By now you will have heard about the shocking miss on the US Payrolls Number, made even more shocking by the cheerleading that preceded it by the likes of Goldman Sachs(who were probably on the other end of that trade> and by Barack Obama himself.
The administration had nothing constructive to say this morning except for mindless sloganeering by the likes of Christina Romer, Obama's chief on the Council of Economic Advisor, who is unlikely to inspire confidence when delivering even good news, much less a clear sign of economic policy errors and a double dip in the making.
With Romer, Summers, and Geithner, the President has managed to put together the economic scream team. Even Volcker is starting to look tired and ineffective. His recent proposal of a VAT, the most regressive of taxes, sounded less like a democratic reform and more like something from the Bilderberg playbook. One has to wonder how long will it be until they start recommending the sale of key sovereign assets to corporate oligarchs.
And then there was Baghdad Barrack, talking up the economy and the jobs numbers this morning at a Maryland truck garage. He seems to be trying to run a bluff, talking his way past his team's economic policy errors and corruption, a reflexive strategy that may have served him better when he had no real responsibilities or quantifiable results.
One might feel better if the other party had not already proven itself to be the party of the elite and the wealthy special interests, without vision or ability, creating many of the problems that are sinking the US today. Things do indeed seem bleak when the reform government fails.
It appears that the SP futures may be forming a bear flag, with another big step down to follow. That would be 'bad news' because below the support at 1040 is a disturbing possibility of a triple digit SP 500.
Chart Updated at 3:30 EDT
“Thus, it should be understood that when pro-US figures use the term, 'rules-based international order,' they are not referring to anything analogous to the rule of law. Quite the opposite, they are using Orwellian language to describe a system in which essentially no rules can be established and/or observed, given that the dominant state has the prerogative to violate and/or rewrite “rules” at its whim.” Aaron Good, American Exception