Unemployment Benefits

• Wonder why: JPMorgan plans to keep pay roughly flat from last year (Reuters) - maybe this: Charles Schwab Warns "We Are In A Manipulated Market"
• Democrats overturn filibuster rule, increasing Obama’s power (FT)
• Day JFK Died We Traded Through Tears as NYSE Shut (BBG)
• When even dictators snub Obama - Afghanistan rejects U.S. call for quick security deal (Reuters)
• Obama Plunges in Investor Poll as Stocks Make New Highs (BBG)
• Iran, six powers struggle to overcome snags in nuclear talks (Reuters)
• Derision for China’s ‘rejuvenation index’ (FT)
• Bottom is in: Paulson Said to Inform Clients He Won’t Add More to Gold (BBG)
• German business sentiment rebounds strongly (WSJ)
• WTO on verge of global trade pact (FT)

Money doesn’t smell of anything except money and wherever it comes from it gives off the same whiff of intoxicating magnetic attraction. 

How anyone thought this made any sense in the first place was a little beyond us, but the Labor Department has ruled that the Federal employees who were furloughed while the government was shutdown were not eligible for unemployment benefits (as well as back-pay)...

• *FEDERAL WORKERS DURING SHUTDOWN NOT ELIGIBLE FOR UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS: CNBC

So no double-dip... we await the union-based class action suit...

As Alan Greenspan described this week, in an interview with John Stewart on “The Daily Show,”

“We really can't forecast all that well. We pretend that we can but we can't. And markets do really weird things sometimes because they react to the way people behave, and sometimes people are a little screwy.”

Which means they don’t necessarily go along with your central planning, no matter how good you think it is. But still economists insist that, if they are allowed to monkey around with it, they can make an economy better. And therefore, the Fed, which has lived by the sword of QE, will probably die by it too.

Economy Minister Fabrizio Saccomanni, a former deputy governor of the Bank of Italy, acknowledged that "more could have been done." He said political squabbling had complicated the government's work, but pointed out that that the budget keeps Italy's deficit below 3% of gross domestic product, as European Union rules require. "Everybody hates this budget, but the stock market is up and the spread is down," Mr. Saccomanni noted.

It took just four days before the Federal government caved to Congress and admitted that it can't even operate in a partial, "non-essential" shutdown. A few short hours ago Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered 400,000 furloughed Pentagon civilian employees - or about half the total defense employees - back to work. it is also roughly half of the total employees furloughed since the start of the government shutdown, which is now in its fifth day, and since both the House and the Senate are now gone until Monday afternoon, it appears the shutdown, even if now at half mast will continue for at least a week.

As opposed to the "pixie dust tout of fairy tales forever" that is trotted out by the herd every day, the fllowing brief look at Taper realities, 'manufactured' numbers unreality, systemic Muni bonds concerns, and of course, political risk provide color for what was described this morning on CNBC as a market bereft of 'bear market theses. As Tartakower once wrote, "The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake;" until then ts all foreplay.

The last time the top 10% of the US income distribution had such a large proportion of the entire nation's income was the 1920s - a period that culminated in the Great Depression and a collapse in that exuberance. As AP reports, the very wealthiest Americans earned more than 19% of the country's household income last year — their biggest share since 1928, the year before the stock market crash. And the top 10% captured a record 48.2% of total earnings last year. Analysis by Emanuael Saez shows that, based on IRS data, in 2012, the incomes of the top 1% rose nearly 20% compared with a 1% increase for the remaining 99%. Economists point to several reasons for widening income inequality including globalization and technology. However, as John Taylor explains in his recent WSJ Op-Ed, using this as a lever for Obama's "middle-out" policies - higher tax rates, more intrusive regulations, more targeted fiscal policies - will not revive the economy. More likely they will perpetuate the weak economy we have and cause real incomes—including for those in the middle—to continue to stagnate.

After the banks, after the city of Detroit it will be the USA that will be going bankrupt and filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. If only that were possible! But unfortunately it won’t be.

The Greeks have been in recession now for six long years. While economies around in neighboring EU countries seem as if they are shining with just a glimmer of hope that the recession is over, the Greeks are not partaking in any of that.

The media, the financial markets and investors have become fixated on the unemployment rate, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, particularly since it was directly linked by the Federal Reserve to its current bond buying program. What is clearly evident is that, despite the headline reports, there is clearly an alarming divergence in employment from the long-term trend.  The structural shift in employment away from manufacturing and production to a service and outsourced based economy has clearly created a deviation that will not likely be corrected for decades to come.  The implications for the Federal Reserve, and the economy, should be concerning.  While the hope is that the economy will suddenly spark back towards stronger growth; the supply/demand imbalance suggests otherwise.

Should we throw logic out the window and run with the bulls?

Elliott Management's 22-page letter to investors has something for everyone as Paul Singer ascribes his uniquely independent wisdom. From the fragility of the financial system to the hubris of academic pretenders; from inflation's various devious impacts on assets and reality to the floundering of the world's bankers; from America's "cooked data" to the pending social unrest in Europe and the perils of centralized power, Singers stresses "the temptation to debase fiat currencies... means owning claims on paper money is an act of either faith or denial." Recent market movements, Singer warns "indicate a world on life-support," and "for every day, month and year that policymakers try to substitute failed, inappropriate and risky QE policies for pro-growth policies, the debt mounts, as does resentment among middle-income families that their situation is not improving." The fact of the matter is that "no government has ever reached fiscal 'nirvana,' yet our central bank (and its peers) continues to push the envelope of risk, confidence and inflation." Despite the confident and brave words in which they are wrapped, central bank actions currently seem underscored by quiet panic.

If our leaders could have recognized the signs ahead of time, do you think that they could have prevented the financial crisis of 2008?  That is a very timely question, because so many of the warning signs that we saw just before and during the last financial crisis are popping up again.  Many of the things that are happening right now in the stock market, the bond market, the real estate market and in the overall economic data are eerily similar to what we witnessed back in 2008 and 2009. It is almost as if we are being forced to watch some kind of a perverse replay of previous events, only this time our economy and our financial system are much weaker than they were the last time around. We have been living so far above our means for so long that most of us actually think that our current economic situation is "normal."

Everything is going to be just great.  Haven't you heard?  The stock market is at an all-time high, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says that inflation is incredibly low, and the official unemployment rate has been steadily declining since early in Barack Obama's first term.  Of course we are being facetious, but this is the kind of talk about the economy that you will hear if you tune in to the mainstream media.  They would have us believe that those running things know exactly what they are doing and that very bright days are ahead for America.  And it would be wonderful if that was actually true. Unfortunately, as I made exceedingly clear yesterday, the U.S. economy has already been in continual decline for the past decade.