How much of this came from the Hurricane? Construction and Utility Jobs? Everything that comes out seems to benefit the status quo. Just an extension of what has been happening over the past year...........

I noticed that Dec 2011 ADP was +293. A lot of seasonal hiring that goes away in January?

39K could EASILY be attributed to Sandy. FEMA was pretty quick with checks and I'm sure lots of insurance money is flowing. Once the 60Billion in relief funds flow, I'm sure there will be an additional visible impact in the jobs numbers.

I'm also guessing that this relief money will actually go to real work being done vs the "shovel ready" farce where lots of cash was allocated but the only construction that seemed to occur was new bank branch offices.

Considering most of the country is migrating from ADP to Quickbooks for payroll in the small business world since it's about 1/10 the price you have to wonder about the ongoing relevance of the ADP models.

Welcome, Mike. Long time no hear from. Congress should think long and hard before allocating $60 billion ****ing dollars for Sandy relief. And Chris Christie can eat ****.

There should be ZERO federal money spent on that.

There's this thing called "insurance" that you can buy to cover disasters. If you didn't, well, then dig into your own wallet.

If you're a city and didn't bother insuring, who's fault is that? You blew the money somewhere else you could have bought the insurance with and now want to suck on everyone else?

**** that.

I'm sure you mean except the flood insurance part since that is to be voted on as well. Those people did pay for insurance. 9 billion of this is for that. It needs to be funded.

Yeah, but Karl, no one knew there was an ocean right there.

NFIP claims should be paid; that's actual insurance. Where did the $9 billion go? If spent those who spent it should be hung by their gonads until dead. If actuarially wrong on their best guess that's a different matter; sometimes you lose in the insurance business, but most of the time you win (which is why the business continues to exist, natch.)

The rest, however, is a pure handout and should NOT be passed.

Thank you for the clarification. I pay through the nose for flood insurance. It is what it is.

Why not just give everyone a new house? No one takes responsibility anymore. If you do, then you are just being stupid. Leverage yourself to infinity, spend money you don't have, commit fraud on your applications and guess what, you get bailed out.

There is no more justice for the people that play by the rules. It will only get worse when the nazi's try taking the guns. That's when it should get interesting.........

The whole idea behind Congress spending 60B on Sandy relief is so that the fat cat states like New Jersey and New York can feed off of the backs of the other 48 states that collectively are much poorer on average. If a congresscritter votes in favor of this bill then they need to do all future campaigns saying "I believe in mortgaging the future of our children by redistributing the wealth from the people to the fat cats".

Place your bets? I bet Goldman already knows the number and has determined the market reaction. You start watching the reaction to the fiscal cliff, I think the whole matter was banks blackmailing the Congress. In fact, I bet Goldman wrote the tax bill.

I will say this. Once I saw what was in the tax bill, I think the Republicans won. No tax increase here on moderately well to do, including estate taxes. I'm sure there is some bullcrap in the details. $450K is a far sight from $250K, which I consider upper middle class and not rich by any means. Where they lost? If we had gone over the cliff, the rest of the country would have seen what a spending problem Washington has, as the higher taxes would have only been a blip on the radar. Bush pulled a nice trick. In order to get revenues, Obama and his socialist successors are going to have to tax the working middle class. Remember, the Bush cuts are owed back to the government.

I was reading something Leonard Liggio had written about Jacksonian banking and the early financial history of the US and a guy named Gallatin came up. He was Treasury Secretary under Jefferson and early Madison and an early member of Congress. The banker party kicked him out of the early Senate because they claimed he wasn't in the US long enough to be elected, but the real reason was he wasn't in the banker party, but a future Democrat. The early Democratic Party was 180 degrees from this banker dominated group we have today. Anyhow, Gallatin was responsible for the debt limit, something put into place early to limit executive spending. Obama asked Congress to give up this power. Can you imagine? The party that created the debt limit to limit bankers and the executive now wants it taken away, so there can be absolutely no restraint in spending and borrowing?

I'm sure we will get the nonsense in the markets over raising the debt limit, starting about 10 minutes from now. It will merely be the same group of child actors throwing their peas against the wall as this time. It doesn't take selling in general to make the market go down, merely the refusal of the market makers to put in bids. If
Congress can't decide spending, then we no longer have a Constitution. We have a kleptocrisy, ruled by bankers.

I concur AZ

I'm getting itchy to start fading all this bullishness but I've learned to listen to it as well as dismiss it.

"The whole idea behind Congress spending 60B on Sandy relief is so that the fat cat states like New Jersey and New York can feed off of the backs of the other 48 states that collectively are much poorer on average."

Patently false.

NY and NJ are net givers to OTHER states in total tax disbursement.

Uh huh...

Yeah Randy, we have to know by now the insurance funds belong to them. Once you understand insurance you realize that if a company can maintain its book of business, they never have to give the money back. You will hear NY claim they don't get back what they pay in, but recognize they are the primary beneficiaries of all of this debt. Management fees on $50 trillion and the bubble fees on other assets are massive.

Karl,

from an income tax perspective show me how I am wrong?

Oh, so you wish to play the game of only looking at the slice of data you prefer to use?

I have a two-word response for dishonest people, and I'm sure you can figure out what the two words are.

What I meant was taxes...aka what people pay into taxes and what they get back as a state. Others are trying to turn this into "how they made that money." No one hates Wall Street more than me. My point is this is no morality play. Some of the people getting ****ed over here had flood insurance and there is no question the response to Katrina was a hell of a lot better from a financial perspective than Sandy.

Around here in Nor Cal— gov't seems to have all the construction workers employed working on roads

our city is currently building two new huge shopping centers as well— one will have a Target.

Quote:

Some of the people getting ****ed over here had flood insurance

Yep - flood insurance underwritten by the US taxpayers, who have to pay beach fees to use the oligarch's beaches.

NJ and NY are the biggest takers of federal corporate welfare, closely followed by CA. Add in Medicaid, EUC, defense spending, etc and I think NY/NJ out-take us all.

Randy - I get your point but the NYC area is THE injection point for the helicopter drop. We NYers will get NO sympathy from anyone nor should we.