Unemployment Insurance

Since the end of the recession businesses have been increasing their bottom line profitability by massive cost cuts rather than increased revenue.  Of course, one of the highest "costs" to any business is labor.  One way that we can measure this view is by looking at corporate profits on a per employee basis.   Currently, that ratio is at the highest level on record. The problem that businesses are beginning to face currently is that while they have slashed labor costs to the bone there is a point to where businesses simply cannot cut further.   At this point businesses have to begin to "hoard" what labor they have, maximize that labor force's productivity (increase output with minimal increases in labor costs) and hire additional labor, primarily temporary, only when demand forces expansion. The issue of "labor hoarding" also explains the sharp drop in initial weekly jobless claims. This is likely obscuring the real weakness in the underlying economy.  Without an increase in the demand part of the equation businesses are likely to continue resorting to further productivity increases to stretch the current labor force farther to protect profitability.  However, as we may currently be witnessing, businesses may be reaching the limits of what they can do.

Last week at its regular policy-setting meeting, the Federal Reserve affirmed that it is prepared to increase its monthly purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities if things don’t start looking up. In all, the Fed has pumped more than a half trillion dollars into the economy since announcing its latest round of “quantitative easing” (QE3) in September 2012. With no recovery in sight, where’s all this money going? It is creating bubbles. Bubbles in the housing sector, the stock market, and government debt. In the meantime, real families are suffering. We are certainly not in a recovery. We don’t see the long unemployment and soup kitchen lines like in the Great Depression, but that’s just because the lines are electronic now. We know what the real solution is: allow the marketplace to work. Restore sound money to the economy and the American people. Sound money is the bedrock for prosperity and the best check on big government and crony capitalism.

Any hopes that the S&P would hit a new all time high on horrible initial claims data may have been dashed following a report that initial claims for unemployment insurance dropped from an upward revised 355K (was 352K) to 339K, better than the expected 350K, and down to a nearly fresh five year low. It was unclear immediately following the report which states were estimated if any: as a reminder last week the DOL announced that 2 states had their data estimated. Continuing claims dropped from an upward revised 3093K to 3000K, the lowest in 5 years. Of course, with millions of people now prematurely out of the labor participation rate, what if any data the initial claims report provides these days, is very much unclear.

In perhaps the most boring initial claims release in a long time, the DOL revealed that in the week ending April 13, there were 352,000 new unemployment insurance claims, an increase of 4,000 from the prior week (naturally revised higher from 346K to 348K), and a slight miss of expectations of 350K. So far in 2013, there have been 8 misses and 7 beats of the expected claims number. The DOL also added that two states' claims were estimated in the past week: of course, if these were California and Illinois, one would imagine reality to be quite different than what is reported but who really cares about reality any more.

Jobs in and of themselves do not guarantee well-being. Suppose that the employment is to dig huge holes and fill them up again? The supply of labor is limited. We must not allow government to create jobs or we lose the goods and services which otherwise would have come into being. We must reserve precious labor for the important tasks still left undone. Instead of praising jobs for their own sake, we should ask why employment is so important. The answer is, because we exist amidst economic scarcity and must work to live and prosper. That’s why we should be of good cheer only when we learn that this employment will produce things people actually value, i.e., are willing to buy with their own hard-earned money. And this is something that can only be done in the free market, not by bureaucrats and politicians. While the free market, of course, does not mean utopia, the path to jobs that matter is the free market.

Below are the expectations of the biggest banks for today's Nonfarm Payroll number to be announced in just over two hours:

• Morgan Stanley +135K
• Barclays Capital +150K
• Goldman Sachs +150K
• Bank of America +160K
• JPMorgan +165K
• HSBC +179K
• Deutsche Bank +180K
• UBS +190K

Following up on Friday's abysmal consumer income data, we now take look at the spending side of the equation, without much optimism. Not surprisingly, as Bloomberg's Richard Yamarone summarizes, the consumer health picture in January was "grim" and "after adjusting for inflation and taxes, is simply insufficient to sustain the expansion." He adds that "over the last couple of weeks, no fewer than a dozen consumer-related companies made mention of the deterioration in incomes as a risk to  business and performances." Yamarone concludes: "Spending on discretionary items has softened in recent months. Four of our ‘Fab Five’ spending barometers fell or were unchanged in January from December. Comments from the Bloomberg Orange Book suggest further deterioration ahead." That this is happening with rates at zero, and with an effective countrywide mortgage payment moratorium allowing millions to live mortgage payment free, means that if and when things normalize, consumption - the driver of 70% of the US economy - will fall off the proverbial cliff.

In the aftermath of Friday's mediocre jobs report, and while we wait for the USDA to release the latest November foodstamp update which will almost certainly print at a new record high, here is yet another representation of a relationship we have shown on several occasions previously, yet which is always entertaining, and shows just what kind of "recovery" the US is undergoing. Presenting the indexed change of payrolls (green line) and foodstamps recipients (red). No explanation is necessary.

