And we were just getting started in the last thread! 
But Jamie Diamond said JPMC was doing great.
Societies commit suicide when they pay more attention to made up stuff than reality.
And we were just getting started in the last thread!
More jobs, please. No jobs, no incomes, no spending.
Ahhh yes Easter week. ~670,000 when holiday adjusted.
Has anyone else noticed the upward revisions in this initial claims series for the last few weeks? Any opinions on what will happen with this number?
------------------------------------
"I am disrespctful to dirt!"
For how long unemployment benefits runs for an individual ?
If this is 6 month we should start see people dropping off from continued claims - not because they found jobs
good! I can end my self imposed exile is Asia and return home to a job?
Unemployment is now 33 weeks, minimum.
Four day week? I'm sure they adjust for this. Very sure. Green shoots!
And the home starts number declining will be spun as good news, because we don't need the houses.
And GGP going bk is good news, since it shows failure is still an option.
Geez.
from a dangling thread....
GDD9000
having spent a few years over here inc. China I don't trust numbers that come out of Beijing, Hanoi, Phnom Penh at all... I go with Reagan on this, "trust but verify"...
as a former fixed income analyst in the late 80s at Solly (I followed the top 100 banks... ah yes, the days of Glass Steagall...) I also was required to do analysis on Japanese banks 6 of which were of the top 10 largest banks in the world... all AAA credits (Morgan Guaranty was our sole AAA) ... the problem was with their accounting system, they were able to hold non-performing loans off balance sheet, if memory serves... their system had nearly zero transparency... and you know how that played out! remember who bought the record purchase of that van Gogh for 88 million? or vastly overpaid for Bridgestone or Rock Center...
just sayin' ... I don't want to damn an entire race but there is a remarkable tendency to be secretive in business and in personal life in Asia...
dCD wrote on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 6:11am.
good! I can end my self imposed exile is Asia and return home to a job?
You can have one of the jobs all those National Guardsmen won't need as BHO settles them in for the long haul in the mid-east.
CR made an opposie:
"- and so far the four-week average is only off 8,500 from the peak of 659,500 last week. "
The revised for last week is 663,000. Not that big, except for the 3,500 people who lost jobs.
Starts being greater than zero being bad is dependent on the rate of inventory draw down and the lead time to completion of the project.
Unfortunately we don't have reliable numbers for the actual inventory level due to the "shadow inventory" effect of banks holding foreclosed properties and not putting them onto the market. We can expect that the inventory level is "really" higher than it is reported, but ...
But Jamie Diamond said JPMC was doing great.
Societies commit suicide when they pay more attention to made up stuff than reality.
Can American unemployment be caused by foreign factors as well, such as world wage prices.
Has the labor market become global? Fiat thinks Chrysler should think that way.
Wouldn't that wage deflation cause inflation (or instead the opposite?) on prices of durable goods, which everybody has been looking for, in order to make house prices higher?
Even being the most productive workers in the world (because of the use of technology) can Americans keep making the same rates when this crisis is over?
Are we global yet, or just partially?
I only ask because I don't know, but the scenario looks possible.
Sorry CR,
Hadn't finished my morning cup of joe.
Back to reading....
Since there are currently 28 users and 469 guests online, we could have Guest1 thru Guest469 as well?
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Black 
Ranch
Don't you worry.. those mercantile douchebags have been getting it in the balls for some time (japan) and will continue getting it in the balls (the sinosphere)
Having said that, our banksters are fraudulent.. in a different way. So it is ponzi scheme control freak ivy leaguers who believe in their racial superiority versus secretive underhanded mercantile a**holes who believe in their cultural superiority.
// I don't want to damn an entire race but there is a remarkable tendency to be secretive in business and in personal life in Asia...//
When I was on unemployment I had just started my first extension, and I'd had a stretch of temp employment. I'm doing contract work now (somewhat fits and starts because I'm reliant on information from other employed units who are ... uncooperative at best).
