I love UrbanSurvival.com

[NVMojo]

http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm

excellent comments this week.



A couple of things figure into market crashes - rapid changes of expectations, asymmetric spread of information, and so forth. Liquidity traps are another. So, it's with all these considerations that the Fed will probably be armed to the teeth for tomorrow's jobs report. If it comes out at 4.6%, the charade of "good times" will continue. However, you can bet that as soon as the report comes out there will be two items of immediate concern.



One of these is the U-6 (Alternative measures of labor under utilization) report. This is where we see that recently 8-9% of the population is chronically under-employed. This would be folks like the IT bosses of 10-years ago that are now flipping burgers for a living, and the MBA's who are bussing tables.



The other measure to watch in the report will be something called the CES birth/death model. This is where the Labor Department lines up it's crystal ball and makes it's best estimate as to the number of jobs that it "guesses" (granted with some statistical basis, but weak) were created during the month. What we see in recent CES birth/death model number is that these "unofficial" and "statistical inferences, have accounted for nearly all job growth this year.

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OK, maybe the stats are confusing. Let's look at the May figures for a minute. We see that the number of people working in may was 143,976,000 (call it 144-million.). Now, let's flip back to January of 2006, where we find employment was 143,074,000. A little quick math and we see that real jobs growth year-to-date (through May) was a whopping 6-10th's of 1 percent.



But wait! It gets even better because dividing 144/143 millions still gives us too optimistic a picture of reality. Instead of taking the 143,976,000 workers at face value, let's back out half of the CES birth/death model claimed, because that may be closer to real life. So instead of adding 540,000 jobs in the period, let's say a real CES would add 270,000 jobs, which would come off the 143,976,000 leaving us with 143,706,000 working, which in turn divided by the January number gives us year to date job growth of a little more than 4-10ths of one percent.

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And that's with a war (two or more actually, we've got Iraq, Afghanistan, and whatever else) to support jobs "creation" and then we have all those invaders from south of the border who show up at some level in the workforce using phony/forged papers.

So now you tell me: Even though it's a near slam-dunk that the reported rate will be 4.6 or so tomorrow, you tell me if things are any better than they were a year ago?


more...

http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm

[Mojorabbit]

1. So do I

One of the few places Ihave a subscription

[Oggy]

2. Mine never worked

I paid up and then could not get in with my username/password. I chased George for a while, but then gave up. Mind you I am happy with the free bit.

[On the Road]

3. That Has to be the Silliest Stock Chart I've Ever Seen

OK, 2006 is compared with 1987 and 1929. But where is the similarity? The trends don't match particularly well. If they did, the time period is too short to draw any conclusions about a long-term pattern like a crash. There's nothing there to distinguish an "overhang" from a rounded bottom.

JMO.