Bloomberg puts 6 million aged 25-54 still missing in employment action

Here:

So far, the faster pace of job creation hasn't coaxed enough people back into the labor force. As of October, the seasonally unadjusted participation rate for people age 25 to 54 stood at 81.1 percent, up 0.3 percentage point from a year earlier but about 6 million people below the 10-year pre-recession average of 83.5 percent.

Every Democrat who didn't vote last Tuesday . . .

. . . voted Republican.

Democrats lost last week simply because voters tired of waiting for full-time jobs to recover

Examine the record here of full-time job losses in recessions since 1969 and you will see that full-time jobs recovered to their previous peaks in 2 years after 1969, 2 years after 1974, about 3 years after 1981, 3 years after 1990 and about 3 years after 2000.

But after 2007? Full-time jobs have yet to recover, over 7 years since peaking in July 2007 at 123.2 million.

It's true that total nonfarm employment recovered to the November 2007 high this June, after 6.5 long years, but full-time is still 3 million below the 2007 peak.

The voting public has been very patient with President Obama and the Democrats. They know this was the biggest jobs debacle in the post-war. From peak to trough between July 2007 and January 2010 14.442 million full-time jobs were lost, beating the 8.1 million lost from 1981 under Reagan by a wide margin, a 9.3% loss. The percentage lost from the peak was also highest in the post-war, down 11.7% in the recent catastrophe vs. the 9.6% loss of full-time jobs from August 1974, the previous most recent top episode for full-time job destruction in percentage terms.

So it's understandable that voters might have re-elected Obama and the Democrat Senate in 2012 on the presumption that such a serious episode would take longer to fix. But even so it was still a relatively close election.

Last Tuesday's nationwide blow-out of Democrats, however, from the US Senate on down through the US House, governorships and state legislative chambers shows that the patience of the country has run out. While full-time jobs have roared back in the last 12 months it is likely that the trend has peaked for the year and that it will be next summer before we see full-time recover fully.

That will be 8 years . . . 5 years too many for many of the millions who lost their jobs to put their lives back together and rejoin the middle class. Five years too many for those who lived in the 5+million homes lost to foreclosure. For them there remains the hope only of minimum and low wage work, food stamps, government disability assistance, Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare and early death.

Obama will be remembered for attempting this hollowing out of the middle class, and some will correctly conclude it was intentional on the part of the country's first Bolshevik president.

"[T]he mass of middle class parasites which lived on the back of the old order is now, equally ready to live on the back of the proletarian State."   

WaPo claims to be scared Congress has more Tea Party radicals now, but P.J. O'Rourke knows better

And who better to really know than a fellow-traveling Tea Party libertarian?

Here:

[Scott] Brown lost the Senate race to Democrat incumbent Jean Shaheen because Scott once posed nude for Cosmo. “Naked male Republican” is not a thought anyone, Republicans included, wants in his or her mind, even if this particular one happens to be buff.

Most of the Republicans America just elected ain’t. And I’m glad of it. We’re seeing more of the old-fashioned establishment-type Republicans who keep their pants and pantyhose on. And who don’t get them in a wad over every little piece of legislation.

The 114th Congress is not going to be full of people who, every time a bill is brought to a vote, have to go dig up the grave of James Madison and ask Jim if the bill is Constitutional. ...

Never mind that young people, women, Hispanics, and blacks forgot to vote. In two years those young people will have done a lot of growing up. What happens when you’re a grown-up? You vote for someone named Bush. Women will probably forget to vote again. You know how forgetful women are. “Did I lose an earring?” “Where’s my purse?” “I could have sworn I left the car keys right here.” And Republican policies for robust job growth and business opportunity will have moved Hispanics and blacks to the top of the socio-economic ladder. Once you get an in-ground pool, you’re a good Republican.

Anyway, this good Republican can dream, can’t he?

------------------------------------------------------

Ted Cruz and Justin Amash, call your offices.

Suggested opener for Obama's State of the Union Address

"My fellow Americans, the State of the Union tonight is fairly Republican."

