‘Come Watson, you must see this!”
“See what, old man?”
“Behold the difficulty in which the Moriarty administration now finds itself! After a shameless charade of a shutdown, to they now risk interference with high-level trading models by reports economic data due some weeks back, or will they delay the inevitable until next month’s reports?”
“You mean with 83% of workers still on the job, they haven’t had the numbers in their back pockets all this time?”
“It matters not! All that matters at this instant is when, not how, Moriarty will release the data! Get my mouse, Watson, we’re on the click!”
And so, as the great criminal enterprise known as runaway corporatism begins this morning, one of the oddest of problems of all to ponder, as we go into the weekend, is when all of the missing economic data from the shutdown period will be unslung and flung on the Street.
Natürlich, Ures truly is not the only one eyeing this Case of the Missing Data. So’s the New York Times.
While the market should (by my trading model that I so studiously ignore, and thus lose money in spite of its being ridiculously right) tack on another major rally today or Monday, the seat belts should be fastened about Tuesday when the last month’s unemployment data is revealed.
Not that it will tell us much, mind you: The Labor Department is highly expert at turning sow’s ears into silk purses. However, the long-term observer will focus not just on the “headline number” but on the underlying collapse in manufacturing (the jobjack number) and the labor participation rate.
The really interesting confluence of data will come when the CPI figures come out on October 30th and then the next unemployment numbers are due the following week.
In the meantime, for Peoplenomics subscribers, we’ll do our fearless review of West Coast Port data tomorrow morning. The brothers and sisters of the ILWU didn’t walk out and so we have at least some guidance available there.
In the meantime, the Fed H.6 Money Stocks report reveals they’re is goosing M1 and M2 at an 8.2% print rate, and if prices aren’t keeping up, the reason is whatcha call deflation.
But that’s not the whole story. If you look at the Fed’s H.3 report, you’ll see the banksters’ reserve balances are up (very roughly) a HUGE 60.2% from the same period a year ago. We’re obviously in the wrong business or just need a rich uncle.
Are the problems now over? Well, no. Lots of experts are skeptical that anything different in the way of an outcome will happen when it comes around again, shortly.
In the meantime, euphoria and fall are having a grand battle of it.
More after….oh, you know…
This is Sick Dept.
The Obamacare story just keeps getting better and better. Now, we’re seeing reports that insurers are getting the wrong data.
Seeing how F/Ued this is really makes me appreciate Microsoft a whole bunch more. My Windows 8 updated worked like a champ out of the box. For a hell of a lot more money, seems to me the error rate in O/care is not something that would play in the halls of Redmond, know what I mean?
In the real (i.e. nongovernmental) world of software, we do things like look at the user experience, redundant data checks, test release candidates, and oh, yeah, have customer support that can actually answer questions.
This is getting just rucking feediculous.
Damaging Doctor-Patient Relations, Too
A side effect of the evolving, Obamacare-driven distrust of the insurance-industry backed premium-care system is a deterioration in doctor-patient relations, as I can attest to personally, since I went in for my periodic checkup this week.
Since I still own me (not my straw man, though) I think I can tell you this story without myself suing me for violation the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act privacy regs. However, I don’t put me, suing myself, entirely aside since we live in that kind of a world now, but here’s my personal healthcare experience:
Went to the doctor and I said, “Do I need to do anything about this [small] navel hernia?”
We’d talked in the past about it…it hasn’t changed any, and his answer was doctorly spot-on:
“Well, if it starts to bother you sure, but it looks stable and lots of people go to the funeral parlor with them…”
My doc is a straight-shooter, but thanks to O/care and the healthsurance scammmers (which is what I call it when different carriers have different rates for the same operations, which in God knows any other industry would be felonious price-fixing) I found myself asking very difficult questions on the way home:
- Did my doc do my a favor by keeping me from getting technical unnecessary surgery?
- Is he secretly watching the debate between webbing and re-sewing approaches to navel hernias? My long-life friend gets an occasional twinge from his still…hmmm…
- Did he recommend not worrying about it because I would likely have signed up for Medicare and thus, my surgery would up Medicare costs?
- Or??? Was he protecting my Big Insurance Company which doesn’t pay a dime until I hit the $5,000 mark annually but then covers everything up to $2-million a year?
- Was he simply marking type to see if it changes any more over time?
Once upon a time, when you went to the doc and asked him a question, you got a simple answer. But with increasing public awareness of how the accountants are going to do for medicine what they did for American manufacturing, well, sh*t, now I just don’t know what to think or believe. You know about doctor junkets from the pharma boyz, right? Toss that in, too.
He’s a serious workaholic, my doc, who I can’t even talk into a quick 9-holes of golf…with me paying…which is about as tough a problem-solving option as I’ve ever come up with. I figured on asking about the 5th green, or so, to see if it could screw up his short game. But he’s too busy to play free golf so you KNOW all this medical froth is ruining relations and working docs to death in the process, right?
In the meantime, I’m being very careful not to lift weights over 100 pounds or so. Although I maintain my sharp mental focus and intellectual acuity by vigorously working out with smaller weights of, oh, about 1.5 ounces at a time, PRN.
We’re on Roaming
At least in a manner of speaking as our Winnipeg news analyst notes:
Dear Mr. Ure,
Do all roads lead through Rome? Those who prefer a mountain view to the seven hills may wish to embark upon an easy search of publicly available whois records. This is not investment advice.
Who, Me? Dept.
Edward Snowden says he took no secret files to Russia with him. But, lemme ask you this: Did he say anything about located elsewhere servers?
I can overlook this one: After all, the kid was raised in a country where the President was saying “Depends what you mean by sex…”: So, I guess, “take with him” could be rather narrowly defined, too.
Traffic Advisories
It’s a good thing our consulting client in the East Bay doesn’t have to deal with this crap most mornings: Bay Area Rapid Transit is out on strike this morning.
Soooo… if you live, in say, Oakland, and see yon sign on the BART website, it may be faster to swim than drive around. And if I were a cop,; I betcha the whole monthly quota could be bagged on the 280 coming up from San Joser (sic) later on this morning.
One other traffic note, which I got a real kick out of from reader Leslie up in ham radio 3 prefixed call sign country:
Traffic accidents are up like mad. It has been fairly quiet traffic wise and accidents the past few days here in the Denver metro area. Thursday all those extended vacation with pay federal workers were heading back and accidents galore stacked up first thing this AM.
So if I figure this out correctly then; if we leave the federal workers off who are not needed, traffic accidents will go down.
Educational Ham Radio Note: This could launch me into a discussion of how the FCC still issues call-signs to hams based on where they lived at the time they received their first license. This actually made sense:
Since they, for heaven knows what bureaucratic insight/reason, they don’t keep the call signs current. Which is how someone like me (with a 7-land call-sign) can live in 5-land.