Australian Conservative Victory Was Backlash Against Carbon Tax

WUWT, here:

"Many Australians are celebrating the win of Tony Abbott and his coalition government as a vote by the populace against the much hated Carbon Tax ramrodded by former prime minister Julia Gillard."

Low Jobless Claims "Not At All Inconsistent With ... Maximum Market Risk"

So says John Hussman, here:

"[W]hile the low level of initial claims for unemployment has been a bright spot, the simple fact is that initial claims are almost always depressed at major market peaks, which contributes to the optimism and euphoria at those highs. ... the recent pattern of new claims for unemployment ... is not at all inconsistent with previous instances of maximum market risk."

Absolute Strategy Research Survey Finds 11% Think This Is Still A Depression, 25% A Recession

The survey may be viewed here.

Look on the bright side: Since February almost 20% fewer think the economy is still in recession, and over 30% fewer think the economy is in a depression.

I guess we'll have to try harder.

Average Weekly Hours Haven't Been "Full-Time" For 12 Back-To-Back Months Since 4/'80

The last time average weekly hours averaged full-time, that is, 35 hours or above, for 12 consecutive months or more was in April 1980.

ObamaCare's 30-Hour Full-Time Rule, A Depression Era Idea Going Back To 1937 And Hugo Black

In 1935, Black became chairman of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, a position he would hold for the remainder of his Senate career. In 1937 he sponsored the Black-Connery Bill, which sought to establish a national minimum wage and a maximum workweek of thirty hours. Although the bill was initially rejected in the House of Representatives, an amended version of it, which extended Black's original maximum workweek proposal to forty-four hours, was passed in 1938 (after Black left the Senate), becoming the Fair Labor Standards Act.

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Even before Roosevelt was inaugurated, Black introduced legislation to establish a minimum wage and to limit work in most large industries to 30 hours a week in order to spread available jobs to millions of workers who lost their jobs in the Great Depression. Six years later, Black's substantially revised legislation became the Fair Labor Standards Act, America's first minimum-wage law. Black's Senate committee investigations prompted the reorganization of the nation's airline and utility industries. While most Southern members of Congress selectively supported New Deal proposals, Black usually voted for Roosevelt's policies and often complained that the administration did not go far enough to help the lower classes.

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Senator Hugo Black of Alabama, a champion of a 30-hour workweek, agreed to sponsor the Administration bill on this subject in the Senate, while Representative William P. Connery of Massachusetts introduced corresponding legislation in the House. The Black-Connery bill had wide Public support, and its path seemed smoothed by arrangements for a joint hearing by the labor committees of both Houses.

Generally, the bill provided for a 40-cent-an-hour minimum wage, a 40-hour maximum workweek, and a minimum working age of 16 except in certain industries outside of mining and manufacturing. The bill also proposed a five-member labor standards board which could authorize still higher wages and shorter hours after review of certain cases.

Proponents of the bill stressed the need to fulfill the President's promise to correct conditions under which "one-third of the population" were "ill-nourished, ill-clad, and ill- housed." They pointed out that, in industries which produced products for interstate commerce, the bill would end oppressive child labor and "unnecessarily long hours which wear out part of the working population while they keep the rest from having work to do." Shortening hours, they argued, would "create new jobs...for millions of our unskilled unemployed," and minimum wages would "underpin the whole wage structure...at a point from which collective bargaining could take over."

Government Statistics Will NEVER Capture The ObamaCare "Part-Timing" Trend

The long term trend in average weekly hours is down, down, down.

And the reason is simple and devious by design, in order to escape detection: Anyone working less than 35 hours is already part-time as far as the government statistical agency, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is concerned, so if hours are reduced from say 34 to 29 to comply with ObamaCare's new definition of part-time, that will never show up in the part-time numbers because that will not make the slightest bit of difference. People working 34 hours were already part-time as far as the BLS is concerned, so if they are cut back to 29 they will still be so. 

The BLS here defines full-time as 35 hours or more per week, and part-time as anything less than 35:

"[Part-time] Refers to those who worked 1 to 34 hours during the survey reference week and excludes employed persons who were absent from their jobs for the entire week."

This is a well known fact. But it is little appreciated that as ObamaCare deviously defines full-time as 30 hours or more, that will by definition not make a difference to the BLS' statistical presentation, which doesn't begin counting full-time until hours are 35 or more.

It's as if the 30 hour rule were designed to exploit the bureaucratic inertia behind the different definition and fly under its radar.

