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Finally The “Very Serious People” Get It: QE Will “Permanently Impair Living Standards For Generations To Come”
Finally The “Very Serious People” Get It: QE Will “Permanently Impair Living Standards For Generations To Come”
When “very serious people” (even if it is those who once ran now defunct Bear Steanrs) announce it, with a 6 year delay, they make the Financial Times.
On the other hand, when Zero Hedge said precisely this 6 years ago, it was cast as a tin-foil clad group of conspriators who see the worst in every situation.
What is “it”? This:
The long-term consequences of global QE are likely to permanently impair living standards for generations to come while creating a false illusion of reviving prosperity.
In this case, it was said this week by Guggenheim’s Chairman of Investments and Global Chief Investment Officer, Scott Minerd. We are happy that increasingly more “serious people” come to the same conclusion which we posited first a 6 years ago.
* * *
Here is the full note:
The Monetary Illusion
As economic growth returns again to Europe and Japan, the prospect of a synchronous global expansion is taking hold. Or, then again, maybe not. In a recent research piece published by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, global economic growth, as measured in nominal U.S. dollars, is projected to decline in 2015 for the first time since 2009, the height of the financial crisis.
In fact, the prospect of improvement in economic growth is largely a monetary illusion. No one needs to explain how policymakers have made painfully little progress on the structural reforms necessary to increase global productive capacity and stimulate employment and demand. Lacking the political will necessary to address the issues, central bankers have been left to paper over the global malaise with reams of fiat currency.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Web: Destroyer or Savior of Culture, Pay and Employment?
The Web: Destroyer or Savior of Culture, Pay and Employment?
The cost of creating and distributing content has fallen to near-zero, and that is not going away.
Last month I explored the contentious question, Is the Web Destroying the Cultural Economy? In my recent video discussion with analyst Gordon T. Long, we expanded this question to pay (earned income) and jobs, i.e. is the Web eroding pay and jobs?
I also discussed these issues with Mike Swanson of Wall Street Window in a podcast Is The Web Destroying the Cultural Economy? An historian by training, Mike is well-placed to put these issues in a larger context.
There are several key dynamics at work.One is the democratization of expression and journalism unleashed by the Web has eroded the industrial meritocracy of gatekeepers and vertically integrated content-media corporations: music labels, publishers, newspapers, etc.
The web has enabled virtually anyone with Internet access to create a nearly-free global distribution network–what I have termed 800 Million Channels of Me (February 21, 2011). This blog is obviously one of those millions of globally distributed channels.
Critics of this democratization feel that this has unleashed an avalanche of mediocrity that is judged on “likes” and pages views–a process in which talent is “lost in a sea of garbage.”
The other side of the debate sees the demise of the gatekeepers, who could enforce their own view of what was valuable culturally and economically, as freeing all those who could never get past the gatekeepers. This explosion of creativity and expression is an unalloyed good thing.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Eh is not OK: Canada’s Jobs Begin to Unravel
Eh is not OK: Canada’s Jobs Begin to Unravel
Canada’s employment stats for February were not what most expected – there was a huge jump in full time jobs. Most commentators tried to put a positive spin on this but I have to disagree. Canada’s labour market is struggling and the outlook for the near future isn’t looking any better.
The chart below is what the Bank of Canada tracks as a measure of the broader health of the labour market. As you can see aggregate hours (the sum of all hours worked by full time and part time employees) have been flat over the past year.
What limited strength exists in the labour market comes from two unsustainable sources: construction and the public sector.
What’s worrisome is the impact of oil prices in Alberta. As per Macquarie, half of the gains in construction employment across Canada occurred in Alberta, a province where construction activity is likely to retreat. As you can see in 1986 in the months following the decline in oil, Alberta’s construction industry employment fell by 17%. A similar decline in coming months would mean nearly 50K in construction job losses in Alberta.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
truthinesslessness
truthinesslessness
Nothing is stable, nothing is straightforward, everything is fixed, and nothing is fixed. O nation of busboys and WalMart greeters, awake and sing!