In MA, basic benefits are 30 weeks, but when there is a federal extension in effect, the basic is 26 weeks. The first extension is 20 weeks, the second extension is 13 weeks. Total 59 weeks, barring additional extensions.
Guest1 is a real member, because someone registered Guest and Anonymous on disposable email accounts, I think.
Given the securization of home mortgages, credit card debt, and what-all (toll fees, girl scout cookie sales,...) is it possible that unemployment could become a leading indicator instead of a lagging indicator?
It sure would ne nice if they'd report how many people went off the rolls due to having found a job, and how many due to their benefits having run out. Surely when someone goes off the rolls they must know why.
"Securitization". (But it's a blog. Speling? Hoo kares?!)
spelling is made bad by FFS 
I heard that Green Shoots under the fingernails was how the Pied Pipers of politics tortured their base of gun loving almighty figure fearing losers into action, vis a vis a propaganda that would have made little Joe Goebbels blush.
Apparently this was the very same torture technique that got them so much valuable information out of their clients @ the hotel Gitmo...
The problem is that we have all these new words to reflect the current load of bullshit in the finance sector, and none of them are in our spell check files yet.
FAS and FAZ are both down over 60% year to date. Glad I got off that shit.
Our Congress and Presidential Administration have become fiction writers and tellers of tall tales to deceive you into thinking they have things under control. They want you to believe that the stock market has just bottomed, and that we will only have a recession, with recovery close at hand, while the dollar rebounds and the bond market is saved, even as they pump trillions of dollars into our economy via monetization of treasury bonds. If you believe so much as a single word emanating from corrupt Wall Street shills and government officials, then you are just plain dumb.
sorry, OT test ...
"Dimon says J.P. Morgan won't take part in PPIP program"
I hope JP Morgan moves away from any Federal Reserve program as well. I think this is a good move for both tax payers and JP Morgan.
we should get Elmo & Kermit smileys BTW....
NSA claims with exception of last year just about always go down 50-60K in the 1st week of april. this year NSA went down by only about 20K. but the statisticians decided to play ball again and print a 50k fall. just when the people started worrying about the sustainability of "greenshoot" baffoonery US govt pulls out yet another rabbit.
Is there any financial instrument in the world, not interconnected to any others, something that stands alone, far from the maddening crowd?
I haven't read anywhere of the impact of the Easter holiday on initial claims. Has anyone seen any data on an Easter dip in claims in prior years. The market's all excited about this, but I have seen no mention of this potential cause of the dip.
This was linked earlier by another, more industrious person. Great interactive graph........even on-thread.....
An interactive map of vanishing employment across the country.
http://www.slate.com/id/2216238/
- - - - -
Black Ranch
The unrevised figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims for the week ending April 4 was 654, 000.
This has been adjusted to 663,000 in this week's report.
AMF: Piggybank??
If we can't blame Easter for dipping sales and employment numbers, there's always Easter Island.
Yoringe,
I was talking about the contents, not the receptacle.
......and the number of unemployed falling off the back of the truck are included where?
- - - - -
Black Ranch
Paulo - I see numbers like this and it persuades me that while the government's only real way out of our mess is inflation, they are unequal to the task, even with the presses running full tilt. Wage deflation is occurring, via unemployment. I suspect that in the nearer term (<24 months) Jas is right about treasuries being a better place to park value than equities.
I think the labor market is global, and that is entirely wage deflationary for American labor. The problem for everyone else is, you have to pump money back into American labor if you're going to sell to the American consumer.
Best case scenario is that the main st. "real" economy stabilizes at some new low equilibrium, and sheds the parasitic finance economy. Obama & Co can try to push on a string all they like, but unless and until you have wage inflation - increased hiring or wages - and put some blood back into the consumer, nothing is going to happen.
My sister-in-law worked for 14 years for one of the biggest law firms in the state where she lives. She got laid off a few months ago and has applied to hundreds of firms (she understands that her salary could be halved-compared to her previous job), but nobody's interested whatsoever.
