3Q2014 GDP Advance Estimate comes in at 3.5%: Deliberately underreporting imports right before the election?

The share contributed to GDP in today's report breaks down as follows:

Personal consumption of goods and services: 34%

Private domestic investment: 4%

Net from export trade: 37%

Government consumption: 23%

I don't believe the import number in the report, which was -1.7%!

What, did the weather close all the ports of entry during July, August and September and we didn't know about it?

Imports, of course, subtract from GDP, so this negative import number boosts the contribution made by exports to GDP.

The last time the import number was negative was in the advance estimate of 1Q GDP, at -1.4%.

You remember 1Q, right, the terrible winter months of January, February and March? But as we all know, that negative number became +0.7% in the second estimate, and +1.8% in the third and final report.

Also note that a surge in defense spending in the third quarter for the war against ISIS all by itself accounts for almost 19% of GDP in this report and 80% of the reported share of government consumption contributing to GDP.

Backing out that government spending on the war means the GDP number is more like 2.8%.

And economists had expected GDP to come in at 3%. 

Jobless claims average 265K weekly, not-seasonally-adjusted, in October 2014

265,000 claims weekly in October is the equivalent of an annual rate of 13.8 million total claims.

Claims in the last four months are now averaging roughly 266,000 weekly compared with the first half of the year at 326,000 weekly.

This means total claims are on track with two months left in the year to come in at a record low in the 21st century in the vicinity of 15.4 million total claims. The best record had been under George Bush with 16.2 million claims.

Poverty thresholds for 2013

Poverty guidelines 2014

As seen here.

Completed foreclosures in September still 119% above normal

Corelogic reports here that completed foreclosure activity reached 46,000 nationally in September, 25,000 above the normal 21,000 level before the housing apocalypse began in 2007.

The report indicates there have been 5.2 million completed foreclosures since September 2008 and 7 million homes lost to foreclosure since 2004, ten years ago.

Florida, California, Texas, Michigan and Georgia alone account for almost half of all completed foreclosures in September.

Maybe Senator Jon "Tin Ear" Kyl really wants Republicans to lose next week

Here is the former Senator from Arizona Republican Jon Kyl in The Wall Street Journal (where else?) just days before the Republicans are about to take back the Senate PUTTING HIS FOOT IN IT, complaining about the Boehner/Obama tax compromise because in his view it really penalized the middle class. It's almost as if he doesn't want Republicans to win next week:

Most workers’ pay has not kept up with inflation for at least six years. ... Why aren’t wages rising? ... [O]ne factor is often overlooked: the tax increase on “the rich” at the beginning of 2013. How could higher taxes on the top 2% or 3% hurt the middle class? ... When the government takes more, there is less to plow back into the business or invest elsewhere.

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Weren't these tax rates the Bush tax rates? Weren't Republicans trying to get them made permanent for years, without success until Boehner came along? If they were so bad for the middle class, why did Republicans pass them in the first place?

Let's see, when we had these tax rates up through the late financial panic, including the lower capital gains tax rates, the first thing businesses did under them was fire everybody to save their sorry behinds. They didn't care about the workers then, and they sure as hell don't now. Millions have abandoned the workforce as a result and won't be returning.

Meanwhile, the all items CPI is up 8.8% over the last six years, while average hourly earnings of all private employees still working is up 12.75% over the same period. Note to Kyl: please pick a metric which makes your point without contradiction.

And then there's the tax rate he is so upset about, which affects the top 0.42% only, all single filers making in excess of $406,751 in 2014. That top tax bracket now pays a higher capital gains tax rate on long term gains at 20% instead of 15% under the compromise, but for some reason Kyl is too sheepish to mention this is a 33% tax hike. Apparently he's too embarrassed to be that specific, because in terms of individual wage earners in 2013 that might affect just barely 520,000 individuals, who are at the very top of the heap of 155.77 million wage earners.

Way to go, Kyl. Paint the Republicans as the party of the rich. The Democrats must love you because they will be more than happy to claim that wages are up because they raised taxes on the rich.

