Jobless Claims Average 435,000 Per Week In Last Month, 17.75 Million Total In 2013

The report for the last week of 2013 is here.

At the current average per week in the last month sustained over a whole year the result would yield 22.6 million first time claims. That doesn't square with the claim that the economy is now in full trot as one headline puts it this morning.

17.75 million actual first time claims for unemployment in 2013, not-seasonally-adjusted, represents the best showing yet under Obama, but still far above George W. Bush's best years in the 16 million range when participation rates were much higher.

With nearly 12 million people having left the labor force since Obama was elected in 2008, far too many of those still working in a much smaller labor pool continue to lose their jobs every week. The levels today only seem less alarming because we remember them from when labor force participation rates were much higher. Now that they are not and levels are still high shows that labor is still flat on its back in this country.

If this is the best Obama can do, it's going to be a very long three more years.

Obama's America: Nearly 12 Million Have Given Up And Left The Labor Force Since His Election

In April 2011 over 1 million people, desperate for work, applied for just 50,000 burger-flipping jobs at McDonalds, which ended up hiring 62,000, 24% more than planned.

Where are the other 938,000 today?

The story is still here, thanks to former Mayor Bloomberg.

Those 938,000 most likely ended up joining another 10 million-plus who have left the labor force altogether.

President Obama meanwhile enjoys day 12 today vacationing in Hawaii snorkeling and golfing, according to news reports, after all his hard work fundamentally transforming the country.

Nearly 12 million have left the labor force since Obama's election in '08

Vanguard's VTSMX Makes New All Time High At 46.67 Today, 53rd And Final New High Of 2013

What a year for this fund: an average of one new high a week, plus one.

John Crudele Of NY Post Still Not Really Sure What The Fed Has Been Trying To Do

Here in "Bernanke's rate ploy robs from middle class" John Crudele of The New York Post still can't seem to put two and two together even after all this time:

1:

Bernanke, who is leaving his job next month, controls something called the Fed Funds Rate. That’s the rate at which banks can lend each other money for a very short term, generally overnight. That rate is set by the Fed and has been stuck at a puny 0.25 percent for the last few years as the Fed tries to — well, I’m not really sure what the Fed has been trying to do. ...

2:

One of the few rates he has been able to keep low is the yields on things like money-market and savings accounts. The banks love him, since the less they pay out to depositors, the more money they earn.

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

What do I gotta do, John, spell it out for ya?

The Fed has been trying to . . . rescue the banks. They don't keep the rate next to zero for this long if they didn't need to.

The middle class has been punished in the process, but lower interest rates presumably have allowed some in the middle class to refinance expensive loans at lower rates while their retirement investments have reflated. That's the rationalization, if not the reality experienced by most.

The banking crisis is over when ZIRP is over.

Middle Class In Flames: All The Fed Has Done Is Help The Banks

Naked Capitalism supports Occupy Wall Street. Heh, heh. Does Jeep know?

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism, here:

Oh, puhleeze. Robust recovery for who? The Fed not only threw staggering amounts of firepower at salvaging bank balance sheets, while showing no interest in rescuing ordinary Americans. It was also all-in on the Administration’s program to paper over the banks’ chain of title problems and their widespread servicing abuses, and didn’t bother to obtain any meaningful concessions or reforms, the most important of which would have been principal modifications, a remedy favored by investors as well as homeowners. The Fed has been all too happy to accept mission creep rather than speak up forcefully for the need for more fiscal stimulus.

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

The analysis is right, but the prescriptions are left: raising the minimum wage, breaking mortgage contracts, and spending money we do not have. Oh, puhleeze. It's Naked Liberalism.

But she's great on Obama's Mussolini-style corporatism, most recently here in response to The New Republic:

I’m actually a bit miffed that Konczal treats the “corporatism” appellation as the sole property of the right wing (in the style sheet of the Vichy Left, calling them “hysterics” is redundant but necessary for the rubes), since I have a prior claim. And what is particularly rich is that Konczal apparently regards the allusion to Mussolini to be unfair . . ..