Eerie, ain't it?
Czarist Bonds-T-Bonds
same-same
'because someone registered Guest and Anonymous'
However, in a glorious victory of the positive power of teabagging, Anonymous was returned to its intended role, as foreseen by the founders.
Best case scenario is that the main st. "real" economy stabilizes at some new low equilibrium, and sheds the parasitic finance economy.
Comrade Scott, +1
Congress will take notice when lawyers get laid off. I hope those lawyers are shovel ready. I feel bad for the support staff, though.
Stewart & Colbert exposed the sham-wows behind team teabaggery, most effectively last night.
From pervious thread:
Cinco-X (member) wrote on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 9:47am.
Byzantine_Ruins (member) wrote on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 9:10am. Wrote:
"Gee I guess all those people who said "don't give yourself powers you wouldn't enjoy if Hillary Clinton had them" maybe had a point. Wonder when I'm gonna hear a "wow we were stupid to start playing the politics of criminalizing political opposition in earnest" out of the Right.
Oh right, never. "
I heard about wire tapping folks that communicated directly with terrorists and all of the liberal complaints about that, but as far as this database you describe, I don't think I ever heard of it. As for putting folks on lists, that goes WAAAAAAAAY back. Remember the lists of Communists from the '30s compiled by JEH that was used by McCarthy in the '50s? My Dad (in the '60s) always warned me about organizations like the KKK, and never to get involved unless you wanted to be on a FBI list of "subversive groups", and then there were the Clintons in the '90s who had the FBI files on most Republican politicians in DC stacked up in the Whitehouse basement in the hands of a known political operative back '90s. Careful where you aim that paint gun Wink
BTW, this leads to a humorous aside:
Back in the '60s when we lived in Alabama, my folks moved from Birmingham to a small town south of there in large part because of the riots that followed the church bombing that killed those little girls (that is NOT the humorous part). My Dad took a job teaching in a small backwoods town where there was this older teacher who was convinced that there was a communist cell in this town of perhaps 100 people at most.
There were also some ruffians in school who were constantly pulling pranks like flipping my Dads VW upside down after school was out and the teachers were still inside making lesson plans, grading papers, etc. In any event, this older teacher would rant about the communists, and insist that these kids were involved, and generally act like a buffoon, and so the kids decides to pull a prank on him.
They signed him up for the Russian magazine Soviet Life and the teaching of Mao Tse Tung, etc., all of which were free during the Cold War, and then proceeded to notify the FBI that this old guy was a communist. The FBI sent 4 agents down to this town, and they completely filled the little boarding house tht was the only place to stay for miles around. They began interviewing people, and apparently interrogated the old teacher about the accusations (remember, this was the '60s, and there had been a major bombing, and both the KKK and the Black Panthers were active in the area).
In the end, the kids bragged about it to their friends, he FBI caught on, and then made them pee-their-pants by threatening to try them for mail fraud (a Federal crime), but in the end, it issue was just dropped. I always enjoy hearing my Dad tell that story.
McCarthy had no list during his famous speech about having a list.
"McCarthy had no list during his famous speech about having a list. "
Perhaps, but as I stated, J Edgar Hoover DID have lists, along with files to back them up.
Tail-Gunner Joe (Hannity's dad?) did have a numbered bottle of Heinz handy, though.
was hoover the Guy who read the files dressed in pink womens clothes?? 
If you count the number of illegals working jobs that Americans will do, the total unemployment number is easily double...so who cares about 8,500? BHO is pushing for amnesty, so if you think it's bad now, you haven't seen anything yet.
It turned out that what was thought to be just a General Growth, was highly cancerous.
Anybody going to the funeral?
AMF: we are all at the Funeral by default of living in interesting times
Green shoots. Makes me think of taco bell.
"The Default World" is what participants @ Burning Man, call that onerous 51 week period between burns.
