Unemployment

Expectations going in were apparently of no material change likely with some increase in dissents. It seems the market is initially disappointed by the Fed's lack of "we'll print 'til we die" comments as Bloomberg notes:

• *FED SAYS STRAINS IN GLOBAL MARKETS `HAVE EASED'  BUT POSE RISKS
• *FED SAYS OIL, GAS `WILL PUSH UP INFLATION TEMPORARILY'
• *FED SAYS UNEMPLOYMENT `DECLINED NOTABLY,' REMAINS ELEVATED

Notably, economic "growth" has moved from modest to moderate, and inflation word count: 6.

Portugal is near guaranteed to default/restructure, so why is everybody so tolerant of so-called "smart people" saying otherwise? OK, let's do this math thingy...

There has been a lot of talk lately about “seasonal adjustments” and what they actually mean and do for the data. Reporting today’s forecast in “seasonally adjusted” terms would not be incorrect. Seasonality isn’t bad, and is useful in many ways, but so is the raw data and trying to figure out if the adjustments make sense or need to be modified a lot due to the particular circumstances at the time (like great warm weather). The markets are almost all doing well so far this morning, aside from European sovereign spreads which continue to leak wider (Spain now +20bps post-Greece and Italy +24bps).

European equity markets are trading higher across the board ahead of the US open, with the financials sector outstripping others and Health Care lagging behind, although still in positive territory. The main news from yesterday’s finance minister’s meeting was instruction to reduce their deficit by a further 0.5% of GDP; this is having an effect on the Spanish spread against the German bund today, underperforming against other European spreads. The main data of the European session so far comes from Germany, with the ZEW survey for Economic sentiment beating expectations for March, as well as the UK trade balance figures showing a record high in the UK’s non-EU exports. As the session progresses, participants will be looking towards the US retail sales data and the latest FOMC rate decision.

Today, almost every financial journalist that is published in the mainstream media prefers to be steered by their controlling interests into being a “cleaner”, scrubbing clean the facts and hard evidence of every financial crime scene and of inherent risks that lurk everywhere, and instead, opting to present a rosy, unrealistic, fantasy outlook of stock markets and the global economy.

The Greek CDS auction has not yet taken place, nor has one quantified how many Greece-guaranteed orphan bonds with UK-law indentures have to be made whole (at a cost to Greece of course, no matter how much Venizelos protests), and somehow the world is already moving on to bigger and better risk strawmen. Because if one sticks their head in the sand deep enough, it will be easy to ignore that European banks have gradually over the past year or quite suddenly (as in the case of Austrian KA Finanz) taken about €100 billion in now definitive losses on their Greek bonds and CDS exposure. Luckily, just like in the US, there is now over $1.3 trillion in fungible cash sloshing in the system, allowing banks to 'fungibly' fund capital shortfalls and otherwise abuse every trace of proper accounting, when it comes to a post-Greek default world. The problem is that none of this actually solves the fundamental insolvency issues plaguing the 'old world', but what it does do, is force the accelerated depletion of an aging and amortizing asset base. That's fine - as Draghi said the ECB can "always loosen collateral requirements even more." So while we await to hear just who will sue Greece and Europe, and how much cash will have to be paid out to UK-law bondholders (before the Greek default is even remotely put to rest), here is a listing of what Bank of America (recall - BofA is the one bank most desperate to remove any lipstick from the pig due to its need for more QE) believes will be the biggest risks to its outlook going forward. In order of importance: 1) Oil prices (remember when a month ago we said this then ignored issue may soon hit the very top of investors worry lists?), 2) Europe; 3) US Economy; and 4) China. That about covers it. Oh and massive debt issuance supply too as well as the even more epic straw man that is this Thursday's stress test. Remember: stress tests will continue until confidence in the ponzi returns!

While the recent employment report will most assuredly give the current Administration plenty to boast about the underlying trends are far more disturbing.   The ongoing structural realities, the fact that many of the jobs that have been destroyed will never return, combined with the demographic shift make the headline number much less important compared with the emerging trends.  Take a look at a recent Gallup Organization poll which polls weekly, rather than one week out of a month with BLS, in regards to the emerging trends of employment.  The most recent poll update shows the trend of the percentage of unemployed rising.   As you can see the Gallup survey tends to lead movements in the BLS poll by about 4 weeks or so.   Therefore, it is highly likely that in the coming month as the massive seasonal adjustments in January and February fade out we will see the unemployment rate rise back towards 8.5%. 

While largely uneventful to most, the tomorrow's FOMC statement redline to the January one will be promptly scoured by algos everywhere for even the tiniest mention of the word inflation, as that will not only push back any hopes for a quick QE episode, but may temper expectations that ZIRP will last through 2014 (as the shaky 3 Year auction earlier indicated). And if JPMorgan's Michael Feroli is right, inflation is precisely what will be Bernanke's oh so observant mind tomorrow. In which case at 2:15pm watch out: the Chairsatan may just pull the punchbowl away as the Hawkish dissent mounts... if only until the market has a downtick of course, which will threaten to destroy the ever flimsier hollow house of ponzi cards, or something, and the chief fireman comes scrambling back with the firehose spraying trillion dollar bills.

