A weak report, but not as tragically dramatic as the silly revisions higher that preceded it based on the ephemeral ADP report.
Traders and politicians like the volatility that emotions bring to the decision making process. Jolting the herd from here to there serves to distract them while moving them along in the desired direction.
The recovery is weak, returning to the weak job growth that was evident prior to the crash of 2008, within the bounds of 2005-2006 for those wearing their Bush goggles. The economy is sick, and could possibly take a turn for the worse. It badly needs a structural reworking, and unfortunately that discussion is not even on the table. The monied interests are setting the agendas and shaping the news.
Simple short term stimulus will not 'fix it,' and fiscal austerity is snake oil from the same con men and grifters that brought you the financial crisis with a sick, unbalanced economy on its way to third world status. What is the 'industrial policy' of the US. I would submit that it is still deregulation, the deification of ideal markets that do not exist, and the shifting of more capital to the few in hopes of a trickle down effect that never really occurs. The funds are used to further bind the real economy with artificial impediments and rents.
From budget surplus to death spiral in a little more than a decade. Gee, where did we go wrong?
You all know what needs to be done. But there is not nearly enough to slake the greed of the powerful. So down this road we must go.
Here's one for those who favor giving tax breaks on offshore funds for multinationals who use accounting gimmicks and loopholes to realize their income in tax haven countries. The program allows corporations like GE to repatriate their stashed cash on the cheap, and pay it out in tax free dividends to wealthy shareholders and bonuses for their executives.
It is a powerful incentive to send even more employment and economic activity offshore, and for countries to engage in state directed mercantilism. There are no Porterian 'natural competitive advantages' involved, but there is a strong artificial disincentive to allow domestic consumption and advancement of the mercantilist's own middle class. There is, at the end of the day, the least common denominator of the health and freedom of the many as the unifying corporate objective, and the principle of one world government.
Trickle down is a canard. Globalization and 'free trade' is a means of beating down all independent public policy and local sovereignty. There is no purely objective macroeconomics without major policy assumptions as to the public 'good.' Naturally efficient and rational markets are the economic equivalent of Piltdown Man.
And there is no such thing as sustainable 'free trade' between independent political entities under fiat currency regimes, without assuming a perfectly rational system run by angels. The game is rigged and the regulators and politicians are bought, always and everywhere, under this type of artificial construct, with a nationless oligarchy as its ultimate objective.
