With Wednesday’s ADP report and Thursday’s jobless claims data laying the groundwork for Friday’s unemployment report, there’s an intense focus on jobs from Wall Street to Washington D.C. and beyond.
But there’s really only one jobs figure that matters, says John Lekas, senior portfolio manager for the $320 million Leader Short-Term Bond Fund:
The U-6 or “real” unemployment number.
U6 is more important than the headline unemployment rate because it includes both the unemployed and “underemployed” workers faced with reduced hours who “still can’t pay their bills,” Lekas tells Aaron in the accompanying clip. “I think that’s a more representative number.”
More jobs weakness ahead. More bearish than most, Lekas sees the headline unemployment rate rising to 10% in February and climbing to 15% or 16% by mid-year. Even more dire, he sees the “real” unemployment figure surging to 25%.
… a growing chorus of economists and labor market analysts say the unemployment picture in the United States is actually far worse.
They argue that the Labor Department routinely undercounts the number of unemployed in this country, adding fuel to a simmering debate on whether the government is providing an accurate snapshot of the nation’s unemployment picture.
“Our gripe about the numbers is that it leaves out broad swaths of unemployed people in the country,” said Madeline Schnapp, director of macroeconomic research at TrimTabs, a Sausalito, Calif.-based investment research firm.
Like other economic observers, Schnapp argued that the Labor Department’s methodology is flawed because it’s based on surveys and polling and ignores “the real-time data available via analysis of withheld income and employment taxes.”
A TrimTabs report this week estimated that the U.S. economy actually lost 104,000 jobs in January, far more than what the government report shows today.
London, England (CNN) — The decision to go to war in Iraq “was the right decision and it was for the right reasons,” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday in his first response at the Iraq War Inquiry.
Brown was answering a question from the chairman of the inquiry, John Chilcot, about whether he thought taking military action in March 2003 was the right decision, especially given that it led to such a great loss of life among military personnel and civilians.
The prime minister said he pays respect to members of the armed forces “who served with great distinction in Iraq” and lost their lives, and to civilians who died.
“I think any loss of life is something that makes us very sad indeed,” he said.
A gunman coolly drew a weapon from his pocket and opened fire at the teeming subway entrance to the Pentagon complex Thursday evening, wounding two police officers before being shot and critically wounded, officials said.
Washington, DC –(AmmoLand.com)- Data released by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) for the year reported 14,033,824 NICS Checks for the year of 2009, a 10 percent increase in gun purchases from the 12,709,023 reported in 2008.
So far that is roughly 14,000,000+ guns bought last year!
The total is probably more as many NICS background checks cover the purchase of more than one gun at a time by individuals.
To put it in perspective that is more guns than the combined active armies of the top 21 countries in the world. countries by number of troops
Of the NICS background checks preformed less than and average .005% were denied, showing, overwhelmingly, that law abiding American citizens are the ones buying guns and that criminals are getting their guns elsewhere.
14,033,824,000 billions rounds of Ammo
Assuming each gun buyer bought 1000 rounds of ammo for each purchase, and you and I know that it is way, way more than that, that would be easily 14,033,824,000+ billions rounds of ammo fired by USA gun owners.
George Papandreou, Greece’s prime minister, pauses during a conference organized by The Economist in Athens, on Feb. 2, 2010. (Bloomberg)
March 4 (Bloomberg) — Greece’s pledge to deepen planned budget-deficit cuts failed to yield an offer of assistance from Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, as protesters in Athens seized the finance ministry building and blocked roads in the city center.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said a meeting tomorrow with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou won’t be “about aid commitments.” Her finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said the third round of deficit-reduction measures this year were probably enough to convince investors to buy Greek debt.
While Papandreou is risking a backlash at home to meet European Union demands for more deficit cuts before allies even consider providing aid, Merkel is facing domestic opposition to tapping taxpayers to extend a financial lifeline to Greece.
“There would be no understanding in Germany for bailing out Greece,” Henrik Enderlein, a political economist at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, said by phone. “It’s a bit of catch-22 situation: if you give in to Greece and you put 5 billion or perhaps even 10 billion into some kind of rescue package or into some guarantees, then the German government would look irresponsible. However, if it doesn’t, then European Union leaders might put a lot of pressure on Merkel and say, look, we have to bail out Greece.”
Inhaled or ingested DU particles are highly toxic, and DU has been classified as an illegal weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations.
