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Initial Jobless Claims At 414K, 10th Consecutive Week Above 400K; Housing Starts At 560K, Both Modestly Better Than Expected
While this morning litany of economic news was modestly better than expected, it really did nothing to change the picture that the US is rapidly regressing into another recession. Initial claims came at 414K, better than expectations of 420K, but as always expect next week's number to be revised higher to 418K or so: last week's number was as always pushed up from 427K to 430K. Far more importantly, this is the 10th consecutive week in which the initial claims data prints over 400k. Bullish? Continuing claims was just worse than the consensus of 3,670K, at 3,675K, down from an upward (of course) revised 3,696K from 3,676K. The biggest change was attributed to New York state, where 4,060 fewer layoffs were seen in the construction, mfg and retail industries, followed by California with 2,510 fewer claims due to a "Shorter work week, as well as fewer layoffs in the service industry." So shorter work weeks are now economic positive. Lastly, on the claims front, the 99 week cliff is pushing ever more people from under the government subsidy wing as 115K people dropped from ongoing EUC and Extended Benefits. The EUC 2008 number is 3,293,507 compared to 4,798,009 a year ago: nearly 1.5 million people have now lost the weekly government check to sit around and look for jobs. Looking at housing starts, the seasonally adjusted annualized number for May was 560,000, just above the 541,000 from April, although below the 580,000 from May 2010. Consensus expected 545K new home starts for the month, or a 4.2% increase from the unrevised April number of 523K. In other words, the starts data was both a miss and a beat, depending on what the baseline used is: revised or unrevised. On an unadjusted basis, there were 55.6K units in May started on, with multi-family units jumping to 13.1K, the highest since September 2010's 13.2k. Lastly, the Q1 current account balance, a largely delayed and irrelevant number, came at -119.3 billion, on expectations of -130 billion.
Bottom line: horrible data that came just better than expected. Which is why the market is largely ignoring it and once again focusing on the only thing that matters: the EURUSD.
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AZ decision likely to artificially push number below 400k next week
It's over, it's over - the recession is over!!! Yee haw!! Look! Look! These folks told us it was over...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39269753/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/t/great-recession-over-research-group-says/
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/07/24/the-recession-is-over.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bernanke-declares-the-recession-over-2009-09-15
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/30/earlyshow/saturday/main6157642.shtml
/sarc/
Let's not be tough on the mainstream media. Each time they talk a few zero-hedgers are
born.
+1 so true.
+1 so true.
Bernanke declares recession over? Oh, right, just as he declared housing was not in a bubble, and anyway the issue in subprime was contained, and anyway the US would definitely avoid a recession?
Fuck, if there's an indicator that the recession is getting worse, it's Bernanke spewing lies again.
on Bizzaro World, if your not collecting UE benefits you're working.
o, look for The Oh, to claim we added 1.5 million jobs...and drugs are illegal?
What's a real economy got to do with the real world, anyway?
Future are negative. Thought this news would lead to a positive day.
Positive now. Still think we need to get to test 1255 before a big ole bounce.
Now turning negative again. Engineered nonsense. ES + SPY + ______ = jobs!
Everyone together now, "Thank you, Ben Bernanke, for this wasteland."
'Better-than-expected-ing' our way right into the greatest depression.
Yep, "Better than expected" roughly translates to "Slightly less God-awful than expected".
Either way, it's full of Doom.
Hey, with a ground war pending in Libya, all of the unemployed should sign up. har har
Yes being a pawn for Uncle Thug, going overseas to someplace no one hardly heard of before to kill all the natives, because apparently they really piss Uncle Thug off.
But... but... They're fighting for our freedom! A guy said that to my wife once, and she cracked up laughing. I don't think he was amused. A lot of folks who are prior and current military "get it" now, but apparently quite a bit do not as well. Supporting the corporate fascist empire by stomping on sovereign nation's with needed economic resources is NOT "fighting for our freedom."
I talk to a lot of military guys on youtube, and the mood is decidedly sour. Troops morale at all time lows, suicides off the charts, when they come home on leave they beat and kill their families, its not good.
They are nothing but mercs, the only thing they are fighting over there is unemployment. When they get back over here, they soon realize the place is worse off than when they left it.
Bottom line: horrible data that came just better than expected. Which is why the market is largely ignoring it and once again focusing on the only thing that matters: the EURUSD.
