By David Stockman
CNBC’s long-running “jobs Friday” fetish is getting downright appalling. Each month the BLS puts out a treasure trove of data on the rich and complex mosaic of the US labor market—-a download that embodies a truly frightening trend of economic failure.Yet the clowns who assemble in its screen boxes to opine on Hampton Pearson’s 30-second summary of the BLS release never have a clue. In their allotted 15 seconds of fame, they merely bloviate about the single dumbed-down number—-the establishment survey jobs print—that is the sum and substance of the coverage.Trained seals would be just as effective: ort! ort! ort!In any event, within seconds the SPX futures are off to the races, flashing the trading algos’ instant take on what the “print” means for one thing alone. Namely, does it portend continued or even more ease at the Fed and a plentitude of juice for Wall Street speculators.Last Friday CNBC inadvertently indicted it own pandering when the winner of its “pick the number” contest hit 142,000 jobs right on the head, making a mockery of the 200-250k consensus range that had issued from the “experts”. The winning viewer’s name was Ronnie Squires, who described himself as “retired” and the owner of a (very) small business through which he occasionally transports unwanted cats and dogs in his pick-up to new out-of-state “homes” for friends. Along the way, he does his own jobs survey:
“I do a lot of traveling around the country and there’s still a lot of folks who say ‘there’s no jobs out there’.
I watch [CNBC] every day and I just don’t see it.
I don’t know if the people on Wall Street are not really getting out and seeing what’s really going on [in America].
When you go to small towns, like I do, and talk to people – people don’t have much confidence in the numbers you hear.“
In a few deft seconds, a “no jobs” nobody who apparently doesn’t actually have one himself, essentially explained the contents of the chart below to his silenced CNBC hosts. Over the course of 170 “jobs Fridays” since mid-2000, the latter have apparently never noticed the single most stunning fact embedded in the monthly BLS report. Namely, that outside of health and education there has not been one net new job created in the American economy since July 2000! Yes, not a single new job—as in none, nein, nichts, nada, zip!
Read the rest here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/09/david-stockman/depression-level-unemployment/
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