The only way we'll be able to observe the perverse scaling back of employee hours is in the hours statistics. Unfortunately, the long-term trend in hours is down, down, and down, and it will be difficult to detect the new downward trend within the old downward trend. Besides, average weekly hours are up since ObamaCare passed, obviously because the economy is slowly improving from a great deficit, ObamaCare notwithstanding. Average weekly hours are actually up 2% since ObamaCare passed.

The Senate healthcare bill, like the Senate itself since the passage of the 17th Amendment, is a Trojan Horse meant to destroy the country as we once knew it. It were almost better if the Senate no longer existed, and the House expanded to the proportions it had formerly before the Reapportionment Act of 1929, itself a grievous offense against the liberties of the people.

Average weekly hours are up 2% since ObamaCare passed.

The Workforce Depression Of 2007 Remains 4.19 Million In The Hole According To Social Security

The size of the workforce earning wages for Social Security purposes went into multi-year depressions since 1990 three times: 1990, 2001 and 2007.

The 1990 depression saw the workforce shrink by 1% and not recover in size until the third following year.

The 2001 depression saw the workforce shrink by 0.4% and not recover in size until the third following year.

The 2007 depression saw the workforce shrink by 3.3% and as of 2011 still has not recovered, four years later. The depression in workers through 2011 is 4.19 million, and since the bottom in 2010 982,000 workers have been added through 2011. 2012 figures will be available in mid-October 2013.

The depression in jobs designated "usually full-time" is 5.35 million, 4.3% below its 2007 peak. 

Sorry, But We Aren't Talking About A Lot Of People Not Counted In The Unemployment Numbers

I'd estimate the number not counted in the unemployment numbers to be between 1.5 million and 3.2 million, max.

9.784 million have left the labor force under Obama and are not counted as unemployed since he was elected 4.75 years ago. That's a lot of people, 75% more than left the labor force under George Bush. Not quite 9.5 million left under Bush, but that was over 8 full years.

Who are they who have left the labor force? And should any of them be counted as unemployed as many critics keep maintaining?

The people who should not be counted as unemployed from that total include the 1.1 million who retire every year, so subtract 5.2 million over the period, leaving 4.584 million. Those not in the labor force with a disability are up 1.4 million since 2008. Subtract them and that leaves 3.184 million.

As for the people who should be included in the unemployment number but aren't, they include the number leaving the labor force who wanted to work and searched for a job but were not counted as unemployed. But they were counted by the government. That number has increased by about 1 million since the beginning of the 2007 recession, as shown in the graph (h/t Mish). Then add in those not in the labor force who weren't discouraged workers but looked for work for other reasons and you add another 475,000. They weren't counted in the unemployment numbers either, but they were counted by the government.

So subtracting those 1.475 million from 3.184 million, you get 1.7 million unaccounted for who might or might not need to be included with those 1.475 million who perhaps should be. Many of those 1.7 million are probably like a lot of Americans who became sole proprietors in the aftermath of losing their regular jobs and involuntarily went into business for themselves, making lots less money than before in many instances, typically as contract employees and freelancers, supplementing their incomes from their savings and practicing frugality. The US Census Bureau might agree, having just reported here in May that between 2008 and 2011 alone the number of such "businesses" is up 1.2 million in the aggregate. That leaves you with a minimum expansion of the unemployed to 12.8 million from the current 11.3 million, and a maximum expansion to 14.5 million, but based on the Census data on sole proprietorships, I'll lean to the under.

The real unemployment rate would therefore be something a little higher than the current 7.3%,  between 8.3% and 9.4%, but probably closer to 8.3%. I'll go with 8.6% unemployment based on an additional 1.975 million not in the labor force who could very well be in it.

That's almost 18% worse than the government says unemployment is right now, but based on what I see regularly from government estimates of things, that's routinely good enough for them.

After all, hasn't it been called "good enough for government work" for decades for a reason?

Usually Full-Time Under Obama Has Nearly Recovered, Just 564,000 Jobs Short Of The 11/08 Level

The graph shows usually full-time from November 2008 to present. Full-time jobs, contrary to what you may have heard, have nearly recovered to the level they were at when Obama was first elected.

Full-time is cyclically higher in summers, so expect a decline in this metric by Christmas. If the pattern of shallower cyclical lows persists, expect a dip to 116 million.

The country is still a long way from a full full-time jobs recovery, however. Peak full-time in 2007 had been in excess of 123 million jobs.

