Attached are my analyses of the January jobs data for the 50 states and Washington DC that were released yesterday by the BLS.
Note that Rhode Island, Vermont and Florida now join long-suffering Michigan having lost jobs yr/yr, with stagnation in job growth in Wisconsin and Ohio.
The Manufacturing sector continues to be the hardest hit yr/yr with only 39 states losing or having no gain in Manufacturing jobs; 31 states lost jobs in Financial Activities including real estate and 28 states lost Construction jobs -- including a -10.5% plunge in Florida.
While the markets rallied and folks cheered the Feds, proclaimed they saved the day, a dissenter emerges in the form of Winter Watch via Dr. Strangelove: Trial Ballooning More Disasters.
Today, the Fed announced a new liquidity plan.
the Fed announced a plan to resuscitate the ailing credit markets by lending $200 billion to battered financial firms in exchange for debt- or mortgage-backed securities. Starting March 27, the central bank is planning to offer weekly auctions, which could exceed $200 billion if there is sufficient demand, the Fed said.
I felt alone in the perception of an enabled ponzi subprime mortgage game continuing unabated, a shell game to push off this greedy disaster onto the taxpayer. Was I wrong? Did I just not understand? After all the market went up the highest 1 day rise in 5 years.
Here is a new industry-by-industry analysis of US/Mexico Manufacturing trade before and after NAFTA.
With the Manufacturing sector in crisis as the US enters a new recession, you may find of interest my attached analysis of US/Mexico Manufacturing and other goods trade for the three years before Nafta compared with the most recent three years.
In the three years prior to Nafta, 1991-1993, the US Manufacturing sector enjoyed a combined surplus of $19.2 billion with Mexico. However, over the most recent three years, 2005-2007, US Manufacturing continued to suffer successive record deficits totaling -$188.3 billion for the three years. Note that the US Manufacturing deficit with Mexico now far exceeds even the US deficit with Mexico for Mineral Fuels. Indeed, in 2007 the US deficit with Mexico in Electrical Machinery alone was larger than the US deficit with Mexico in Mineral Fuels.
This weekend I'm working on the format and some other features.
The site may change or you might see test posts periodically.
Over on the left bottom, you will see an up/down arrow. This is a voting module. By default all blog posts go to the front page. Any blog post receiving negative points(votes) can be removed from the front page by user consensus.
Any forum topic that receives enough positive points will be promoted to the front page. If a post receives enough negative votes(points) it will be unpublished.
Comments are also rated and with enough negative ratings will disappear from the site. Positive ratings over time will give that user more site privileges.
The idea here is to generate a front page that are the best writings and the most reasoned blogs. Registered fellow bloggers determine the content versus just myself as arbitrary dictator on high.
Private sector jobs lost for 3rd consecutive month in February; wages likely again failed to keep up with prices as recession starts to bite.
Today’s BLS jobs report from February should finally put an end to the sucker-hype that has until now continued to deny the recession that likely started in December. The BLS’ downward revisions today to their earlier jobs estimates for December and January are now consistent with virtually all of the previous economic information.
The private sector is now shown to have lost a net of -14,000 jobs in December, lost another -26,000 jobs in January, and lost another -101,000 jobs in February; a total of -141,000 private sector jobs lost over the past three months.
Oh yeah, before you start, I'm not saying that nothing is said about this issue or that the citizenry does not rank this festering sore created by Mr. Decider, 'Lil Boots', George W. Bush, America's Greatest Conservative President God save him and keep him safe in Paraguay....home of all fascist scum. Nor am I going to continue arguing with those who say that since the One Million Iraqis killed by Herr Leader are not Amerikkkan citizens that we, you and I, homer are not living in a Fascist State. Nope....I just want to bring your attention, as I have many times before, to the most important of all measures for Amerikkka.
The crisis in household finances: total hours worked and real compensation per hour both declined in Q4 and yr/yr ...worse than previously reported.
The details of today’s revised BLS report on Q4 productivity and costs are again very instructive on the state of the economy.
According to the BLS, total non-farm output in 2007-Q4 grew by even less than the BLS had estimated last month; 0.27% annualized growth rather than their earlier estimate of 0.35%. It is important to note this small downward revision to the original estimate of virtual stagnant output because the headline (and virtually only media “reporting”) is that non-farm productivity growth was revised slightly upward from the initial 1.82% annualized rate to 1.85%.
This may be a strange title for a "populist" blog, but the behavior of the stock market is a leading indicator for the economy, so there is some value in calling attention to it when it signals something to us. Not to mention that progressives like to make money too.
I'm really impressed with the behavior of the stock market these last couple of days. We've had a slew of bad news, mainly worse than expected, and instead of collapsing, the market has held its own both days, finishing, less than 1% lower as of Tuesday's close.
Not only that, but both days have seen strong rallies in the last hour. That's the sign of a market that wants to go higher, i.e., a bull market.
I know, I just got done posting graphs for a 120 year period and said I distrust short term charts. But when the market behaves in an unexpected way -- going down on good news or up on bad news -- I pay attention. This market wants to go up, even on bad news.
This will be a quick note. I will probably post more extensively tomorrow.
The Housing Crisis Fairy ain't coming. Ten years of housing were built in the 5 years of 2001-2005, and the only way the market will be restored to a reasonable equilibrium is by falling house prices. Those who bought houses in 2004-7 at very least are going to have to acknowledge that the value of their house is declining. I.e., there will be pain.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has signed on to the idea of voluntary mortgage cramdowns, similar to those proposed by the Office of Thrift Supervision last week. Here's a quick summary, per CNN:
Does it make any sense at all to tax American workers for working, American investors for investing and not tax imports?
NAFTA is Not the Main Problem
Early in our nations history, states were not allowed to place tariffs on goods produced in another state. This was done because it was believed that free trade would benefit the entire country.
Most states then wisely instituted sales taxes and derived income from all things purchased in their state. This way the state gained income from all businesses selling things on their turf. It is somewhat like, if a neighbors cows are going to graze (sell things) on our farm, we should share in in the profits.
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