Friday, July 2, 2010

7/2/10 Midafternoon Report: More bad macro data leaves US worker in desperate need of a hand, job

Money McBags was initially in a good mood this morning as when he was scouring the internet for news/data/information, he learned that Wonder Woman was turning a delicious 69 (and it is news like that for which Money McBags lives), but then the jobs number came out and didn't just put a turd in his punchbowl, but took the punchbowl, spilled out all of the punch, and then proceeded to fill it with a cacophony of fetid bile made up of what had to be 10 year old kimchi, expired mayonnaise, and Lindsay Lohan's saliva.  The headline was that 81k private sector jobs were created despite 125k overall job losses due to the firing of 225k temporary census workers.  And while that is mostly true, it obfuscates exactly how bad the numbers were like Goldman has obfuscated their real derivatives dealings with AIG.  Money McBags doesn't usually drop tables here (instead he drops all kinds of rules of decorum, manners, and grammar) but he has to do it today to explain exactly how bad the jobs number was and why it is a terrible sign for the economy going forward.  So Money McBags went to the BLS' actual press release (and readers should know the "L" in "BLS" is silent) and broke out the numbers since financial reporters hate doing work like Kafka hates writing endings to novels.  That said, below is his table showing the actual jobs report numbers:






















There are several things of note:

1.  The BLS said the Government lost 225k temporary census jobs but had total loss of only 208k jobs, so one can backsolve in to a 17k government job creation number ex. census workers, which is kind of like a pyrrhic victory only without the fucking victory.  Anyway, there is no way to know if those 17k job adds are temporary or permanent workers, but whatever, 208k net losses still sucks worse than a hooker with a bad case of  xerostomia.

2.  Of the 84k private sector jobs that the headline touts as somehow being positive, 21k of them were temporary, and the last time Money McBags checked his dictionary for "temporary" it hadn't changed to being a synonym for "permanent."  The point is, only 63k real "thank the great Nipsey Russell in the sky I don't have to look for another job in a month or so" jobs were created, not 84k. 

3.  The birth/death model plug which as noted before is the biggest black box Money McBags has seen since Vanessa Del Rio's in the 1980s, added 147k jobs to the total and it would be easier to verify that the meaning of life is in fact "42" than anything from the birth/death goalseek.  Again, you can read all about the model here but it is basically the BLS' way to rig the numbers, I mean estimate the number of jobs created/destroyed by new or dead businesses not in their survey.  Now look, Money McBags is no Dale T. Mortensen and wouldn't be able to debate the merits of the Beveridge curve or a backward bending labor supply curve (though he would like to give some beverages to Olivia Munn to see if she would bend backwards over his supplied curve), but how the fuck are more businesses being added now than are closing, when economy is going south faster than Mel Gibson's chances of winning an NAACP image award?  Yeah, Money McBags gets it, big businesses are no longer hiring so people are trying to start their own things, sure that could be one solution.  But what about all of the small businesses that are dying because people don't have fucking income?  Are we really supposed to believe that 144k more people started businesses or joined start-up businesses than were laid off because their companies died?  Sorry, but that doesn't pass Money McBags' sniff test and he's got a hella good olfactory system.  So taking out the fictitious birth/death model, 271k jobs were lost and 63k private sector jobs (temporary and/or permanent) were destroyed.  Feel free to believe the birth/death model is remotely accurate, but Money McBags has more faith in Alan Greenspan winning this year's Playgirl Man of the Year than he does that phony model.

4.  As always, and not sure why Money McBags even keeps pointing this out, but analysts missed the number by a margin wider than a Larry Craig stance.   Analysts guessed that 110k private sector jobs would be added and as you can see from above (and excluding the birth/death plug) only 84k or 63k were added, depending on if you give a shit about temporary workers.  So Wall Street, WHY ARE YOU PAYING THESE GUYS?  Money McBags is giving you better insight for free (well the cost of your dignity), so for the price you pay those highly distinguished economists, hire 20 people who are unemployed and Money McBags bets at least half of them come up with a better guess than the supposed experts.

So now that we know the jobs number was worse than reported, do we even bother debunking the drop in unemployment rate from 9.7% to 9.5%?  Yeah, it fell, but that's because the labor force participation number dropped by 652k as more people just gave the fuck up.   The drop in unemployment rate is more full of shit than the birth/death model, Eliot Spitzer, or a constipated elephant with an overactive liver.  Using what type of math can job losses increase, but the unemployment rate go down?  No really?  Is it some arcane rule of boolean algebra or perhaps Pythagoras' lost theorem that says A^2 + B^2 = Whatever the fuck you want?  The point is, the economy is not recovering (the real unemployment rate including discouraged workers was 16.5%) and with the stimulus running out, republicans denying extended unemployment benefits (so up to 4MM-5MM people potentially losing their safety nets), and retirement funds dropping daily as the market tries to find a new bottom (and as always, Money McBags only hopes it is Brooklyn Decker's bottom), we are now at the tipping point where either Uncle Obama steps in again or we double dip our way back to 666 or below.

In other US news, factory orders declined by 1.4% which was triple what analysts had guessed, though that shouldn't surprise anyone since we have already proved that the economy is getting worse and analysts suck at their jobs. 

Internationally, Europe's unemployment rate held at 10% (which Money McBags believes converts to 12.2% in American) but it's still the highest rate in 12 years since the great black jeans shortage of 1998.  Austria came in with the lowest unemployment rate of 4% which would be great if anyone actually lived there and Latvia came in with the highest rate at 20% which is great that no one lives there.

As for both large and small cap stock news, who really gives a crap today.  It's all going down right now so even though this is a party weekend, keep your shorts on as long as you can.  And remember, follow WGP on facebook and Twitter and enjoy the fireworks on this 4th of July weekend.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is Olivia Munn funny, or just a hot girl pretending to be funny?