You may get sick of me talking about government’s “creative accounting” but here we go again.
With president Obama’s new amnesty plans out last night, we have to wonder how quickly these folks who are in the US illegally, but not now being deported, will show up in unemployment figures?
It’s not a pointless question because 4.5 million people will have to show up somewhere…or not. Perhaps a good sleuthing reporter (like John Crudele at the NY Post) could find the answer.
So what will five million additional workers look like when tossed into the jobs hopper? I suspect it will improve the unemployment rate, but that’s just a guess. We hear that 8.1 million are already in the workforce and unemployment data, so who knows? Mexicans in the US is dropping while OTMs continue to climb.
Questions about “how the numbers work” are fairly straightforward with publicly traded companies. I found Disney’s 10-K report an interesting read this week, for example.
When you’re dealing with government, though, it’s a more difficult problem. Take the little matter of how many people have signed up for Affordable Care Act coverage.
The original story (thus, the one most people will remember) is that 7-million had signed up by August, or so. But, it turns out, 380,000 signups were for dental plans, so the real ACA number was smaller and did not hit government goals.
While the republicats and democans battle out another point of minutia, what we have is a larger problem of lack of government candor.
And even width the election behind us, that’s a problem that’s not going away.
If you were facing an airline flight on a plane with the same kind of safety record as the government (both parties) have, I’m sure you’d walk, drive, or take a train. And I’d be right there with you.
Executive Amnesty
Oh, sure, it still ignores the law, but it could have been worse. Besides, when comes down to it, doesn’t a president have the ability to grant pardon’s? Just think of it as 4.5 million of them all at once.
As the WaPo reported this morning, last night was a mix of celebration and disappointment. And, oddly, I’d offer that this is what America really has become, thanks largely to the folks in Washington: A “mix of celebration and disappointment” but shading more to the disappointment side here lately.
Wall St. loved it, though so expect the market to scream up 150 points on the Dow at some point today.
What I find troubling is the lack of mental acuity in Washington. While the president said “Our immigration system is broken and everybody knows it.” What should be obvious that it didn’t start that way and the way it started breaking was by failing to enforce laws on the books back then.
So let’s do more of the very thing that caused the problem in the first place.
I shake my head stare woefully at the ViceGrips. They don’t seem to be working anymore…
Mexico is now going to charge visiting Americans. Well, I’ll be an SOB…with friends like this who needs enemies?
More after this…and yes, the new version is now shipping…
ON to What Really Matters
This website, though steeped in Georgisms, is first and foremost about economic matters.
If you just arrived here from a strange planet and are wondering what’s going on, we’re now 14-years into a Greater Depression (as my friend Jas describes it) and where the first Depression started with a crash, this one could end with a crash.
The major feature of depressions is that there is not enough work to go around and people begin to pull in their horns on things like spending. At some point, the monotonous whine of the Marketing Machine just puts people to sleep and the disenfranchised get downright resentful. So that’s where we are.
Now, to the point about deflation, notice this morning how Mario Draghi is calling for the immediate return of inflation as a way to save the world, or at least his EU.
What’s really going on I s that the globalist banker class is getting worried. It’s why the Germans weren’t able to get their gold back from the USA, and it’s why you see things like China lowering rates overnight.
And more importantly, this comes as there’s speculation that OPEC could be raising rates next year and that might cause some energy inflation and prevent a bust in the oil patch. Or not.
What we’re seeing is the very real possibility that we could see a blow-off top to the Dow that might make it to surprisingly high levels, if the global bankers can just keep harmony among themselves and persist in the closely choreographed global inflation/repudiation of debt that is now in play.
Bond prices are going down a bit, which means yields are going up, and this means more money will be sloshing about, so gold will go up and it will take more depreciated ducats to buy the same core value of a stock, so the paper there will go up in price.
In the latest update to the US M1 money report out last night, the US rate of increase for the most recent three months shows an annual increase of 0.1% – essentially flat, so the Fed is ever so carefully nibbling at drying up money thinking that if rates do up, other things might too.
As usual, they’re missing the need for wage inflation, but that’s why the common man (and woman) doesn’t have a representative in Washington anymore. The PACs own capitol hill and the bankers own everything else.
We just get to sit back and wait while more jobs get whacked by software and robotics and my, isn’t this a fine little economic experiment to be living through?
Ferg du Jour
If you’re waiting for the Molotovs in Ferguson, the latest is the officer involved is in negotiations with the city to resign.
But that will depend on the outcome of the grand jury case, still pending. And you know the old saying among the stand on the steps of the Federal building reporter crowd from back in the day bumming Kool filters, right? “A watched grant jury never boils…”