Results 1 to 2 of 2

Thread: Reality Attack strikes Official Gov't Statistics

  1. #1
    Banned Melonie's Avatar
    Joined
    Jul 2002
    Location
    way south of the border
    Posts
    25,932
    Thanks
    612
    Thanked 10,563 Times in 4,646 Posts
    Blog Entries
    3
    My Mood
    Cynical

    Default Reality Attack strikes Official Gov't Statistics

    (snip)Weekly Unemployment Claims Spike To 496,000; Will Reality Soon Set In?
    by Mike Shedlock


    Yesterday the market rallied the moment Bernanke started yapping to Congress about holding interest rates low for a considerable length of time. Pray tell what did he say that anyone should not have expected?

    Perhaps today the reality of "why" Bernanke feels compelled to hold rates low will set in. Following news that unemployment claims spiked to 496,000 the S&P 500 gapped down 15 points. Is there more where that comes from?

    With that backdrop, let's take a look at the report.

    Inquiring minds are investigating the Unemployment Weekly Claims Report for February 25, 2010.

    In the week ending Feb. 20, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 496,000, an increase of 22,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 474,000. The 4-week moving average was 473,750, an increase of 6,000 from the previous week's revised average of 467,750.





    In reference to Feb 6, last week I said "After last week's unexpected huge dip, this week sports an unexpected huge rise. That's why it's best to focus on the trend in the 4-week moving average."(snip)

    (snip)The 4-week moving average of claims for the last three weeks is above where it was on December 12, 2009 and just slightly better than it was on December 5, 2009. By this measure, the recovery has stalled.

    Is Bad News Finally Bad News?

    The day is still early. Bad news buyers may still save the day.

    At some point however, reality will eventually set in. Without jobs, all this happy talk about the impending recovery, and all of Bernanke's yapping about low rates, will not satisfy the market. It is going to take both jobs and an increase in consumer spending to lift the economy.

    From where I sit, neither is coming.(snip)

    from

  2. #2
    Banned Melonie's Avatar
    Joined
    Jul 2002
    Location
    way south of the border
    Posts
    25,932
    Thanks
    612
    Thanked 10,563 Times in 4,646 Posts
    Blog Entries
    3
    My Mood
    Cynical

    Default Re: Reality returns to official Unemployment Statistics

    and if a reality attack re unemployment statistics wasn't bad enough by itself ...

    (snip)"Last Refuge
    by Michael Ashton

    For the second day in a row, the economic data fairy left a lump of coal in the market's stocking. January New Home Sales, expected to show a bounce-back from last month's decline, instead fell significantly further. The 11% decline took the annual run-rate to just 309,000 units. That's not just disappointing, it's an all-time record low .

    Not just low, but the lowest ever.

    The presence of massive government stimulus always makes it difficult to tell what is happening, organically, beneath the stimulus. Late last year, when home sales were bouncing, however feebly, it was not easy to discern how much of that was true organic growth - a turn in housing market fortunes perhaps sparked by the government tax credits - and how much was merely pulling demand forward. Sometimes, it's impossible to ever tell: if the bottoming in New Home Sales happened to coincide with the onset of government stimulus, there would be no way to tell how many New Home Sales were "created or saved" by the stimulus compared to the natural growth that would have happened anyway simply because the economy was enjoying the upside of a natural oscillation.

    It now appears, though, as if there was never a turn in the market after all. It appears, right now anyway, as if a large proportion of the bounce was in fact due to the pulling of demand forward from 2010 to 2009. Certainly, it is difficult to make the argument that we're better off having spent the [taxpayers' - sic ] money to goose the housing market, since it didn't stay goosed.

    I am sure that some observers will blame the weather in January. Perhaps that is some of the underperformance, since the biggest decline in sales was in the Northeast. But I seem to recall that the weather in January is usually pretty poor and the seasonal adjustment provides for much of that.

    Now, the good news here is that most home sales don't happen in January, so a disappointing seasonally adjusted run rate in January is not as bad as a disappointing rate of sales in late springtime. But it's still bad news. (snip)

    from
    Last edited by Melonie; 02-25-2010 at 06:12 PM.

Similar Threads

  1. Replies: 0
    Last Post: 05-09-2011, 03:20 AM
  2. Replies: 3
    Last Post: 09-16-2009, 06:42 AM
  3. Replies: 0
    Last Post: 03-02-2007, 03:27 PM
  4. "shadow' gov't statistics
    By Melonie in forum Dollar Den
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 12-11-2006, 11:25 AM
  5. Validity of gov't unemployment statistics ...
    By Melonie in forum Dollar Den
    Replies: 39
    Last Post: 02-22-2006, 09:06 AM

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •