So troubling is the ‘economic climate’ out there that several sites have posted ‘shotgun’ articles in an effort to demonstrate the scale of the, er, disaster.
What should astonish the pragmatic observer is the ‘non-reaction’ coming from the general public. The job markets are ‘gone’, the economic desert is expanding rapidly and this is NOT going to ‘go away’.
If there was ever a time to panic, NOW would be it!
Understand good citizen, the ‘signs’ you should be paying attention to are not to be found in the MSM, you will find them in your shopping basket and at the gas pump.
While the fucktards cry ‘deflation’, there is NO DIFFERENCE between prices rising and purchasing power falling, they are effectively THE SAME FUCKING THING! (This is the ‘weasels’ slipping you the bone because they can! And there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it!)
Soon it won’t matter if you have the ‘money’ to afford a given thing, it will become a question of whether or not you have the ‘firepower’ to seize it.
With THAT ‘cheery thought’ let us proceed with our first offering Something we haven’t done in a while, a quick visit to shadowstats.com!
No. 301: Money Supply Update Subscription required June 7th, 2010
• 5.9% M3 Annual Decline Deepest Since Early-1930s Banking Crisis
• Post-World War II Record Drop in Inflation-Adjusted M3 Signals Intensifying Business Contraction
• Renewed Recession Will Set Stage for U.S. Solvency Crisis and Severe Inflation Threat More ...
No. 300: May Employment and Unemployment Subscription required June 4th, 2010
• May Nonfarm Payrolls Rose 20,000 Net of 411,000 Temporary Census Hires and Fell by 31,000 after Revisions and Birth-Death Model Shenanigans
• May Household-Survey Employment Fell by 35,000 Irrespective of Census Hires
• Unemployment Rates Were Artificially Low Due to Census Effects: 9.7% (U.3), 16.9% (U.6), 21.7% (SGS)
• M3 Signal for Double-Dip Downturn Intensifies More ...
No. 299: Employment Report Outlook and Some Updates Subscription required June 3rd, 2010
• 420,000 May Census Hires Assure "Strong" Jobs Report
• Consensus Estimates May Be Disappointed
• Continued Data Distortions Generated by Severity of the Economic Downturn More ...
The bullet points speak for themselves, the ‘employment picture’ is not improving, which means the economy itself will not improve, not for you, not for me, not for anybody.
The ‘juggling act’ we’re watching now of rising asset prices and falling currency values is simply theft by those with the power to do so…Understand good citizen, the rich aren’t ‘losing ground’; too bad you can’t make the same claim!
Our next offering asks a question most of us don’t have a good answer for, sadly, neither do the perps!
And there ARE perps!
Why Does it Matter?
Many people seem to think that U.S. markets are jittery because of fears about what developments in Europe might mean for the rest of the world. But even if there was no sovereign debt crisis, I would be hard-pressed to overstate just just how bad things are here at home. While I've posted plenty of articles detailing the dismal state of the U.S. economy from the perspective of the man in the street (not the one on Wall Street, mind you), all you need is Google, an internet connection, and a few moments of time to see that there's plenty more bad news where the rest came from. [This assumes you know what you’re looking at…] After reading the following articles, the first thing that pops into my head is: Why does what is happening overseas even matter? [Short answer, good citizen: shit rolls downhill!]
"In Brutal Job Market, More Than a Million Quit Looking" (CNBC.com)
If you think the jobs situation has become pretty hopeless, you're not alone. Roughly 1.1 million workers have given up hope of finding employment.
The staggering level of "discouraged workers" as the government calls them has swelled to historic proportions in 2010, past the million barrier for the first time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking the number.
Though a bit off its all-time high of 1.2 million recorded in February, the metric stands as perhaps the most daunting statistic of last Friday's gloomy jobs report, which showed that almost all the new employment is coming from temporary government Census jobs and not the kind that will sustain an economy.
"The fact that people are sitting down indicates just how bad the market is for some categories of people," says Peter Morici, professor at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business and the former chief economist at the US International Trade Commission. [Um, Time out, good citizen! Let’s begin with the ‘not in the workforce’ designation and how ‘not looking’ gets you dumped there…there are currently 83 MILLION working aged citizens ‘counted’ as ‘not in the workforce’…so the single million listed here isn’t as shocking as the MSM would like you to believe it is! Worse, this figure started at 53 million in 1995, just to give you a hint as to how long this bullshit has been going on and what direction it is headed!]
