Unemployment claims "unexpectedly" rise.

Zebo

Elite Member
Jul 29, 2001
39,398
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Not unexpectedly to me but it's quite amazing heading into biggest shopping season of the year employers are slashing jobs. Talking heads can pump all they want but they can't ignore mathematics of Americans being broke. Spring accounting will be nightmare as cash for cribs runs out and banks can no longer bury thier worthless properties. Prepare.

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The number of Americans filing for initial unemployment insurance rose last week, the government said Thursday. Analysts had expected a decline.

There were 480,000 initial job claims filed in the week ended Dec. 12, up 7,000 from the previous week's revised 473,000, the Labor Department said.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/17/news/economy/jobless_claims/
 

woolfe9999

Diamond Member
Mar 28, 2005
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It's a one week spike in new jobless claims. It isn't any more meaningful than many of the positive statistics we've been seeing recently.

- wolf
 

werepossum

Elite Member
Jul 10, 2006
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Makes me wish for employment as an expert. Must be fun to be continuously surprised at work.
 

EagleKeeper

Discussion Club Moderator<br>Elite Member
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Oct 30, 2000
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Heading into the shopping season,it is only temp help that will be affected in a positive way. The shopping season will have no real impact on other employment stats.

What we may be seeing is the result of the first stimulus jolt phasing out. Funds were dumped into the government for temp work that when completed did not retain long term employment.
 

woolfe9999

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Mar 28, 2005
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What are those positive stats exactly?

Sorry, if you don't read the financial pages on a daily basis like I do, I can't help you. There have been dozens of good and bad macroeconomic stats reported over just the past several months. I don't have any axe to grind in this. Like some people, I am not trying to prove the economy is good or bad, improving or worsening. I am just following the data, in part because I have investments. And my take is that a one week uptick in new unemployment claims is not a terribly significant development, just as a one week downtick wouldn't be either. If you think it means the sky is falling, fine, but be aware that if there's a downtick of similar magnitude next week, or a month from now, you'd be duty bound to interpret that as the best thing since sliced bread or else you'd be logically inconsistent.

- wolf
 

Corn

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Nov 12, 1999
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Sorry, if you don't read the financial pages on a daily basis like I do, I can't help you. There have been dozens of good and bad macroeconomic stats reported over just the past several months. I don't have any axe to grind in this. Like some people, I am not trying to prove the economy is good or bad, improving or worsening. I am just following the data, in part because I have investments. And my take is that a one week uptick in new unemployment claims is not a terribly significant development, just as a one week downtick wouldn't be either. If you think it means the sky is falling, fine, but be aware that if there's a downtick of similar magnitude next week, or a month from now, you'd be duty bound to interpret that as the best thing since sliced bread or else you'd be logically inconsistent.

- wolf

So basically you've got no idea. You should have just answered honestly or disappeared instead of getting played so easily. The "data" say silly lefties are amusing.
 

Specop 007

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2005
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So basically you've got no idea. You should have just answered honestly or disappeared instead of getting played so easily. The "data" say silly lefties are amusing.

Hes right, there are some isolated positive upticks in the economy. The problem is that every minor uptick is hailed as the "End of the Recession!" and every minor downtick is entirely ignored by the MSM.

Hell we've been hearing of the green shoots and end of recession for months now. Next year will be worse at least into Q2. Unemployment may not reflect the full extent of the job losses as temp help isnt reported in the advertised unemployment statistics. Follow U6 for a better idea.

Rest assured there are a few green shoots here and there. But in a scorched field a few green shoots are hardly anything to get a hard on over like the MSM media does.
 

werepossum

Elite Member
Jul 10, 2006
29,873
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Hes right, there are some isolated positive upticks in the economy. The problem is that every minor uptick is hailed as the "End of the Recession!" and every minor downtick is entirely ignored by the MSM.