The quest for cheap energy and cheap labor is a conquering human urge, one that has played out with notable ferocity starting with the Industrial Revolution. The introduction of coal into British manufacturing, and the more recent outsourcing of Western manufacturing to Asia, have marked key thresholds in this ongoing progression. But despite the harvesting of additional productivity gains from the more recent revolution in information technology, the suite of macro data suggests that the rate of advancement in physical production has slowed, notably, in the past thirty years. Seen in this light, the greatest gains to global industrial production were probably enjoyed from the late 18th century (when coal extraction and use began in earnest) into the mid-20th century (when oil reached broad distribution). In contrast, computers, the Internet, and the leveraging of developing world labor might eventually be seen as the finishing touches on this great industrial wave.

Just as the president reminded us yesterday we are not a deadbeat nation, merely borrowing money today to pay the bills of yesterday, so, as the NY Times reports in this all-too-real article, many of the citizens of the US are also living not just paycheck-to-paycheck but short-term-loan-to-short-term-loan. As one debt-consolidation service noted "They've been borrowing just to meet payments on previous loans; it builds on itself." Rings an awfully loud bell eh? (and yes, we know the government's finances are not run like a households - though at some point the check book needs to balance). People in tough 'economic' situations fall into the 'poverty trap', borrowing money at ever higher interest rates in a shell game to keep previous borrowers at bay. The average debt for households earning $20,000 a year or less more than doubled to $26,000 between 2001 and 2010 - as people dig deeper, precisely because they long to escape. As the focus of the article notes, "the belt-tightening was the easy part... the larger problem was cash-flow." Critically, experiments show that 'economic' scarcity by itself - independent of personality or any other factors - fuels a drive to borrow recklessly.

Following up on today's relentless debt ceiling propaganda, which started with the Politico report that more than half of republicans are willing to push the US into a "temporary" default, going through Obama's "We are not a deadbeat nation", but one whose president apparently will not debate the debt ceiling (the same president who as a Senator was against rising the debt ceiling) and closing with Boehner's rebuttal to Obama, saying the GOP would raise the debt ceiling but in exchange for spending cuts, sure enough it was time to unleash the Treasury Secretary in his last days on the job, toting the party line ("extending borrowing authority does not increase government spending; it simply allows the Treasury to pay for expenditures Congress has previously approved") making it "abundantly clear" that "Even a temporary default with a brief interruption in payments that Congress subsequently restores would be terribly damaging, calling into question the willingness of Congress to uphold America’s longstanding commitment to meet the obligations of the nation in full and on time.  It should also be noted that default would increase our borrowing costs and damage economic growth and therefore add to future budget deficits, not decrease them." The unleashed Geithner then proceeds to threaten: "Threatening to undermine our creditworthiness is no less irresponsible than threatening to undermine the rule of law, and no more legitimate than any other common demand for ransom." Finally, Geithner also made it clear that the CNBC "RISE ABOVE THE DEBT CEILING" campaign is now at T-30 to T-45: "Treasury currently expects to exhaust these extraordinary measures between mid-February and early March of this year" which however should not be news to anyone.

With just 3 hours left in the trading day, why not up the stakes a little in the soap opera and take it straight to the star character:

• OBAMA MAKING STATEMENT ON BUDGET TALKS AT 1:30 P.M.

What will he disclose? Perhaps this, from the AP...

The divergence between consumers and producers within the real economy that has stumped economists for the better part of 2012 can, at least in part, be attributed to the Fiscal Cliff; but the anticipatory effects of the Fiscal Cliff on the United States of America evidently began with American politicians, and probably for the worse, that is where it will end. The division that has plagued Washington has grown starker in recent years, and the divergence between consumers and producers as a result of divided leadership stands as a testament to the irresponsibility of those sent to Washington D.C. to serve their country. These divergences cannot last forever, and depending on the events of the next couple weeks, the United States is due for a reversion to the mean. The direction of that reversion - either production up to meet consumption or consumption down to meet production and confirm a recession within the United States - is wholly on the shoulders of the politicians in Washington D.C.

The problem with democracy. 

The beginning of the year has traditionally been a time of optimism when we all look forward to the exciting things that are going to happen over the next 12 months. Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of things about 2013 that we already know are going to stink. Taxes are going to go up, good paying jobs will continue to leave the country, small businesses will continue to be destroyed, the number of Americans living in poverty will continue to soar, our infrastructure will continue to decay, global food supplies will likely continue to dwindle and the U.S. national debt will continue to explode. Our politicians continue to pursue the same policies that got us into this mess, and yet they continue to expect things to magically turn around. But that is not the way that things work in the real world. Bad decisions lead to bad outcomes. Sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that everything will be “okay” somehow is not going to help anyone.