Average Effective Federal Funds Rate by chairman of the Fed in the post-war

William McChesney Martin (15 years)  3.62%
Arthur F. Burns (8)        6.49%
G. William Miller (2)    9.56%
Paul Volcker (9)           10.45%
Alan Greenspan (19)     4.86%
Ben Bernanke (8)          1.58%
Janet Yellin (less than 1) .09%

Average Effective Federal Funds Rates in the post-war by decades

1955-1960  2.62%
1961-1970  4.58%
1971-1980  7.72%
1981-1990  9.44%
1991-2000  4.96%
2001-2010  2.35%
2011-2013  0.12%
2014 to date .09%

Post-war average (six decades): 5.3%

Why do voting machines in heavily Democrat states always malfunction in favor of the Democrats, huh?

Just recently in Schaumburg, Illinois, here, and now in Maryland, here. 

US Antares rocket to intl space station with 5K lbs of supplies explodes on launch

Another photograph of Obama's incompetence. We can't send even supplies reliably after cancelling the Shuttle program, but the Russians can get our astronauts there and back safely. Watch for yourself here.

Maybe NASA should spend less time making nice with Muslims who only want to kill us.

Gold price vs. CPI 2000-2014

Gold averaged $279 in 2000, and so far in 2014 has averaged $1,282 the ounce, an increase of about 360%.

The all items CPI has risen over the same period from 174 to 238, or about 36%.

Which one do you think is the more accurate measure of inflation?

VGPMX tanked to 9.50 yesterday

You have to go back to 2002 to get a price lower than that. Declining gold prices from nearly $1,900 an ounce in 2011 to a range around $1,200 now have put the screws to miners' profitability. New accounting rules for the industry suggest that costs to produce an ounce are too high to justify more production in many places, costs which well exceed the current price of gold. That might mean a floor for the price of gold has been or will be forming near $1,200 as higher cost mines slow production. The average price per ounce in 2013 of $1,411 has fallen so far in 2014 to $1,282.

Why this bull market is running out of steam

Because cost-cutting and stock buybacks have their natural limits, too.

Seen here:

“You can’t do a whole lot more cost cutting and you can’t buy back a whole lot more stock,” David Lafferty, the chief market strategist for Natixis Global Asset Management in Boston, said by phone. His firm manages about $930 billion. “The big disconnect where companies have been able to grow their earnings significantly faster than top-line revenue growth is coming to an end.”

Hey look! He fixed it!

Ausländer raus!

Drudge is umbday in any language: Good help is still hard to find

Don't let anybody tell you cattle futures create profits easily

Joni Ernst scares Paul Begala: It's a good thing

The Forehead wets himself, here:

[I]f it was a serious statement of philosophy, it was chilling -- even scary. Joni Ernst, the Iowa candidate who has vaulted to within an inch of United States Senate due to her boasting of hog castration in this year's most inventive political ad, was speaking to the National Rifle Association in 2012. "I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family -- whether it's from an intruder, or whether it's from the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important." . . . [I]t's one thing to hear, say, goofball Ted Nugent honk off that way. (The Nuge, by the way, has boasted about how he avoided taking up arms in defense of his country during Vietnam.) It is another to know that someone with those loopy views is one step away from the United States Senate.

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Speaking of loopy views, Thomas Jefferson, a step away from the presidency and writing about Shays Rebellion in 1787, had liars like Paul Begala who talks only of The Whiskey Rebellion in mind when he said this about taking up arms as a warning to rulers:

The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of its motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. 

The gold/oil ratio remains at par tonight

The gold/oil ratio ends the week at 15.2, meaning the price of gold relative to the price of oil is just about right.

1231.8/81.01 = 15.2.

Bank Failure Friday: the 16th in 2014

The National Republic Bank of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, failed tonight, costing the FDIC $111.6 million, a fairly big one by recent standards.

The bank was an Indian-American-owned bank, specializing in the hotel and motel lending business.