Jobless claims finish December averaging 362,000 per week, 2014 ends at 15.9 million total first time claims for unemployment

All figures are raw, not-seasonally-adjusted.

The 15.9 million figure is now the lowest in the 21st century, beating the heretofore best level achieved under Bush, which was 16.2 million (but when the participation rate of the labor force was much higher than it is today, 66.4% in November 2006 vs. 62.8% in November 2014). Previously I had expected claims to total 15.7 million in 2014, but first time claims for unemployment ramped up a little higher in December than they had been averaging through November.

Here's the historical record:

2001 20.9 million

2002 20.9 million

2003 20.8 million

2004 17.7 million

2005 17.7 million

2006 16.2 million

2007 16.7 million

2008 21.6 million

2009 29.5 million

2010 23.7 million

2011 21.7 million

2012 19.4 million

2013 17.8 million

2014 15.9 million.

Conditions remain very favorable for making continued progress on a recovery of full-time jobs, which are still 3.8 million off their 2007 peak, over seven years ago.

The global oil war just got even more interesting: Dept. of Commerce relaxes export ban

With a tip o' the hat to Andrew Critchlow at the UK Telegraph, Reuters reported just a couple of hours ago that the US Dept. of Commerce has announced relaxation of some parts of the 1974 US oil export ban, here:

(Reuters) - The Obama administration has opened a new front in the global battle for oil market share, effectively clearing the way for the shipment of as much as a million barrels per day of ultra-light U.S. crude to the rest of the world.

The Department of Commerce on Tuesday ended a year-long silence on a contentious, four-decade ban on oil exports, saying it had begun approving a backlog of requests to sell processed light oil abroad. It also issued a long-awaited document outlining exactly what kinds of oil other would-be exporters can ship. ...

... the impending swell of U.S. petroleum into global markets may intensify what many analysts say is a pivotal oil market war, with Saudi Arabia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) unwilling to yield ground. Now they will face even greater competition beyond U.S. shores.

Alan Greenspan is expecting mediocre GDP in 4Q, says housing and investment must recover to fix it

Quoted here at Bloomberg:

Greenspan said the economy won’t fully recover until American companies invest more in productive assets and the housing market bounces back.

“Almost all of the weakness in the last four, five, six years has been in long-lived investments” in capital goods and real estate, Greenspan said. “Until these pick up, we’re not going to get the kind of vibrant growth that everyone is hoping for.”

Greenspan, who retired from the Fed’s helm in January 2006, said he expects growth to dip below a 3 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of this year. His forecast is in line with the estimate of 2.5 percent in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

Libertarian Real Clear Markets trots out no less than THREE screeds against housing today

Libertarians really hate the idea that people want to get married, settle down and have children . . . you know, producing future Americans, future tax-payers, well-adjusted, law-abiding, competent future workers. They'd rather have machines they can move around and interchange at will without all the trouble that human beings present. 

Dangerous idiots they are these libertarians, enemies of the permanent things, and of humanity itself.

Good thing no one is paying attention on New Year's Eve Eve.

Norway whacks GDP projection by over 50% amidst plunging oil prices

Seen here:

According to Statistics Norway, lower investment in the oil sector, Norway's primary growth engine, will likely slow the country's overall GDP growth to 1% next year from 2.1% anticipated in September.

The Conservative-led government has not proposed modifications to the current tax levels imposed on the oil and gas sector, where an additional 51 percent income tax rate applies to make the effective rate 78 percent.

Instead, in order to compensate for declining oil revenues, the current right-wing government, made up of the Conservative and Progress parties, has proposed tax reform measures that would significantly alter the distribution of Norway's tax revenues. 

The measure, that would see the tax burden moved from corporate and personal income toward taxes on consumption and property, has been criticized by left-leaning opposition parties.

IEA revises down 2015 oil demand growth by 20%, a third of British oilers in big trouble, mostly smaller

Andrew Critchlow reported Dec. 12th here:

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday that world demand for oil will grow by 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) next year, a downward revision of 230,000 bpd from its previous estimate.

The Paris-based watchdog now expects world demand to reach 93.3m bpd in 2015. The agency said: "A strong dollar and the lifting of subsidies have so far limited supportive price effects on demand."

And here on the 29th:

A third of Britain’s listed oil and gas companies are in danger of running out of working capital and even going bankrupt amid a slump in the value of crude, according to new research.

Financial risk management group Company Watch believes that 70pc of the UK’s publicly listed oil exploration and production companies are now unprofitable, racking up significant losses in the region of £1.8bn.

Less than 10 years ago $2.29 per gallon was a new high price for gasoline

You could almost say the few people Obama's added to the labor force he's sent straight to the unemployment lines

The lowest jobless claims yet still don't yield the lowest unemployment levels under Bush.