"We learned our lesson" about borrowing from the government", Jamie Dimon said, Nothing like sucking on the hind-teat of the TARP baby. "We could pay it back tomorrow", Dimon also said.
Black Star Ranch was as well quoted that they consistently grow "monster beefstake 3-feet long tomatoes that last for months without refrigeration " - perfect "slicers" for sandwiches - Sweet & Juicy & Forever Good!
(Some of the above information may not represent the facts directly involved, but are used for the sole purpose of advancing journalistic integrity and license while achieving the required poetic chendra thru healthier available means.)
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Black Ranch
Don't know if this was posted - I have to get some work done today & can't wade through comments:
Looks like BBY following CC down the drain. Hoocoodanode.
Lots of bad news out there today: http://www.layoffdaily.com/
I have no idea what's propping up the Dow, other than terror that the reality is that the bottom is about 4000-5000 points below where we are right now.
I have to go milk.....later.........
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Black Ranch
Elmo in the house
This has the feeling of a two-run homer when you're trailing by 12 runs in the ninth inning:
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama is calling for the country to move swiftly to a system of high-speed rail travel, saying it will relieve congestion, help clean the air and save on energy.
Appearing with Vice President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Thursday, Obama said the country cannot afford not to invest in a major upgrade to rail travel. He said he understands it necessarily will be "a long-term project" but said the time to start is now.
Obama said that "this is not some fanciful, pie-in-the-sky vision of the future. It's happening now. The problem is, it's happening elsewhere." He cited superior high-speed rail travel in countries like China, Japan, France and Spain.
Obama said the rail upgrades are critically needed because the nation's highways and airways "are clogged with traffic."
CNBC SWEATS 'OBAMA-BASHING'
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04162009/gossip/pagesix/cnbc_sweats_obama_ba...
"THE top suits and some of the on-air talent at CNBC were recently ordered to a top-secret meeting with General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt and NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker to discuss whether they've turned into the President Obama-bashing network,.
..."
OT , but telling:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8001254.stm
thats the Country who didnt invest in Rail in decades !!!!! Leadership you are happy to follow..
another good OT:
Everybody under 25 has been raised on a steady diet of technology which has only improved and fallen in price all of their lives...
There are vast bastions of kids out there that have $100 cell phone bills every month. Soon their parents won't be able to afford it.
In lieu of not having money to pay for technology, I suspect that kids will soon start being anti-tech, a defense-mechanism of sorts.
"was hoover the Guy who read the files dressed in pink womens clothes?? Innocent"
Yup-
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"was hoover the Guy who read the files dressed in pink womens clothes?? Innocent"
Yup-
Except red was his color - not pink.
"This has the feeling of a two-run homer when you're trailing by 12 runs in the ninth inning:"
So, you're calling the start of a rally?
Did someone say monorail?
Lyle Lanley: Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail!
What'd I say?
Ned Flanders: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
Patty+Selma: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: That's right! Monorail!
[crowd chants `Monorail' softly and rhythmically]
Miss Hoover: I hear those things are awfully loud…
Lyle Lanley: It glides as softly as a cloud.
Apu: Is there a chance the track could bend?
Lyle Lanley: Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
Barney: What about us brain-dead slobs?
Lyle Lanley: You'll be given cushy jobs.
Abe: Were you sent here by the devil?
Lyle Lanley: No, good sir, I'm on the level.
Wiggum: The ring came off my pudding can.
Lyle Lanley: Take my pen knife, my good man.
I swear it's Springfield's only choice…
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: Once again…
All: Monorail!
Marge: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken…
Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!
Or is it, more appropriately, an Obamarail?
Oh right, never. "
I heard about wire tapping folks that communicated directly with terrorists and all of the liberal complaints about that, but as far as this database you describe, I don't think I ever heard of it.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/06/fbi_terror_watc.html
They are working on an MOU so they can actually get their database straight. And that is just the big one, there are a plethora of others, most of which are erratically maintained and copied back and forth without particular regard for veracity.