Dollar going to the moon on the back of failing Euro, YET Au holding solid. Gold is the beacon of strength.
The only thing that matters is 2 printed to oblivion worthless fiat currencies.
Barama covers eyes and ears on economy:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/164985-obamas-daily-economic-...
Bernanke, Geithner & Obama, just hanging out:
http://www.bilerico.com/2010/06/hear-see-speak-no-evil1.jpg
Look Maw - it's a recovery.......oh no wait a minute...it's another tornado...
GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!!!
US préelections are coming up, and they'll need at least 5 million bumpersticker distributors for the new slogan!!!
CHANGE ULTRA!!! THE NEW AND IMPROVED!!
BANKRUPTING PEOPLE SINCE 2008!!
long bumper stickers, buttons, tshirts.
give us an obama-nation! <(I was certain that one would sell, too lazy to get around to it though)
BORING!
BRING BACK RIOT TUBE.
THERE HAS TO BE ONE SOMEWHERE.
GET US A FEED FROM SYRIA.
It's called Al Jazeera.
Hour after hour of Arab-headcracking goodness!
According to John Williams' Shadow Stats, the number of un/sub-employed now stands
at about 22% among the US population. And nearly half of the jobs being created in
the private sector are McDonald's..
http://www.shadowstats.com/article/hyperinflation-special-report-2011
I have a hard time believing the McDonalds numbers. Each one has what, 10 or so staff? So they'd have to be building hundreds of new McDonalds for the numbers to even begin to fit. I havent seen a new one here, have you?
The ones around me (suburban Boston) have ludicrously high turn-over - esp. among "management". So the McJobs number could be more churn than not. Don't know if that's the case everywhere in the McWorld, though.
I've actually seen 1 or 2 closed over the last 18-months, and not because they relocated or re-fabed the building - just flat-out closed. That would have been completely unthinkable prior to the start of The Great "Recession".
These markets are so rigged. Truly horrid economic data is sometimes the excuse used to pump the ES by 10+ points, while better than expected data can also pump the ES. The economic data really doesn't matter at all.
Idiots who say the stock market is "forward looking" make me laugh.
I don't recall the markets tanking until AFTER most of the bad data came in. Right now, the market has plunged for 7 straight weeks, so there must be trouble on the horizon, right? After all, the market is a forward looking one. Fucking bullshit all around while they print, print, print, bailout, print, bailout, print, transfer money, print, bailout and print some more.
'The markets' are truly irrelevant at this point, nothing but a statist centrally planned and controlled joke.
You forgot record bonuses in your last paragraph -- Gods work and all...
Better bad numbers means morsels for the starving bulls. Brian Sack will be at his desk early.
"Better bad numbers"
Hey, isn't that a CNBC talking point?
This was reason to rally stock futures off fresh new lows?
Wall Street: "Must... perpetuate... Pollyanna Party... at any... cost!"
Wall Street is grasping at straws to perpetuate the delusion! It's bad, folks, and it's only going to get worse! Plan and prepare accordingly!
I dont buy it at all, 560,000 new home starts? Where? And combining the last 3 months theyre saying almost 2 million new homes are under construction? I call bullshit. The real number is lucky to be 50,000 new homes in total.
i believe the numbers are an annual based number..
50k is still only 1000 new home/state and i believe condos, appts and mobile homes fit the stats, but i may be wrong.
SD1, the new home permit data is an extrapolation of full year trends. Remember, this is data representing the # of new home permits that builders pulled on single family dwelling units (it doesn't mean they're sold; many of them are 'spec' builds).
Just for some context, they are now saying 500k+ new homes will be built this year, and this rate was forecasted to be closer to 380k back in February (over 2 million new permits were issued in 2006).
I think it will be less than 500k as things have begun to once again deteriorate within this space as more foreclosures are coming onto the market to compete with new homes, building materials are showing sustained inflationary trends due to Bernanke's policies and not organic demand, and many homebuilders are 'spec'ing' more new homes - building without a buyer in hand, as the alternative would be to literally either cut their employees yet again or close down.
Home STARTS do not equate to home SALES! They are NOT correlated! In a glutted market, it only leads to lower prices and a depressed market.
...yes, channel stuffing the sticks and bricks. I love Amerika !
Not seen so many places on the market in my area (again, suburban Boston) in the 11-years I've lived here. People who've been here longer say the same thing. Open Houses every weekend - absolutely nobody looking.
