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Perhaps this chart will help explain the divergence that Charles Biderman of Trimtabs sees between the official unemployment numbers and the income tax data he has been tracking.
The difference amongst the three measures revolves around the treatment of workers who desire a real full time job, but have to either settle for a part time position and other forms of under-employment that may technically qualify as a 'job' but not as a 'living,' or who have simply been removed from the government's official attention span.
"The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment."
Read the rest of John Williams' Shadowstats here.
My own estimation is that the recovery is flat-lining here and is vulnerable to a double dip which, if it does occur, will be blamed on some exterior factor such as slack European demand, problems in the emerging markets, or China. But it is still too soon to tell from the numbers.
In terms of historical perspective, the great reformer Obama is much more like Herbert Hoover or Nelson Rockefeller than a Franklin Roosevelt. He resembles a moderate Republican despite all the hysterical rhetoric from the far right.
The economy has not been reformed, and most of the problems that caused the collapse in the first place are still operating. As the corporate lobbyists were able to weaken financial reform in Dodd-Frank, so they continue to monopolize the conversation and policy discussions with their money.
I do not see genuine change happening until and unless the human misery increases enough to trigger a reaction, mass protests, or some other serious challenge to the status quo and the apathy of the fortunate. And I have quite a bit of confidence that the one percent will continue to obsessively power forward as the economy dries up until they achieve a pyrrhic victory. Winning.
This applies not only to the US but several other western countries, particularly the UK. It is also true for China which despite the gloss of their miracle economy in the western corporate media remains largely a narrow oligarchy sitting on top of a virtual slave labor camp, with a few showcase exceptions. And the western oligarchs love it. As Bill Gates said, 'This is my kind of capitalism.'
The NY Times has discovered that the Banks that were rescued by the public have turned into serial fraud offenders. JP Morgan is near the top of their ranks, with Goldman Sachs and Bank of America not far behind. Only Citigroup seems to have fallen out of favor.
This is not news to any of the regular patrons of the Cafe, but it is good to see the mainstream media taking notice. Perhaps they might have a look at the Silver manipulation investigation that the CFTC has been sitting on for over three years. Not to mention the outrageous theft of customer money by MF Global and the Banks.
Obama talks a good game, and presents a moral face through the media, but an examination of his actions and his record shows that his administration serves the monied interests to the detriment of the public interest. In many cases they are merely following the same practices begun in the Clinton Administration and carried on by Bush. It is a bad situation indeed when the 'reformer' elected by the people has failed to reform.
He may not be as brazen and open as his Republican opponents in promoting the interests of the Wall Street, perhaps, and certainly is not as favorable to Big Oil, but the corruption of justice for all in American politics seems to have become pervasive over the last fifteen years.
NY Times
S.E.C. Is Avoiding Tough Sanctions for Large Banks
By Edward Wyatt
February 3, 2012
WASHINGTON — Even as the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its investigations of Wall Street in the last decade, the agency has repeatedly allowed the biggest firms to avoid punishments specifically meant to apply to fraud cases.
By granting exemptions to laws and regulations that act as a deterrent to securities fraud, the S.E.C. has let financial giants like JPMorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America continue to have advantages reserved for the most dependable companies, making it easier for them to raise money from investors, for example, and to avoid liability from lawsuits if their financial forecasts turn out to be wrong.
An analysis by The New York Times of S.E.C. investigations over the last decade found nearly 350 instances where the agency has given big Wall Street institutions and other financial companies a pass on those or other sanctions. Those instances also include waivers permitting firms to underwrite certain stock and bond sales and manage mutual fund portfolios.
JPMorganChase, for example, has settled six fraud cases in the last 13 years, including one with a $228 million settlement last summer, but it has obtained at least 22 waivers, in part by arguing that it has “a strong record of compliance with securities laws.” Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, which merged in 2009, have settled 15 fraud cases and received at least 39 waivers.
Only about a dozen companies — Dell, General Electric and United Rentals among them — have felt the full force of the law after issuing misleading information about their businesses. Citigroup was the only major Wall Street bank among them. In 11 years, it settled six fraud cases and received 25 waivers before it lost most of its privileges in 2010...
Read the rest here.
I spend a great deal of time looking at the various government reports, and especially the Payrolls report as you know. I keep my own spreadsheets with their data, and measure various changes in the way in which they calculate the seasonal adjustment factors, imaginary jobs, and prior revisions.
If I wish to leave you with one takeway, it is that the current use of the monthly headline number is more of a Sales and PR program for Wall Street and the government, and hardly the product of serious and thoughtful analysis of statistical data.
The US economy is on a flatline from all that I can tell. I suspect that if a double dip occurs it will be blamed on Europe or some other factor. but in fact there has been no real recovery as of yet.
There is a yawning discrepancy between the bond and equity markets in the manner in which they are interpreting the data. And one of them is wrong. Based on my experience, it is the bond guys who are most always the adults in the room.
Still, the markets are what they are, and it does not pay to fight the tape ahead of its season. Wall Street and its Banks have shown a marvelous ability to create paper rallies out of nothing and sustain them for quite some time before their inevitable collapse.
The US economy can recover. The system can be repaired. But I do not see the effort required to perform that task coming out of New York or Washington yet. They may be talking a good game, but it looks like just more of the same.
It is interesting to read this now, when Europe once again considers what its shape and its future will be. And the rest of the world as well.
This leaflet was written and distributed in January, 1943. Intelligent and open minded Germans could see the decline and fall coming, even while the Reich was intensifying its efforts to feed the hatred and delusion with its lies.
I was always struck by the fact that even while the Russians were shelling Berlin, there were gangs of Nazi thugs roaming the streets, hanging old men and even boys who were not in uniform, labeling them as slackers. The will to power calls out the madness. Always. If men who would be gods cannot create and sustain life as God does, then they must ravage and destroy life, and the creative impulse and diversity of art, and finally themselves in their delusion.
As Charles Upton said, "This is why true evil always exhibits a tell-tale mixture of diabolical cunning and immense stupidity." It only imitates and steals its forms from true being, but remains a souless and non-productive aberration of genuine life.
The White Rose
Fifth Leaflet
Munich, 1943
We will not be silent.
The war is approaching its destined end. As in the year 1918, the German government is trying to focus attention exclusively on the growing might of our submarine warfare, while in the East the armies are constantly in retreat and invasion in imminent in the West. Mobilisation in the United States has not yet reached its climax, but already it exceeds anything that the world has ever seen. It has become a mathematical certainty that Hitler is leading the German people into the abyss. Hitler cannot win the war; he can only prolong it. The guilt of Hitler and his minions goes beyond all measure. Retribution comes closer and closer.
But what are the German people doing? They will not see and will not listen. Blindly they follow their seducers into ruin. Victory at any price! is inscribed on their banner. "I will fight to the last man," says Hitler-but in the meantime the war has already been lost...
What can we learn from the outcome of this war-this war that never really was our own national war?
The imperialist ideology of force, from whatever side it comes, must be shattered for all time. A one sided Prussian militarism must never again be allowed to assume power. Only in large-scale cooperation among the nations of Europe can the ground be prepared for reconstruction.
Centralized hegemony, such as the Prussian state has tried to exercise in Germany and in Europe, must be cut down at its inception. The Germany of the future must be a federal state.
At this juncture only a sound federal system can imbue a weakened Europe with a new life. The workers must be liberated from their condition of down trodden slavery under National Socialism. The illusory structure of autonomous national industry must disappear. Every nation and each man have the right to the goods of the whole world!
Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the protection of individual citizens from the arbitrary will of criminal regimes of violence-these will be the bases of the New Europe.
Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.
