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participation problem

For The Love Of Unemployment Rates

By |2021-10-08T18:19:36-04:00October 8th, 2021|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Here we are again. The labor force. The numbers from the BLS are simply staggering. During September 2021, the government believes it shrank for another month, down by 183,000 when compared to August. This means that the Labor Force Participation rate declined slightly to 61.6%, practically the same level in this key metric going back to June.Last June.These millions, yes, [...]

An Eye On GDI May Tell Us Why

By |2021-08-26T19:46:12-04:00August 26th, 2021|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The second estimate for second quarter 2021 GDP didn’t change much, or anything. However, coincident with this “expenditure side” data release the BEA also completed its full preliminary assessments of the “income side.” GDI, in other words.What’s interesting on this other side of the output ledger is something called Net Operating Surplus (NOS). And it is NOS which frustratingly takes [...]

No Doubt, There Really Will Be Two “L’s” In Payrolls

By |2020-12-04T17:10:47-05:00December 4th, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks|

Bad news is good news? The payroll report for November 2020, like those of the previous four months, have only further corroborated and confirmed the untimely death of the recovery. Since actual recovery can take only a “V” shape, then the end of the “V” necessarily means the end of recovery.In the twisted world of mainstream assumptions, however, fret none. [...]

QE Didn’t JOLT (again)

By |2020-11-10T17:13:19-05:00November 10th, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

COVID-19 is a 2020 story and not so much one for 2021. Pretty much everyone, however, will be seeking to make it that way. To begin this week a stark reminder of that promise: vaccine-phoria. While that unleashed a curiously narrow risk and reflation frenzy, the fact that it wasn’t more widespread speaks to this disparity.A vaccine doesn’t really change [...]

Slowdown In The Rebound; Stop Listening To Central Bankers

By |2020-11-06T19:55:06-05:00November 6th, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The primary reason for that first rate hike in a decade in December 2015 was ferbus figuring that full employment had probably been reached, certainly close to where the unemployment rate had fallen at that time. The Fed’s main econometric model calculated this key economic level at between 4.8% and 5.0% unemployment; the actual rate for that month hit five [...]

Eurodollar Accounting

By |2020-09-18T18:14:13-04:00September 18th, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

One step forward, two steps back. Implicit in the Fed’s big strategy reviewed unveiled by Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell at the end of August was an admission that policymakers had screwed up. No minor detail, either, they have messed up big time on the big stuff. Though failing to be explicit about it is so infuriatingly cowardly, it’s at [...]

The Two Easiest Dots Anyone Will Ever Have To Connect

By |2020-04-07T17:10:53-04:00April 7th, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Toward the end of March 2012, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was busy with so many things. It wasn’t supposed to have been that way, not after two “massive” QE’s launched in the wake of the Great “Recession.” After all, V-shaped recoveries provide their own momentum upon which central bankers might piggy-back. In short, there shouldn’t have been any questions [...]

Weakening Labor Market Now In All The Data

By |2019-08-06T12:24:20-04:00August 6th, 2019|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The JOLTS series had always been a seemingly superfluous set of labor numbers for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The agency wanted to go deeper into employment when it originally presented these other series in 2002. The unemployment rate seemed accurate enough, but it came at the labor market solely from the view of labor supply. As the BLS [...]

No Such Thing As An 80% Boom

By |2018-10-24T17:12:53-04:00October 24th, 2018|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Many attribute the saying “a rising tide lifts all boats” to President John Kennedy. He may have been the man who brought it into the mainstream but as his former speechwriter Ted Sorenson long ago admitted it didn’t originate from his or the President’s imagination. Instead, according to Sorenson, it was a phrase borrowed from the New England Chamber of [...]

Tropical Labor Math

By |2018-10-05T12:00:35-04:00October 5th, 2018|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It was coming, it wasn’t coming. On again, off again. Voluntary evacuations, all clears, and then the rushed mandatory removals. When Hurricane Bonnie finally made landfall, it left people more angry than usual with these kinds of storms. Weather officials just didn’t know where it would end up. In eventually would smack right into Virginia’s Tidewater region, after wreaking variable [...]

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