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California Demands Business Insider Retract False Story On Jobless Claims Misreporting; Business Insider Refuses
After yesterday Zero Hedge first reported the reason for the surprising plunge in the past week's initial claims, which as the BLS explained was due to "a state" (whose identity despite all tabloid speculation to the contrary is still unknown) not reporting "some" figures, assorted blogs picked up on what has since been confirmed to be an incorrect report by Business Insider's Henry Blodget claiming that "Well, we're glad to say that we've finally gotten to the bottom of what happened" and that the state in question is none other than California (supposedly as opposed to Illinois to shut up those wacky conspiracy theorists). Turns out the site known best for its slideshow presentations (which will soon double down as advertisements) may have once again fibbed just a little, following an official demand by none other than California state Employment Development Department direct, Pam Harris, that BI retract its article. To wit: "Reports that California failed to fully report data to the U.S. Department of Labor, as required, are incorrect and irresponsible... It’s unfortunate this ‘reporter’ and others who repeated the article’s erroneous statements chose to speculate rather than report, failing to confirm this information with EDD." Sure enough, the 'reporter' in question replied, and it appears that Business Insider is better informed than California when it comes to matters such as these, and has refused to retract.
From California:
SACRAMENTO – California Employment Development Department Director Pam Harris today issued the following statement in response to an un-sourced and unsubstantiated media report from Business Insider that erroneously asserts the state failed to fully and properly report unemployment insurance weekly claims data – also known as the jobless claims report – to the U.S. Department of Labor.
“Reports that California failed to fully report data to the U.S. Department of Labor, as required, are incorrect and irresponsible. The California Employment Development Department, which administers the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program in the state, has reported all UI claims data and submitted the data on time.
The original article also erroneously claims that there is a backlog of UI claims in California. California continues to file UI claims on a timely basis. Data on UI claim activity is required to be reported to the Labor Department every week and California has fully complied with the weekly reporting deadlines.
It’s unfortunate this ‘reporter’ and others who repeated the article’s erroneous statements chose to speculate rather than report, failing to confirm this information with EDD. We demand an immediate retraction and encourage writers to verify these ‘stories’ before publishing them.”
Cue Business Insider's response:
In response to our story, California's Employment Development Director issued a statement saying the state "has reported all UI claims data and submitted the date on time." A spokesperson for the department also offered an alternative explanation for the drop in California's unemployment claims: "Our weather has been unusually warm which has had some typical seasonal patterns in employment delayed."
The California spokesperson also demanded a "retraction" of what the Labor Department told us. We accurately reported what the Labor Department told us, so we stand by our story. In a follow-up exchange, we asked the spokesperson how California could be sure it had submitted all of its claims on time. The spokesperson did not respond to the question. She simply reiterated that the Labor Department analyst we spoke to was "wrong."
Leave it up to "reporters" to determine what data is right and wrong, even after being chastised by those who actually do know and are not pressured by Series ZZ investors for page views.
Ironically this brings up two amusing side effects. One is that the state which actually is exposed as being responsible for this misreporting will be seen as politically in bed with the administration. Which would then beg the question: why? Is said state so desperate for a Federal bail out that it would do anything to perpetuate the current administration, even if it means being responsible for misreported critical economic data. And heaven forbid the state is found to be Illinois...
Or, worse, the BLS did get California claims data, and simply chose to ignore it, which in turn will make allegations that the BLS is purposefully manipulating jobs data which it claims it does not have yet turns out it has, even louder, and most likely result with precisely what Darrell Issa is contemplating: a hearing on the accuracy and validity of economic data in a pre-election context, which if nothing else, will confirm that the US economic reporting apparatus is just as broken as that of other banana republics of which everyone enjoys making fun day in and day out, such as China, yet which are merely doing just what the US has been doing for years.
Because remember: grand conspiracies never exist. Libor-gate (as a very recent example) aside of course.
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California dreaming......on such a winter day. I fell down on my knees...and began to pray.
Welch on WSJ and the BS, er, BLS report:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444897304578046260406091012.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
Keep the peasants distracted with the freak show while the Yids at the Fed continue the plundering and pillaging.
Paybacks a bitch.
I'll take Choice B. The BLS got the Cali data and chose to ignore it.
Ack - I don't like this gameshow. Is there a door number 3?
california says millions employeed not counted in official statistics as they are illegal aliens slaving away undocumented in farms.
white southern plantation owning republicans jealous of california because slavery is legal there.
I believe Cali. All that ass-to-mouth porn must be employing plenty of Emperor Moonbeam's serfs.