“More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing [of nuclear bombs] has been released from DU weaponry since 1991,” said Leuren Moret, a U.S. nuclear scientist. “The genetic future of the Iraqi people, for the most part, is destroyed. The environment now is completely radioactive.”
“Because DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, the Middle East will, for all practical purposes, be radioactive forever.”
Beyond Treason investigates causes of Gulf War Illness and continuing deaths of gulf war veterans. Beyond Treason outlines: – exposure to depleted uranium munitions used on the battlefield. – chemical and biological exposures. – experimental vaccines given.
The US have destroyed Iraq forever. Even Hitler, Stalin and Mao begin to pale against such a crime against humanity.
Fallujah doctors report rise in birth defects
John Simpson talks about the children with birth defects he saw in Fallujah
Doctors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are reporting a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used by the US after the Iraq invasion.
The city witnessed fierce fighting in 2004 as US forces carried out a major offensive against insurgents.
Now, the level of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than in Europe.
The US military says it is not aware of any official reports showing an increase in birth defects in the area.
BBC world affairs editor John Simpson visited a new, US-funded hospital in Fallujah where paediatrician Samira al-Ani told him that she was seeing as many as two or three cases a day, mainly cardiac defects.
– 40 miles (64km) west of the capital Baghdad
– Major city in the predominantly Sunni province of Anbar, a hotbed of insurgency following US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003
– Burned corpses of four ambushed US contractors dragged through the streets of the city in March 2004
– Scene of major US-led offensive against insurgents in November 2004, when thousands of marines stormed the city
– US military’s use of white phosphorus munitions in that offensive widely condemned
– Situation in Anbar as a whole calmer since 2006, when tribal “Awakening Councils” turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq Disturbing tale of birth defects
Our correspondent also saw children in the city who were suffering from paralysis or brain damage – and a photograph of one baby who was born with three heads.
He adds that he heard many times that officials in Fallujah had warned women that they should not have children.
Doctors and parents believe the problem is the highly sophisticated weapons the US troops used in Fallujah six years ago.
British-based Iraqi researcher Malik Hamdan told the BBC’s World Today programme that doctors in Fallujah were witnessing a “massive unprecedented number” of heart defects, and an increase in the number of nervous system defects.
She said that one doctor in the city had compared data about birth defects from before 2003 – when she saw about one case every two months – with the situation now, when, she saw cases every day.
Ms Hamdan said that based on data from January this year, the rate of congenital heart defects was 95 per 1,000 births – 13 times the rate found in Europe.
“I’ve seen footage of babies born with an eye in the middle of the forehead, the nose on the forehead,” she added.
Met Office figures recorded a December-to-February mean UK temperature of just 1.51C, while the 1971-2000 average is 3.7C
A driver eases through Great Chart in Ashford, Kent, during what the Met Office has now confirmed as the coldest UK winter for 30 years. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
After suffering snow, sleet, rain and consistently freezing temperatures, the knowledge that the Met Office has officially recognised winter 2009-10 as the coldest in 31 years brings with it a certain grim satisfaction.
Provisional figures from the forecaster show the UK winter ? which in forecasting terms lasts from the start of December until the end of February ? has been the harshest, in temperature terms, since 1978-79.
(NaturalNews) In a new study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), every single fish tested from 291 freshwater streams across the United States was found to be contaminated with mercury.
“This study shows just how widespread mercury pollution has become in our air, watersheds and many of our fish in freshwater streams,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that builds up in the food chain at ever higher concentrations in predators such as large fish and humans. It is especially damaging to the developing nervous systems of fetuses and children, but can have severe effects on adults, as well. The pollutant enters the environment almost wholly as atmospheric emissions from industrial processes, primarily the burning of coal for electricity. It then spreads across the plant and settles back to the surface, eventually concentrating in rivers, lakes and oceans, where it enters the aquatic food chain.
The number one cause of human mercury poisoning in the United States is the consumption of fish and shellfish.
A high court majority reviewing a handgun ban in Chicago indicates that it sees the right to bear arms as national in scope, and can be used to strike down some state and local gun regulations.
Plaintiff Otis McDonald participates in a news conference at the Supreme Court. (Haraz N. Ghanbari / Associated Press / March 2, 2010)
Reporting from Washington – The Supreme Court justices, hearing a 2nd Amendment challenge to Chicago’s ban on handguns, signaled Tuesday that they were ready to extend gun rights nationwide, clearing the way for legal attacks on state and local gun restrictions.
