Um, the markets closed ‘up’ today but it was rather obvious that they ‘painted the tape’ at the close of trading…even the near vertical finish in the last twenty minutes of trading only put the Dow up 11 points.
I’m sure nobody is ‘shocked’ to read the warnings that the recovery is likely to be more ‘muted’ than originally anticipated. That seems to be a ‘sign of the times’ where suddenly everything is ‘surprising’ or ‘disappointing’, depending on the news.
Ironically, this begs the question of how these ‘analysts’ keep their job being wrong so often, the only other ‘occupations’ that are more forgiving is weather forecasting, followed by professional sports.
Understand good citizen that tonight’s headline has been altered to reflect the market’s ‘positive finish’, so we proceed with tonight’s offering
Jobs Report Unsettles Wall Street [Just not for the whole day…]
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
Published: January 8, 2010
A grimmer-than-expected report on the United States job market rattled Wall Street investors on Friday, spurring a rally in government bonds as traders looked for a safe haven.
Across the board, prices fell: the dollar weakened, and crude oil remained below its 15-month high for a second day. At the same time, two-year Treasury notes posted their largest gains since last month. [Um, a barrel of oil is going for $ 83 +, which is somewhat higher than it’s been in a while.]
The day began with disappointing figures from the Labor Department, which reported that the United States economy shed 85,000 jobs in December. That surprised many analysts Some had ventured that employers, encouraged by signs that the recovery would endure, might have even added jobs.
There was some hope amid the lackluster numbers: the government said employers actually added 4,000 jobs in November, backtracking on its original estimate of 11,000 losses for the month. [Um, as we all know, this is a positively astounding development considering there are no freaking jobs out there anywhere, and positively nobody is hiring! Must be more of those miraculous ‘government accounting methods’ working their magic…or is proper to call it ‘voodoo’ when it involves raising the dead?]
Those dissonant figures highlighted the erratic nature of economic renewal, but came as encouraging news to some investors
“There’s been enthusiasm about the pace of the recovery, so this wasn’t a great number,” said Uri D. Landesman, head of global growth at ING. “But it’s hardly a disaster.”
Gegner here…let’s take time out for a moment to consider what’s really going on. Defaults are off the charts, people are losing their jobs left, right and center.
What do you suppose scares our creditor’s spitless right now? If the job market isn’t going to turn around, people will know they aren’t getting a pay increase. Um, no raise (or even the prospect of one) will put people who are currently ‘juggling’ their payments is a bad place…and they will more than likely ‘triage’, paying only the bills they absolutely need to pay. Place where the climate is, um, less agreeable puts residents under extra pressure, although most localities prohibit cutting off utilities to a home that has minor children or elderly folks living there during the ‘winter months’…come Spring, all bets are off, you pay up or you get shut down.
So that is ‘why’ the MSM is sticking to the ‘fantasy’ that economic recovery is right around the corner…the lies don’t cost them anything, their credibility is already shot to hell.
In afternoon trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.22 percent at 10,583.58. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 0.11 percent, slipping below its 15-month high, and the technology-dominated Nasdaq climbed 0.36 percent.
The Dow was held back by declines in shares of Coca Cola, which fell 2 percent after JPMorgan Chase downgraded its rating on the company.
Overseas, European markets fluctuated but by the close had gained momentum. Investors were weighing a report showing the unemployment rate in the euro area had reached double digits in November for the first time since the introduction of the currency a decade ago. [Now we can all wonder what that has to do with the price of tea in China…although it does tell us one thing, there ain’t no recovery over there either…]
Next week, United States investors will begin to get a glimpse of how companies fared in the fourth quarter of 2009. Analysts said that as investors dissect earnings reports, they are expecting companies to show growth in revenue — not just nimble cost-cutting efforts. As the recovery takes hold, investors are looking for reassurance that companies can sustain growth, and that consumer demand is returning.
Let’s wish the investors ‘good luck’ with their search for ‘solid economic recovery’, because it isn’t there.
Everytime you look at the numbers, the data gets more distressing. Like the latest blurb about how there are currently more government paper pushers than people employed in the manufacture of goods.
By definition, a paper-pusher is ‘overhead’; their job doesn’t ‘create’ wealth, keeping that person employed is pure ‘cost’. If you want to add insult to injury, government employees enjoy benefits that in many cases don’t even exist in the private sector.
Again, Euro-Zone Jobless Rate at Double Digits stories like this cast a rather daunting shadow on the prospects for economic recovery anytime soon…if at all.
And that just might be the hell of it good citizen, you could very well be starving/freezing yourself to death in a vain effort to pay off debt that’s going to ‘disappear’ anyway.
When civilization collapses, nobody is going to come looking for your lawnmower…
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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