The Part-Time Myth: Usually Part-Time Is Up Just 465,000 Since Obama Was Elected In 2008

Usually part-time is up barely 1.8% since Obama was elected in November 2008. The number goes up in the winter and comes down in the summer, with the school year. There are no dramatic higher highs after ObamaCare was passed in 2010, however, just higher lows, which is what you would expect from a growing population.

Drudge, repeater of stupid

Stupid Conservative Headline Alert: CNS News Says Unemployment Down Only Half A Percent Since 2009

The story is here.

A drop of .5 from 7.8% to 7.3%, of course, is a drop of 6.4%, not .5%.

Ignorant boob.

August Unemployment Ticks Down To 7.3% From 7.4%, Job Gains Now Averaging 184,000/month

Obama's job recession still going strong long after everyone else's ended

That's 4.75 years straight of unemployment above 7%, or 57 months.

Job gains averaging 184k/month are slightly higher on average than two months ago, despite revisions down to jobs added in June and July. Separately, not-seasonally-adjusted first time claims for unemployment in August were running 278,000 per week, the lowest yet under Obama.

The full report is here.

Two months ago the unemployment rate was 7.6% and we were adding an average 182,000 jobs a month. At that time hourly earnings were also up 2.2% year over year, and they still are in the August report.

Not-seasonally-adjusted, part-time for economic reasons is down 152,000 year over year while usually full-time (+35hrs/wk) is up 1,654,000. Usually part-time (-35hrs/wk) is up only 297,000 year over year, not-seasonally-adjusted.

If ObamaCare is supposed to be part-timing us all, I still don't see evidence of it. What it's really doing is helping to retard employment generally. We need to start viewing persistent, long-term employment deficits as a response by business to Obama administration policies. Otherwise full-time jobs would not have continued to decline throughout 2009 and 2010 the way they did. As late as February 2011 full-time was still at the 110 million level, only slightly off the low just under 109 million a year earlier in January 2010.

At just under 118 million now, full-time remains 5.35 million off the 2007 peak above 123 million. Factor in population growth and full-time should be trending close to 130 million by this time. We're 12 million full-time jobs behind where we should be.

The Bush jobs recession ended after 47 months, but the Obama jobs recession is still going strong at 67 months.

That's the real scandal of this so-called recovery.

When It Comes To Moral Obscenity, The US Takes The Prize For Indiscriminate Slaughter Of Civilians

That Red Line In Syria, Somebody Else Drew That

Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons

President Obama, quoted here:

“I didn’t set a red line, the world set a red line,” Obama said. “My credibility’s not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line. And America and Congress’s credibility’s on the line."

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When everyone's responsible, no one is.

Radioactive Water Tank Leaks At Fukushima Produce 2.2 Sv/hr

Reported here:

Readings just above the ground near a set of tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi plant showed radiation as high as 2,200 millisieverts (mSv), the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said on Wednesday. The previous high in areas holding the tanks, 1,800 mSv, was recorded on Saturday. Both levels would be enough to kill an unprotected person within hours. The NRA has said the recently discovered hotspots are highly concentrated and easily shielded.

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Normally, 2000 mSv/hr is enough to kill you, but because the story says the radiation is "easily shielded" after it's found, this must mean this is not deadly gamma radiation for the most part. Paper can block alpha and foil can block beta, but gamma requires 2.5 inches of concrete just to reduce intensity by 50%.

Constitutional parchment was no "practical security" against the US Senate's ObamaCare, was it?

After discriminating, therefore, in theory, the several classes of power, as they may in their nature be legislative, executive, or judiciary, the next and most difficult task is to provide some practical security for each, against the invasion of the others.