Hell we've been hearing of the green shoots and end of recession for months now. Next year will be worse at least into Q2. Unemployment may not reflect the full extent of the job losses as temp help isnt reported in the advertised unemployment statistics. Follow U6 for a better idea.

Rest assured there are a few green shoots here and there. But in a scorched field a few green shoots are hardly anything to get a hard on over like the MSM media does.

I dunno, I prefer the media emphasizing the good news even if it's an attempt to help the Democrats, because we all* suffer during a recession like this. And I still hear plenty of doom and gloom, as there's plenty of bad news as well.

* Not including the federal government, obviously. No layoffs or pay cuts there.
 

Modelworks

Lifer
Feb 22, 2007
16,240
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Just wait till employers lay off all those employees they will not need in January when the holiday season is over.
 

Zebo

Elite Member
Jul 29, 2001
39,398
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Sorry, if you don't read the financial pages on a daily basis like I do, I can't help you. There have been dozens of good and bad macroeconomic stats reported over just the past several months. I don't have any axe to grind in this. Like some people, I am not trying to prove the economy is good or bad, improving or worsening. I am just following the data, in part because I have investments. And my take is that a one week uptick in new unemployment claims is not a terribly significant development, just as a one week downtick wouldn't be either. If you think it means the sky is falling, fine, but be aware that if there's a downtick of similar magnitude next week, or a month from now, you'd be duty bound to interpret that as the best thing since sliced bread or else you'd be logically inconsistent.

- wolf

Fair enough I'd just like to point out with Washington DC a problem delayed is a problem solved but really none of the underlying causes of the financial crisis have been solved. We still have deteriorating bank balance sheets. Banks are still loaded with "toxic assets" e.g. people who can't pay. The commercial real estate crisis is just starting. And runaway public debt trying to alleviate it all to no avail, only now everyone except bankers and politicians is a lot poorer. In my book that's not an 'improvement' but actually a much worse situation than before, worse than 2008.

Note that most of the 'improvements' cited by the media are slowdowns in rates of decline. Another intersting point I've noticed is how any "good news" will immediately be spread far and wide, while "other" numbers are automatically subject to heavy scrutiny and low circulation. So the "recovery" is basically 'public relations' campaign and has nothing to do with reality.


In so far as the stock market. Good luck. I've never understood it with it's crazy valuations or investing in items with no cash flow. I don't even have any delusions I can time market no matter how much I read.
 
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woodie1

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2000
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.......

Note that most of the 'improvements' cited by the media are slowdowns in rates of decline. Another intersting point I've noticed is how any "good news" will immediately be spread far and wide, while "other" numbers are automatically subject to heavy scrutiny and low circulation. So the "recovery" is basically 'public relations' campaign and has nothing to do with reality.

...................

It does seem that way. Surely someone can come along and explain away this unusual phenomenon.
 

Acanthus

Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
19,915
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ostif.org

Zebo

Elite Member
Jul 29, 2001
39,398
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81
The jobless recovery doesn't need you.

Interesting you mention that, economist Nouriel Roubini who predicted crash, has said that there are two US economies emerging. One where people that have jobs and businesses that are still viable and on the other hand there are roughly 20 million households who are simply not going to recover ever. Or about 50 million people.
http://www.roubini.com/roubini-moni...faces_the_guillotine_and_goodbye_to_the_bulls

We will become stratified like Mexico, with peasants, serfs, plebeians, begging in the streets while some in the middle class maintain their position and top controls all wealth.

I personally don't put much stock in it understanding Americans will cause enough social disorder to make a system like that untenable for long.
 
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bob4432

Lifer
Sep 6, 2003
11,694
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SOURCE

Prepare For Rebellion, Obama Orders US-Canadian Troops

Kremlin position papers presented to Prime Minister Putin today on his upcoming meeting with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen state that the European-US military alliance has authorized an ‘emergency request’ from President Obama to utilize American and Canadian NATO troops to put down what is expected to be a “rebellion” after the expected January, 2010 ‘declaration of bankruptcy’ by the State of California.

