Karl Denninger, "Unemployment Claims: Where Are The Apologists Now?"

"Unemployment Claims: Where Are The Apologists Now?"

by Karl Denninger

"The Survey Says! In the week ending Jan. 8, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 445,000, an increase of 35,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 410,000. The 4-week moving average was 416,500, an increase of 5,500 from the previous week's revised average of 411,000.

It's worse... The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 770,413 in the week ending Jan. 8, an increase of 191,686 from the previous week. There were 815,593 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010. 770,000?!  Holy crap.

Click image for larger size.

Now here's reality folks - I said last week that I didn't believe the "3 handle" folks nor that the problem was over, and that seasonal distortions and idiocy in the labor department was responsible.  Of course "idiocy" implies unknowing distortion, which is a damn hard argument to make when the "errors" are all in one direction - and they both are and have been.

How about intentional lies instead? In any event this ought to take some hot air out of people's BS-running lungs. The other not-good thing is that the ranks of those going back into the extended programs was up for the week of the 25th too - by 195,000. This is unambiguously bad - extended benefits AND initial benefits both up materially, and note that this was a week during which people said that the claims numbers were generally "good".

Nope. Wake up folks - the supposed "economic expansion" is complete crap and is all government blowing money they don't have. The end of that rope is approaching. Fast. And the floor of the canyon we're rappelling down is 500' below us."

- http://market-ticker.org/

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