What this security ought to be, is the great problem to be solved. Will it be sufficient to mark, with precision, the boundaries of these departments, in the constitution of the government, and to trust to these parchment barriers against the encroaching spirit of power? This is the security which appears to have been principally relied on by the compilers of most of the American constitutions. But experience assures us, that the efficacy of the provision has been greatly overrated; and that some more adequate defense is indispensably necessary for the more feeble, against the more powerful, members of the government. The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex. The founders of our republics have so much merit for the wisdom which they have displayed, that no task can be less pleasing than that of pointing out the errors into which they have fallen. A respect for truth, however, obliges us to remark, that they seem never for a moment to have turned their eyes from the danger to liberty from the overgrown and all-grasping prerogative of an hereditary magistrate, supported and fortified by an hereditary branch of the legislative authority. They seem never to have recollected the danger from legislative usurpations, which, by assembling all power in the same hands, must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpations. In a government where numerous and extensive prerogatives are placed in the hands of an hereditary monarch, the executive department is very justly regarded as the source of danger, and watched with all the jealousy which a zeal for liberty ought to inspire. In a democracy, where a multitude of people exercise in person the legislative functions, and are continually exposed, by their incapacity for regular deliberation and concerted measures, to the ambitious intrigues of their executive magistrates, tyranny may well be apprehended, on some favorable emergency, to start up in the same quarter. But in a representative republic, where the executive magistracy is carefully limited; both in the extent and the duration of its power; and where the legislative power is exercised by an assembly, which is inspired, by a supposed influence over the people, with an intrepid confidence in its own strength; which is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a multitude, yet not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions, by means which reason prescribes; it is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions. The legislative department derives a superiority in our governments from other circumstances. Its constitutional powers being at once more extensive, and less susceptible of precise limits, it can, with the greater facility, mask, under complicated and indirect measures, the encroachments which it makes on the co-ordinate departments. It is not unfrequently a question of real nicety in legislative bodies, whether the operation of a particular measure will, or will not, extend beyond the legislative sphere.

On the other side, the executive power being restrained within a narrower compass, and being more simple in its nature, and the judiciary being described by landmarks still less uncertain, projects of usurpation by either of these departments would immediately betray and defeat themselves [don't laugh, he really wrote this]. Nor is this all: as the legislative department alone has access to the pockets of the people, and has in some constitutions full discretion, and in all a prevailing influence, over the pecuniary rewards of those who fill the other departments, a dependence is thus created in the latter, which gives still greater facility to encroachments of the former. I have appealed to our own experience for the truth of what I advance on this subject. ...

The conclusion which I am warranted in drawing from these observations is, that a mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments, is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands.

-- James Madison, 1788 (Federalist 48, emphases added)

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Repeal the 17th Amendment.

Estimated Fair Value Of The S&P500 Today Is About 1000

Doug Short doesn't say "fair value", but about 1000 should be the fair value level of the index using regression analysis, here (where he has, as always, a vivid chart):

The peak in 2000 marked an unprecedented 152% overshooting of the trend — nearly double the overshoot in 1929. The index had been above trend for two decades, with one exception: it dipped about 11% below trend briefly in March of 2009. But at the beginning of July 2013, it is 62% above trend. In sharp contrast, the major troughs of the past saw declines in excess of 50% below the trend. If the current S&P 500 were sitting squarely on the regression, it would be around the 998 level. If the index should decline over the next few years to a level comparable to previous major bottoms, it would fall to the 450-500 range.

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Investors with a memory will remember that when TARP was signed on October 3, 2008, the S&P500 was at 1099 and then fell dramatically from there until early March 2009, and that on the third anniversary of TARP in October 2011 the index revisited 1099 exactly, in the wake of the summer debt ceiling brouhaha. But we haven't looked back since.

Unfortunately, the S&P500 has another date with the depths, but just hasn't set it yet.

Fed Tapering QE "In Part To Relieve The Collateral Scarcity"

Mentioned here by Peter Coy:

The abrupt shrinkage of the budget deficit this year caused the Treasury Department to cut back on issuance of debt in the shorter maturities that are sought after on Wall Street. Foreign demand has been strong, partly because some European government securities that had been used as collateral are no longer considered safe enough. Finally, the Federal Reserve, in its efforts to stimulate the economy, has been soaking up $85 billion a month of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. Some market participants argue that the Fed is planning to taper its bond purchases in part to relieve the collateral scarcity.

Stereotypical Federal Spending Wei Tu Hai

Federal outlays from fiscal 1985 through 2012 are up 274%, from $946.3 billion in 1985 to $3,537.1 billion in 2012. Federal receipts have lagged those outlays, however, up only 234% over the period, resulting in a net addition to deficits in nominal terms of $9.08 trillion as of the end of fiscal 2012, exploding the national debt. The political argument has been whether the taxes were insufficient to cover the spending, or the spending too high given the taxes. But in 24 of those 27 years there were annual deficits, each a message that Sum Ting Wong. Many Democrats shrugged and answered on taxes "Wi Tu Lo". Republicans looked at all that spending and said "Ho Lee Fuk, spending Wei Tu Hai". And now that we are $17 trillion in the hole the people say "Bang Ding Ow". But will they demand a cut to spending? No Fuk Hing Wei. Nao Tu Suun, they will say, as always. Po Ni up Tai Ni Sum later, maybe, but No Like Lee. Besides, Ri Li No Won Tu, anyhow. No Fun. Rather Tai Wan On.