Obamacare IS corporatist. Here we have the industries that are significant contributors to why the American medical system is so overpriced – the health insurers and Big Pharma – actually playing a major role in writing the legislation. And how is it not a sop to large companies to have the government require that citizens buy your product or else pay large tax penalties? Mr. Market certainly thought so, for the price of health insurer and drug company stocks jumped the day the ACA passed. And remember, the beneficiaries of Obamacare extend beyond the insurers and pharmaceutical makers. Hospitals, who increasingly engage in oligopoly pricing (most surgeries need to be done in hospitals), also come out even stronger because new requirements imposed on doctors’ practices will make it difficult for a retiring MD who practices medicine, as opposed to servicing the rich (e.g., cosmetic surgeons) to sell their business to anyone other than a hospital.

And the label fits in the banking arena like a glove. I’ve ... called both the Bush, but far more often the Obama bank-friendly policies “Mussolini-style corporatism” since 2008, and well before what [Mike] Konczal [of The New Republic] claims is the origin of this description, Tim Carney’s book Obamanomics, published November 30, 2009.

North Dakota Railroad Involved In Accident Causing Oil Inferno Is Wholly Owned By Warren Buffett

The New York Post has the story here, but never mentions Warren Buffett, who has become richer off transportation of oil by rail because his pal Barack Obama did him a favor by stopping the XL pipeline in exchange for his support for higher taxes on the rich:

The derailment happened amid increased concerns about the United States’ increased reliance on rail to carry crude oil. Fears of catastrophic derailments were particularly stoked after last summer’s crash in Canada of a train carrying crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken oil patch. Forty-seven people died in the ensuing fire. The tracks that the train was on Monday pass through the middle of Casselton, and Morris said it was “a blessing it didn’t happen within the city.” The train had more than 100 cars, and about 80 of them were moved away from the site.

According to Wikipedia, here, and BNSF's own website:

The BNSF Railway is the second-largest freight railroad network in North America, second to the Union Pacific Railroad (its primary competitor for Western U.S. freight), and is one of seven North American Class I railroads. It has three transcontinental routes that provide high-speed links between the western and eastern United States. BNSF trains traveled over 169 million miles in 2010, more than any other North American railroad. ... Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, the railroad is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Global Warmists Stuck In 5 Meters of Sea Ice In Antarctic SUMMER Now Require RESCUE

Warming scientists stopped by 5m of SUMMER Antarctic ice

Story here, which never mentions it's the Antarctic SUMMER, and you have to read the picture caption to know how DEEP the ice is:

They went in search evidence of the world’s melting ice caps, but instead a team of climate scientists have been forced to abandon their mission … because the Antarctic ice is thicker than usual at this time of year. The scientists have been stuck aboard the stricken MV Akademik Schokalskiy since Christmas Day, with repeated sea rescue attempts being abandoned as icebreaking ships failed to reach them. Now that effort has been ditched, with experts admitting the ice is just too thick. Instead the crew have built an icy helipad, with plans afoot to rescue the 74-strong team by helicopter.

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

Yeah, "thicker than usual this time of year": five meters of ice. Do you think these warmists went there expecting to be stopped in their tracks by that?

When tabloid journalists start telling the truth . . . what? Hell will freeze over?

Aging Lesbian Camille Paglia Still Longs For A Man

Reported here:

Politically correct, inadequate education, along with the decline of America's brawny industrial base, leaves many men with "no models of manhood," she says. "Masculinity is just becoming something that is imitated from the movies. There's nothing left. There's no room for anything manly right now." The only place you can hear what men really feel these days, she claims, is on sports radio. No surprise, she is an avid listener. The energy and enthusiasm "inspires me as a writer," she says, adding: "If we had to go to war," the callers "are the men that would save the nation."

One Week Later, Michigan Ice Storm Still Had 30,000 Without Power Saturday Morning, But Only 8,100 By Evening

Story here:

In Michigan, roughly 30,000 Consumers customers remained without power, down from 399,000 since a weekend ice storm swept across the state. The worst-hit area continued to be around Lansing, where 3,000 customers were still in the dark Saturday morning.

But this evening, the number is down to 8,100 as reported here:

As of 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 28, 8,100 customers statewide remained without service. The majority of those people are expected to be restored by midnight Sunday, the utility says.

