Great Depression Online Archive Issue:

Four More Years

Great Depression Online
Long Beach, CA
April 06, 2010

Inside This Issue You Will Discover…

*** Some Good Stuff
*** No Guts to Bring Spending to the Black
*** Four More Years
*** And More

Some Good Stuff

Things are looking up.  In fact, if you didn’t already know it, the recession is over.  Last Thursday’s unemployment report said so.

The Labor Department tallied up the figures for March and concluded payrolls had risen by 162,000 workers.  Not bad…particularly since just 48,000 were temporary workers hired by the government to conduct the census. 

We won’t dwell on these bogus jobs for now.  Good news is good news.  Let the celebration begin…

“The labor market has turned,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC.  “We’ll see steady hiring in coming months.  There is momentum in the recovery.”

~~~~~~Private Insider’s Report~~~~~~

Chaos and panic are always created when new financial rules replace old, established ones.  Those who understand this have the combination to the New Vault and can easily open it, reach in, and get their generous share of the new wealth. Unfortunately, those who don’t understand this will desperately cling to the Old Rules and stoically go down with the sinking ship like a brave old sea captain.

New Rules here

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Things are better,” said David Haffner, Chief Executive Officer of Leggett & Platt Inc., a 127-year old manufacturer.

“The quality of jobs is improving, and it is a clear sign of improving CEO confidence,” Christopher Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York, said in a note to clients.

That’s some good stuff… 

…unfortunately, the average earnings per hour dropped last month and the number of people working part-time because they couldn’t find full-time work increased. 

…regrettably, the underemployment rate – which includes the people who want work but have given up looking – increased to 16.9 percent from 16.8 percent.  

…and, lamentably, the number of people unemployed for 27 weeks or more rose to a record 44.1 percent of all jobless.

No Guts to Bring Spending to the Black

Here at the GDO we believe that an increasing number of payrolls are better than a decreasing number of payrolls.  But we also like to take a gander beyond just the numbers to understand what the payrolls represent.

The biggest inconvenience we see is that when you add up the payrolls, the share the government takes is not nearly enough to support it’s bloated operations.  Of course we’re not advocating higher taxes…we’re advocating smaller government.

In 2010 alone, the federal government will spend $1.17 trillion that it doesn’t have…over $3.2 billion per day.  The difference will be made up with debt largely borrowed from foreign governments.  While this is a subject beyond the scope of today’s GDO, we just bring it up to ask the question…

If you were to take away all the deficit spending, what would happen to the payroll numbers?

We suspect they’d first go negative in rapid fashion, but then, without all the zombie jobs propped up by government fritter, new – real – jobs would sprout up like soybeans in Brazil.  Too bad no one in government has the guts, or integrity, to bring spending back to the black.

Lastly, some perspective on the jobs report…

Four More Years

The 48,000 temporary census worker jobs don’t help the economy; they hurt it.  They add to the deficit.  They steal jobs from the future.

Of the 162,000 new jobs, 81,000 were created according to the government’s birth/death model.  The birth/death model, if you’re not familiar with it, is based on the assumption that most of the time jobs created at new companies make up for losses at companies that close.  We don’t quite comprehend the logic.  As far as we can tell, these jobs, like Federal Reserve notes, were created out of thin air.

So when you subtract the 81,000 birth/death model jobs and the 48,000 temporary census worker jobs from the 162,000 total jobs, you’re left with 33,000.  This is far short of the 125,000 jobs needed each month just to keep up with population growth.

Plus, in addition to the 48,000 temporary census worker jobs, another 40,000 jobs were temporary worker positions.  We’ll let you decide if you want to keep those in the 162,000 jobs figure or not.

Regardless, over 8.4 million jobs vanished from the U.S. economy since December 2007.  At a rate of 162,000 per month, it’ll take over 4 years to get back to even.

Sincerely,

M.N. Gordon
Great Depression Online

P.S.  The Great Depression and history have shown us clearly enough that when economic rules shift, they are merciless. Those who know, prosper… those who don’t, get crushed. That’s just the way life is.  Don’t get crushed.

 

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