Time for Obama to sit in the back after driving the bus into the ditch

The Gay Mafia funds so-called conservatives: Club for Growth, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Justin Amash just love pot-smoking queer billionaire Peter Thiel's money

And if you think there's no payback expected for that then I've got a bridge to sell you.

Reported here:

Peter Thiel is a pot-smoking gay man, which makes him the kind of person Cruz supporters would like to launch into some sort of Martian exile. But Thiel is also, crucially, a massively rich bussinessman [sic], which is enough for Cruz to shelve his Tea Party druthers and accept hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Silicon Valley luminary. Adjacent bigots have yelled at Cruz for pocketing Thiel's cash, but he has every reason to ignore them: last year, Thiel gave $2 million to Club for Growth, a SuperPAC that in turn poured over $600,000 into Cruz's (successful) senatorial run. Club for Growth is still a vocal supporter of Cruz as he's flailed and railed against Obamacare.

It wasn't a Republican wave, it wasn't a thumping, IT WAS A DELUGE

Republicans didn't just sweep the House, the Senate and governorships on Tuesday, they took enough legislative chambers to set records that go back to before the Civil War. They took 65% of open state legislative seats. Now if they only had a leader. 

Reuters reports here:

[The Republican Party] gained control of 10 chambers and could be on track to holding the largest number of legislative seats since before the Great Depression. ... With Tuesday's vote, Republicans took over the U.S. Senate, beefed up their majority in the U.S. House and won the governor's office in several key states. The vote also increased the number of state legislative chambers with Republican majorities to 67 from 57. Party control of the Colorado House and Washington House was still up in the air. The number of states with Republicans in control of both legislative chambers came to 27 ahead of the election and has now edged closer to the high mark of 30 in 1920 . . .. By contrast, Democrats will control the lowest number of state legislatures since 1860 . . .. Republican State Leadership Committee President Matt Walter said the party appeared to be on track to eclipse 1928's record high of 4,001 Republican state legislative seats. ... Voters on Tuesday were deciding 6,049 legislative races in 46 states, or nearly 82 percent of all state legislative seats.

Intermediate term bonds beat the S&P500 over the last fifteen years

The average nominal return from the S&P500 from September 1999 through September 2014 is 4.71% per year with dividends fully reinvested.

The nominal annual return from the intermediate term bond index fund VBIIX for the fifteen years to 11/7/14 is 6.37%.  

Food stamp recipient total falls only slightly in August 2014

Food stamps were taken by 46,484,828 people residing in America in August 2014, down from 46,486,888 in July.

The level is 2.5% lower than in August 2013.

The total benefit in August 2014 was $5.766 billion. The total costs in 2013 came to $79.9 billion.

The average total benefit was $124.04 per person in the program in August 2014, down from $133.07 per person monthly in 2013, and $253.69 per household on average in August 2014. 

Temperature anomaly for Grand Rapids, Michigan, through October 2014 rises to -27.2 degrees F

The cumulative 2014 temperature anomaly for Grand Rapids, Michigan, through October comes to -27.2 degrees F. That's the sum total of degrees below normal temperature for the year 2014 so far. Divided by ten that comes to an average anomaly of 2.72 degrees F monthly, falling from an average anomaly of 3.00 degrees F monthly through September.

In October temperatures were nearly normal, off just 0.2 degrees F, after a below normal September off 0.7 degrees F.

The S&P500 ends the week just 0.7% below the all-time inflation-adjusted high in August 2000

The current real price of the S&P500 is 2031.92, an all-time high in the nominal sense.

This level is just 0.7% off the all-time inflation-adjusted high, which was 2046.21 and occurred in August 2000.

Valuation is rich at 26.61 for the Shiller p/e, but well-off the December 1999 peak of 44.19. However, the market crash of 2008-09 was preceded by the Shiller p/e peaking at 27.55 during 2007.