Mortgaged States Their Grandsires' Wreaths Regret

"Yet Reason frowns on war's unequal game,

Where wasted nations raise a single name,

And mortgaged states their grandsires' wreaths regret,
From age to age in everlasting debt;

Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey
To rust on medals, or on stones decay."

-- Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749)

Total Credit Market Debt Owed Has Grown Just 16% In 6 Years, The Smallest Increase On Record

Between July 2007 and July 2013, total credit market debt owed (TCMDO) has grown just 16%, by barely $8 trillion. It's the smallest increase on record for any six year period going back to when the data series begins in October 1949.

Going back six years from 2013 is instructive because the summer of 2007 was when the level of TCMDO last doubled (going back to the summer of 1999), and if you go back to the beginning of the data series you find doubling times of as few as 6 years in length to as many as almost 12. In other words, in a period of rapid credit expansion TCMDO might have conceivably doubled in our last six year period, but it hasn't. We sure could have used it. Instead it has for all intents and purposes collapsed, growing just $8 trillion from $50.032 trillion in 2007 to $58.082 trillion now.

From humble beginnings in 1949 when TCMDO stood at $400 billion, the level went on to double in the summers of 1961, 1970, 1977, 1983, 1989, 1999 and 2007. In order to double again (to a level of $102 trillion) by, say, 2019 (12 years from 2007), we're going to have to pick up the pace just a little . . .. Unless, of course, this debt-based economy has reached the limits of what it can do, which may be what the last six years is trying to tell us. 

Here's the data for TCMDO for the six year periods going back to July 1953:

7/1/13 $58.1 trillion (up  16%)

7/1/07 $50.0 trillion (up  74%)

7/1/01 $28.8 trillion (up  58%)

7/1/95 $18.3 trillion (up  45%)

7/1/89 $12.6 trillion (up 102%)

7/1/83 $06.3 trillion (up  97%)

7/1/77 $03.2 trillion (up  87%)

7/1/71 $01.7 trillion (up  57%)

7/1/65 $01.1 trillion (up  49%)

7/1/59 $00.7 trillion (up  42%)

7/1/53 $00.5 trillion.

As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard formulated it in 2011, "debt draws forward prosperity". In other words, we've already enjoyed the prosperity years ago which should be present today by literally pulling it back there from here, and now that we're here, well, there's nothing here, except for a measly 0.97% real average GDP report for the six years 2007-2012.

Time to pay.

Top Comment On Story That A&E Caves To Phil Robertson

Story here.

About 61,000 In Michigan Still Without Power Two Days After Christmas

Blotches indicate some of the 61,000 still w/o power today in MI

Story here:

Michigan utilities reported that over 61,000 customers remained without power Friday morning and said it could be Saturday before all electricity is restored.

Over 200,000 Still Without Power In Michigan On Christmas Day After Ice Storm

Consumers Energy outage map showing some of Michigan's 200,000 without electricity on Christmas Day

According to The Detroit News, here:

Roughly 214,000 homes and businesses across lower Michigan were without power late Tuesday. Officials at the area’s major provider, Consumers Energy, described the storm that hit the region over the weekend as the largest Christmas-week storm in its 126-year history. Overall, it’s the largest storm in the last decade, they added.

Flashback March 2010: Sen. Max Baucus Forgot To Mention Income Redistribution Was FROM The Middle Class, Not To It, Or Did He Just Lie Like Obama Did?

Reward for his service to the State: ambassadorship to China

Actually, ObamaCare, which is the handiwork of Sen. Max Baucus, will transfer income from the middle class to the lower class and wipe out the middle.

Here, March 25, 2010:

Sen. Max Baucus (D): "Too often, much of late, the last couple three years the mal-distribution of income in America is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind. Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America."

Meanwhile, income inequality has never been worse, reaching its all time high under just four years of Obama.

Flashback to HuffPo, here in 2012:

In the 2009-2010 period, a time of modest economic growth, the top 1 percent of U.S. earners captured 93 percent of all the income growth in the country.

Got that? Now compare it to how the mega-rich made out during the Bush upswing years of 2002 to 2007. During that time, the top 1 percent of earners captured just 65 percent of all the income growth.