Business Insider is as close to a proxy arm of communications for Team Obama/Biden 2012 as just about any "publication" out there, which is just as terrible a crime as being a proxy arm of communication for Team Romney/Ryan (in our democratic smorgasbord where voters are free to pick the amongst two products, having the same basic ingredients, but wearing different labels).
It lacks any credibility amongst the VSPs (very serious people) such as Paul Krugman (former Enron Advisor who predicted that the internet's cumulative political, social and economic impact would ultimately be no greater than that of the fax machine--Paul Krugman's predictions from 1998), however, even though in an ironic twist, BI's most prolific "wordsmith" is none other than Joe 'I Heart Krugman' Weisenthal, who parrots every possible talking point of Krugman, and probably has a literal shrine to Krugman (complete with photos, lit candles, incense & flowers) in his apartment that he genuflects towards thrice daily.
I deal with EDD regularly. This doesn't surprise me ONE.FUCKING.BIT.
EDD regularly levies people's accounts/property for taxes that were left "unpaid" even though said taxpayer didn't even reside in the fucking State or do any business activity during the tax period in question.
Once again, EDD being accused of withholding sensitive economic information or lying about it doesn't surprise me at all.
"I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that EDD would be accused of such misfeasance. Round up the usual suspects..."
I've had a running theory that if Obama gets re-elected, CA and IL (and whoever else needs it) get a bailout check. If Romney gets elected, CA & IL get a big FU. This development seems to support that but it will be interesting to watch what happens. I imagine a Romney win would cause Sacramento to empty out like a sinking ship.
Ahhh, but where would they go? The demand for second tier office workers from Sacremento can't be too high. It's not exactly a proud achievement to have been part of that team.
Also: letting state gov't workers go might help with the budget a little, but it doesn't help the unemployment numbers. And it's a bitch to do.
GZGold, not to be to picky but I believe the California Dreamin line is "and I pretend to pray".
I'm going to ask the Russians for US economic data, they will probably tell the truth. Who needs nuclear weapons.
The song is hilarious in today's libturd context. The old hippies were singing about going into a church and praying. It would never get on the radio today.
CA is so f***ed-d. They need more high speed rail. Commie libs.
"Journalism", bitchez.
What??
Blodget write an UNTRUTH in a "research" post. UNPOSSIBLE (unless history is a guide in which case............).
I stopped reading Business Insider two years ago. There are too many half-educated hacks like Joe Weasel on Business Insider.
EigenValue wrote:
Bingo, you nailed it! Joe "Weasel" Wiensenthal's articles on precious metals, especially silver, are a freaking joke.
OTOH, IIRC, I discovered ZH via BusinessInsider.com, believe it or not.
-- Paul D. Bain
PaulBain@PObox.com
Because we all know Alaska and Texas have population density enough to substancially skew the employment numbers, that had not been questioned, would have been good for an extra 50 DOW points.
Business Insider likes to tell me that the debt to gdp ratio has dropped substantially. They suck.
I for one think its very strange about the secrecy....what is so secret on who did not report???? And why didn´t they just say so right in the report out front as a headline...wierd
It almost seems like we're not citizens of the same country...
What does it matter if it was California or some other dysfunctional state that didn't report? How long have the numbers been underreported? After all, when was the last time you heard of all 57 states having reported their unemployment claims?
The implication on why it matters (unless I'm missing the sarc tag) is because California is a liberal left state, as I understand it. When that data was unreported it skewed the jobless claims way down, giving the impression that the economy was improving right before a key presidential debate. Thus this whole issue comes down to whether the state of California or the BLS is trying to intentionally mislead the american public and assist President Obama in getting re-elected.
I do agree with your main point that implies the whole methodology of the BLS is suspect since anyone who lives in the U.S. knows the unemployment is closer to 20% than it is to 8%.
Certainly un and underemployment is 20%+ and jobs with benefits have gone POOF...
the top half of CA is liberal and left leaning more or less. The bottom half, not so much - do remember who gave us Nixon and Reagan. That's one reason why the state is so dysfunctional... you could call it a microcosm of the US political landscape except that it's too big to be micro.
California is miffed! This means war.....death by tossed Beanie Babies at twenty paces.
more fucking distractions...
oromny for prez.one big rehypothicated shit swirrling in a toilet bowl called ussa.
Any entity that is associated with likes of Henry Blodget can't be taken seriously. That man is a joke.
Are we talking about permanently banned securities analyst Henry Blodget? Man, that guy never gives up on his own bs, no matter what evidence to the contrary he is presented with. I think he is still convinced the world is flat.
Even if the reporter is right, this still doesn't tell us what numbers are missing.
I love it when a plan comes together!
