"I don't know if the people on Wall Street are not really getting out and seeing what's really going on.
When you go to small towns, like I do, and talk to people - people don't have much confidence in the numbers you hear."
Ronnie Squires, Winner of CNBC's Guess the Jobs Number Contest
The Non-Farm Payrolls number sucked out loud with a fairly stupendous miss. If you back out the imaginary jobs from the Birth Death report, the economy added about 40,000 real jobs, of a generally low quality. Chief Strategists and economists took delight in the tenth of a percent decrease in unemployment, a generally misleading statistic. And of course, stocks rallied.
Given the need for the central banks to keep printing money, and the ECB's endorsement of that approach, the hit on the metals this week makes quite a bit of sense from a perception management standpoint of the porcine persuasion.
Here is my most probable forecast for the future. Be sure to make a note of it.
The next time there is a financial crisis, which is likely to be in the not too distant future, almost to a person the economists and talking heads of the status quo will express shock and bewilderment saying, 'who could have seen this coming?' Unless of course there is some foreign scapegoat who can be conveniently blamed for the collapse of a house of cards.
And then, from their Olympian heights of privilege, the overpaid pundits will quickly fall back into their most comfortable, ideologically blind slogans. There is too much government, or there is not enough stimulus or the unfortunate many are just lazy and stupid.
And meanwhile, given the lack of reform of the financial and political system, the average American family, which they will all claim to uphold and revere, is being led down a blind alley of officially tolerated corruption, and strangled.
Alibaba was announced after the bell. See the stock posting for commentary about that and its likely influence on the markets.
Have a pleasant weekend.
