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Employment Costs Surge Most In 6 Years As Initial Claims Miss
Following last week's "seasonal volatility"-driven plunge in claims to new cycle lows, this week saw a 32k rise to 302k, missing expectations for the first time in 4 weeks. However, what is more worrisome for bullish equity market investors is the surge in employment costs. The Employment Cost Index jumped 0.7% (beating expectations of a 0.5% rise) - its biggest jump since Sept 2008. This is the biggest variance from expectations in 8 years and suggests Janet Yellen's 'slack' just got a lot tighter. Good news is bad news for bonds and stocks (for now).
Employment costs jump most in 6 years...
As claims miss for first time in 4 weeks...
Charts: Bloomberg
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No jobs, but higher pay...BULLSHIT
Higher taxes, forced health "insurance", higher everything but higher net wage.
I was talking with our finance team yesterday, they assured me employee fully burden costs are now 44% of target salary.....I remember when it was 30% 10 years ago.....main contributor is medical, go figure.
And my guess is that if, like me, you are providing the healthcare coverage, none of your employees can go onto the exchange and actually look for a better deal.
So, let me get this straight. You tax me and my employees to build a national healthcare exchange, but then prohibit us from participating in the exchange we paid for. Why hasn't any clever attorney taken up this case. We all know what the supremes would say. We need a "Boston Tea Party" type response to this.
The exchange is generally shit. Options on it are limited and the plans basically suck. Sure, if you're poor or at least under the subsidy cliff, you get that subsidy to ease the pain. However, it's a gimmick as the cost of actually USING the insurance is insane. It's a scam. The insurance company relies on premium payments that go unused to cover costs, but in reality you are just giving interest free loans that you may or may not claim one day. Then, just for the hell of it, they charge you fees to access your premium. And even once they give you access, well, surcharges. Enjoy your $10k deductible with 50/50 copay on everything I guess. Don't worry it's "cheap". What? And you are being FORCED to participate in this mockery?
Now to those who see "single payer" as something horrible, here's all it is.
You know how a large company can get good rates on a good plan because the pool of employees is large? Well, just pool that company and others together... hey, even better rates. Ok, now pool everyone together into a single decent basic plan that covers 99% of everything most people are likely to run across in a lifetime. Now take that single plan with that single company and strip it of profit.. not "non-profit" where they jew around the money to make the numbers work, but ACTUAL non-profit. Oy vey, what if basic isn't good enough? Supplemental insurance to give you more coverage... which is now all dirt cheap because that 99% of risk is gone. All rates for everything are negotiated, it's simple now. Administrative overhead (31% of healthcare cost) is now finito, gone, no more. All that supplemental shit is easy now too. Want nicer rooms? A daily in-patient cash allowance? Access to non-generics? Specialized care at private clinics? Supplemental.
This isn't rocket science. It's everyone in the same damned pool, paying premiums indexed to income (a TINY percentage) with the haves subsidizing the have nots. Oh no laomei, that's dirty filthy socialist communism! Poors with access to preventative care gives them more advantage and opportunity to actually get into a position to PUT skin in the game. It releases employers from the healthcare burdens and makes a more level playing field... job sucks but you're in it for the healthcare package? You can now leave and go work where you want without fear. No more healthcare kickbacks to employers or excuses for not giving raises because "health insurance". No more fucking COBRA to suck the life out of you if you lose your job either.
Dear god, for what the US spends on healthcare, just the public cost, not private, healthcare should be $0 additional cost and it would still be the most expensive in the world. Who the fucking hell cares if it's pulled out directly from the paycheck or you pay it after? At present it eats 17.6% of GDP. It would save $600 BILLION PER YEAR. 95% of EVERYONE would pay much less and EVERYONE would have insurance... not shitty insurance, but GOOD insurance. Oh but wait times and stuff. Guess what you can use that savings for? PUBLIC HOSPITALS with massive funding that sets a standard. So long wait times, hello even higher standard of care.
I seriously do not understand why Joe Fucking Lieberman is not dancing from a lamppost. Obama sat down with the insurance companies who wrote their idea of reform and agreed to it. The public wanted single payer. Well, can't ignore the public can we? All the dems vote yes, except for fucking Joe who is resigning anyways and is chosen to be the fallguy. Oh well, we tried so hard, but Joe didn't like it... as they then ignored the issue entirely. If it wasn't Joe, it would have been someone else, the point is that they were all bought and paid for, they are all fucking corrupt illegitimate treasonous criminals and should be summarily executed for that single issue right there. That, by the way, also happened to be my motivation to leave the US for good. It was either leave or start assassinating members of congress... I decided it's simply not worth it... might as well leave for somewhere that's sane.