According to these reports, Obama’s fears of rebellion are due to the economic health of California (the United States largest State) after the 3rd largest US State, New York, declared a ‘fiscal emergency’ and refused to release to its cities and towns over $750 Million due them this past week with the Governor of New York, David Paterson, declaring “I can’t say this enough: The state has run out of money.”

New York’s fiscal crisis, however, pales in comparison to California’s, where new economic data points to its expected 5-year budget deficit reaching the staggering amount of over $100 Billion which Russian economists warn will result in budget cuts so steep as to create ‘social chaos’ among this States 36 million citizens.

Reports from the United States are, indeed, confirming the mass movement of military supplies and thousands of Canadian Special Forces Troops to California from the Canadian Forces Base of Petawawa to join their American military counterparts, with ‘secondary’ reports stating that at least 1,000 tanks are massing their too.

Russian Military Analysts are further warning in this report that Obama has decided to implement the feared RAND Corporation (one of the most powerful research arms of the US Military-Industrial-Homeland Security Complex) police state ‘blueprint’ tilted “Stability Police Force for the United States: Justification and Creating U.S. Capabilities” that has been modeled on the Nazi German secret police forces organization Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) meant to ‘control and demoralize’ any opposition to the state.

Even worse for these American people is the legalization process currently embedded in their new health care legislation which will see everyone of them becoming virtual slaves of their government, and as warned about by the Fox News Service in their report titled “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid of Obama’s Latest Big Brother Plan” and which says:

“Under the Democrats’ national health care scheme not only would OPM be charged with overseeing and administering federal employees health care but they will have the added charge of administering civilian federal health care as well. What does that mean? Basically, that Americans will be treated as “civil servants.” Are you starting to see the danger?

The more government seeks to control our lives the more Orwellian it gets. This “big brother” mentality that “government knows best” and that it is their mission to provide cradle to grave “care” of its citizens will doom America as we know it. Under such a system the individual becomes meaningless and the state becomes the entity upon which we are all forced to rely.”

Unfortunately, with or without these Americans succumbing to the loss of their Nation through the establishment of a police state, their fate appears to have already been sealed as new reports are showing that by their continued saving they are failing to provide China with the money needed through the buying of goods to purchase US bonds to keep them afloat, and which has led to the incredible circumstance of the United States, through its Federal Reserve and other financial entities, becoming the largest buyers of their own debt.

Not being seen in all of these dire events by the American people is that their present collapse as an independent Nation was engineered by their own President Obama, who working in concert with the previous President, George Bush, sold them out to Wall Street by packing his administration with banking insiders have, literally, pillaged the entire economic future of the United States for the benefit of their elite classes and, incredibly, supported these once collapsing banks with over $352 Billion in drug money.

And so grave has it become for ordinary Americans that new reports are now showing that in what was once the most powerful Nation on Earth, there now exists an ‘epidemic’ of child hunger and one their fastest growing cities is a tent-town of newly homeless named “Obamaville” in a stark reminder of the thousands of shanty towns named Hoovervilles built during the Great Depression.

For those American people believing their propaganda media reports that a recovery is underway they couldn’t be more mistaken, as newly released data shows that of the millions of jobs lost these past 2 years almost all of them are permanent. And, as always, these people are being kept from knowing the full and brutal truth of their economic collapse with reports also showing that the latest unemployment figures released by the US government were faked.

But to the greatest fears of these Americans should be the newly released information showing that US scientists have perfected, for the first time in history, a new drugless technique to wipe from these people’s minds their very own memories, and as we can read:

“In a scientific experiment that brings to mind the memory-erasing escapade in the 2004 film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” scientists have blocked fearful recollections in human participants, sans drugs. The results challenge the view that our long-term memories are fixed and resistant to change.”