I read it was 30,000 new claims, and would have put the overall number at 368,000, in line with 370,000 estimates, vs. 338,000 and 'the lowest since 2008' BS headline numbers they were hoping to generate. Wow, bald faced, brazen lying going on...doesn't surprise us too much, does it?
Market Watch also cited California the numbers missing are unemployment claims
“As a result, there is an accumulation of claims that are likely submitted over a period of several weeks but not processed until the turn of the quarter. Apparently, the state in question (and it pretty much has to be California to account for anything close to 30,000) forgot to include that stockpile of unprocessed claims in their tally for this week (which is the first week of a new calendar quarter).
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/jobless-claims-plunge-to-four-year-low-2012-10-11?dist=beforebell
and Forbes put it this way
Indeed, it seems this week’s data was skewed by a large state failing to report quarterly figures. “Some are saying it was California, though we cannot confirm that,” says FTN Financial economist Chris Low. “As a result, the reported plunge in claims is suspect.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2012/10/11/latest-fuel-for-jack-welch-conspiracy-theory-weekly-jobless-claims-hit-four-year-low/?utm_campaign=forbestwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
its all BLShit anyway......................none of this matters anymore...........im ready to return to the matrix:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BuQFUhsRM
The employment numbers and data from CalifPorn-ia are as bad as the crap Hollywood spews out. F Hollywood and F TV.
Gotta make a new lie to cover the last lie which covered up the lie before and the lie before that and the lie before that . . . well, you get the message.
The disconnect from reality will continue until riots commence. Thank god we have no inflation!
Why do we have to have a weather/climate report with every jobs stat?
I am laughing my head off right now.
WHAT!! California has PLENTY of jobs!! There are TONS of fast food places where people can get part time crappy low paying shit jobs!!!
Illinois should just step up and take the blame already. It's not like we do anything on time in this state anyway (see Judy Baar Topinka's billpay account). And if the data was withheld intentionally, what's it going to do...damage our pristine reputation? Please.
So much election year propaganda when the difference between the 2 parties is nil. Truly boring. You're supposed to get excited about this and vote for one of the 2 banker stooges.
Right. And yet there are two cabals that still do want to vie for power to do the bidding of their financial masters. When Ron Paul decided to pick one of the dead carcasses (Ds or Rs) to try to co-opt for his revolution (after his time in the L party), it was the R party...I would say that Rs still have many libertarians, those leaning libertarian, conservatives that haven't been convinced to leave the R party, and that those folks constitute a number of millions who are also more inclined toward the Austrian school and libertarian economics. The Ds have no such wing. But there are large numbers of conservatives and libertarians in the not committed to either party middle. Ron Paul has certainly proven that the Republican party cannot be reborn.
Of course, the Democrats are also a totally captured, ridiculous dead carcass. We have need of a great new sound money Party to rise out of the ashes of both dead parties.
Amerika is home to the land of Pollyanna's and the gullible. Warning: Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.
half of what you see..........
not if youre watching cnbc..............
Including on this site, presumably.
Personally, I could give two shits less which state it is/was. The fact that BLS didn't issue a bullet stating the discrepancy is what pisses me off. It just exposes even more so, how our kleptocratic leadership functions. Like the 3 monkeys.
Hear no evil, See no evil, Do no evil.
The third one is "speak no evil"...doing evil is fair game.
Good point. Which leads me to believe that BLS is at least 50% responsible for the fuck up and probably 100%. Pretty clear they could have mentioned the number was based on incomplete data. Regardless, I think all they accomplished was drawing both their impartiality and methodology into question in the eyes of the public (those paying attention and not already aware of the way they skew data).
I just can't believe people are actually paying attention to this stuff. It constantly amazes me the kind of kayfabe we have in place in this country. It's gotta be like this in N. Korea, too.
HOPELESS!!!
Denying a problem, not reporting about a problem etc... are all essential weapons in the 'american' arsenal of problem solving.
Californians, 'americans' through and through...
Believing any economic data coming out of government is a fools errand. These parasites in Washington have proven themselves to be incompetent, corrupt and unashamedly self-serving. Why would you believe in the integrity of their data? These people have no integrity.
The US economy is disintegrating. This is not a cyclical downturn. This is a structural collapse. There has been no recovery. We are in a depression. And it is going to get a lot worse. Ignore the noise coming out of D.C. and get your house and finances in order, for your sake and your family's sake. Do it now.
"We have always been at war with Eurasia."
We have always been at war with Amnesia.
Selective amnesia is a friend of political muckety mucks.
I miss Rhodesia !
I junk your every post. I'll give you credit, this ones kinda funny!
Based on how he scoffed at the people who called bullshit on the data it's pretty clear Blodget really wants to believe the initial claims number. You'd think he would happily retract and claim all is well.