Anyway, you're engaging in a rhetorical retreat into specificity. You'll deflect into debating the technical aspects and history of any specific list mention to try to contextualize it in part of a broader policy that deflects specific blame, sorta like how you carried things off into a Hoover-era anecdote -- like there's anything wholesome or desirable about the Hoover era. Did we have all these public policy reforms because of abuses from that era?
Not the first Republican insect mouthpart I've heard chirp, not even the first educated and articulate apologist.
As for putting folks on lists, that goes WAAAAAAAAY back.
So do slavery, tax farming and the practice of pederasty. Their antiquity does not recommend these practices. Proscription shares this trait.
Remember the lists of Communists from the '30s compiled by JEH that was used by McCarthy in the '50s?
They were used for roundups before the 30s.
My Dad (in the '60s) always warned me about organizations like the KKK, and never to get involved unless you wanted to be on a FBI list of "subversive groups"
And wasn't that smart policy. They got a "tune out" society of people too smart to get involved! Just what the vested interests wanted! Now you leap to defend it! Guess how you got to this impasse? Follow your footsteps back into the past.
and then there were the Clintons in the '90s who had the FBI files on most Republican politicians in DC stacked up in the Whitehouse basement in the hands of a known political operative back '90s. Careful where you aim that paint gun Wink
Yeah, that's me, ardent Clintonite. However, don't think that invoking Billary clears you of the behavior after 9/11. It will neither be forgotten or forgiven that anyone who spoke out against the Executive was called a traitor or that the Executive privately declared himself king due to exigent circumstances.
More American manufacturing may go this direction to avoid the shackles of unions.
http://www.freep.com/article/20090416/BUSINESS01/904160419/1014/BUSINESS...
this looks horrible but i don't hear this from the media.... what gives?
Surely "they" must know? Only if someone tells them. If you were getting benefits, and they ran out, would you call up the unemployment office and tell them what you were doing? Would someone at the unemployment office enter your name into a database? The answer is no to both. If someone gets rehired, they do show up in the state employment data, but only when their employer does the quarterly unemployment tax filing.
AMF: "My sister-in-law ... applied to hundreds of firms ... but nobody's interested whatsoever."
Labor oversupply at every regional to international level, and in most occupations. Here in the "Silicon Valley" I see a lot of apparent fishing by companies for that elusive Mr/Ms Right, and/or takers with excellent credentials but willing to accept substantial wage discounts. And in the (professional!) occupations where they have figured out how to do that, progressed conversion to a contract/temp workforce.
When the same positions are not filled for extended periods, or keep being reposted possibly because of high turnover, my only conclusion can be that the work/projects are not essential to the company's core operations or bottom line.
I see this in my own workplace, many supposedly-important projects keep being put on the backburner. My rationalization is the management figures that they won't get incremental revenue out of them, which may well be the case, our business features "volume purchasing agreements" heavily, i.e. our big customers essentially get a "buffet" deal plus attached services, and attribution to individual products is negotiated internally by applying various formulas to the purchased product mix.
To do:
- cut the work week.
- cut wages accordingly.
- reduce standard of living.
- get with the make-work, public transit projects.
- become Sweden.
- enjoy free-time riding trains around and dressing like a hipster.
Can we just hurry this along? Because I really don't see the problem with going quietly into the second tier, first world night. All the hyped up, capitalist junkies can head to the wild wild east, while we'll export some green technology and become a sleepy backwater.
Good point. Has anyone looked at previous weeks containing a Good Friday to see if they were similarly affected?
El Lurko
"- become Sweden'
SWEDEN !! No, become china !! Close OSHA, the EPA, CARB, break the unions ! disband all these do-gooder, enviro-hippies, get rid of the restrictions on business and let the market flourish 
The late 1800's was a boom time for industry, only by returning to that golden age* can we re-capture the industrial high ground.
*note: air quality, life expectancy and the environment may suffer as a consequence
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