Can an empire founder on sheer credulousness? After last Friday’s jobs report, I think so. For a culture that luxuriates in statistical analysis (and the false idea that if you measure enough things, you can control them), it is rather amazing that we absolutely don’t care whether the measurements are truthful or not. Hence, an economist (sic) such as Paul Krugman of The New York Times might ask himself how it is that Zero Interest Rate Policy only trickles down to places where hamburgers are sold. PK was at it again in his Monday column, yammering about “rapid job growth,” “partying like it was 1995.” Wise men like him are pounding this country down a rat hole faster than you can say Romulus Augustulus.
Apparently the US Bureau of Labor Statistics missed the job bloodbath in the oil industry, especially over in Frackville where the latest western phenomenon is the ghost man-camp (along with ghost pole dancing parlors). It’s a veritable hemorrhagic fever of job layoff announcements: 9,000 here, 7,000, there, thousands of thousands everywhere — Halliburton, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes — like an Ebola ward in the oil services sector. Not to mention the cliff-drop of capital expenditure, meaning even steeper job losses ahead, Casey Jones. But nobody notices, I guess because they’re out at Ruby Tuesdays eating things bigger than their heads. Are the portions getting smaller, or are their heads shrinking?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Is Per Capita Energy Consumption at Recession Levels After Six Years of Recovery?
Why Is Per Capita Energy Consumption at Recession Levels After Six Years of Recovery?
Per capita energy consumption remains at recession levels.
One way to verify rosy official data–GDP growth, low unemployment, etc.–is to compare it with data that is less easily gamed: for example, energy consumption.Those seeking a realistic snapshot of the Chinese economy routinely turn to energy consumption and rail traffic data for this reason: at least until recently, these data sets were more reflective of real economic activity than the glowing official numbers.
So let’s try the same analysis on the U.S. economy. Courtesy of Market Daily Briefing, here are four charts of per capita (per person) energy consumption.By using per capita data, we eliminate population growth as a variable.
If total energy consumption remains steady as population rises, the per capita energy consumption will drop.
As vehicles, appliances, etc. become more energy-efficient, we would expect per capita energy consumption to decline. For example, as mileage/unit of fuel of vehicles rise, the fuel needed to drive the same number of miles per year declines.
offsetting this gradual decline due to increasing efficiency is an overall rise in the standard of living, which in a consumerist society means owning and operating more vehicles, appliances, etc., taking more vacations, etc.–all of which tend to push per capita energy consumption higher.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Nearly At ‘Full Employment’? 10 Reasons Why The Unemployment Numbers Are A Massive Lie
Nearly At ‘Full Employment’? 10 Reasons Why The Unemployment Numbers Are A Massive Lie
On Friday, we learned that the official “unemployment rate” has fallen to 5.5 percent. Since an unemployment rate of 5 percent is considered to be “full employment” by many economists, many in the mainstream media took this as a sign that the U.S. economy has almost fully “recovered” since the last recession. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, some Federal Reserve officials believe that “the U.S. economy is already at full employment“. But how can this possibly be? It certainly does not square with reality. Personally, I know people that have been struggling with unemployment for years and that still cannot find a decent job. And I get emails from readers all the time that are heartbroken because they are suffering through extended periods of unemployment. So what in the world is going on? How can the government be telling us that we are nearly at “full employment” when so many people can’t find work? Could it be possible that the government numbers are misleading?
It is my contention that the official “unemployment rate” has become so politicized and so manipulated that it is essentially meaningless at this point. The following are 10 reasons why…
#1 Since February 2008, the size of the U.S. population has grown by 16.8 million people, but the number of full-time jobs has actually decreased by 140,000.
#2 The percentage of working age Americans that have a job right now is still about the same as it was during the depths of the last recession. Posted below is a chart that shows how the employment-population ratio has changed since the beginning of the decade. Does this look like a full-blown “employment recovery” to you?…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Oil Bust Mauls Texas Manufacturers, Atlanta Fed Sees Hit to Broader US Economy
Oil Bust Mauls Texas Manufacturers, Atlanta Fed Sees Hit to Broader US Economy
By now, every executive in the American oil patch goes through the day with one eye riveted on the price of oil. And on Monday, West Texas Intermediate plunged once again below $50 a barrel. It has become the nightmare price for Texas manufactures.
The Texas economy grew admirably during the fracking boom. The high price of oil threw money in all directions. Drillers and oil field services companies, along with suppliers of the drilling boom raked in orders and the big bucks. But now the fracking boom has turned into a fracking bust, and the consequences are spreading through the economy.