The numbers don't lie. Income inequality has grown at a rate 4.75 TIMES faster under Obama compared to Bush (perfect equality is 0 on the scale, perfect inequality is 1). Inequality has never been higher than under Obama. The nomenklatura gets richer.

income inequality under 8 years of Bush up 0.4%

income inequality under 4 years of Obama up 1.9%

ObamaCare's Draconian Tax Increase On The Middle Class: Wisconsinite To Pay $7573 Tax On $5000 Of Extra Income

The middle class is the greatest enemy of the proletarian revolution.

Great example of ObamaCare's war on the middle class from The New York Times, here:

A 60-year-old living in Polk County, in northwestern Wisconsin, and earning $50,000 a year, for example, would have to spend more than 19 percent of his income, or $9,801 annually, to buy one of the cheapest plans available there. A person earning $45,000 would qualify for subsidies and would pay about 5 percent of his income, or $2,228, for an inexpensive plan.

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

Obama's message to America: Don't EARN too much, people, or it'll happen to you, too.

Gunney Highway's Assessment Of ObamaCare

What's your assessment of this ObamaCare, Gunney?

It's a clusterfuck, sir. Americans shouldn't be sitting on their asses filling out forms on a website that doesn't work.

Obama Alters His Own Law Of The Land Yet Again, John Fund Says For At Least The 14th Time

Here:

Yesterday the Obama administration suddenly moved to allow hundreds of thousands of people who’ve lost their insurance due to Obamacare to sign up for bare-bone “catastrophic” plans. It’s at least the 14th unilateral change to Obamacare that’s been made without consulting Congress.

Whether It's ObamaCare Or The Gay Mafia, Camille Paglia Detects Stalinism And Fascism

Lesbian Camille Paglia, quoted here:

“To express yourself in a magazine in an interview — this is the level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my liberal colleagues in the Democratic Party and on college campuses have supported and promoted over the last several decades. ... This is the whole legacy of free speech 1960’s that have [sic] been lost by my own party. ... I think that this intolerance by gay activists toward the full spectrum of human beliefs is a sign of immaturity, juvenility. ... This is not the mark of a true intellectual life. This is why there is no cultural life now in the U.S. Why nothing is of interest coming from the major media in terms of cultural criticism. Why the graduates of the Ivy League with their A, A, A+ grades are complete cultural illiterates, etc. is because they are not being educated in any way to give respect to opposing view points. There is a dialogue going on human civilization, for heaven sakes. It’s not just this monologue coming from fanatics who have displaced the religious beliefs of their parents into a political movement. ... And that is what happened to feminism, and that is what happened to gay activism, a fanaticism.”

Here's Paglia in October on ObamaCare:

"But the ObamaCare is, to me, a Stalinist intrusion--okay?--into American culture."

Q3 2013 GDP Third Estimate At 4.1%, But Inventories Constitute 41% Of That

The BEA reports here:

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 4.1 percent in the third quarter of 2013 (that is, from the second quarter to the third quarter), according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  In the second quarter, real GDP increased 2.5 percent. The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "second" estimate issued on December 5, 2103.  In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was 3.6 percent (see "Revisions" on page 3).  With this third estimate for the third quarter, increases in personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and in nonresidential fixed investment were larger than previously estimated. ...  The change in real private inventories added 1.67 percentage points to the third-quarter change in real GDP, after adding 0.41 percentage point to the second-quarter change. Private businesses increased inventories $115.7 billion in the third quarter, following increases of $56.6 billion in the second quarter and $42.2 billion in the first.

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

That's a huge inventory number compared to the recent past.

Personal consumption expenditures, which in the second estimate came in at a paltry 1.4%, suddenly are revised up 0.6 to 2.0% in the third estimate, also contributing significantly to the up revision of GDP. In the second estimate it looked like the consumer was pulling back by over 20% from the second quarter. In the third estimate it now appears the consumer ramped it up by over 10% in Q3 compared to Q2, quite the reversal.

Someone wanted to go home early: Both reports in html and pdf say "December 5, 2103".

Hey. They're just numbers. Time for a beer.