The first headline to strike my bloodshot pair of eyes this morning (due to allergies to tractoring/brush hogging the south 16, not el Don, which would have been the preferred cause) was the headline that “One in 10 Americans gets help to buy food.“ The story then went on to say that more than 2.9-million folks right here in the Republic of Texas get help – a good thing as I see it. Nationally the average benefit works out to something like $112 per person, although in California the benefits are about to take a major jump upward – going up 13.6% – and curiously, California has fewer people on food stamps than does Texas, with only 2.5 million receiving help.
Since tax time is just around the corner, this all gets me to wondering about the proper ‘role of the dole’. Obviously, helping people who are hungry, laid off, homeless and living in tents or cars is the right thing to do. But, how far up the food chain does it go?
The G20 yesterday decided to ante up a trillion dollars (plus or minus a Honda) to bail out the international financial system, on the notion that without a healthy international economy, the whole kit and caboodle falls apart. That may, or may not be so, depending on who you talk to. However, since I’m an economic Neanderthal (and no slight to Neanderthals intended) and I’m stuck on why AIG has to keep sucking up money while Lehman was flushed. I keep looking for some sign of a sound currency – anywhere it seems – because the cause of all our woes seems to be the paper that shows up so often down at the root of all evil.
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The Unemployment Report for March is out…and as expected, it took another major move upward:
“Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline sharply in March (-663,000), and the unemployment rate rose from 8.1 to 8.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.1 million jobs have been lost, with almost two-thirds (3.3 million) of the decrease occurring in the last 5 months. In March, job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors.
Unemployment (Household Survey Data)
In March, the number of unemployed persons increased by 694,000 to 13.2 mil- lion, and the unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has grown by about 5.3 million, and the unem- ployment rate has risen by 3.4 percentage points. Half of the increase in both the number of unemployed and the unemployment rate occurred in the last 4 months. (See table A-1.)
The unemployment rates continued to trend upward in March for adult men (8.8 percent), adult women (7.0 percent), whites (7.9 percent), and Hispanics (11.4 percent). The jobless rates for blacks (13.3 percent) and teenagers (21.7 per- cent) were little changed over the month. The unemployment rate for Asians was 6.4 percent in March, not seasonally adjusted, up from 3.6 percent a year earlier. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed tem- porary jobs increased by 547,000 to 8.2 million in March.”
Those numbers, serious as they are and the highest since 1983, understate the real situation. The harsh reality begins to get a little more accurately reflected in the U-6 number which is the broader measure of labor underutilization which I call the PhD’s flipping burgers and IT managers stocking store shelves index climbed to 16.2% last month. But even further, there’s no telling how bad things would really be if the workforce number was limited and the discouraged and underground economy numbers were cranked into the equation. I’ve got real problems with telephone-based surveys since 1) almost everyone has a cell phone and 2) numbers change all the time, but that’s a discussion we don’t have time for.
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Tent cities continue to spring up around the country. In California, where the governator opened up state fair grounds, Sacramento tent city residents are saying they won’t be moved from their present location. This all sets up the ugly prospect of something we’ve been eyeing in the HalfPastHuman predictive linguistics for a while to become very real: the potential for a showdown between “authorities” and the homeless, since as KCRA reports “Some at ‘tent city’ unhappy with Cal Expo site” and “Sacramento homeless camp expected to be shut down.”
It’s all so disappointing to watch: Bankers getting more dole than common folks (must save the world, don’tcha know), the PTB may be setting up a “hurt them to help them” showdown in a lot of places, and meantime the second biggest headline on Goggle’s News site this morning when I looked was “Madonna loses Malawi adoption bid.”
WTF people?
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President Obama is off to Strasbourg for NATO meetings; and as a result that city has gone into lockdown/fortress mode.
North Korea is readying it’s latest rocket for launch despite not-so-thinly-veiled threats from the US that ‘ya’ll better not do that‘.
And as if all that isn’t enough, seems Cambodia and Thailand are exchanging potshots across their border. Just what the world needs about now: another war.
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I had a conversation last night with Michael Panzner, whose latest book “When Giants Fall” was pimped in yesterday’s report. Here’s a very interesting bit of trivia about his book, which I don’t think he’d mind my sharing with you: Panzner’s original title for it was “Splintered States”. Publisher’s title is fine and all, but linguistically I can’t help feeling that ’splintered’ is a much hotter word than “fall” when it comes to action verbs.
Anyway, it’s an absolutely dandy description of what’s going on in the world right now: Things are splintering almost everywhere you look. In a period when we all ought to be coming together, we’re all splintering; there’s a global retribing going on as affinity groups that didn’t exist are popping up all over the place to fight (check as many as you want here) ( ) crimes committed in finance by banksters ( ) foreclosures ( ) religious extremists and lots of other issues that received only miniscule attention 10 or 20-years back.
So that’s the first point in this morning’s report: As a ‘framing concept’ think ’splintered states’ (courtesy of Panzner) and throw in a bunch of terra entity change to come (from he ALTA reports) and you’ll have the right serving dish for the rest of the day’s news.
“NWO Emerging”
It’s against this framing that Britain’s Gordon Brown says the “New World Order is emerging.“
Brown, apparently doesn’t read statistics about the UK’s economy, reports of tent cities, or the emergent sense of rebelliousness globally very well. Might I suggest it’s a New World Disorder that’s really going on?
Sound Thinking
Worried about the ice caps melting, waters rising 16-200 feet? Think that might be a bummer?
Well, have we ever got a hot new framing concept here: I call it preemptive deniability. Cool concept, huh? Want an example? (The right answer is “Yes!”).
“Oil not to blame for climate change: OPEC”.
Repeat after me: Preemptive deniability.
Trillions and Trillions
Here’s a simple math problem for you:
We start with “House approves $3.6 trillion budget blueprint.“
Next we take the US GDP at $13.84 trillion and whack maybe 10% off that thanks to the recession-turning-to-depression which we’ll call, oh, about $12.46 trillion.
Then we divide the budget by my estimated GDP figure and we come up with 28.9% of GDP going to government. Federal government. Don’t forget to add your state and local taxes (property tax and sales taxes) on top of that.
Now I pop open Excel and enter 1/1/2009 in cell A1.
Then I enter =365*.289 in A2. (Excel says 105.485 when enter is pressed.)
In cell A3: =A1+A2 which says federal taxes and promises to pay mean working until 4/16/2009 to pay for federal spending. Not even touching the federal deficit.
Yikes. And it’s even later when you consider the number of people who are unemployed..but we don’t need to go down that rabbit hole.
Markets
Despite the jobs report the market may be able to scratch out a gain today. But can it last? A buddy who trades in Europe (Luxembourg) sends this interesting observation:
“There has been a very consistent pattern of market tops with varying degrees of significance ranging from short-term to long term. The dates of the previous highs are 231 trading days apart and occurred on August 1st, 2005, June 30, 2006, June 4th, 2007, May 2, 2008, and today, April 2nd, 2009.”
Remind me to call Robin Landry and ask him if this little pop is due for a pullback next week…futures point to a soft opening, but like one website says: “Water, water Everywhere; Fluoride in every drop.“ Yup, might help explain things.