"Genuine" Windows...?
Well... er...
(*WHISPERING BACK AND FORTH*)
Folks... on the advice of counsel - and my tech guru - I hereby invoke the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Right's 5th Amendment right not to incriminate myself!
(*GUFFAW*)
Anyway... let's start today's postings with this front-page newsbite!
* * * * * *
The number of Americans 16 and older who did not
participate in the labor force climbed to a record high of 92,120,000 in June,
according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
* RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU'RE SICK AND TIRED OF THE...
er... "OBAMA RECOVERY."
This means that there were 92,120,000 Americans 16 and
older who not only did not have a job, but did not actively seek one in the
last four weeks.
That is up 111,000 from the 92,009,000 Americans who were
not participating in the labor force in April.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
In June, according to BLS, the labor force participation
rate for Americans was 62.8%...
In December, April, May, and now June, the labor force
participation rate has been 62.8%.
Before December, the last time the labor force
participation rate sank as low as 62.8% was...
(*DRUM ROLL PLEASE*)
...in February 1978, when it was also 62.8%. At that
time, Jimmy Carter was president.
At no time during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan,
George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, did such a small percentage
of the civilian non-institutional population either hold a job or at least
actively seek one.
While the number of Americans not in the labor force
increased, the unemployment rate dropped -- from 6.3% in April to 6.1% in June.
7 comments:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/07/03/hiring-pickup-aided-by-rare-source-of-strength-governments/?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
In June, all levels of government added a seasonally adjusted 26,000 employees.
* GOVERNMENT IS HIRING, FOLKS! BROKE-ASS GOVERNMENT! DEFICIT RUNNING GOVERNMENT!
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
That gain...
* GAIN IN GOVERNMENT EXPENSES! GAIN IN GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURES! ULTIMATELY GAIN IN FEDERAL DEBT DOLLARS WHICH FLOW DOWN (TRICKLE DOWN) TO STATES AND LOCALITIES...
(*SHRUG*)
...outpaced the manufacturing and construction sectors — combined.
* MEANING THE REAL ECONOMY... STILL FUCKED!
* FOLKS.. U6 UNEMPLOYMENT - THE REAL UNEMPLOYMENT NUMBER - IS 12.1%.
(*SIGH*)
Rising government employment not only adds to the total hiring figure, it also represents growth in a relatively well-paying field.
* YES... THIS IS HOW THE WALL STREET MEDIA PLAYS IT...
(*SNORT*)
* FOLKS... THE GOVERNMENT CAN'T AFFORD TO PAY OPERATING COSTS! NOT EVEN CLOSE! HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS BORROWED EVERY SINGLE YEAR JUST TO "BALANCE" THE BOOKS... BUT AT THE COST OF $17 TRILLION IN DEBT... AND RISING... WITH NO END IN SIGHT... AND NO MEANS OF EVER REPAYING THE PRINCIPLE!
Public-sector employment grew by 54,000 so far this year.
* FOLKS... HAVING EXPERIENCED ALL THAT GOVERNMENT WORKERS ARE... er... CAPABLE OF... IS THIS RISE IN EMPLOYMENT REALLY A GOOD THING?! I THINK NOT...!!!
Government workers tend to be paid better than those in the fast-growing fields of retail and food service, and they typically receive health and retirement benefits. Well-compensated workers could support stronger spending and faster economic growth.
* AGAIN... THIS ARTICLE IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF HOW WALL STREET ATTEMPTS TO MANIPULATED THE SHEEPLE.
* GOVERNMENT SALARIES ACROSS THE BOARD ARE GENERALLY HIGHER - BE IT BROOM PUSHER TO BROOM PUSHER OR PAPER PUSHER TO PAPER PUSHER! AND BENEFITS... YEP... THEM TOO!
* AND, AGAIN... "PAYING" SALARY AND BENEFITS ENTAILS DEFICIT SPENDING... BORROWING MONEY... ADDING ADDITIONAL DEBT!
* ANYWAY... THERE'S MORE TO THE ARTICLE... I JUST DON'T HAVE THE HEART. I'VE MADE MY POINTS.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-02/july-4-barbecue-costs-climb-to-record-chart-of-the-day.html
Rising prices for beef, ice cream and lettuce mean Americans will spend the most ever for Fourth of July barbecues this year.
