US Employment Hopium Smoking Idealists?

All over the MSM today, we here Jobless Claims in U.S. Fall More Than Forecast [25], presented as good news. Of course, a little digging finds that not only was the jobless rate from last month adjusted upward retroactively (as it nearly always is), but "Too-Sick-to-Work Americans Shrink U.S. Labor Force [26]". In other words “With a rising number of disability beneficiaries, there are both lower unemployment rates and lower participation rates.” As reported by Bloomberg, and to wit:

The number of workers receiving SSDI jumped 22 percent to 8.7 million in April from 7.1 million in December 2007, Social Security data show. That helps explain as much as one quarter of the decline in the U.S. labor-force [27] participation rate during the period, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley.

Expiring Benefits

The participation rate -- the share of working-age people holding a job or seeking one -- was 63.8 percent [28] in March after falling to a three-decade low of 63.7 percent in January. Disability recipients may account for as much as 0.5 percentage point of the more than 2 point drop since the end of 2007, the economists calculate, and that contribution couldgrow [29] when some extended unemployment benefits expire at the end of this year.

“How we measure and understand what’s going on in the economy can be influenced by the degree to which various public- support programs are available and being used,” said Michael Feroli [30], chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan in New York. “With a rising number of disability beneficiaries, there are both lower unemployment rates and lower participation rates.”

Bloomberg also reports U.S. Productivity Falls [31], but I must say non-sequitur... It simply does not follow...

The productivity of U.S. workers fell in the first quarter, indicating businesses are reaching the limit of how much efficiency they can wring from the workforce.

The measure [32] of employee output per hour declined at a 0.5 percent annual rate after a 1.2 percent gain in the prior three months, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington. Expenses per worker increased at a 2 percent rate, less than estimated.

Employers had to take on more staff at the start of the year even as growth slowed, signaling they can no longer count on existing staff to meet demand. A government report tomorrow may show payrolls increased again in April, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Okay, so growth slowed after 4 years of the deepest, widest, most global fiscal stimulation exercise in the history of... well... The globe! One would assume this slowing growth trend will accelerate as the stimulus is unwound due to a variety of common sense reasons, starting with...

1. It just didn't work, and following up with...
2. the potential to incite the inflationary fires, and ending up with...
3. many countries simply can't afford the Ponzi scheme, trashy asset merry-go-round game thingy anyomore.

Even if stimulus is not lessened, we still can't ignore the plain and simple fact - it ain't working. Growth has slowed any way and quite a few developed nations who shepherded the global stimular cartel are now stating they're back in recession - depsite the fact that I made clear to my subscribers that they never left recession in the first place. Now, as growth continues to slow, what exactly does the astute pontificator think will happen to employment demand???????????????????????????????? Well, it's a positive omen as long as you only live your life a fiscal quarter at a time. Just don't look past 2 or 3 months or so, and you're straight, right????????????????

“This slowdown in productivity is a positive omen for the labor market,” Joseph LaVorgna [33], chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York, said in a research note. He correctly projected the drop in productivity. “It suggests that additional increases in output will necessitate a faster pace of hiring than what has occurred thus far.”

Now reference my comments from exactly this time last year, in "On Employment and Real Estate Recovery [34]":

A regular commentator on BoomBustBlog has been attempting to make the case for a housing recovery based upon rising employment metrics. He has, particularly, pointed out rising hourly earnings. I thought I would take this time to point out that average hourly earnings can rise due to the fact that less people are working. The aggregate employment in the US has literally fell off of a cliff. Since you know that I love pictures, let's do this graphically...

Below you have a chart of total hours worked in the US with the average hourly earnings superimposed on top. As you can see, two and a half years and trillions of dollars of stimulus and QE later, we have barely budged. There was no multiplier effect. In essence, what you had was a divisor effect, and the money would have shown up more on a dollar for dollar basis if it was simply given to the populace! Of course, that wouldn't have kicked the inevitably deflation of the banking system down the road, now would it have?

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Notice that despite the severe drop in total hours worked, average hourly earnings have increased. This can easily mislead someone who is not paying attention. Read more on this topic here: Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation ~ Lower Real Estate Values! [36] 

It's all HOPIUM, which is a tad bit stronger than that typical sticky sesimilia many are used to...

Reggie Middleton ON CNBC's Fast Money Discussing Hopium in Real Estate [37]

Now that I have (quite honestly) issued my most sincerest thanks, let's attempt to remedy the shortcoming of the limited amounted of time that I had. You see, after the 3 minute hit ended there was a brief discussion of commercial real estate in which I didn't get to participate, thus I will take the liberty of doing so through this medium.

Yes, commercial real estate has shown some marginal increases in the last quarter, and REITs have been on fire. The issue is, many publicly traded equities have detached from their underlying fundamentals. Let's reference “A Granular Look Into a $6 Billion REIT: Is This the Next GGP?” [38] The following are excerpts from it:

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You have to factor in non-market factors that have gone into supporting CRE prices. We have government bubble blowing where you can see where property prices were in a massive bubble, they rose and that bubble popped, and they were artificially supported and that bubble was partially reblown. Yes, the bubble was purposefully reblown, reference Buried Deep Within The Files That The Federal Reserve Released On Thier MBS Purchase Program, We Found TARP 2.0!!! More Taxpayer Money To The Banks!: [40]

We have conducted analysis on all MBS sale and purchase transactions conducted by the Fed whose data was recently released. Of the total 10,058 MBS transactions, 72% were done at a yield of less than 5% (5% below yield of 4.0%, 32% between 4.0%-4.5%, 35% between 4.5-5.0%) with an average yield of 4.75% on all MBS transaction. The table below presents the number of transactions under their respective yield category.

[41]

We have also analyzed the yield on MBS purchased and MBS sold, looking for price discrepancies between MBS purchased and MBS sold. The data points out that the average yield on MBS purchased was 4.71%, 29bps lower than average yield for MBS sold, thus implying MBS purchased were at a higher price than MBS sold. You know that old government adage, buy high and sell low!

Yield on sale: 5.00%
Yield on purchase: 4.71%
Difference in bps: 29.1

Now, imagine this artificial suppression, both in the form of MBS purchases (which are supposed to be over) and QE in the form of Treasury Ponzi purchases, are overpowered by the market driven rate storm brewing ahead. You also have the government looking the other way at depreciating asset values, see FASB Appears to Have Bent Over For The Final Time & Accuracy In Financial Reporting Dies An Ignominious Death!!! [42]:

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