The Dallas Fed’s February manufacturing index for General Business Activity dropped to -11.2 from the already crummy -4.4 in January, the lowest level since April 2013. In the survey, 22% of the business executives reported that conditions were “worsening” while only 10.8% said conditions were “improving.”
The new orders index swooned to -12.2, the “lowest reading since June 2009.” Growth of new orders hit -16.3, unfilled orders -17.3. The shipments index dropped to -3.3, “a low not seen since 2009.”
This is how companies are reacting: as costs are getting slashed to preserve cash flow, the capital expenditures index dropped to -4.8.
Texas, the job creating machine? The employment index is beginning to stagnate: 15% of the companies reported net hiring, 14% reported net layoffs, and the hours worked index descended into the negative.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Our House of Cards
Our House of Cards
As John Williams (shadowstats.com) has observed, the payroll jobs reports no longer make any logical or statistical sense. Ask yourself, do you believe that retailers responded to the very disappointing Christmas season by rushing out in January to hire 46,000 more retail clerks?
Perhaps those 46,000 retail jobs is the BLS telling us that they have to come up with new jobs to report whether or not there are any.
As we have reported on a number of occasions, whenever the price of gold in the futures market starts to rise, massive uncovered shorts are suddenly dumped on the market. As the shorts dramatically increase the supply of future contracts all at once, the supply overwhelms demand, and the price of gold is driven down despite the fact that the demand for gold in the physical market is strong. (Remember, the price of gold is determined in the futures market in which contracts are largely settled in cash and seldom in gold. The physical market is where gold bullion is purchased, not paper claims on gold for speculation.)
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Anxiety and Interest Rates: How Uncertainty Is Weighing on Us
Anxiety and Interest Rates: How Uncertainty Is Weighing on Us
Anxiety and uncertainty are weighing on individuals even where the overall economy is growing.
Some of this angst is the fallout from advances in information technology. The Internet, ubiquitous computing, robotics, 3-D printers and the like are wonderful advances, yet they may also be personal threats: For some, the technologies may eliminate our jobs or potential future jobs, or make them less lucrative. For others, they may bring new riches.
Even people with moderately high incomes have reason to be uncertain. Some college professors, tenured or not, might lose their jobs in the face ofmassive open online courses, while others prosper from them. Lawyers might find less demand for services that can be supplanted by computerized legal research tools. News and entertainment media have already faced huge technology-related job losses.
Such fears are not measured by the usual consumer confidence indexes. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index reached its highest level since 2004 in January. But this index, and others like it, look ahead only into the short term and report about perceived aggregate conditions rather than individual risks.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Don’t Believe The Headlines: Canada’s Latest Job Numbers Don’t Look Good
Don’t Believe The Headlines: Canada’s Latest Job Numbers Don’t Look Good
After two months of shrinking job numbers, it looked like Canada had broken the streak with this morning’s StasCan report showing an increase of 35,400 jobs, and a decrease in the jobless rate to 6.6 per cent, from 6.7 per cent.
But that is just about the sunniest number there is in this jobs report. Dig a little beneath the surface, and what you find is a struggling job market.
First and most importantly, all of the net increase in jobs was accounted for by an increase in “self-employed” individuals, of 41,000.
Many economists are suspicious of this category, because “self-employed” does not equal “making money.” It could be that more than 40,000 Canadians found their entrepreneurial spirit last month and launched their own startups, but it’s just as likely many are putting a brave face on their unemployment.
The number of salaried jobs actually fell by 5,400 from a month earlier, and the number of full-time jobs of any kind fell by 11,800. That was offset by an increase of part-time jobs of 47,000.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Grand Manipulation
The Grand Manipulation
Gerald Celente, editor of the Trends Journal, a subscription-based publication for which I write, has permitted King World News to republish my most recent article from the Trends Journal. This makes the article available to you from a free site. In place of me writing yet another expose of the non-existent jobs reported today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, read my article, The Grand Manipulation:
The government’s economic reporting has no credibility. In the face of depressed Christmas sales and the closure of retail chains such as Radio Shack, do you think retailers rushed out in January to hire 45,900 new retail employees?
In the face of declining restaurant traffic, do you think 34,600 new waitresses and bartenders were hired in January?
