Video: Idiots React to Coronavirus

This….is….excellent: via Paul Joseph Watson on YouTube:

 

U.S. adds 173,000 jobs in August, unemployment at 5.1%

I guess this is supposed to be good news:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The U.S. economy created a modest 173,000 new jobs in August to mark the smallest gain in five months, but the unemployment rate fell to 5.1% from 5.3%, the government said Friday. That’s the lowest level since April 2008. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected a gain of 213,000 nonfarm jobs. On the more positive side, employment gains for July and June were revised up by a combined 44,000. The Labor Department said 245,000 new jobs were created in July instead of 215,000. June’s gain was revised up to 245,000 from 231,000.

Source: U.S. gains 173,000 jobs in August; unemployment 5.1% – MarketWatch

To be honest, until I see massive hiring everywhere, for good paying jobs and some protection for people like me; who haven’t had a job in ages — I really do not feel this news to be of merit. I haven’t worked since 2003 and had a long term job since 2000. So, this news means nothing.

Not to mention that the growth is paltry.

 

So much for that economic recovery! 

So much for the recovery promised by President Obama eh?

The economy got off to an even weaker start this year than first thought, the government reported Friday, as economic activity contracted amid a disappointing trade picture and continued caution on spending by businesses and consumers alike.The 0.7 percent decline in economic output in the first quarter of 2015 was a reversal of the initial 0.2 percent advance for the period reported last month by the Commerce Department.While statistical quirks and one-time factors like wintry weather in some parts of the country played a role, as did a work slowdown at West Coast ports, the lackluster report for January, February and March underscores the American economy’s seeming inability to generate much momentum.Source: U.S. Economy Contracted 0.7% in First Quarter – NYTimes.com

One thing I feel the need to write about and correct is this; Ed Morrissey over at the neoconservative blog, HotAir.com says the following:

Get ready to hear a lot about supposedly harsh winter weather in supposedly the warmest year on record, and port closings in a period where imports seemed to have no trouble coming on shore.

 Allow me to share something with you; I recently applied for a got my sales tax ID. I am back in the business of selling 12 volt electronics, mainly for cars. One of the other things that I can get are 10 meter mobile amateur radios. Well, one of the brands that I can get are the Ranger line of 10 meter radios. Well, this is what I see, when I log on to one of my many supplier’s website; they’re all out of stock:

rangeroutofstock
Because of a labor dispute, the radios for this company are super slow about coming off of the ships. If Ranger has product on these ships; so do others too. So, the story about import slow downs due to labor disputes is very true; despite what some neocons want you to believe. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The problem is, it is not just this supplier; it is all of them and I am told the next time that Ranger is going to try to ship any, is in July. Now, this really does not bother me; because this stuff is not my main line of sales. I am more into the car stereo end of things. But, could you really imagine being heavily invested into the CB/10 meter end of things and have a huge customer base and then find out that you cannot get this stuff? Ouch.

So, Ed is wrong about the part about imports, there is a labor dispute going on. They are working without a contract and thus the slowdown. This all plays into the status of the economy. Also too, inflation and globalism all play a part into as well.

Others:  Wall Street Journal, White House.gov Blog, Truth Revolt, Outside the Beltway and The Week (via Memeorandum)

 

 

Census ‘faked’ 2012 election jobs report

This is not a terribly big shock to me; just look who is in the White House. This administration and Government is rife with corruption. I believe if this Government released the true numbers of unemployment in this Country; this stock market would crash and there would be a run on the banks of epic proportions.

The Story:

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.

Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy.

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.

“He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked.

The Census employee caught faking the results is Julius Buckmon, according to confidential Census documents obtained by The Post. Buckmon told me in an interview this past weekend that he was told to make up information by higher-ups at Census.

Ironically, it was Labor’s demanding standards that left the door open to manipulation.

Labor requires Census to achieve a 90 percent success rate on its interviews — meaning it needed to reach 9 out of 10 households targeted and report back on their jobs status.

Census currently has six regions from which surveys are conducted. The New York and Philadelphia regions, I’m told, had been coming up short of the 90 percent.

via Census ‘faked’ 2012 election jobs report | New York Post.