Folks, this is a DE-pression. And those who claim we’ve turned a corner are going by “adjusted” AKA “massaged” data. The actual data (which is provided by the Federal Reserve and Federal Government by the way) does not support these claims at all. In fact, if anything they prove we’ve wasted money by not permitted the proper debt restructuring/ cleaning of house needed in the financial system.

Just because being officially the first broke Eurozone country, having 50%+ youth unemployment, and a collapsing economy is not enough, adding absolutely insult to injury is the following chart from Reuters, which shows that compared to other European economies, Greece now has the highest gas price in the old continent. And indicatively while America complains over what is now the highest gas prices in 2012 per AAA, at $3.80 average for a gallon of regular, 30 cents higher than a month ago, and 35 cents higher compared to a year earlier, gas in Greece now sells for over $9.00/gallon. But at least the IMF's worst case projects that Greek economy will be flat in 2013. And that's the "worst case scenario." But at least Europe sure taught Iran a lesson by halting crude imports. Oh yes, that Iran just happened to be one of the biggest suppliers to Greece - oh well. At least Greece still gets to proudly say it is a European colony, everything else be damned. 

A month ago Zero Hedge, based on some Goldman observations, asked a simple question: is Okun's law now terminally broken? Today, with about a one month delay, the mouthpiece of the New York Fed (which in itself is nothing but a Goldman den of central planners, and Bill Dudley and Jan Hatzius are drinking buddies), Jon Hilsenrath shows that this is just the issue bothering his FRBNY overseers. In an article in the WSJ he ruminates: "Something about the U.S. economy isn't adding up. At 8.3%, the unemployment rate has fallen 0.7 percentage point from a year earlier and is down 1.7 percentage points from a peak of 10% in October 2009. Many other measures of the job market are improving. Companies have expanded payrolls by more than 200,000 a month for the past three months, according to Labor Department data. And the number of people filing claims for government unemployment benefits has fallen. Yet the economy is barely growing. Many economists in the past few weeks have again reduced their estimates of growth. The economy by many estimates is on track to grow at an annual rate of less than 2% in the first three months of 2012. The economy expanded just 1.7% last year. And since the final months of 2009, when unemployment peaked, the economy has expanded at a pretty paltry 2.5% annual rate." Hilsenrath's rhetorical straw man: "How can an economy that is growing so slowly produce such big declines in unemployment?" The answer is simple Jon, and is another one we provided a month ago - basically the US is now effectively "printing" jobs by releasing more and more seasonally adjusted payrolls into the open, which however pay progressively less and less (see A "Quality Assessment" Of US Jobs Reveals The Ugliest Picture Yet). After all, what the media always forgets is that there is a quantity and quality component to jobs. The only one that matters in an election year, however, is the former.  As for whether Okun's law is broken, we suggest that the New York Fed looks in the mirror on that one.

The last time we plotted European youth unemployment in what was dubbed "Europe's scariest chart" we were surprised to discover that when it comes to "Arab Spring inspiring" youth unemployment, Spain was actually worse off than even (now officially broke) Greece, whose young adult unemployment at the time was only just better compared to that... of the United States. Luckily, following the latest economic (yes, we laughed too) update from Greece, it is safe to say that things are back to normal, as Greek youth unemployment is officially the second one in Europe after Spain to surpass 50%. In other words, Europe's scariest chart just got even scarier.

Injection will have its desired affect.

Do not trust any government. Nothing new here. This Greek government invoked the collective action clause (CAC). It retroactively inserted provisions in a debt contract and then imposed them.

There was a time when Bank of America's archoptimist David Bianco would take any economic data point, no matter how fecal mattery, and convert it into 24-carat gold. Then, in late 2011 Bianco was fired because the bank realized that its only chance to persevere was if the Fed proceeded with another round of QE, (and another, and another, ad inf) and as such economic reporting would have to lose its upward bias and be reporting in its natural ugly habitat. And while many other banks have in recent days become content with every other central bank in the world easing but not the Fed in an election year due to the risks of record gas prices, BAC's push for QE has not abated and in fact has gotten louder and louder. So exposes us to some oddities. Such as the firm's 29 year old senior economist Michelle Meyer literally demolishing any myth that yesterday's job number was "good." Needless to say, this will not come as a surprise to Zero Hedge readers. Nor to TrimTabs, whose opinion on the BLS BS we have attached as exhibit B as to the sheer economic data propaganda happening in an election year. Yet it is quite shocking that such former stalwarts of the bullish doctrine are now finally exposing the truth for what it is. Presenting Bank of America as we have never seen it before - throwing up all over the Bureau of Labor Statistics.