Russian Military Psychologists have long warned that the West’s longest term plan to control their soon to be rebellious populations lie in memory altering techniques such as are being perfected in the United States and due to be deployed through their mass media in radio programmes, television, and movie broadcasts outlets as these Nations past reliance on the drugging of their citizens through mass fluoridation is becoming more and more ineffectual.

Important to note too is that the economic collapse of the United States is just one of the catastrophic dangers they are facing, as this past week the giant plant genetics company Bayer admitted in a US Federal Court that it has been “unable to control the spread of its genetically-engineered organisms despite ‘the best practices’ to stop widespread contamination” and which may very well see the destruction of the American’s ability to feed themselves as these ‘monster plants’ reap their destruction on Nature.

To all of these events, it is not in our knowing if the American people will awaken from their self induced slumber to arise, as they have many times throughout their history, to reclaim for themselves what is now rapidly being stolen from them. But, and if their present actions are a predictor to what they may do in the future, one can only fear for them as they are marched in lockstep towards an abyss they only fail to see because they won’t open their eyes.
 

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
83,948
47,836
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Hes right, there are some isolated positive upticks in the economy. The problem is that every minor uptick is hailed as the "End of the Recession!" and every minor downtick is entirely ignored by the MSM.

Hell we've been hearing of the green shoots and end of recession for months now. Next year will be worse at least into Q2. Unemployment may not reflect the full extent of the job losses as temp help isnt reported in the advertised unemployment statistics. Follow U6 for a better idea.

Rest assured there are a few green shoots here and there. But in a scorched field a few green shoots are hardly anything to get a hard on over like the MSM media does.

I like how 'every minor downtick is entirely ignored by the MSM', when this very thread is based off of a minor downtick reported by the MSM. Ahhh the myth of the librul media lives on!
 

Specop 007

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2005
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I like how 'every minor downtick is entirely ignored by the MSM', when this very thread is based off of a minor downtick reported by the MSM. Ahhh the myth of the librul media lives on!

Yep, they act likes its a damn shock. "Unexpectedly!" Unexpectedly?? To whom may I ask? Oh thats right, to those trying to paint rainbows and sunshine on a cloudy canvas.
 

0marTheZealot

Golden Member
Apr 5, 2004
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I like how 'every minor downtick is entirely ignored by the MSM', when this very thread is based off of a minor downtick reported by the MSM. Ahhh the myth of the librul media lives on!

There's been a lot of mixed messages in the economy, but I'll be damned if I can hear about them in any great detail except on specialist websites. The MSM is more focused on the upbeat news than the downbeat indicators. This is just one of those indicators that you can't ignore. Every single "expert" I hear on the radio says that the economy is showing signs of life again, when the reality is that no one really knows where the economy will go in the next 6 months.
 

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
83,948
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Yep, they act likes its a damn shock. "Unexpectedly!" Unexpectedly?? To whom may I ask? Oh thats right, to those trying to paint rainbows and sunshine on a cloudy canvas.

Well if it weren't a shock then why would they report on it? Do you read newspapers that report obvious news that everyone knows? I like how now you've moved your criticism from 'the librul media never reports on this' to, 'the librul media doesn't report on it in the way I think they should'.

Whatever it takes to preserve your world view.
 

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
83,948
47,836
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There's been a lot of mixed messages in the economy, but I'll be damned if I can hear about them in any great detail except on specialist websites. The MSM is more focused on the upbeat news than the downbeat indicators. This is just one of those indicators that you can't ignore. Every single "expert" I hear on the radio says that the economy is showing signs of life again, when the reality is that no one really knows where the economy will go in the next 6 months.

Well if you want to go with the 'nobody can ever know anything' argument then I don't really know what to say. Since people are curious about where the economy is headed, the newspapers ask the most qualified people to make such a prediction. If you don't like their predictions, don't read them.

The experts say the economy is showing signs of life again because the stock market has rebounded and GDP is increasing. Every single article I read on such a thing goes out of its way to mention how this is only small signs of growth and large problems remain.