The CHART OF THE DAY shows an index tracking U.S. retail prices for seven foods commonly consumed while grilling climbed 5.1% in May from a year earlier to the highest ever for the month, the latest data from Bureau of Labor Statistics show.
* CHANT IT WITH ME, FOLKS! O-BAM-A! O-BAM-A! O-BAM-A! O-BAM-A! O-BAM-A!
Prices for ground beef are 16% higher than a year earlier, while ice cream climbed 1.7% and tomatoes soared 12%, government data show.
Consumers “are becoming adjusted to these price levels,” said Don Close, a vice president for animal protein at Rabobank Food and Agriculture Research and Advisory in St. Louis. “I would expect the overall grilling demand to be very good. The natural long weekend will be a benefit.”
* YES... "BECOME ADJUSTED..." BECOMING ADJUSTED TO "FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE..."
The Bloomberg-compiled barbecue index tracks ground beef, white bread, American cheese, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, ice cream and potato chips. Ground-beef prices are at a record amid a shrinking U.S. cattle herd.
* YEP... PRESIDENT OBAMA DOESN'T LIKE RANCHERS...
* CONNECT THE FUCKING DOTS, YOU MORONS! (NOT "YOU." I MEAN LIBS WHO LURK!)
http://online.wsj.com/articles/gas-prices-wallop-wallets-1404336800?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
As Americans drive to barbecues and the beach in coming days, they will be paying more for gas than on any Independence Day weekend since the record highs of 2008.
* LEAVING LESS MONEY FOR EVERYTHING ELSE...!!!
A gallon of unleaded gasoline cost an average of $3.67 Wednesday, almost 20 cents above last year's price, according to automobile club AAA.
In California, drivers have been paying well over $4 a gallon for weeks.
Prices at the pump are tracking a sharp rise in oil prices over the past month, after Islamist militants took control of several cities in Iraq.
* ANOTHER SCAM! WE GET 2% OF OUR OIL FROM IRAQ!
Investors and traders have worried that the spreading insurgency poses a threat to the country's oil production.
* THE OLIGARCHS AND SPECULATORS USED IRAQ AS AN EXCUSE TO RAPE THE AMERICAN CONSUMER.
The recent run-up in gasoline prices is a reminder that the U.S. still depends on imported oil...
* 2% FOLKS... (THESE WALL STREET "JOURNALISTS" HAVE NO SHAME!)
Global crude supplies are tight...
* FOLKS... ENERGY MARKETS DISCONNECTED FROM SUPPLY AND DEMAND YEARS AGO! (JUST GO THROUGH MONTH BY MONTH, YEAR BY YEAR RECORDS TAKING ACCOUNT OF MARKET LOOSENESS OR TIGHTNESS.)
Drivers "might cut back on other things, like shopping or dining or going out," said Michael Green, a AAA spokesman. The high cost of gas "really just affects their budget, and the amount they can spend on everything else when they're traveling."
* DUH!
Carla Coleman, an unemployed social worker from Los Angeles, said higher gasoline prices have cut sharply into her budget this summer as she drives to and from job interviews. "Last night, I drove to Hollywood for a free jazz concert, and my mom told me not to go because I'm using her gas card. I'm more aware of where I'm going and how much I'm spending," said Ms. Coleman, 47, who had just filled her Toyota Camry at a 76 station in Sherman Oaks, Calif., where regular gasoline costs $4.17 a gallon. "I hope the prices go down."
* OBAMA'S AMERIKA...
On Wednesday, U.S. oil futures fell 86 cents, or 0.8%, to $104.48 a barrel after Libya's government reached a deal with rebels to restart some exports. Crude-oil prices account for about 65% of the cost of retail gasoline.
* FOLKS... THERE'S NO REASON FOR OIL TO BE ABOVE $60-$70/BR. AT MOST! (AT MOST...!!!) (CHECK THE FUNDAMENTALS... PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION COSTS!)
Government data released Wednesday showed oil inventories fell more than expected last week but remain near the peak of almost 400 million barrels reached in April.