The court’s majority appears almost certain to strike down a Chicago ordinance and rule that residents have a right to a handgun at home. Of U.S. cities, only Chicago and its Oak Park suburb have total bans on handguns. But many cities and states have laws regulating who can have a gun and where they can take it.
Gun rights advocates have said they’ve been waiting for the court’s ruling in this case to begin challenging gun regulations nationwide.
At one point in Tuesday’s argument, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted the city’s lawyers doubted that people had a right to carry concealed weapons in public.
“Well, maybe that’s right,” Roberts said. But he quickly added that the question could be left for a future case, indicating that the court was not likely to sweep away additional gun regulations in this ruling.
But the clear message from the argument is that a five-member majority on the court thinks the right “to bear arms” is a fundamental right, like the freedom of speech, that cannot be unduly restricted by federal regulations, state laws or city ordinances.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The U.S. Postal Service said on Tuesday that it would reduce its workforce by another 30,000 positions and slash overtime this year in an effort to reduce costs.
Together these staffing reductions will result in cost savings equivalent to eliminating 50,000 full-time positions, according to Chief Financial Officer Joseph Corbett.
Corbett said the agency expects 30,000 employees to retire during fiscal year 2010, which ends Sept. 30, 2010. More positions will be eliminated as other employees resign and those positions are not filled.
“We expect that we will be able to get to the right staffing levels through natural attrition,” he told CNNMoney.com.
The USPS, which is not permitted to lay off employees, is currently under a nationwide hiring freeze. It has eliminated jobs in the past by offering early retirement packages and through attrition. It cut a whopping 40,000 positions this way in fiscal 2009 alone.
The USPS has shed more than 100,000 jobs in the last five years. It currently has about 600,000 full-time employees, down from about 705,000 full-time workers in fiscal year 2005.
You know a company/country/continent is in trouble when authorities start cracking down on short bets against it.
That’s why it’s so disturbing how much heat European currency and sovereign debt speculators are getting these days.
Even the U.S. has climbed aboard the bandwagon now.
Reports of a U.S. Justice Department investigation into Soros Fund Management, SAC, and Greenlight Capital short positions against the euro broke last week.
Yet now the speculator clamp down is evolving into something completely terrifying. Apparently, it could now be considered collusion if you simply share economic opinions over dinner:
Oscar-winning filmmaker talks “Capitalism,” politics and Oscars with Raw Story
Just over a year ago, Michael Moore vigorously campaigned for President Obama and the Democratic Party.
But watching them jettison the public option from health care legislation appears to have been the final straw.
“These Democrats are a bunch of wusses,” Moore told Raw Story in a hard-edged interview Wednesday.
“They don’t have the courage of their convictions. They won’t stand and fight.” Health care is a uniquely important issue for the liberal filmmaker, whose 2007 documentary “Sicko” explored the heartbreaks and inequities in the US health care industry.
He says he’s fed up with the Democrats’ reticence to take on insurance companies.
“It’s embarrassing, it’s disgusting and I won’t have it anymore,” he told Raw Story, mocking them in a baby’s voice. “I’m sick of them.”
His views on the Republicans? Well, at least they have cojones, Moore said.
“You really have to admire the Republicans on some level, because they stand up for what they believe in,” he said. “They come into town, and when they win, oh they win. They come in with guns blazing.”
Listen to audio of the interview at the bottom of the story.
THE GLORIOUS BRITISH GOVERNMENT, upon which the sun finally set almost 100 years ago, has decided that having open WiFi networks is bad for the general population and it wants them all shut off.
The move, which will kill off using your laptop in an Internet cafe or coffee shop without getting a password from the owner, is part of the Digital Economy Bill.
The government has issued a clarification of the Bill which will mean that many organisations will be open to the same penalties for copyright infringement as individual subscribers, potentially including disconnection from the Internet.
Some legal experts say it will become impossible for small businesses to offer WiFi access to their customers.
Lord Young, a minister at BIS and apparently a flaming twit, saidlibraries and universities could not be exempted because “this would send entirely the wrong signal and could lead to ‘fake’ organisations being set up, claiming an exemption and becoming a hub for copyright infringement”. The idea is anyone could set themselves up as the University of Pirate Bay and they’d then be safe, Lord Young fears.