Yes, ignore the participation rate or the fact that the "higher net wage" still hasn't kept up with inflation. - winning.
It's not higher pay, it's higher costs. Zerocare doesn't come cheap.
Goddammit Doc it's wages. Turn on cnbc and get with the narrative.
They carefully nutured those green shoots and now they find out they're growing kudzu.
Little known fact regarding kudzu, the nectar is blue and it will turn the honey of local bees blue. The asians believe the blue honey has special properties and will pay 3x-10x more for this honey. Just for fun we typically move one or two hives to local kudzu patches mid-summer.
Regardless guys, people don't simply "dissappear" once they become unemployed. Add to that, exisiting people dependent on SNAP, disability, or medicare and things are going to start getting interesting shortly.
Albert Bartlett was correct - "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability
to understand the exponential function.”
Because Obamacare.
ooops....the FED never had control and the data is blowing up in their faces....
Its the data they want us to have. Monthly number will be under 6 percent! Happy Days are hear so smoke a joint and enjoy the cooler weather 75 for a high today in oklahoma city
BE A PATRIOTIC BLIND OPTIMIST OR WE'LL ALL GO DOWN!!!
THE LEADER HAS SPOKEN!!
Employment costs = wages for anyone who missed it and wants a good laugh. Now you know why the 10yr is selling off and stawks are selling off. Yellen is finally going to be forced to raise rates because real inflation is on the way because we are all making so much fucking money because things are so fucking great.
Employment costs = Zerocare.
See my reply above. I don't want to have to report you but there are like 7 agencies I am supposed to be contacting right now about you.
Lol..... Thanks for the laugh. I needed it today.
It's called stagflation ... same as it ever was. No different this time.
Brought to you by the Larry Summers/Bob Rubin team of data manipulation at the highest levels...
only because the maggots at the top take a bigger bite
And that's where inflation has gone, COSTS.
This is a short lecture on inflation, deflation and economy.
Profit = Revenue - Cost
There is:
Inflation of Revenue
Deflation of Revenue
Inflation of Costs
Deflation of Costs
Profit must always be >0, otherwise business will not convert any raw materials into consumable products.
Inflation, deflation of each component are not meaningful.
What matters is that Profit=Revenu-Cost (to be >0)
Lecture is over
Economy is dying because business is not making a profit because Quantitative Easing has pushed costs into hyperinflation.
It is that simply.
Just remember this again:
Profit = Revenue-Cost (to be always >0)
and here is a quick lesson on the stock market
http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/29/investing/amgen-layoffs/
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AMGN+Interactive#symbol=AMGN;range=5d
Bullets through heads are coming soon Fonz, not more staged suicides.
Controlling those trading computers is what matters right now.
All oligarchs dream of controlling those computers and only bank lobby has major control of them now.
Wait.
If bank lobby doesn't surrender, bullets will fly, very, very, very unfortunately.
How does bringing the down down to 5k solve any of this? First off i'd argue that you can't do it anyway. The market would just seize up. The sheep would finally decide they would rather have cash in the mattress. Everything would freeze.
It does not pay off any debt. It may bring oil prices down because the real economy would be in shambles but Oligarchs don't like civil unrest and it would be chaos. Coomplete chaos. It's better to continue to fake it. Better for everyone.
Good thing with debt is that it doesn't have to be paid off, it can simply be defaulted on, which is about to occur.
The real issue is not debt or interest rates.
The real issue is $60 trillion USD sloshing around the world
Gov and Fed MUST extinguish about $20 trillion, otherwise world abandons USD.
There's too much
Correct, there goes Argentina, again...
for all that money sloshing around the world it is interesting that the countries in the worst trouble seem to be the ones that find themselves starved for dollars.
And argentina is not giving an excrement. They will do bilateral trade with brics and avoid USD. They have plenty of commodities
Correct.
Argentina can't give an excrement because they have no toilet paper.