* SO MUCH FOR LOW INVENTORIES!
Prices at the pump in California averaged $4.138 a gallon Wednesday, according to AAA.
"We could have another 30-cents-a-gallon increase nationally and I really don't think it would have significant effects on consumer sentiment or major spending," said James Hamilton, professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego.
* WHAT A MORON! GEEZUS... JUST DO THE MATH FOR YOU OWN VEHICLES, FOLKS!
That would be unwelcome news for drivers like Tai Gabriel, a fitness trainer in Los Angeles, who said he noticed last month that he had spent an unusually high amount on fuel. "Gas didn't used to be this important. You didn't think that about gas, and now it's as high a priority as food. It eats away at your lifestyle," Mr. Gabriel, 41, said as he filled his white Jeep.
* THIS GABRIEL GUY HAS MORE BRAINS THAN THE PROFESSOR!
http://online.wsj.com/articles/john-cochrane-new-keynesian-macroeconomic-models-dont-support-more-stimulus-spending-1404342631
Output per capita fell almost 10 percentage points below trend in the 2008 recession.
It has since grown at less than 1.5%, and lost more ground relative to trend.
Cumulative losses are many trillions of dollars, and growing.
And... the latest GDP report disappoints again, declining in the first quarter.
* WELCOME TO THE OBAMA ECONOMY...!
Sclerotic growth trumps every other economic problem.
(*NOD*)
Without strong growth, our children and grandchildren will not see the great rise in health and living standards that we enjoy relative to our parents and grandparents. Without growth, our government's already questionable ability to pay for health care, retirement and its debt evaporate.
* "QUESTIONABLE...?!?!" "QUESTIONABLE...?!?!" WE RUN HUGE DEFICITS EVERY YEAR...!!! OUR "ABILITY TO PAY" IS BASED UPON JUGGLING CREDIT CARD BALANCES! (REMEMBER WHAT CAUSED THE HOUSING BUST IN 2018... HINT... IT BEGAN WITH THE DEBT BUBBLE!)
Without growth, the lot of the unfortunate will not improve. Without growth, U.S. military strength and our influence abroad must fade.
[A supposed] lack of "demand" is no longer the problem. Financial observers now worry about "reach for yield" and "asset bubbles." House prices are up. Inflation is steady. The Federal Reserve evidently agrees, since it is talking about taper and exit, not more stimulus. Even super-Keynesians note that five years of slump have let physical and human capital decay, which "demand" will not quickly reverse. But we are stuck in low gear. Though unemployment rates are returning to normal, many people are not even looking for work.
* AGAIN WITH THE WALL STREET LIE...
* UNEMPLOYMENT RATES ARE DECLINING BECAUSE A HUGE PERCENTAGE OF THE WORKING AGE POPULATION IS NO LONGER BEING COUNTED AS BEING IN THE LABOR POOL - BECAUSE THEY'VE OPTED OUT... MANY COLLECTING "DISABILITY!"
* FOLKS... SERIOUSLY... HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO GO OVER THIS...?!?!
Where, instead, are the problems? John Taylor, Stanford's Nick Bloom and Chicago Booth's Steve Davis see the uncertainty induced by seat-of-the-pants policy at fault. Who wants to hire, lend or invest when the next stroke of the presidential pen or Justice Department witch hunt can undo all the hard work?
Ed Prescott emphasizes large distorting taxes and intrusive regulations.
The University of Chicago's Casey Mulligan deconstructs the unintended disincentives of social programs.
(These problems did not cause the recession. But they are worse now, and they can impede recovery and retard growth.)
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/obamas-border-crisis-108540.html#.U7XNAkAkm1t
It’s hard to imagine a more apt summation of the lunatic state of the nation’s immigration debate than this week’s split screen.
In Washington, most "respectable opinion" lined up, yet again, to condemn Republicans for not passing an amnesty under the guise of defunct-for-now “comprehensive immigration reform.”
Meanwhile...
(*SIGH*)
...the crisis on the Southern border continued.
A massive influx of people — largely driven by Central Americans, many of them children — drawn here in the expectation of lax immigration enforcement is overwhelming border officials and facilities.
