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I just hold one party more responsible than the other.

And that is why you failed...

I hold Reagan in high regard.

He is still the best president of my lifetime.

He wanted to do so much more and was a real conservative who could articulate conservative principles.

But as anyone, he was far from perfect.

The government is merely a reflection of the people who put them in office. You cannot be angry at the politicians. Nothing will change until it must.
Play the game.
Obama now will blame the Congress (read that Republicans) if there is a downturn in the recovery. Oh, how he plays the game well. He sits in the catbird seat with a cheshire grin.
Thank the school system for churning out voters that can't do math.

Man the lifeboats.

If you believe the numbers are being fudged by the government then why do you also believe that Obama’s chances for reelection are better? An unemployed person still gets to cast a vote whether he gave up looking for employment or not. If you believe the economy is the biggest issue in this election said unemployed person isn’t going to vote for the same. The lower the % unemployed heads(due to fudging of numbers), the larger the # of unemployed (the truth), the greater resentment at the current administration.

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I hold Reagan in high regard.

Wow. That is amazing, considering that it is Reagan who signed the law that allowed Social Security funds to be raided for the benefit of the general federal budget (and replaced with IOUs), and it was during Reagan's tenure that this whole bull**** of the increase in "debt in the system" outpaces the actual economic growth in the system (GDP). KD has been over this a thousand times. Since learning these factoids, I hold Reagan with much less regard than before.

I apologize in advance if this is a stupid question...

Someone upthread brought this up, and I haven't seen any explanation yet. There's a bit in the report as follows (page 6, tables on page 7):

"In accordance with usual practice, BLS will not revise the official household survey estimates for
December 2011 and earlier months. To show the impact of the population adjustment, however,
differences in selected December 2011 labor force series based on the old and new population estimates
are shown in table B.
The adjustment increased the estimated size of the civilian noninstitutional population in December by
1,510,000, the civilian labor force by 258,000, employment by 216,000, unemployment by 42,000, and
persons not in the labor force by 1,252,000. Although the total unemployment rate was unaffected, the
labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio were each reduced by 0.3 percentage
point. This was because the population increase was primarily among persons 55 and older and, to a
lesser degree, persons 16 to 24 years of age. Both these age groups have lower levels of labor force
participation than the general population."

On table C then, they're claiming that the not-in-labor-force was actually REDUCED by 75k (for the month) (instead of increased by 1177K), and now there are a couple places laughing at ZH about it.

My read is that the NILF didn't actually "jump", as those people have been here all along but not counted, maybe? The %-employed number is still very bad, of course. Would this affect the y-o-y chart that Gen had? (the red line)

Yeh, well people like Wis only care about political affiliations. They care nothing for the facts. Easily blinded by words and always making excuses, and otherwise being an apologist, for their bad actions.

Not really. The issue isn't there however, and the revisions don't matter, as I use NSA numbers which aren't revised.

The revisions are put on the "seasonally adjusted" figures, which is one reason I don't use them - you wind up having to go back and revise months (or even a year or more!) of previous charts and views when it happens, and that's bull****.

So I use actual counts. A count is a count is a count.

Blah blah blah blah /rolls eyes

Sorry, Reagan was great and loved.

Actually that is what your hacksterism sounded like to me.

This is the garbage the majority see.

Recovery is gathering speed, jobs data confirm
By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer

The U.S. economy is like a flywheel: It takes a lot to get it going. Once it starts moving, it can pick up speed pretty quickly.

To see why, look no further than Friday’s jobs report, which offered convincing evidence that the U.S. recovery is finally gaining momentum.

http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20....

Reagan also greatly increased the drug war, among other things.

From Calculated Risk:

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/0....

Quote:

Some readers sent me a link to some terrible analysis that argued over 1 million people left the labor force in January. I pointed out the error. Apparently Rick Santelli at CNBC made the same mistake and reads the wrong blogs!

The Bonddad blog points out the error: No Rick Santelli and Zero Hedge, One Million People Did Not Drop Out of the Labor Force Last Month (CR note: I never read zero).

This does bring up an important point: The BLS updated the population estimates today based on the 2010 Census. I mentioned this in the preview yesterday and in the posts this morning. For whatever reason, the Census Bureau doesn't go back and revise the earlier population estimates, but they do provide analysis of the changes in several key numbers if the population estimate hadn't been changed.

Below is the table from the BLS:

With the 2010 population controls, the "not in labor force" appeared to have increased by 1.2 million in January, and the working age population jumped 1.7 million. That didn't happen last month; the numbers changed because of the new population estimate. This does suggests there are 1.2 million more people out of the labor force than we originally thought, but that is because the working age population is larger than previously estimated.

As the BLS points out, without the population change the "not in labor force" actually declined.

A couple other key points:
1) The decline in the participation rate was entirely due to the population change.
2) The employment-population ration would have increased 0.3 (good news) without the population change.

Go to the link for the Table from the BLS.