That's Venezuela
As of right now Argentina is right back where they were over a decade ago. When they start flourishing due to bilateral trade with the bric nations and the dollars start piling up over here I will perk up. I know everyone says it's bound to happen but it never seems to.
QE was a breaker to hold back a tsunami. But they had to keep adding more and more bricks at the top because the wave kept building. Now the wave will breach and the whole breaker will fail and the end result is 10x worse than if they had let it take it's natural course in the first damned place.
"If bank lobby doesn't surrender, bullets will fly, very, very, very unfortunately. " -
You sir, are truly an optimist.
When oligarchs do not share wealth and power with each other, they start killing each other.
That is 4000 years of documented history.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/the-self-destruction-of...
What is happening now, happened to Venice, hence oligarch civil war
"hence oligarch civil war" - and great opportunites for soldiers of fortune.
Just saying...
Absolutely agree
You are still living in the old'en times I see. Havent you seen the books of Amazon, FB, GM, and about 75% of the DOW components? They strive to not make a profit so as to not pay taxes. The correct formula would be:
CEO compensation_2014 >= CEO compensation_2013+10%.
That is fake profit, document profit.
Firms are manipulating money and bonds due to ultra abundance of USD and not expanding output.
It doesn't last long. It is actually about to suffer a sudden death
Re "... about to suffer a sudden death" :
I really wish I could believe you but I keep having visions of people going to "money saving wealth creation seminars" and being convinced of the joy of taking out 20 year loans to pay for a week's worth of groceries "and next week just roll over the debt", and next door there will be a pension fund with a salesman spruiking the joys of Accumulating Collateralised Grocery Obligations. ...and we'll all be rich!!!
There will be an ad in the newspaper: How to get rich by cutting your grocery bill by 99.9% and investing the remaining money in ACGOs.
The scary part is that when hyperinflation kicks in, this will be the only survival hedge that will work. For a little while. Not to worry, when it all eventually falls over it will all be the peasant's fault becoz they were so stupid and greedy!!!
With almost 40% of the companies on the public exchanges involved in selling financial "products", it's safe to say that approximately 40% of the listed companies don't actually provide anything of real fucking value. Doesn't even count the "facefucks" etc.
Can I have a turn? Let me see ...
Profit reported to IRS = revenue - costs
Profit in prospectus = revenue - costs + unsold inventory + change in value of the land that the factory sits on, as reported by accounting firm paid for by company + change in debt - interest that is actually paid as opposed to interest that is acutally owed because the nice bank man is very understanding about these things and you can borrow as much as you like as long as you assure us that you're good for it because we can always sell the bonds to the workers' pension funds
Am I getting close?
Oh yeah, and I nearly forgot:
CEO compensation + Dividends = profit which is good and must be maximized or else the whole capitalist system will collapse
Wages = cost which is evil and must be minimized or else everyone will go bankrupt and we're not a bunch of communists you know
rich customers = someone else's problem, the market will provide, we're not a bloody charity either
That is because there are too many dollars sloshing around.
It's easier to capture them by manipulating balance sheets rather then expanding output
I like your thought but I'll add What profit is made is taxed at 4% in Ireland instead of our much bigger rates. Or sequested in Burmda in Re-Insurance. Never to be repatriated to America. When is the last time we have seen Industrial MFG here?
Its Obamacare....making our products more costly in the world is not good business....
Reporting on everything BUT GDP news today, eh?
I don't think anyone is going to revisit the GDP news, They managed to report it with a straight face yesterday and I think everyone knows that was going above and beyond the call of duty for the MSM and the propaganda mission.
But then again, if we have 15% inflation, does that translate to a 15% increase in GDP???
Maybe a 1% correction today??? Don't think so.
You know how I know the economy is doing great???
Yesterday I get home from work and my wife says to me, "Honey, I had a talk with the kids today and I told them that we really need to cut back on back to school shopping this year."
If my wife is saying stuff like this out loud, we are all in trouble because she thinks her primary mission is to keep the economy going.
I can only hope my wife will follow suit. Congratulations sir.
We can all have a chuckle about the employment costs = wages thing. But you know that is how those gov't economists view this. Anything an employer pays for on behalf of an employee is considered "compensation." And you know what's next: you WILL get taxed on that compensation. Bend over and get ready.
The costs in Ethiopia are still cheap.
It's those $15 minimum wages in Seattle. Now I have to ask my boss to double my pay to keep up.