A Wall Street Journal story about the White House reaction to the crisis was headlined, “Obama Plans Executive Action to Bolster Border Security,” which has a man-bites-dog feel to it after all of the administration’s executive actions to undermine immigration enforcement.
(*SNORT*)
He has systematically [undermined] the nation’s immigration laws, and tens of thousands of new illegal immigrants are showing up at our doorstep.
House Speaker John Boehner appropriately attacked the president over the crisis the other day, but spoke imprecisely when he excoriated him for “giving false hope to children and their families that if they enter the country illegally they will be allowed to stay.” Actually, the hope is quite real. As the pro-enforcement Center for Immigration Studies notes, apprehensions of non-Mexicans have increased sharply over the past year, but deportations of citizens of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have dropped in the same period. A leaked memo from a high-ranking Border Patrol official said that only 3% of non-Mexicans apprehended at the border are being returned to their native countries.
* RE-READ THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH IF NECESSARY...
(*SIGHING WHILE SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
The administration is waving the families and children into the United States, dispersing them around the country, and giving them a date — often quite distant because of a huge backlog — to appear in immigration court.
* MAKING OBAMA THE "COYOTE-IN-CHIEF!"
Experience says only about a quarter of illegal immigrants released pending a court date will actually show up for the proceedings.
* I BELIEVE I READ "7%" THE OTHER DAY...
(*SHRUG*)
Why would they? As Byron York of the Washington Examiner points out, once illegal immigrants are in the country, they fairly quickly can become part of the broad category of people that the administration has exempted from interior enforcement.
Even many of the illegal immigrants who bother to go all the way through the system and get a removal order don’t go anywhere. At the end of last July, according to Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, there were 872,000 aliens who had been ordered removed but were still here.
For a would-be migrant, the question is: Whom to believe, Joe Biden or your lying eyes? If a kid gets through to his aunt in Phoenix and is then essentially scot-free, word of that is going to get back quickly to his home country and trump the chest-beating of the vice president of the United States.
But isn’t the Obama administration infamously breaking records with its deportations? This claim, frequently made by both the administration’s allies and its critics on the Left, is nonsense. Jessica Vaughn has conclusively demonstrated that it is the product of statistical sleight of hand.
The administration includes in its accounting Border Patrol arrests that wouldn’t previously have been counted as deportations. The reality is that, thanks to a June 2011 executive action, the administration has gutted interior enforcement by essentially limiting deportations to criminal illegal aliens.
As John Sandweg, who was acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said recently, “If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero.”
(Vaughan notes that interior arrests have declined 40% since 2011 and ICE released more illegal immigrants than it arrested in 2013, including nearly 70,000 with criminal records.)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
It is true that a Bush-era law forces the Border Patrol to hand over child migrants from countries other than Mexico to the Department of Health and Human Services to be placed with a suitable relative.
The administration is rightly calling for that law to be changed. ["CALLING," BUT NOT "DEMANDING." NOT DOING ANYTHING TO ACTUALLY CHANGE THE LAW. JUST EMPTY RHETORIC.] But the administration’s policy of eviscerating interior enforcement is entirely its own creation and has no basis whatsoever in law. That policy, the president’s de facto amnesty of young illegal immigrants imposed by executive order and all the talk of a more wide-ranging amnesty over the past year have had their predictable effect.
The key to reversing the tide is enforcement, and not just at the border. If illegal immigrant adults receiving newly arrived children from the border knew that they would be reliably deported upon coming to the attention of authorities, the message would get out quickly. The influx would radically slow, if not stop. But the president wants even less interior enforcement.
The same Wall Street Journal story with the headline about Obama bolstering the border reported he “will make at least minor adjustments to deportation policy later this summer that would shield some illegal immigrants from deportation” — with his base agitating for even more far-reaching action.
For the left, and its fellow-travelers in the business community and on the libertarian right, there is only side of the split screen that matters. It’s always amnesty.
* "LIBERTARIAN RIGHT?" BULL. IN ANY CASE, I'M SPEAKING AS A NATIONALIST LIBERTARIAN AND "WE" WANT SECURE BORDERS!
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