Congressman Paul Returns Over $100,000 to Treasury
Washington, D.C. – Congressman Ron Paul has continued to run his Congressional office in a frugal manner, and was able to return more than $100,000 from his allotted office budget to the Treasury this year, an increase over the $90,000 returned last year.
“Since my first year in Congress representing the 14th district I have managed my office in a frugal manner, instructing staff to provide the greatest possible service to the people of the 14th district at the least possible cost to taxpayers,” said Paul.
March 2 (Bloomberg) — Germany’s highest court overturned a two-year-old anti-terrorism law that requires telecommunications providers such as Deutsche Telekom AG to store Internet and phone data for six months, saying the rules violate privacy.
The law, which came into effect in December 2007 during Chancellor Angela Merkel’s previous government, calls for phone companies to collect data on phone calls, Internet surfing and text messaging for potential use in criminal or terrorist investigations.
The Federal Constitutional Court found that while the storing of communications data isn’t automatically unconstitutional, the law doesn’t sufficiently clarify what the information will be used for or provide for transparency.
The data “must be deleted immediately,” Hans-Juergen Papier, the court’s president, said today as he read out the decision in the western city of Karlsruhe.
An atrazine-induced female frog (a genetic male) is shown (bottom) copulating with an unexposed male sibling. This union produced viable eggs and larvae that survived to metamorphosis and adulthood. Yet, because both animals were genetic males, the offspring were all males. (Tyrone Hayes photo)
BERKELEY —Atrazine, one of the world’s most widely used pesticides, wreaks havoc with the sex lives of adult male frogs, emasculating three-quarters of them and turning one in 10 into females, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.
The 75 percent that are chemically castrated are essentially “dead” because of their inability to reproduce in the wild, reports UC Berkeley’s Tyrone B. Hayes, professor of integrative biology.
“These male frogs are missing testosterone and all the things that testosterone controls, including sperm. So their fertility is as low as 10 percent in some cases, and that is only if we isolate those animals and pair them with females,” he said. “In an environment where they are competing with unexposed animals, they have zero chance of reproducing.”
The 10 percent or more that turn from males into females – something not known to occur under natural conditions in amphibians – can successfully mate with male frogs but, because these females are genetically male, all their offspring are male.
“When we grow these guys up, depending on the family, we will get anywhere from 10 to 50 percent females,” Hayes said. “In a population, the genetically male females can decrease or wipe out a population just because they skew sex ratios so badly.”
German TV station ProSieben finds what appears to be some evocative proof of gold counterfeiting, in the form of tungsten gold substitutes coming to the W.C.Heraeus foundry, which is the world’s largest privately-owned precious metals refiner and fabricator, located in Hanau, Germany.
The foundry has isolated at least one 500-gram tungsten bar due for melting, originating from a (so far) unnamed bank, which as the head of the foundry stated made the unpleasant discovery that “not all the glitters is gold.”
Full clip after the jump.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/01/2010 16:37 -0500
As the euro is plunging (and dollar by implication surging) with gold yet again flat and looking like it may turn positive for the day, gold denominated in euros just hit another all time record of €827.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/01/2010 11:36 -0500
* Financial watchdog BaFin attempts to identify debt bettors
* Probe sharpens German debate about helping Greece
* Berlin fears a rescue could give windfalls to speculators
BRUSSELS, March 1 (Reuters) – Germany has moved to identify speculators in Greek debt to try to prevent them from profiting from any bailout of the euro zone country’s ailing economy, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The initiative by the country’s financial watchdog is part of delicate deliberations in Germany as to whether it should help bail out Greece, which is grappling with mounting debts. [ID:nLDE6200TF]
“It would be bad if it were to emerge after a rescue that the money had gone into the pockets of speculators,” the source told Reuters.
“The result of the ‘Greek tragedy’ is that the political environment has become such that the Credit Default Swap (debt insurance) problem has come to the fore.”
The investigation by financial watchdog BaFin comes against a backdrop of worries over Greece’s future. It sends a warning to those trading insurance for Greek debt which, while legal, has been blamed for fuelling volatility – though it has so far failed to identify to what extent speculators are behind Greek debt price swings.
“It is a transfer of wealth that is going on right now.”
Added: 28. Februar 2010
“When a country embarks on deficit financing and inflationism you wipe out the middle class and wealth is transferred from the middle class and the poor to the rich.”
– Ron Paul
The earthquakes in Chile, Haiti and China were (probably) caused by H.A.A.R.P.
Added: 27. Februar 2010
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