Libertarian Paul Ryan, disgusting traitor, advances immigration bill to bypass cap on guest workers in order to employ Obama's illegal hordes

From the story here:

'The cap exemption on the H-2B expired in 2007. At the time, it doubled the number but it could as much as quadruple, legislative sources told WND. This is the same way the total number of existing H-1B visa workers got so much higher than the annual inflow. The H-2B visa program, though referred to as a “seasonal” guest worker program it is not an agricultural guest worker program. “These are explicitly non-farm jobs, often for lower-skilled work but also middle class jobs,” the source told WND. “Of course, because we don’t have a visa-tracking system and the president is not enforcing over-stay rules, it increases another avenue to add to the illegal population.”'

Rush Limbaugh: 94 million not in labor force are ALL on welfare, ALL have an EBT card, ALL getting food stamps, ALL getting disability

Today, here, with the right's version of The Big Lie:

"We don't have 5% unemployment. We've got 20% unemployment.  Bob, we have 94 million Americans not working, not in the labor force.  They're all on welfare, Bob, one way or another.  You are talking about vandals basically coming in and ripping you off at the laundromat.  Half of this country is on welfare, Bob. That's another reason why people aren't talking about it.  Half the country that votes is on welfare, and they vote for Santa Claus, Bob. And to them, you're Santa Claus.  And you're...

"I can understand exactly why you want to sell the business and get out of there.  It's probably being stolen from you.  Customers in there get harassed by people that want to commit vandalism or crime in there.  I have total understanding, relatability, sympathy for what you're going through.  But we've succeeded in letting so many people... Bob, 94 million Americans not working, and they all have an EBT card. They're all getting food stamps. They're all getting some form -- many of them -- of disability."

Rush Limbaugh thinks the 46 million on food stamps are the U-3 "counted" unemployed, many of whom actually can and do work

Yesterday, here:

"Today, there are 46 million Americans unemployed, and 94 million not working. Now, these 46 million people, these are the counted unemployed. This is the U-3 number. The counted unemployed represent 14% of the population."

Limbaugh somehow gets this convoluted mess from here, which he cites but which clearly states the 46 million are those on food stamps, not the U-3 "counted" unemployed:

"The reason you don’t see huge lines of people waiting in soup lines during this Greater Depression is because the government has figured out how to disguise suffering through modern technology. During the height of the Great Depression in 1933, there were 12.8 million Americans unemployed. These were the men pictured in the soup lines. Today, there are 46 million Americans in an electronic soup kitchen line, as their food is distributed through EBT cards (with that angel of mercy JP Morgan reaping billions in profits by processing the transactions). These 46 million people represent 14% of the U.S. population." 

In the latest Employment Situation Summary from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for September, those actually counted as unemployed are listed at 7.915 million (2.5% of the population) and the not counted as unemployed at 1.9 million:

"In September, the unemployment rate held at 5.1 percent, and the number of unemployed persons (7.9 million) changed little. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons were down by 0.8 percentage point and 1.3 million, respectively. (See table A-1.) . . . In September, 1.9 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, down by 305,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)"

U-3 is not a number in millions as Limbaugh says but a rate, the percentage of the labor force which is unemployed (7.915 million / 156.715 million), namely 5.1%.

Limbaugh doesn't understand that lots of employed people get food stamps. Individuals grossing up to $15,312 annually can still qualify for assistance.

Almost 49 million individuals made up to but not more than $15,000 annually in 2014.

The unemployed in Sept. 2015 numbered 7.9 million

U-3 is a percentage

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 97% of those 94.6 million not in the labor force aren't lazy bums after all

They're the 92 million who are in high school, college, and graduate school full-time, or who are raising the kids at home, or are disabled, or are over 65 years of age, retired and drawing Social Security.

Just 3% don't fit into any of those categories, or about 2.8 million people, that's it.

These are the  truly "marginally attached" who aren't counted as unemployed.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says about them:

"These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey."

The BLS estimates they number 1.9 million in September. This analysis puts them about a million higher than that. Both can't be right but the margin of error is only 1%.

The government's estimate is close enough, I'd say.