I agree with CR's analysis. I think the employment situation is getting better. I can see the signs of improvement in the economy everywhere I go. I started to see things pick up in around mid 2010 but now its like it's going into overdrive.

I have never heard Rush go into such detail using numbers from the BLS.

He been going on and on in an effort to get people to understand how unreliable the reported unemployment numbers are.

"There isn't job creation going on....it just isn't happening"

That's because he now reads ZH and puts it into his workflow.
Last 2 days in a row he attributes these rants to ZH articles.

We should bombard his phone lines with market-ticker.org (KD beat ZH to the net anyway didn't he?Exclaim they should go with the Original Recipe if thats the case).
Make it the new baba-booey

As far as I know TD or anyone from ZH doesn't do anything
in meatspace.
Lets get KD on there.

Wait, so the employment situation is getting better, it was just a lot worse than we thought all along?

Read the ticker on this I just posted.

Short form: The "oh it's really better" calls are WRONG and giant FAIL.

You missed a few 2011s when updating your copyright notices in the graphs.

Phew!…. Well we finally got the correct Matrix program loaded! …..that was too close…..a lot of our subjects were spontaneously waking……Agent Liesman, stand by with the 0% unemployed…90% participation rate program…..we’ll need to run it prior to the ‘US election’ sub-routine…..and let’s ramp up the mix with…‘Call of Duty – Modern warfare 6 – Yes we can Iran!!’…….It’s always kept the subjects safely asleep in the past. Incidentally, regarding the ‘US election’, I’m of the view that the candidate avatars are too wooden and dated ….let’s take 25 years off each of them and increase their energy levels by 30%. Finally, I know some of you are concerned in relation to the malfunctioning ‘European servers’…….I agree those scenarios are becoming steadily more ridiculous and unbelievable …..even for our subjects…..the cognitive dissonance could cause them to awaken. I think we should replace the servers and then restore from an earlier backup…….any dissenters?…..Very well….let’s get on with it…..

"Pennsylvania's individual taxes collected were *down*; not up. That means withholding (and employemnt) is *down*; which means either less people working, less overtime or pay cuts; perhaps all three."

There is a 4th way...

SYSTEM D: Working plenty, making/doing valuable things people want, paying cash for the supplies and getting cash for payment. Formerly: "The Black Market", now the only remaining "free" market.

For many, money for rent and some food comes from welfare agencies or GF's on welfare, while everyone helps take care of children, makes sure people eat, and do off-books labor or material production. The "big score" for many a 30-something person is to finally become officially declared permanently disabled by TPTB, and start feeding at the economic trough of "the needy" (which pays about $14K a year in cash and prizes, which can be maximized as a better way to get through school without debt than working). It's nauseating to think that only manipulative psychopaths at the top and bottom have a pretty good chance of doing what they want while everyone else is looking through layers of cage/bars/land-mines/tangle-foot/razor-wire/silent-Doberman-guard-dog-runs at a promised land beyond.

Liars survive, while tellers of the truth are sacrificed. These are times to test men.

I was screwing around at the FRED site again and I'll be damned. Even the BS UE rate they spew forth is BS. It's SA just like anything else and there's an NSA version of it that I hadn't noticed before. I double checked it against the numbers for the last few months at the Bureau of Bull**** Statistics and the released numbers match.

The numbers released by the BBS followed by the NSA numbers I found.

November - 8.7/8.2
December - 8.5/8.3
January - 8.3/8.8

I mean, it's not like I'm surprised but criminy. I actually almost laughed just because there's even more BS behind the BS.

So is the Calculated Risk article totally inaccurate or are they correct?
As the market only ramped further in to the close I presume the points they make are correct and Karls, Ricks, Zero's analysis was incorrect? Totally confused and feeling like an idiot as the market zooms up yet again.
Everyone I know just tells me I got it wrong for the last four years!
Luckily I have also been running a long book for that period so the financial pain has been offset.

One thing I caught myself doing is mixing apples and oranges. I think it t fair to say, thanks to Karl and similar sites, we know a crash is coming to the macro financial/economic system.

I fell into the trap that ALL economic data would continue to trend in a bad direction, including the employment rate. Then it dawned on me, many of those indicators are independent of what is coming. Back before and during the Great Depression there were periods of time where SOME economic data trended in a good direction, only to later be pulled in the bad direction as the macro pressures continued.

Employment data may very well improve in the near future (even without the government lying). It does not change the long game at all. It only makes uninformed folks think we are permanently on the upswing and the future looks bright again. You can bet the MSM will sell this hard for their man.

It also makes it harder to share our belief the long term game is still very bad. Any mention of what is to come will be met with, "you are full of it, look around, things are getting better."

TPTB and the MSM will do everything in the power to keep J6P from knowing the long game.

So my plan has not changed, stay prepared for the long game and avoid dropping my guard based on improving micro economic trends. As Karl has laid out some many times, math does not lie. Momentary improvements do not change the end game.

Jubber, read my follow-up article.

Well every news channel hasn't changed their mind over the weekend that these figures were just outstanding, no mention whatsoever that they may be misleading.