just cause theres work at taco bell doesn't mean the economy is healthy. I want a white collar job number. betcha it blows. The last time the big 3 were hurting this bad was 2001 pre 9/11. they squeeze their suppliers which kills their lenders, problem is fundamentally I want to be short, but short levels in stocks are so high it almost dicates going higher.
http://www.kitco.com/ind/Puplava/jun242005.html "In the early 90âs the government realized it had a problem with rising entitlement costs for Social Security, Medicare, and government pensions. These entitlement payments were indexed by the inflation rate each year. With inflation on the rise it meant these costs were rising faster, thus making government deficits much worse. In order to bring the government deficits under control, it would be necessary to bring rising entitlement costs down. One way to lower entitlements would be to bring the inflation rates down, which would translate into lower Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA). The way to do this was to bring down the rate of inflation. However, this was not done by natural means, but artificially through statistical manipulation. The supply of money and credit began to go parabolic in the 1990s as shown in the graph of M3. The rise in money and credit would mean higher inflation rates. Higher inflation rates would mean higher COLA adjustments, which would lead to bigger deficits. The solution was to change the way inflation is measured. Media reports began to surface on how CPI was overstated. The real inflation rate was actually much lower according to government and Federal Reserve officials. The Senate Finance Committee appointed the Boskin Commission to study the problem and find a solution. The Boskin Commission published its final report âToward a More Accurate Measure of the Cost of Living,â and submitted its findings to the Senate on December 4, 1996. The Boskin report recommended downward adjustments in the CPI of 1.1%. The CPI, which is used as the basis for COLAs to Social Security and government pensions, if lowered as recommended by the commission, would reduce future entitlement payments as well as impact other government programs. The CBO estimated that by overstating CPI by 1.1% it added $691 billion to the national debt by 2006. By then the annual deficit would rise anywhere from $148 billion to $200 billion annually by overstating the inflation rate. In effect the government was overpaying because the actual inflation rate was much lower."
cont. "Substitution Up until the Boskin/Greenspan initiative surfaced the CPI was computed each month using a fixed basket of goods. That changed after the Boskin Commission. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began using substitutions in their monthly computations of the CPI. If beef prices rose, it was assumed that people substituted chicken. If chicken prices rose, then consumers would switch to fish. If all these prices rose, well consumers would become vegetarians or maybe start eating Alpo."................ "Hedonics The manipulation didnât stop there. The bureau also began to adjust prices for quality. This practice became known as hedonics. Hedonics adjusts the prices of goods as a result of the increased pleasure a consumer derives from a product. A few examples will illustrate how removed the index has moved away from reality. Tim LaFleur is a commodity specialist for televisions at the BLS. In December last year he adjusted the price of a 27-inch television set for quality improvements. The 27-inch television set had a retail cost of $329.99. However, he decided the new model, which still sold for $329.99, had a better screen. After putting this improvement through the governments complex hedonic adjustment model he determined the improvement in the picture was worth at least $135! Taking in this improvement he adjusted the price of the TV by $135, concluding that the price of the TV had actually fallen by 29%! [1] The price reflected in the CPI was not the actual retail store cost of $329.99, but $194.99. The only problem for we consumers is that if we went to Best Buy or Circuit City to buy that TV, we would still pay $329.99. Another example of hedonics at work is the way the BLS treats rising automobile prices. Mr. Reese, a specialist for autos, took a 2005 model car, which went from $17,890 in 2004 to $18,490 in 2005. After adjusting for quality items and making antilock disc brakes standard, the bureau adjusted the actual $600 price increase down by $225. The problem for we consumers is that the price of the car in dealer showrooms was still $18,490."
cont. "The Substitution Effect Substitution also plays a role in reducing the CPI. From 2001-2003 the CPI index fell by 1.6% reaching a low of 1.1%. Wall Street and the Fed were talking about the risk of deflation. Deflation was predicted everywhere in the press. The financial world became fixated over the risk of deflation even though the monetary presses were working overtime, credit was mushrooming, and asset bubbles were inflating in the mortgage, bond, and real estate markets. The reason for the decline was the substitution effect. Instead of using new car prices, which were going up each year, the BLS substituted used car prices, which were falling. In place of exploding real estate prices, the Bureau gave more weight to the price of rents, which were falling as more households bought homes. Rents were given more weight even though 69% of households own a home versus the 31% that rent.".............. "Many homeowners may not be aware that as a homeowner they receive a fictional income referred to as Ownerâs Equivalent Rent (OER). Essentially the BLS samples the price of rents in residential housing to come up with what a homeowner would receive hypothetically if they were to rent their own home. That sounds idiotic to me, since most homeowners would agree the family castle is in many cases a money pit and not a source of income. Unless the home is owned free and clear, most homeowners have cash outgo each month due to mortgage payments, property taxes, utilities, and repairs. As absurd as this concept appears, OER gets the largest weighting in the CPI index of 23% versus actual rent, which gets only a 6% weighting. OER is purely fictional, yet it carries the greatest weight within the CPI index. Hedonics helps the BLS keep rising prices for goods in the CPI from ever showing up as rising prices. Even though the cost of housing, energy, food, medical bills, prescription drugs, tuition, and entertainment have soared, the government keeps reporting moderate inflation. Hedonics is partially responsible. It has become a convenient and subjective way of removing prices increases from the CPI. The combination of substitution, changing the weight of goods rising in price, hedonics and seasonal adjustments is one reason why the CPI and reported inflation has remained as subdued as it is reported each month. The problem is that these numbers are all fictional and bare no resemblance to what households face each month with their actual budgets."
i don't know much about COLA,BLS,OER, hedonics and whatever left. but i do know, that no one will buy TV for even $329, because it not going to work after 2006 and all other options are way above $329. i also know that at beginning of the year milk at BJ's cost $1.56, now it cost 1.82(not to mention other places,where price is beyond $2) it did not fit in numbers we got so far.so...i see all those numbers as one big BS
That well may be although I doubt it, at any rate we're talking about the job report and what those people became is irrelevant, the fact is the economy did not have jobs for them. Up until May 2005 the number of private sector jobs was below its January 2001 level despite significant population growth during the same period. Compared to historical post-recession trends we are about 8 million jobs behind where we should have been during this stage of economic recovery/expansion.
Unemployment rate is # unemployed/#people in workforce. That's what it is on the surface. What's misleading is that a person is no longer considered part of the workforce if he has been unemployed for longer than 6 months. The assumption the government uses is that if a person is unemployed for 6 months, he is no longer looking for a job, so he is not part of the workforce anymore. Say for example there are 10 people unemployed and there are 100 people in the workforce. The unemployment rate is then 10/100 = 10% Say 6 months later, one of the 10 has been unemployed for 6 months, then he is no longer counted, so the new unemployment rate is 9/99 = 9.09% Just like that the unemployment rate dropped. See how misleading this is? Who says if someone has been unemployed for 6 months, he is no longer looking? (Note: it has been a while since I looked at exactly how every little detail of the number is calculated, but the above example is the gist of it)
In the tech sector there is, and has been, some hiring. The issue is that if you compare the hiring to 1995 and 1992 you would see that real salaries are generally lower. There is a continued flow of lower level white collar jobs offshore that is accelerating and spreading across the the financial and tech sectors so, while there is hiring, the salary levels are lower in real terms across a number of areas as compared to ten years ago.