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 2% of those 94.6 million lazy bums not in the labor force who eat but don't work pursue graduate degrees full-time

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 13% of those 94.6 million lazy bums not in the labor force who eat but don't work stay home to raise the kids

10.4 million mothers and 2 million fathers stayed home to raise kids in 2012

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 11.5% of those 94.6 million lazy bums not in the labor force who eat but don't work are disabled working-age people

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 12% of those 94.6 million lazy bums not in the labor force who eat but don't work are in college full-time

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 13% of those 94.6 million lazy bums not in the labor force who eat but don't work are high school sophomores, juniors and seniors

Conservative news sarcasm alert: 46% of those 94.6 million lazy bums not in the labor force who eat but don't work are over 65 drawing Social Security

Rush Limbaugh expresses astonishment that Germany will accept 500,000 refugees annually

Limbaugh said in the last half hour that he looked into it and discovered Germany's birthrate is so low they're happy to have the refugees as future workers.

How long will it take this doofus to figure out that our declining labor force is the result of retirees who aren't being replaced because our birthrates were also too low for too long?

The Baby Boom between 1946 and 1966 produced 83.1 million births. Unfortunately Baby Boomers produced just 72.6 million births from 1967 to 1987, a shortfall of 10.5 million or 12.6%.

What it means is there are 500,000 fewer replacements every year on average for retiring Baby Boomers, about 85% of whom more or less survive to retirement age.

Obama's horrible, awful full-time jobs record

The numbers are out this morning and they are not pretty.

Full-time jobs for July 2015 registered at 123.142 million in the report today, not seasonally adjusted. The previous high for the measure was set, wait for it, way back in July 2007 at 123.219 million.

That means full-time jobs still have not recovered to the peak level set eight years ago. Examine the record of recessions since 1969 and you will see that full-time jobs always have bounced back to pre-recession levels after two to three years ... until now.

In fact there are today still 77,000 FEWER full-time jobs than there were eight summers ago. That means it will likely take until next summer to surmount the 2007 peak. That'll make it nine years, versus two to three normally.

Yes, there are 2.4 million more jobs today than there were eight years ago, but they are all part-time: 26.6 million part-time now vs. 24.1 million then, for an increase of 2.5 million part-time. Subtract the decline in full-time and you arrive at just 2.4 million more net jobs in eight years while the population has grown by 19 million.

Obama crows about the all the jobs he's created, but only out of the depths of their decline which he oversaw and did nothing to stop. Full-time jobs fell in a panic by 6 million in the three months from his election in 2008 to his inauguration in 2009, and by another 5 million in the next year.

Arguably all those jobs went away out of fear over what Obama would do to the economy, which after six full years of his maladministration has grown at its slowest pace in the post-war and 26% worse than for the same period under George W. Bush, a surprising outcome considering that there was nowhere to go but up once the economy had crashed.

If the Obama rate of GDP growth from the first six years of his tenure is sustained through the end of it, Obama GDP will underperform the previously worst record of George W. Bush by over 20%. And more than likely, full-time jobs will continue to suffer as a result.  

IMF signals that it cannot now participate in the third bailout of Greece

Here, which The Guardian considers a "cannonball" shot into the bailout:

Greece’s debt can now only be made sustainable through debt relief measures that go far beyond what Europe has been willing to consider so far. ... Greece cannot return to markets anytime soon at interest rates that it can afford from a medium-term perspective. ... Greece is expected to maintain primary surpluses for the next several decades of 3.5 percent of GDP. Few countries have managed to do so. ... Greece is still assumed to go from the lowest to among the highest productivity growth and labor force participation rates in the euro area, which will require very ambitious and steadfast reforms. ... [G]overnance issues ... are at the root of the problems of the Greek banking system. There are at this stage no concrete plans in this regard. ... The dramatic deterioration in debt sustainability points to the need for debt relief on a scale that would need to go well beyond what has been under consideration to date—and what has been proposed by the ESM. There are several options ... maturity extension ... of, say, 30 years on the entire stock of European debt, including new assistance. ... Other options include explicit annual transfers to the Greek budget or deep upfront haircuts. The choice between the various options is for Greece and its European partners to decide [i.e. not the IMF].