As I pointed out here, jobless claims for 2014 are probably going to finish the year at the 15.7 million level, not-seasonally-adjusted. The comparable year under Bush was 2006, coincidentally also his sixth year in the presidency, when there were 16.2 million similarly measured jobless claims. That's as low as claims ever fell under Bush in absolute terms, and as low as they've been in this century, until now.

So things are better under Obama, right, because claims are going to be the lowest yet this century?

The civilian labor force level was 152.6 million in November 2006, almost 10 million higher than when Bush was first elected, but only 3.7 million higher now at 156.3 million as of November 2014. So claims were 10.6% of the civilian labor force in 2006, and 10.0% of the civilian labor force in November 2014, so yes, things are marginally statistically better, but still very close.

But what's not close is the unemployment rate, or the unemployment level. Not-seasonally-adjusted the rate was 4.3% in November 2006, but 5.5% in November 2014. The civilian labor force has barely grown by 1.7 million after six years of Obama, yet the unemployment level is still 2.05 million higher today than it was in November 2006 when first time jobless claims were at their lowest level before now.

You could almost say Obama sent the few people he's added to the labor force since 2008 straight to the unemployment lines. The other 8 million or more sent themselves straight out of the labor force, never to be counted as unemployed again.

Obama's civilian labor force has only grown 1.7 million since 11/2008, 1.3 million of which came in the last year!

The civilian labor force grew by 1.3 million 11/13-11/14

By contrast George Bush's civilian labor force grew by 11.8 million over his presidency, 6.9 times more than Obama's. To the same almost 6 year point in his presidency Bush's civilian labor force grew by 9.8 million, 5.8 times more than Obama's.

The current year's addition of 1.3 million may be contrasted to the 2.4 million added at the same interval under Bush.

Obama, he sucks!

The civilian labor force grew by 2.4 million 11/05-11/06

2.8x more people left the work force in the last year than did at the same time under Bush

360,000 left the labor force 11/05-11/06

1 million have left the labor force 11/13-11/14

Unemployment comes down faster when you have fewer unemployed people to count.

Giving USA puts 2013 charitable giving at $335 billion, still in depression from 2007's $349 billion

Seen here:

"At an estimated $335.17 billion, total charitable giving from U.S. individuals, corporations, foundations and bequests in 2013 approached the peak seen before the worst of the Great Recession, adjusted for inflation, according to research released today by Giving USA Foundation and its research partner, the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. ...

"Donations in 2013 increased 4.4 percent (in current dollars) from the revised estimate of $320.97 billion for 2012. Adjusted for inflation, total giving rose 3.0 percent over the 2012 estimate. ...

"When adjusted for inflation, 2007 donations totaled an estimated $349.50 billion."

Jeb Bush pocketed $1.4 million in 2013 working for ObamaCare profiteer Tenet Healthcare of Dallas

So says the LA Times, here:

And on Wednesday, Bush resigned from the board of directors of Tenet Healthcare Corp., also effective Dec. 31, according to a corporate filing. The Dallas-based company actively supported the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and has seen its revenue rise from it, an issue that could draw fire in Republican primaries.

Bush earned cash and stock awards worth nearly $300,000 from Tenet in 2013, according to corporate filings. He also sold Tenet stock worth $1.1 million that year, the records show.

Dr. Copper has been trading below $3 since before Thanksgiving

Except for a brief ten day period in March, copper hasn't been this low this long since the stock market low in 2009. Combined with oil falling out of bed, the prospects for improving GDP look dim.

Part-time jobs peak at the end of the year, and full-time jobs peak in the middle of the year

Part-time jobs hit a new all-time high level in November at 28.225 million. This follows a pattern of part-time peaking at Christmas time and full-time peaking around Independence Day. The oscillation between the two is best observed in the not-seasonally-adjusted data.

If Obama had wanted to "rescue" the economy in 2009, he should have ramped-up the wars as he's doing now

If Obama had really wanted to rescue the economy in 2009, he would have ramped up dramatically the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan instead of putting them on the path to euthanasia. In this sense he was a very bad Keynesian who made FDR spin in his grave.

Of course, that assumes he is smart enough to understand Keynesianism, being raised as a doctrinaire Marxist who was content to bask lazily in the glow of his presidential victory while a bunch of Clinton re-treads did their mediocre best for him . . . recreating HillaryCare. A more sinister interpretation believes that the inattention to the economy was all on purpose, since suppressing the middle class is the main objective of revolutionary leftism faced with successful capitalism almost everywhere. Still others simply chalk it up to Obama's incompetence, just another example of the Affirmative Action Presidency at work.

But I digress.

The simple reason for the need to have ramped up the wars back in 2009 is that the radical stimulus spending called for by the likes of Paul Krugman (3x what Obama ended up spending), who ridiculed the smallness of Obama's stimulus spending plan in The New York Times here, cannot be accomplished quickly through any other department of the federal government except through what we used to call more accurately The War Department. 'There are only a limited number of “shovel-ready” public investment projects — that is, projects that can be started quickly enough to help the economy in the near term,' Krugman wrote at the time.

That's for sure.