Blogger roundup Via Memeorandum Business InsiderMediaiteThe Gateway PunditAEIdeasHot AirScared Monkeys,Washington Times“The Lid”Right Wing NewsVodkaPunditWeasel ZippersThe PJ Tatler and National Review

Updated with Video: Republicans and Democrats on the hill stand against the Trans Pacific Partnership

Update: Here is video on the subject regarding a leak by Wikileaks on the text of this monstrous thing: (H/T Democracy Now)

For once there is something that the President is trying to get accomplished, that the Democrats and Republicans in Congress are actually standing against. For once, this is a very good thing.

This comes via Mother Jones:

The Obama administration is nearing the end of negotiations on the biggest free trade deal in US history, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). The stakes are high: The pact affects the United States and 11 other countries, domestic policy areas ranging from intellectual property rights to product safety and environmental regulations, and $26 trillion in annual economic output. But in order to secure the deal, President Barack Obama says he wants Congress to grant him permission to sign the final trade agreement, which Congress has not yet seen, without congressional input. A coalition of about 174 conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats in the House signaled this week they would likely vote against giving those trade powers to the president.

The US trade representative Michael Froman and Obama want to finalize the TPP by the end of the year and are pushing Congress to pass legislation soon that grants the president something called fast-track authority, which would allow him to sign the final trade agreement without Congress making any amendments to the pact. If Obama gets what he wants, Congress may not even be able to read the final version of the massive trade deal in its entirety until after lawmakers have signed away their rights to influence it. At that point, the two chambers will only be allowed an up-or-down vote to implement the international pact into domestic law. The administration says fast-track authority will assure other countries that the deal the United States has committed to after three years of negotiations won’t be dismantled by American lawmakers who dislike some of the provisions. No major trade agreement has been finalized without it.

[…]

Many conservative Republicans—usually fans of free trade—feel the same way. “For two hundred years of our nation’s history, Congress led our nation’s trade policy,” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and 22 Republicans in the House wrote in a letter sent to the president Tuesday. “However, recent presidents have seized Congress’ constitutional trade authority and also ‘diplomatically legislated’…using…’Fast Track.’”

“Conservatives have shown themselves to instinctively oppose anything coming out of the Obama White House. So their opposition is not surprising,” Adam Hersh, a trade expert at the liberal Center for American Progress, says in an email. But he adds that the Democratic opposition is new. “We’re seeing the culmination of dissatisfaction with persistent poor trading outcomes for the US economy” such as job outsourcing, he says, and the feeling that Congress has been “kept in the dark.

Rod Dreher, of whom I owe the hat tip to for reporting this story on his blog says:

Trust him? No. It’s not about Obama personally; Congress gave fast-track authority to Bill Clinton, and to George W. Bush. But the House Democrats who oppose this — and the overwhelming majority of the opponents are Dems — say. Establishment Republicans tend to support fast-track authority, but some Tea Partiers are standing with the Dems.

[….]

I’m willing to hear the counterarguments, but in general, I’m not in favor of giving this or any president the authority to approve something so enormous and consequential without Congress even seeing it. I could be wrong, but it seems that we’ve had enough trusting political and business elites always to operate in the best interests of the American people.

I feel the same way; this is not about Obama personally. However, it is about policies that undermine the sovereignty of the United States of America and literally it is about policies that put the screws to the American worker. We have enough “free trade” deals in this Country as it is; and they are quite literally draining this Country of its GDP. People want to know why there are no jobs in this Country? This is why! Because crony capitalists and the political elites who protect them; would rather manufacture products overseas on the cheap, instead of giving an American worker a living wage.

This is something that we have to stop and reverse at all costs, if we are ever going to be able to put America back as the manufacturing mecca that it once was.

From the “You gotta be kidding me” file: House just voted on 2 bills that would undercut new financial regulations

This one somehow snuck past me.

I happen to read on Populist Jim Hightower’s website about this one here and I went and looked it up and sure enough; there it was in black and white:

The story:

WASHINGTON –– To Wall Street, this town might seem like enemy territory. But even as federal regulators and prosecutors extract multibillion-dollar penalties from the nation’s biggest banks, Wall Street can rely on at least one ally here: the House of Representatives.