"Drag on Recovery: Consumer Debt-Cutting" (Wall Street Journal)
Anyone who has struggled with addiction knows recovery is a long, slow process.
So it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that the economic rebound is moving at such a gradual pace. [Um, if you were a bit stupid, this statement would make sense. The recovery is ‘creeping’ because there is no investment! Funny how the two are related…you’d think someone on Wall Street would understand that…but apparently not.]
Despite a vigorous bounce-back in corporate earnings and a veritable factory boom, job growth is decidedly sluggish. Gross domestic product is growing at only half of the 7% to 8% pace that typically has been seen after past deep recessions. [Um, once again we see evidence that Wall Street has ‘redefined’ certain terms to conform to standards that are not widely understood by the general public. ‘Vigorous’ on Wall Street is interpreted as stronger players gobbling up the market share left behind by weaker players…and the factory boom thing is right up there with ‘bonuses’, the little ‘something extra’ that Wall Streeters have come to expect if their employers wish to retain their services. Knocking your competitors into a hole and stepping up your production to cover the gap isn’t a genuine ‘increase’ but apparently the fucktards think YOU are STUPID. You’d have to be blind not to see that the economy continues to shrink, not expand!]
One reason: deleveraging. After years of bingeing on debt, U.S. households are paring back. Those not doing so by choice are often being forced, because lending standards remain tight.
The question now, both for consumer spending and growth more broadly, is how much further the process has to go.
The answer is probably a lot. [Here we bump up against that other ‘demon’ known as ‘time’…do the usurers have enough time to juice the public or will civilization crumble as it did when Rome collapsed? The ‘invaders’ were welcomed with open arms by the oppressed Roman citizenry!]
"Employers Lowballing New Hires" (Wall Street Journal)
The job market may be recovering, but some salary offers are still a few years behind. [A ‘few years behind’? Is this ‘Wall Street speak’ for justifying screwing workers? Remember, what they don’t pay you is that much more they can pay themselves!]
Since the labor market began picking up steam, companies hiring for entry-level or administrative spots with pay that would normally range from $40,000 to $50,000 have been offering workers $28,000 to $38,000, says Randy Miller, founder and chief executive of ReadyMinds, a Lyndhurst, N.J., provider of online career counseling and coaching. [Left unsaid here is whether or not ‘Coach Randy’ is cool with this? How much do you want to bet Coach Randy ‘advises’ his clients to ‘suck it up’ at least you’ll have a job!]
.For workers further up the food chain, an offer that might have been $100,000 a few years ago is now coming in at $85,000 or $90,000, he says. [Can you say ‘squeeze play’, good citizen? This is what happens in a ‘buyer’s market’, and it’s not the kind of thing you build a ‘stable civilization’ on. This way leads to slavery! Those who ‘dictate the terms’ will steadily renege, taking away parts of the original deal as your ‘usefulness’ to them diminishes, and there ain’t a fucking thing you can do about it!]
"Companies are more worried these days about margins, profitability, and they are cutting costs across the board. Even though [workers are] qualified and have prior experience, the hiring department has been told to set a budget at a lower range," Mr. Miller says. "Everybody is more price-sensitive these days." [So, what can we expect when this ‘price sensitivity’ inevitably leads to wages you can’t survive on? Understand, this is not their problem but yours! It is definitely a case of ‘stupid is as stupid does’, so don’t BE stupid!]
"Big Increase in Mortgage Foreclosures Predicted for this Year" (Miami Herald)
Real estate experts predicted this week that 3.5 million homes nationally will go into foreclosure this year as risky adjustable-rate mortgages written in 2005 reset and unemployment continues.
That's up from 2.8 million homeowners who faced foreclosure in 2009, and sets a pace that isn't likely to plateau until late 2011, said RealtyTrac Senior Vice President Rick Sharga.
Sharga spoke this week in Austin during the 44th annual National Association of Real Estate Editors conference.
``The second wave of toxic loans is about to hit,'' said Sharga, whose Irvine, Calif.-based company tracks foreclosure filings. [What will banks do considering we have already ‘surrendered’ twice the value of the housing market to, er, ‘shore up’ the banking system. Will the ‘little banks’ be ‘allowed to fail’ (which is to ask will they be ‘scooped up’ by the ‘Too big to fail’ banks?)
Sharga's panel of speakers, which included a Bank of America representative and Arizona-based mortgage modification executive, painted a bleak picture for anyone who thought the worst of the real estate meltdown is over.
"CFOs Signal Worsening Job Market" (CFOZone.com)
More bad news on the hiring front.
CFOs say they are less likely to hire people now than they were three months ago.
According to the latest quarterly Robert Half Financial Hiring Index, six percent of chief financial officers said they plan to hire full-time accounting and finance employees during the third quarter of 2010.
In the prior survey conducted three months ago, seven percent of CFOs indicated they planned to add full-time accounting and finance employees during the second quarter. At the time, the folks at Robert Half celebrated the fact this was the highest hiring forecast since the first quarter of 2009.
Well, that party was short-lived.
Meanwhile, in the latest survey, nine percent of CFOs said they anticipate staff reductions. This is up from eight percent in the prior quarterly survey.
Add it up, and CFOs are more pessimistic now than they were three months ago. Not a recipe for bringing down the nation's stubbornly high unemployment rate. [Considering NOTHING has been done to stem the massive ‘outflow’ of domestic jobs, this should surprise no one. Welcome to the ‘Desert’, Amigo’s!]
"More than 40m Now Use Food Stamps" (Boston Globe)
WASHINGTON — The number of Americans receiving food stamps in March topped 40 million for the first time as the jobless rate hovered near a 26-year high.
Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases totaled 40.2 million, up 21 percent from a year earlier and 1.2 percent more than in February, the Department of Agriculture said yesterday in a statement on its website. The number of recipients has set records for 16 straight months. [I ask you good citizen, is this a sign of a ‘healthy’ society?]
"Food Pantries Fear the Future" (Times Herald-Record)
Less assistance, more demand strain resources
KINGSTON — With donations drying up, state money cut and demand skyrocketing, food pantries and soup kitchens in the Hudson Valley are struggling to stay afloat.
"We're doing so much more with fewer resources," said Diane Reeder, executive director of Queens Galley in Kingston. "Even our regular fundraisers aren't pulling in the kind of money we're used to seeing."
For instance, Reeder and the soup kitchen — which serves about 9,000 meals a month — usually raise at least $5,000 by selling food at the Hudson Valley Mayfaire.
But this year, the organization walked away from the May event with only $600.
"We're going into our biggest season with no money and no help," she said.
The financial problems are widespread.
The Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York expects to receive a cut of $100,000, to roughly $3.2 million, from the state's Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program for the grant year that begins July 1, said Executive Director Mark Quandt.
The Florida Community Food Pantry these days runs almost entirely on that money.
The pantry exhausted its grant two months ago and has been dipping into reserves to fund operations. For the first time in 15 years, Florida pantry Director Denise Thibault has to eye the bank statements very closely.
"I think everyone is feeling the pinch," she said. "My concern is, I want to make sure that we don't get into a position where we can't supply food."
Money isn't the only problem.
With the school year nearly over, many kitchens and pantries are bracing for increased demand from families whose children rely on the schools for meals nine months of the year.
You have to back up considerably to find the real issue here good citizen, does the ‘good of the many’ outweigh the good of the few or the one?
What we’re witnessing is probably the most blatant example of ‘gross mis-management’ seen since the uprisings against the ‘Royals’; but that’s not what’s being reported.
Small wonder there, eh? Guess who ‘owns’ the ‘public’ information services? It sure isn’t you or me…or even ‘we’ for that matter. Our ‘corporate sponsors’ control all of the ‘commercial content’ you can absorb and then some.
In what direction does sanity lie in a world that makes no sense?
There is but one source good citizen and that is your own internal compass…if there were ever a recipe for ‘chaos’, there it is!
Fortunately, you are NOT on your own. Countless other ‘compasses’ point in the same general direction that yours indicates. The trick is not to get too hung up on the specifics, we all ‘generally’ want the same thing.
Which leads us to the bizarre, ‘largely imaginary’ differences the Noise Machine keeps jumping on, united we are ‘invincible’ thus they strive to keep us ‘divided’.
Can you turn your head enough to join in?
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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