If elected, Romney needs to hire Charles Biderman to run the BLS. Or better yet, abolish it altogether.
If Romney is elected he will move BLS to China.
BLS = Bureau of Lies and Statistics
BuLLSH*T
It was Illinois. Don't know why they don't just admit it. Nobody that matters care anyways. BTW- the unadjusted numbers actually increased by 25,000
Now there are three things never to watch being made: sausage, laws, and US economic data.
This kind of crap makes the economic data coming out of China seem downright credible by comparison.
ROFL hey that is why I make my own sausage.
Well, I don't make it, but I knead mine 5-12 times a day.
"It’s unfortunate this ‘reporter’ and others who repeated the article’s erroneous statements chose to speculate rather than report, failing to confirm this information with EDD."
Since when do the MSM comfirm things? I thought they quit that nonsense fact checking BS in 2008! On another note any think it could have been the fighting ILLINI that failed to report since opie has total control of that state?
Thats a hot looking reporter!
Maybe they are inflation adjusting jobless claims
What state report do we ignore to get the results we want .... then let them wait for the revision ! Bureau of Labor Stochastics !
What is sad is this is NAZI shit....false propaganda....
This destroys confidence when we are treated as droids in Star Wars....
I smell Civil War 2 brewing........some support this fucking admin and others who see through this shit.....
oh so this is what a breakdown crisis, and collapse of empire looks like lies about lies
The BLS is of course producing bullshit, but worse is the Main Stream Media Whitehouse gigilos, willingly giving headjobs to the Administration.
The MSM neglect of looking at analysing the data is criminal. Instead of revealing the bullshit from the BLS they promote and adorn with their own unique dishonesty. No talke about food stamps, long term unemployed, participation rates at level they were in 1721, constant revising of the data in the same manner each report in order to offer a better result.... the MSM in all its guieses is as corrupt as the everyday politician and beaurecrat.
I expect all sorts of amazing wonderful data from everywhere until the election. These guys will do anything, invent any form of lie to get Obama and freinds back in power...
But what they cannot control are the Black Swans....and will the current Administration get its black swan prior to election day.
um i think we've had a black swan for the last 4 years?
Oi, CA is even fucked up in all the Fringe-esque parallel worlds. Someone got their string knotted.
Secede from the Union.
honey boo boo
Gee, if no states reported then we'd have full employment. Problem solved.
No, no. Not "full employment." We'd have "0% unemployment."
There's no relationship between these two concepts.
Panem et circenses.
The regular Muppets get "Dancing with the Coke Fiends" and "America's Got Cellulite."
We get blatantly falsified data points and faith-based journalism.
It's all smoke and mirrors - distraction. They're the house band on the Titanic - Set up on deck and playing all the hits from the seventies, eighties, and nineties.
"Whatever happens, just keep 'em dancing!"
Those at the top believe they're too rich and powerful to be touched. They're manning the lifeboats and the underlings who do their bidding are simply hoping for protection once the jig is up.
I can only hope there's a special place in hell...
california reported all 'the claims it had processed'....they didnt say that california had processed all the filing and then submitted that...big fucking dif. if they had 2000 people file yet cali only processes 300 then submits that 300 number, they under reported the claims.
Overextended equity/commodity/gold/silver daily charts still indicate impending correction.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-24/market-analysis
http://trader618.com
It'll be VERY interesting to see if there are any significant "revisions" in key economic data (particularly employment, participation rate, budgetary data etc.) AFTER the Election.
Wonder if the scapegoats have already been identified - "Office Underlings" who can conveniently carry the can and be booted without upsetting the "Big Players", who were of course "completely unaware" of any reporting / computation failures further down the Corporate food chain.
Do ANY of us have ANY REAL IDEA of just how bad it really is - especially for those without the benefit of family / corporate connection to the TBTF Empire??
images funny images funny images Natural images Natural images funny sms strange images sky funny cartoon images funny images funny images of animals funny birthday images funny images of people 3d images background images love images flower images cartoon images baby images halloween images dog images cat images
This whole story is very funny! I was reading something about zip lock bags and from there I jumped to the news and when I saw this headline I laughed hard. In my opinion "The Freedom of Speech" act is giving some people too much "power" and they can talk trash about people!
Typical BLS stuff... from the Boston Biz jorournal and Similar reporting from Boston Globe BLS economists originally reported a gain of 40,000 jobs in 2011, but revised that number down to 9,000 in March. Here in Massachusetts we are glad that Deval Patrick outsourced the labor reporting to BLS... Heck the BLS only missed by 444.44%.. Typical economist psydo science where on the "one hand ...... and on the other". Proves the central planners are ampidextrious jerk offs.. BUT NOT POLITICAL!