Presidents ranked by average monthly additions to total nonfarm employment in the post war, not seasonally adjusted

Clinton: 235,000

Carter: 215,000

Reagan: 166,000

JFK/LBJ: 164,000

Obama to date: 136,000 (77 months 1-1-09 to 5-1-15)

Nixon/Ford: 115,000

Truman: 111,000 (1949-1952/drops to 87,000 going back to April 1945 when FDR died)

GHW Bush: 49,000

Eisenhower: 34,500

GW Bush: 13,500

Doug Short makes our point: Part-time surged because of the recession, not because of ObamaCare

Here:

"With regard to Obamacare and part-time employment, the surge in part-time employment was triggered by the recession, not by the Affordable Care Act, as the next chart clearly illustrates."

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After studying the issue since 2010 we first began to express doubts about the meme that ObamaCare part-timed the country in July of 2013, here.

In August 2013 here we realized a part-timing trend, to be real, would have to show up in the hours data and wasn't.

By September 2013 here we were calling the meme a myth, and here we identified the part-time statistics as incapable of capturing such a trend due to the high bar set by the government definition of part-time as less than 35 hours worked.

In October 2013 here we blamed the part-time explosion on the recession.

In February 2014 we noted here that The Atlantic had finally caught on.

Mish started to catch on in September 2014, here.

Now Doug Short joins the party.

Hooray.

I still want my Pulitzer.

Democrats broke nearly every promise about ObamaCare

Jack Kelly here:

Nearly every promise Democrats made has been broken. The average family pays more (some much more) for insurance, not $2,500 less. About 9 million Americans (so far) have learned they couldn’t keep the health plans they had if they wanted. Or some of their doctors.

Federal spending for health didn’t go down. It’s zoomed upward. So have emergency room visits. Overhead costs are exploding.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obamacare will lower full-time employment by 2.3 million in 2021, compared with what might have been without reform.

The ACA has hurt millions more than it’s helped. The worst is yet to come. President Barack Obama delayed or altered (mostly illegally) unpopular provisions at least 50 times. If they’re implemented fully, up to 100 million who get insurance from their employers could have their policies canceled, the American Enterprise Institute has estimated.

Jobless claims so far in 2015 are running 6.25% below the same period in 2014

First time claims for unemployment have averaged 450,000 per week in the first three weeks of January 2015 compared to 480,000 per week in the first three weeks of 2014, not seasonally adjusted.

The claims spike last week was equalized by a spike to the downside this week.

Uh oh: Today's jobless claims soar well above 500k to within 1.2% of last year's level at this time

Are full-time jobs up 427,000 or down 47,000 in December?

Not-seasonally-adjusted full-time is in red.

The latest Employment Situation Report for December 2014 shows full-time jobs either up 427,000 in the seasonally-adjusted measure, or down 47,000 in the not-seasonally-adjusted measure, both from the respective November levels.

Which to believe?

Since 1968 the not-seasonally-adjusted count of full-time jobs between November and December has gone down 33 times vs. 13 times going up, with one year flat (1992). This is consistent with the historical record of cyclicality in full-time vs. part-time.

Full-time typically peaks in the summers and troughs in the winters while part-time does the opposite. Full-time tends to peak in the summers with work related to seasonal and student employment, while part-time tends to peak in the winters with holiday additions to the workforce.  Therefore it is consistent with this pattern to expect part-time jobs to be peaking right now (they already did last month) and full-time to be near its lowest point in the current cycle, which usually happens in January, for which measure we will have to wait another month.

So full-time down 47,000 is obviously more in keeping with the generally expected pattern than the seasonally-adjusted figure.

It is noteworthy, however, how low that negative full-time figure is relative to the recent past and to the historical average.

The 30-year average of the subtractions to full-time between November and December (excluding the outlier years in 2007, 2008 and 2009 when employers panicked and fired 1.4 million on average, 1.7 million on average in 2008 and 2009 alone) is a subtraction of nearly 244,000 full-time jobs.  Add to that that we haven't had this low a subtraction since the year 2000 between November and December and you get the feeling that things are indeed improving.

Unfortunately what we don't see yet is the kind of addition to the full-time rolls which occurs rarely at this time of year and typically after recessions. The last time we saw this in the November-December data was in 2005, 2004 and 2003 when we had three back to back years of full-time gains averaging 290,000, well above the average gain for the 13 up years of 145,000.

What we'd like to see right now, but don't, is a similar strong recovery of full-time after a recession like we've seen in the past.

For example, after the recession of 1970, full-time recovered between November and December of both 1971 and 1972, adding an average of 105,000 full-time jobs for those two months. Similarly after the recession of 1974, full-time jobs recovered for three straight years, averaging an addition of 195,000 full-time jobs between November and December of 1975, 1976 and 1977. And of course after the recession of 2001 we've already pointed out the three years of November-December additions to full-time averaging 290,000, double the average.

