Greetings good citizen,

The ‘rumor du jour’ is that unemployment is showing signs of ‘bottoming out’. The ADP report shows ‘payrolls’ are down by 742,000 yet the ‘official’ number is somewhere in the ballpark 650,000. ADP stands for Automatic Data Processing and their main ‘product’ is handling the ‘processing’ of…paychecks.

The reason for the disparity is easily explained as not everyone that stops receiving a paycheck is also eligible for unemployment benefits.

Perhaps more ‘misleading’ is the ‘piss poor’ job creation record of the last administration. Only 5 million jobs were created between 2000 and 2008. This is 4 million LESS than the number required to absorb new entrants into the labor force. Um, five million jobs created over eight years and there are currently 5.7 million people collecting benefits (and untold millions that have already exhausted them…or as we see in the disparity above, not eligible to collect.)

Grrrrrr!

I’m going to chill and let you proceed to tonight’s offering and let Ilargi tell you what’s what…

Wake Up! Who Needs Reality?

Ilargi: The world of hallucinations in a few short lines:

G20: The promised amount gets bigger as the day progresses. It stands at about $1.2 trillion as I write this. Everybody will wear the happy face masks, brag of how hard they worked and claim unexpected successes. Tomorrow, back home, they'll take off their faces and start preparing for a world in which treaties can no longer be made or if they are, trusted. That's what the leaders take away from the meeting. Not the markets though: happy masks all over on the floors. Check your wallets. And any way, how come the Dow is up when:

U3: Unemployment numbers keep on rising fast. Continuing claims are at their highest since records began in 1967, new claims since 1982. Seeing the stock exchanges as somehow reflecting the state of the real world was always shaky; it's a load of nothing now. Down the line, however, the real world will reflect nigh perfectly in the exchanges. To delay that point, lawmakers and the banking industry, in their Siamase unison, have pushed so long and so hard that the:

FASB: Accounting Standards Board today decided to squash mark-to-market regulations, which will allow for more and worse mark-to-toilet-paper lies at Goldman et al, as well as at:

AIG: In a report published today, The Institutional Risk Analyst states that AIG has been a doomed Ponzi scheme for years, at least since the day they started getting involved in Credit Default Swaps, but if you look closer, for much longer. Geithner and Bernanke's claims that the swaps are valid and legal paper, says the report, are either proof of gross incompetence or worse. All payments of taxpayer money made to Wall Street banks through AIG's rescue programs will have to be recalled by the bankruptcy court that will have to deal with AIG eventually. Will that happen, or will AIG last long enough to participate, at the behest of the banks, in the:

PPIP: Geithner's Public Private Investment Plan requires that those firms that would like to play a substantial role, i.e. that wish to share in the 20-25% returns the plan promises, will have to hold at least $10 billion in toxic assets on their own balance sheets. In other words, only the biggest losers need apply. That would be Goldman, Citi, JPMorgan and perhaps the largest hedge funds like Blackrock. Oh, and it would also include:

PIMCO: Which is willing to suffer a 20% profit for the common good, re: the recovery of the US economy. So why are you so ungrateful? Wake up, it’s dream world out there. If you want reality, just go look at your own bank account. Or your pension fund, the value of your home .

The lies keep coming…the other day they were all a twitter about an ‘unexpected’ improvement in home sales. Yesterday there was some clap trap about manufacturing orders being ‘better than expected’. Today, the return of ‘mark to fantasy’ asset pricing sweetened the bottom line of all of the banks.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the economy continues to hemorrhage jobs as inventory levels across the board remain stubbornly high. If it ain’t sellin’ there’s little need to restock.

And in case you didn’t notice, capitalist enterprise isn’t a ‘charity’, they don’t pay workers to stand around and do nothing (even if it is in their best interests to do exactly that.)

Worker = Customer…how hard is that?

Sadly, you don’t have to be very smart to own a business.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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