The Shiller p/e has been in a never-never land of high valuation above 26 for extended periods since October 1996, coinciding with the famous onset of "irrational exuberance". You have to go back before that all the way to 1929 to find valuation at 27 and above.

Bank Failure Friday: number 17 on the 7th of November

Frontier Bank, FSB, Palm Desert, California failed last night, costing the FDIC $4.7 million. It was the seventeenth bank failure this year. 6,656 institutions remain insured within the FDIC system through the first half of the year. That's down from 6,891 at the beginning of the year, or 3.4%, as mergers and acquisitions continue to reduce the overall number to a much higher degree than do bank failures. Stricter capital and regulatory rules continue to put pressure on relatively smaller banks, which find it difficult to remain profitable under them.

Hel-lo America . . . Republicans control the New York State Senate once again

Reported here:

In a decisive rebuke to efforts by Democrats to dominate both houses of the New York State Legislature, voters elected Republicans to a clear majority in the State Senate on Tuesday, handing them a wave of victories upstate and on Long Island, and returning the party to full control in a chamber it long dominated.

Unemployment falls to 5.8%, 214,000 jobs added in October

Average jobs added monthly in the last twelve months rose to 222,000. A year ago at this time 190,000 were being added monthly in the prior twelve months. During the Reagan boom 250,000 were added monthly for six years. During the Clinton boom 235,000 were added monthly for eight years. The 17% increase in the pace in the last year is a good thing, but we've got a long way to go, if it can even be sustained. A different indicator may give reason to hope so.

From 2008 to 2013, the percentage of the work force participating had been in steady decline measured October to October, until today. The labor participation rate now is 63.0% vs. 62.9% a year ago, not seasonally adjusted. That's not much but it may mark a turning point. It remains to be seen if the 62.5% level reached in January was in fact the bottom.

Looking at the broad measures, those who say they work usually part-time are up 414,000 not seasonally adjusted from a year ago, but the level remains 233,000 off the previous peak for an October, which occurred in 2012.

Those who work usually full-time are up an astounding 3,378,000 not seasonally adjusted from a year ago at this time. Compared with the peak year of 2007 for this metric, October on October, those who work usually full-time today are still 1.83 million fewer in number than then, not seasonally adjusted.

If you add the two categories together and divide by twelve, you get 316,000 jobs added monthly, not 222,000 as stated in the Establishment Survey which takes a larger sampling.

Go figure.

Average hours went up .1 and average earnings went up 3 cents.

Federal appeals court in Ohio upholds Michigan's 2004 Marriage Amendment

The Detroit News reports here:

The Michigan couple at the center of the same-sex marriage debate vowed Thursday to "continue the fight" after a federal appeals court in Cincinnati upheld the state's gay marriage ban. ...

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals also upheld laws prohibiting gay marriage in Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky, breaking ranks with other courts that have considered the issue and setting the stage for review by the U.S.Supreme Court. ...

Attorney General Bill Schuette, who brought the appeal ... said he welcomes a Supreme Court review. "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit has ruled, and Michigan's constitution remains in full effect," Schuette said. "As I have stated repeatedly, the U.S. Supreme Court will have the final word on this issue. The sooner they rule, the better, for Michigan and the country."

Voter turnout nationally in 2014 at 36.6% vs. 40.9% in 2010

Reported here.

Remember "you didn't build that"? Yesterday Obama said "you didn't vote for that" crushing Republican wave

The ideologue, dismissive of the facts, quoted here:

“To everyone that voted, I want you to know that I heard you,” Obama began. “To two-thirds of voters that chose not to participate in the process yesterday, I hear you, too.”

Average age of vehicles in operation in 2014 remained steady at 11.4 years

The level was identical in 2013.

IHS/Polk reported here:

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (June 9, 2014) – The combined average age of all light vehicles on the road in the U.S. remained steady at 11.4 years, based on a snapshot of vehicles in operation taken Jan. 1 of this year, according to IHS Automotive, which incorporated Polk into its business last year.

The gold miners are digging holes in the basement