Read my sometime coauthor Dave Kranzler’s take on today’s payroll jobs report:
http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/todays-employment-report-is-the-biggest-lie-theyve-told-to-date/
If the government will not even tell us the truth about jobs and inflation, how can we believe the government when it tells us, without supplying any evidence, that Russian tank columns have entered Ukraine? Americans need to come to terms with the fact that they live in The Matrix, a world composed of fake information designed to control thought and behavior.
Post Crisis Scorecard – Global Debt Up $57 Trillion, 60% of American Jobs Created Are Low Level, Record Youth Living with Parents
Post Crisis Scorecard – Global Debt Up $57 Trillion, 60% of American Jobs Created Are Low Level, Record Youth Living with Parents
This morning, my Twitter stream was filled with some of the most outlandish bullish economic victory laps from pundits I’ve ever seen. The source was the monthly employment report, which showed a larger than expected increase in employment as well as higher wages. In addition, there was a huge upward revision to employment data in November. Interestingly enough, on the same day this report was released, several important articles came across my screen that make me as concerned as ever about the true state of the economy and where we are headed.
First, CNN Money just yesterday published an article titled: Obama Jobs: More Caregivers, Servers and Temps. Here are a few excerpts:
Got a job while Obama was president? Then there’s a good chance you are working in healthcare or food service or as a temp.
Those sectors were responsible more than 60% of the jobs created since Obama took office in January 2009.
Healthcare now employs 14.9 million Americans, up 11% over the past six years, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. More than one in 10 payroll jobs in the U.S. are in this industry.
Much of the job growth in healthcare has taken place in home health care services and outpatient care. That follows both the aging of America and the shift away from more costly hospital and nursing home care. These later two industries added only 3.7% and 1.2% more jobs, respectively, since 2009.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Sorry, Millennials, We’re Out of the Jobs You Want
Sorry, Millennials, We’re Out of the Jobs You Want
Millennials don’t want to work in sales, reports the Wall Street Journal. They think it’s exploitative. They also hate the idea of variable compensation; they want a nice, steady job where the company takes the risk, not the worker.
The feeling that sales is exploitative is not new; people have always been uncomfortable with the idea of selling something or being sold. And, of course, many people have always been uncomfortable with the idea of variable compensation. But if companies are having a harder time finding people to take sales jobs and reworking compensation packages to decrease the commission component, that is worth noting.
It’s not entirely surprising, of course. I’ve heard people who worked in New York City’s government during the 1970s noting that there was an unusually high number of very competent senior staff at the time — refugees from the Great Depression who ended up there because it was the only place where you could get a steady paycheck. That generation was risk-averse in ways that their children were not, with a high savings rate and a permanent aversion to equity investments. It would be natural for the millennial generation to have had a similar reaction to such a brutal formative experience.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
20 Stunning Facts About Energy Jobs In The US | Zero Hedge
20 Stunning Facts About Energy Jobs In The US | Zero Hedge.
For all those who think the upcoming carnage to the shale industry will be “contained” we refer to the following research report from the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research:
- The United States is now the world’s largest and fastest-growing producer of hydrocarbons. It has surpassed Saudi Arabia in combined oil and natural gas liquids output and has now surpassed Russia, formerly the top producer, in natural gas. [ZH: that’s about to change]
- The increased production of domestic hydrocarbons not only employs people directly but also radically reduces the drag on growth and job formation associated with America’s trade deficit.
- As the White House Council of Economic Advisors noted this past summer: “Every barrel of oil or cubic foot of gas that we produce at home instead of importing abroad means more jobs, faster growth, and a lower trade deficit.” [the focus now is not on the oil produced at home, which is set to plunge, but the consumer “tax cut” from plunging oil prices]
- Since 2003, more than 400,000 jobs have been created in the direct production of oil & gas and some 2 million more in indirect employment in industries such as transportation, construction, and information services associated with finding, transporting, and storing fuels from the new shale bounty.
- All told, about 10 million Americans are employed directly and indirectly in a broad range of businesses associated with hydrocarbons.
- There are 16 states with more than 150,000 people employed in hydrocarbon-related activities. Even New York, which continues to ban the production of shale oil & gas, is seeing job benefits in a range of support and service industries associated with shale development in adjacent Pennsylvania.