Even the long drought of additions to full-time jobs at this time of year which began in 1978 and lasted through 1992 was broken for two back-to-back years in 1986 and 1987 when an average of 66,000 full-time jobs were added between November and December. This was the rather delayed recovery of full-time after the recession of 1982, which cast a long shadow over employment much like the most recent recession has done.

As things stand, the current brutal drought of full-time additions at this time of year now stands at a record nine years, one more than the previous record posted between 1978 and 1985. The average subtraction to full-time then between November and December was 202,000. Now it has soared to 586,000 on average, almost 3x worse.

That's the scale of the trouble we've been in, and so far there's been no sign of leadership out of this mess, except that the pain right now is well-below its average level for this time of the year.

The simple fact remains that full-time is still far below its 2007 peak, no matter how you measure it.

TARP ends, but conservatives still don't realize it was just a sideshow

Existing crisis loans 1st of the month in billion$

That TARP was just a sideshow was not known at the time in 2008, but it should be known by now.

Too bad conservatives haven't paid attention.

TARP assumed the role of the main actor on the stage of the financial panic as the liberal government of George W. Bush tried to show that it was capable of doing something to bring the panic of 2008 to an end. Bush at length signed the TARP legislation on October 3, 2008, at which point the stock markets promptly rewarded him by caving over the next three weeks, setting the stage for the final denouement by March 2009. Only Securities and Exchange Commission changes to mark-to-market accounting rules at that point stopped the cratering and put a floor under stock prices. Meanwhile behind the scenes the liberal government of Woodrow Wilson in the form of the Federal Reserve had already been hard at work for months frantically doing the real rescue.

Now that TARP is over, liberal political operatives are wont to characterize TARP as a success because it supposedly made a profit accruing to the government, and hence to The People, who are ever almighty in liberalism. They also say this to keep our eyes off the ball. "Conservatives" continue to take that bait and argue there was a loss to TARP, never examining themselves to see if they are in the larger truth. National Review's Matt Palumbo is just the latest example, here, quibbling over a few measly billions of dollar based on an argument from inflation to substantiate a loss to TARP.

It doesn't get much more pathetic than that.

TARP became the sideshow it always was once and for all when Bloomberg News, using the Freedom of Information Act, forced the Fed long after the fact in late 2010 and early 2011 to reveal the true scope of its bailout of the world in 2008-2009. Behind the scenes the rest of us had groped in the dark trying to fathom TARP's $700 billion bailout, when that turned out to be just a decimal point in the real bailout, the Fed's $7.7 trillion lending authority through the discount window and other programs.

"Conservatives" still haven't grasped this.

Over five million Americans lost their homes in the wake of the panic, almost 30 million ended up filing first time claims for unemployment in 2009 (85% more than did just last year), and almost eight years after the employment peak of 2007 full-time jobs still have not recovered, the most disgraceful record in the post-war.

The Federal Reserve bailed out hundreds upon hundreds of large banks and corporations not just in the United States but all across the globe by backstopping them with promises of huge sums if needed while regular Americans were simply left to fend for themselves:

$7.77 trillion -- The amount the Fed pledged to rescue the financial industry, according to Bloomberg research that examined announced, implied or actual upper limits on lending and guarantees. This number, which represents potential commitments, not money out the door, was first published in March 2009, when it peaked.

“One of the keys to understanding why we’ve avoided another Great Depression, so far, is to see how bold the Fed was in 2008 and 2009,” said Niall Ferguson, a Harvard University history professor. “That boldness consisted of a range of contingency commitments that backstopped the banking system. Just because they weren’t used doesn’t mean they weren’t important.”

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Actual loans at rock bottom prices over time amounted to about half that, at $3.3 trillion, as can be appreciated here in just one of the lending programs of the Fed, the famous discount window. The low interest rates charged there, a sideshow in themselves, are thought to have benefited the banks at the same time by about $13 billion, according to Bloomberg, over what they would have had to pay at market rates.

That was simply the cherry on the gargantuan crony capitalism cake, an object, I am sure, of singular fascination for the likes of the Matt Palumbos of the world.

That spike in the graph is the discount window lending in the 2008 panic