Unemployment

This is where the Fed. now finds itself. Here they were. Just holding policy lines doing what they in their Ivory Tower contemplated and the so-called “smart crowd” insisted they do. And now the saying of “Between a rock and a hard place” might be an understatement. The world sits atop a tinderbox fueled by monetary policies that created them and awaits a match that could set it off in a blaze of who knows what. All in short order. Unless they don’t do anything except try their best Draghi impersonation and declare, “They too are once again at the ready to do what ever it takes!” Except – just not now.

Canada will be in an extremely horrible shape from next year on...

While the world patiently waits for Janet Yellen to raise interest rates this month, the markets have been unable to decide as of yet whether such an event is good or bad thing.

"Presented with official employment figures that were literally incredible (impossible to believe), she took them at face value and trumpeted them in tweets and in a press conference as a triumph for her government. But it's not the real thing"

Americans have a broad and heavy bias away from unpleasant data. We are ready to be manipulated by vested interests in finance, economics, and climate change, whose interests might be better served by our believing optimistic stuff "that just ain’t so." We are dealing today with important issues, one so important that it may affect the long-term viability of our global society and perhaps our species. It may well be necessary to our survival that we become more realistic, more willing to process the unpleasant, and, above all, less easily manipulated through our need for good news.

"What I find most hilarious is that some serious commentators have been pontificating at considerable length about what the market’s participants think. These days, some 70% of market orders are generated by computers, and many of the rest by indexers. And computers do not think... I cannot remember a time when less thinking has ever been done in the financial markets, which is why I find today’s financial markets infinitely boring."

- Charles Gave

When Australia released its October jobs data a month ago (printing an astonishing 58k increase - almost 6 times expectations of a 10k increase), the media threw up all over the farce of the best jobs gain in 3 years (amid commodity price collapses, mining industry bankruptcy fears, and China trade implosions) saying simply "don't believe the jobs figure for October." So we cannot wait to see what the men from downunder make of November's print. With expectations of a 10k drop, Australia added a mind-numbing 71,400 jobs - the most in 15 years!! This is equivalent to the US adding almost 1.75 million jobs in 2 months... They just don't care anymore!

Following a roudy session in Congress that nearly dissolved into "chaos," the Brazilian Supreme Court suspended impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff until December 16. Meanwhile, annual inflation rose to 10.5% in November, the highest in 12 years as the country's stagflationary nightmare continues unabated.

"I think it was really a massive failure of market analysts," Nowotny told a news conference, adding that those analysts should have paid more attention to economic fundamentals.  The comedy continued when Nowotny said that "the ECB can and will not let itself be pushed by the markets," adding that "it’s not our job to correct wrong expectations of individuals” and “it wasn’t the view of the whole market." Which, of course, was a lie.

Why does most brand-name beer taste like swill? Why has the standard of living across most of the Western world fallen by more than half over the past 40+ years? 

Why do we as a nation keep on playing into the same dismal scenario and committing the same mistakes? Why this seemingly irresistible urge to fight yet another war against evil? The longer we fight, the more deeply we are seized by fear. The more we fear, the more fiercely we are determined to fight. Perhaps the point is not to win the war but to remain trapped in this vicious circle, which feels perversely comforting because it offers a sense of unified national identity as nothing else can in our otherwise deeply divided nation.

"We’re broke. We’re basically living off of debt. We’ve had a huge transformation of the American economy. Look at all the Americans now on food stamps, on disability, on unemployment... The whole economy has imploded... the bottom hasn’t dropped out yet because we’re able to go deeper into debt. But the collapse is coming."

The dream and demand of Bernie Sanders and all of the other "democratic socialists" of all political parties is that all or at least significant parts of human life need to be micromanaged and controlled by government so people may be liberated from the "tyranny" of not having all they may want without finding effective ways of acquiring it through honest and peaceful work. The "freedom" about which Bernie Sanders speaks, and before him Franklin Roosevelt, in fact, involves a loss of liberty into an even greater degree of political paternalism.

Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan were the Elvis and Beatles of this movement – the first to see widespread fame for their efforts. Then came Ben Bernanke, perhaps the Jimi Hendrix or Led Zeppelin of his day, taking existing tools and pushing them in new, previously unconsidered, directions.  Now, we have Janet Yellen and Mario Draghi, whose legacies are as yet undefined. They may end up like the next generation of rock stars from the 1970s – something like Bruce Springsteen, with a deep focus on common people in his music. Or, they could be the Bee Gees, who focused simply on commercial success. Only time will tell.