And yet, there are not less than 3 new developments going-up right now in my small suburb - all would have been 3/4-mil range houses in 05-06. Go figure.
Channel stuffing, indeed.
Home prices are still pretty high here. I drive past billboards advertising townhouses starting in the low low $160Ks. Great, except the "rich" state employees average $34K per year. What's that rule of thumb, 2.5 times your salary? Yeah about double what the average "rich" state employee can afford. What do private sector paper pushers and bit flippers do? Seems like if you don't buy an overpriced townhouse, the only other option is a matchbox palace quickly approaching $1 million. Nothing has changed since I was moving out in 2008. Nobody wants to build starter homes and the banks are content to sit on all the foreclosed properties until they literally rot no matter how many taxpayer-funded bailouts our elected/appointed prostitutes shovel down their greasy snouts.
Have you considered just grabbing one and squatting?
Flat day so far. It makes 0 sense that homebuilders are building new homes. They cannot compete with the banks and the amount of foreclosed homes held by the banksters keeps rising. Until this glut is moved, 2014?, they are just spinning their wheels. We have too many homebuilders, why do they not file for bankruptcy and just fade away into the sunset.
The homebuilder's inventory is an asset on the bank's balance sheet.
I call BS, flat out pile of crap. I know homebuilders, theyre sitting idle, laying off employees.
Zactly.
Time for the bears to take their profits :) You'd think most would learn that fighting the system is a little bit of a stretch. It isn't a market based on fundamentals. It is a market based on corporations making profits off those who think they trade based on data.
This is an excerpt from an AP article on the weekly unemployment claimdata:
<<< Still, applications have been above 400,000 for 10 straight weeks, evidence that the job market is weak compared to earlier this year.
Applications had fallen in February to 375,000, a level that signals sustainable job growth. >>>
Since when does 375,000 weekly unemplyoment claims signal sustainable job growth? During the President George W. Bush era, the reported number that signaled sustainable job growth was much lower (i.e. 250,000). It is obvious the media has moved the goalposts. 375,000 weekly unemployment claims is terrible.
I thought around 150,000 increase was needed just to be treading water. Now 375K jobs lost per month is 'sustainable growth'? Only in Bizarro World.
<<< Only in Bizarro World >>>
It is FUBAR world.
Lie to the masses, print, lie, bailout, lie, print, lie, bailout, lie. Any moment now, I expect Timmy Geithner and Hank Paulson and The Ben Bernank to stage a press conference and scream in unison that the debt ceiling must be raised and Wall Street needs another bailout.
Three brand new large commerical buildings built in my town the last few months. All are empty with signs out front advertising "Below Market Rental Rates" Little bubbles growing out of popped big bubbles. Mean time we have plaza's empty.
This is the direct result of Bernankincide warping the demand-supply curve on...well, everything...so much that planetary objects reverse their rotation.
Stop in and inquire about the rates and you'll find quickly that their claim is a bald-faced lie. Lots of empty storefronts in my town and malls around here as well. You have to do alot of business to pay $1 million per year in rent. The average person wanting to run a shop can't even get a loan for initial inventory/equipment.
Could it be someone(s) with deep pockets trying to bankrupt the local players by underpricing, then jack the rates up when all the locals are gone (i.e. Walmart)???
Isn't this just our more modest equivalent of the empty cities in China?
Economy 101. Housing is not going anywhere without increased jobs. It does not work the other way around.
Good news on demand. Amazing.
Now the market can rally again. Looking for 1320 by next Thursday.
http://pebblewriter.blogspot.com/2011/06/fan-me.html
CNBS talking about how much we might bounce if Philly fed beats expectations...ugh
Another slumber of recovery is upon us and the necronomy is fine...
Net-Net: with all the cooked up nominal BLS and FEd numbers for unemployment, GDP, and inflation, the economy has got to be contracting in real terms despite the trillions printed (to save the EU, no less).
Too bad nobody has a plan to actually do anything about the unemployment problem. Oh, sure, one bunch of idiots wants to tax working people more and another bunch of idiots wants more handouts for importers of Chinese crap. And they both want to print more money for banksters and special friends, imagine that! Wow, what an election 2012 is going to be, the clown debtors or the debtor clowns. WHO WILL WIN?! WILL STIMPY PRESS THE BUTTON?! WILL AMERICA BE DESTROYED?! TUNE IN NEXT WEEK, SAME BAT-TIME, SAME BAT-CHANNEL.