The House is scheduled to vote on two bills this week that would undercut new financial regulations and hand Wall Street a victory. The legislation has garnered broad bipartisan support in the House, even after lawmakers learned that Citigroup lobbyists helped write one of the bills, which would exempt a wide array of derivatives trading from new regulation.

The bills are part of a broader campaign in the House, among Republicans and business-friendly Democrats, to roll back elements of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the most comprehensive regulatory overhaul since the Depression. Of 10 recent bills that alter Dodd-Frank or other financial regulation, six have passed the House this year. This week, if the House approves Citigroup’s legislation and another bill that would delay heightened standards for firms that offer investment advice to retirees, the tally would rise to eight.

Both the Treasury Department and consumer groups have urged lawmakers to reject the bills, warning that they could leave the nation vulnerable again to excessive financial risk taking. The House proposals stand little chance of becoming law, having received a much chillier reception in the Senate and at the White Ho

via House, Set to Vote on 2 Bills, Is Seen as an Ally of Wall St. – NYTimes.com.

You believe those greedy bastards? Jim Hightower is not amused and rightly so:

Audio:

[podcast]

Partial Quote:

On the day before Halloween, the ethically-challenged members of our lobbyist-haunted House of Representatives did a perverse imitation of “Profiles in Courage,” turning that body into “Profiles in Spinelessness.”

In particular, they cravenly caved in to an outrageous and dangerous demand by Wall Street whiners. Such financial powerhouses as Citigroup just hate having their profiteering recklessness restrained by the regulatory reforms passed after their 2008 financial meltdown. Even though the shockwaves from that Wall Street collapse continue to devastate America’s middle class, the banking elite have completely recovered – including recovering their swaggering arrogance and ability to sway money-hungry congress critters with rich campaign donations. — Read the rest at Jim Hightower’s site

I am shocked that more Conservatives are not swinging from the trees on this one here! To their credit, there are some Democrat Party house members that are opposed to this bill and rightly so. This is the same idiotic crap that brought down the stock market and killed our economy; thank goodness there is some semblance of sanity up on the hill.

Sure enough the Bill passed the house, But it is not expected to make it through the Senate and the White House has said that they would veto the thing, if it made it to the President’s desk. Which in this instance is a very good thing. However, this is not the point. What is the point is this: Those same bastards who caused the great meltdown of 2008, are now lobbying our Government to put things back as they were, so that this sort of thing could happy again. That my friends is enough to make an economic populist, like myself, to want to bite a nail in two! 😡

The people that caused the Wall Street meltdown and downturn in our economy ought to be brought up on treason charges, and lined up against a wall and shot! 😡 But, instead, they are trying to buy their way back to lawlessness. This my friends, is an outrage.

Jobs? What Jobs?!?!

(H/T Insty)

Saith Megan McArdle:

The unemployment rate has fallen, but keep the cork in the champagne bottles: it’s falling because people are just giving up looking for work. The share of the population that is either working, or looking for work, has fallen to a 35-year low. The economy created just 169,000 jobs last month, barely more than we need to keep up with population growth. It’s nowhere near enough to absorb the people who have been out of work for months or years — what Karl Marx called the reserve army of the unemployed. No wonder fast-food workers are demonstrating for higher wages; jobs designed as supplementary income for kids, or housewives, are now being taken by breadwinners who can’t find anything else.. . .

Here’s the really bad news: The weak economy may be accelerating the rate at which older workers exit the labor market. Thanks to changes in Social Security benefits (and the entry of women into the workforce), labor force participation rates among those over 55 have been trending upwards since the 1990s. But since the recession, that progress has plateaued. Older workers are actually less likely to be out of work than their younger counterparts (probably in part because they’re clinging to jobs in order to make up big losses in their retirement accounts). But if they do end up out of work, they have a much more difficult time finding new jobs.

That doesn’t just bode ill for the present; it also promises lower growth for the future. There is no ray of sunshine to be found in this jobs report. The best thing you can say about it is that it wasn’t worse.