Proof of this can now be seen in the GDP numbers in just the last year when ISIS all of a sudden became a threat on the administration's radar screen even though ISIS had been building in the open for years and the administration actually had been warned about it and knew about it.

Federal government consumption had been a net negative subtraction from GDP for each of the last three years, 2011-2013, totaling -0.28 points of GDP for each year on average, and 75% of that came on average from cutting spending on National Defense.

All of that changed on a dime in 3Q2014 when ISIS surged into Iraq. Consumption on national defense suddenly vaulted to +0.69 points of GDP from +0.12 points in 1Q and -0.07 points in 2Q, to the point where defense spending now represents fully 97% of the federal contribution to GDP in the third quarter of 2014, and over 13% of GDP overall. All the current big contributors to GDP come in lower than this except for exports, with which defense spending is tied. 

Only the military can spend large sums of government money quickly in this slow-moving, inertia-plagued bureaucratic state. Future presidents, take note: War is still the father of everything.

Our markets closed early today in honor of the birth of Jesus Christ, you rag-headed heathen bastards

Merry Christmas: The world is experiencing the benefits of Western liberty like never before

The Nativity at Night c. 1490

Freedom from want, loneliness, ignorance, danger, disease, discomfort and drudgery.

From Richard Rahn:

As we go into this Christmas week, you should count your blessings that you live in 2014. ...

People in the world live far better today than they did a mere half-century ago. World per-capita gross domestic product is now a little more than $14,000 per year, a little less than where the United States was in 1960 or where the Japanese and United Kingdom were in the mid-1970s (inflation adjusted). In October, the World Bank reported that those living in extreme poverty fell from 36 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2011. ...

Read the whole thing, here.

Zero Hedge gets ObamaCare spending all wrong, again

The latest screed is here, claiming that healthcare spending is "the reason" behind the surge in Q3 GDP.

From the BEA here, healthcare spending contributed 0.52 points (line 17) to 5.0 GDP, about 10.4% of the total.

Zero Hedge wants to leave the impression there was no single bigger contributor to GDP, which isn't the case at all:

Equipment contributed 0.63 (line 30)

Durable goods 0.67 (line 4)

Pure consumption from defense spending 0.69 (line 55)

Export of goods 0.69 (line 47).

More importantly, it's not like we haven't spent 0.52 points of GDP on healthcare before.

We spent 0.51 in 4Q2011, 0.70 in 1Q2012, 0.48 in 4Q2013, and 0.45 in 2Q2014.

That last one is really important. It's the third estimate final figure of healthcare spending for the immediately preceding quarter, which can now be compared to the third estimate final figure for this one. The difference? Just 0.07 points, for an increase in healthcare spending of 15.5% on an annualized basis from 2Q to 3Q. As I've said, we've seen such increases before, quite apart from any new developments over ObamaCare.

The proper comparison, notably, is with 2Q, not with the previous estimate of healthcare's contribution to GDP for the current quarter, which, like everything else, was admittedly incomplete in the BEA's own words, as is always the case with the estimates before the third and final report.

And what that shows, last of all, is that GDP hasn't "surged" at all between 2Q and 3Q. The only thing which surged is the final revision based on the more complete data. The quarterly measure of GDP is up a very modest 0.40 points, from 4.6 to 5.0, or about 8.7% on the annualized basis. Healthcare's share of that increase to GDP is just 17.5%. 82.5% comes from other categories.

The worrisome thing is all kinds of people read and sometimes quote Zero Hedge: Rush Limbaugh, John Hussmann and Bill Gross come to mind. And Real Clear Markets often links to it, which is how I saw it.

Zero Hedge is embarrassing to read, kind of like pornography.

To date current dollar GDP under Obama is running 9.6% behind Bush every year

Bush nominal GDP increased 43% over his term. To date nominal GDP under Obama is up less than 20%.

Bush nominal GDP rose $4.4338 trillion from the end of 2000 to the end of 2008, from $10.2848 trillion to $14.7186 trillion. That comes to $554.225 billion per year for eight years.

Obama nominal GDP has risen to date $2.8812 trillion from the end of 2008 to the end of 3Q2014, from $14.7186 trillion to $17.5998 trillion to date. That comes to $501.078 billion per year for 5.75 years.

The $53.147 billion difference amounts to a difference of 9.59% on average per year to date.

Total market cap to 3Q2014 GDP ratio falls slightly on third revision . . .

. . . to 1.415 from 1.419.

The ratio was 0.74 at the end of 2008, indicating that the stock market was 91.2% more expensive at the end of September 2014 than it was at the end of 2008.

At rich valuations the return from stocks over the subsequent long haul is surprisingly small. From the peak in August 2000 to now the average nominal return from the S&P500 has been just 4.22% per annum, with dividends fully reinvested. From the peak in October 2007 to now the average nominal return has been 6.35% per annum.

The great bull market from July 1982 to August 2000 produced an average annual return of 18.99%.