What's to be done? Unemployment is the human debris caused when fiction crashes into reality and reality wins. The government can fudge all the numbers it wants to, and the CNBC parrots can squawk happy talk until their feathers fall off, but when the bullshit tide recedes, the real world is still there, it's ugly, and it is not going any place. Until the fiction stops, there can be no real solutions to the real problems real people are facing.
There's something which...... hmm, let's call it "conventional capitalists" do not understand sufficiently. I already wrote about this a few times. This time, i'll try an explanation that is much shorter and more "practice oriented".
Let's take that whole food-stamps program. The US is providing them en masse to people. Those people supposedly cannot find work, and thus the gov pays for them, via taxes and Ben's printing machine.
Observation: Those people apparently have a need, since they receive those foodstamps. So, there is DEMAND. Those people also currently have no job, so there is SUPPLY of workforce. If that is so, then why are those people not simply working to produce the food which they need? Heck, it could even be done as a dirty hackfix: Those people work for companies which produce the food, and the state then gets a certain quota of "free" goods from those corporations. Those people then get their food stamps, and pay with them for food from those corporations. It is an unnecessarily complicated implementation, yes, but in the end, it would no longer cost the state anything.
So, why is this not done? Oh, wait a minute.... does the USA even have corporations who produce all that food? Not? It's importing all that stuff? Oooops!
And so, we come to understand something familiar from a different POV: "Traditional capitalists" are focussed on corporations isolated from the country they produce in, and sell to. Such people consider it no problem at all, that a corporation produces in one nation, and then sells to another. This is why they consider it completely logical, that a corporation may move factories to another country, because it's cheaper to produce there. In their view, there is nothing one can do about that, except of competing with those other countries for cheap labor.
But as we have just seen, this is not true. To a nation, it matters what it imports and what it exports. In the case of the USA, it imports food, and can only pay for this, by exporting something else.... except of, it doesn't! So, the USA as a whole cannot afford food! Instead, the USA itself is receiving foodstamps, in the form of debt and stealth-taxing dollar holders across the planet via inflation. Or to phrase it metaphorically: Economically, the USA is unemployed and living on debt/inflation handouts.
Now, to get back to the question regarding "what to do about it?": While people often recognize production costs of corporations as a factor, they much more rarely consider consumer buying power, even though both belong together. As a corporation, it matters to me at which cost i can produce, and at which price i can sell. So, what would happen, if the US gov, would stop giving free unconditional food stamps.... and instead says, that the foodstamps only are valid to buy products from certain corporations.... with those corporations also employing the people who are eligble for those stamps?
Well, what would happen, is that corporations are forced to consider how labour costs affect local consumer buying power (after all, the production workers, and the consumers, are one and the same people!). It also would become profitable to produce in a country that has higher labor costs, because consumer buying power would offset this!
Phrased another way: When a country reduces labor costs, it also reduces consumer buying power. And when a country increases labor costs, it also increases buying power. It thus should be of high importance for both - govs and corporations - to ensure sufficient labor costs/buying power (both are the same). The gov so far has not intervened in this balance at all, despite of it sticking its dick in everything else. Why? Why has the gov not punished importers and exporters, and supported corporations who, both produce and sell locally? It messes with everything else, yet stands by idle doing nothing, when it comes to one of the root factors regarding unemployment and debt?
Maybe..... just maybe..... it not only does not care about unemployment and debt..... but actually WANTS just that? If at this point you are perplexed how one would want that, then consider that in the short term, certain people profit from the consequences.
"housing starts, the seasonally adjusted annualized number for May was 560,000"
Back about 1999 or so the Census Bureau estimated that there would be ONE BILLION "Americans" in the 21st century, on track to reach that level, so they have to live somewhere right? I realize these are going to be 99.99% Third World people used to living several families to a dwelling but still isn't this GOOD for real estate?
After all there is but one god, $ or as He is known in Euro land, €
Unemployment? Then why does the government keep increasing all those alphabet visas such as H1-B ad nauseum.
Then all the millions who come in LEGALLY as immigrants each year, birth tourism giving anchor babies from China and elsewhere, refugees, letting foreign students who have graduated now virtually may stay forever if they wish, etc
How many jobs will white Americans have? They lost the BULK of the jobs over the last few years while Latinos GAINED jobs during this downturn. But nobody talks about it, no candidates, no NY TIMES or WSJ op-eds, Cramer nothing.