Fun part is, we got three more years of this crap. 🙄

Of course, it’s pretty damned hard to get even get a job; when you have racist blacks accusing whites of racism and making up stories to get you fired —– and have companies afraid of lawsuits.  Something that I know all about. 😡

 

So, why did gold crash?

I am not an expert on the subject, but I think here might be a good reason as to why:

Who killed the gold?

 

 

In the wake of gold prices cratering in recent days, more than a few prominent experts have already started pinning the blame on Western central banks — especially the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB). According to numerous analysts, the central bankers are desperate to salvage their fiat currencies and eliminate competition as “monetary authorities” continue to create ever-greater quantities of euros and dollars out of thin air.

Some experts, whistle-blowers, traders, and former officials say the Fed dumped as much as 400 or even 500 tons of “paper gold” on the market — metals that it might not even have — as part of a naked short sale aimed at driving down the prices. Other analysts, especially among the establishment, pointed to the ECB chief’s recent suggestion that struggling European authorities in countries such as Cyprus would have to sell their precious metals to keep receiving bailouts

via After Gold Crash, Experts Point to Central Bank Manipulation.

I do not really want to veer into Alex Jones territory; but it does seem interesting that gold plunges, there’s an attack and the stock market dives too. The events might not be related; but it sure does look a bit suspect to me.

Oh yeah, it’s a nightmare alright

I have one thing to say about this below — Welcome to my world.

The Story:

Close your eyes and picture the scariest thing you can think of. Maybe it’s a giant spider or a giant Stay Puft marshmallow man or something that’s not even giant at all. Well, whatever it is, I guarantee it’s not nearly as scary as the real scariest thing in the world. That’s long-term unemployment.

There are two labor markets nowadays. There’s the market for people who have been out of work for less than six months, and the market for people who have been out of work longer. The former is working pretty normally, and the latter is horribly dysfunctional. That was the conclusion of recent research I highlighted a few months ago by Rand Ghayad, a visiting scholar at the Boston Fed and a PhD candidate in economics at Northeastern University, and William Dickens, a professor of economics at Northeastern University, that looked at Beveridge curves for different ages, industries, and education levels to see who the recovery is leaving behind.

via The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment – Matthew O’Brien – The Atlantic.

I have been unemployed for 8 solid years. Now, some of that, is my fault. I got into some of that HERE, when I wrote about my job hunting.  But, some of it; is simply the bad economy here in Michigan and as of 2008; the entire Country.

One part that I quibble with on this piece, is this here:

It’s time for the government to start hiring the long-term unemployed. Or, at the least, start giving employers tax incentives to hire the long-term unemployed. The worst possible outcome for all of us is if the long-term unemployed become unemployable. That would permanently reduce our productive capacity.

We can do better, and we need to start doing so now. We can’t afford long-term thinking in either the short or the long-term.

Okay, let me break this down here:

  1. Our Government is broke. They hardly can afford the people that they have now! They are having to cut hours and staff to stay afloat. So, that is out. 
  2. As for the tax incentives; I just do not think that incentives would even remotely work. What the employers would do, is hire the people; declare it on their taxes and then turn around and let the people or fire them for silly reasons.

What will work is a strongly worded piece of legislation that would make it illegal for employers to discriminate against those, who have been unemployed longer than six months and make damned sure the law is enforced to the hilt. With fines and loss of business license being the penalties for the infraction.

Let me clear here; I am not in favor of big Government statism at all; however, there are times, when, because of the actions of crony capitalists, Government has to take action to protect the American people, namely long-term unemployed Americans, like me — from being discriminated against, for the simple crime of not being able to find a job.  My reasons for not being able to get a job in the field that I trained in are explained here.  Yes, I whacked a pole, trying to make a turn out of a parking lot; that was in 2003. I should have been able to find work with a trucking company locally or at least regionally. I have not, why? Because no one locally or regionally is hiring, outside a big company around here, which is notorious for screwing its employees.

Again, I agree with what this man is saying is this article; I simply just do not believe his solutions are the right ones.