If You Want To Know The Truth About The Unemployment Rate Read This Article

The Obama administration is telling us that the unemployment rate in the United States has fallen to 5.1 percent, but does that number actually bear any resemblance to reality?  On Friday, news outlets all over America celebrated the fact that the U.S. economy added 173,000 jobs in August.  We were told that the unemployment rate has fallen to a seven year low and that wages are going up.  So everything must be getting better for the middle class, right?  After all, isn’t that what the official numbers are telling us?

The financial markets are buzzing over this news because the unemployment rate has fallen into a range that the Federal Reserve has typically considered to be “full employment”, so there is an expectation that the Fed may raise interest rates shortly.  The following comes from Business Insider…

The unemployment rate fell to 5.1% in August, the lowest since April 2008. This was lower than forecast, and put the measure in the middle of the 5.2% – 5.0% range the Federal Reserve considers to be “full employment.” The economy added 173,000 jobs, below the expectation for 217,000, although August payrolls are usually revised higher. We also saw some wage growth, with average hourly earnings rising 0.3% month-on-month, and 2.5% year-over-year. The payrolls gain for July was revised up to 245,000 from 215,000.

But do we actually have anything close to “full employment” in this country?

Of course not.

The truth is that the only way they have been able to get the official “unemployment rate” to steadily go down over the past few years is to eliminate hundreds of thousands of Americans that are chronically unemployed from the official labor force numbers every month.  Jim Quinn elaborated on this very eloquently in one of his recent articles…

Now for the plunge in the unemployment rate. That comes from the household survey. The fact is that 220,000 more Americans entered the work force in August. According to this survey, 196,000 more Americans were employed. In the real world this would result in the unemployment rate going UP. Not in the Bizarro world of the BLS. They expect the peasants to believe that 261,000 Americans, of their own free will, voluntarily left the workforce in August because they don’t need a job to pay the bills, feed themselves, and keep a roof over their heads. The idiocy of this ridiculous assumption is breathtaking to behold. Only an Ivy League educated economist, CNBC shill, or complete and utter moron could believe this drivel.

At this point, the percentage of Americans that are actually considered to be “participating in the labor force” is the lowest that it has been since 1977.

According to the Obama administration, more than 94 million working age Americans are “not in the labor force”, and so they don’t count as being unemployed…

A record 94,031,000 Americans were not in the American labor force last month — 261,000 more than July — and the labor force participation rate stayed stuck at 62.6 percent, a 38-year low, for a third straight month in August, the Labor Department reported on Friday, as the nation heads into the Labor Day weekend.

Personally, I believe that the civilian employment-population ratio provides a much more accurate picture of the employment situation in this country.  It is a measure of the percentage of the working age population that actually has a job.

As you can see from the chart below, the percentage of working age Americans that are actually working has barely risen from the depths of the last recession…

Does that look like an “employment recovery” to you?

It sure doesn’t to me.

According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if honest numbers were being used we would actually have an unemployment rate of 22.9 percent in this country.

But if the mainstream media reported that number, everyone would be talking about a “Great Depression” and we would all be complaining about what a horrible job Obama was doing.

Sadly, the cold, hard truth is that the U.S. economy has been collapsing for a very long time.  According to CBS News, the number of “ultrapoor” Americans that live on less than 2 dollars a day has doubled since 1996…

By one dismal measure, America is joining the likes of Third World countries.

The number of U.S. residents who are struggling to survive on just $2 a day has more than doubled since 1996, placing 1.5 million households and 3 million children in this desperate economic situation. That’s according to “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America,” a book from publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt that will be released on Sept. 1.

The measure of poverty isn’t arbitrary — it’s the threshold the World Bank uses to measure global poverty in the developed world. While it may be the norm to see families in developing countries such as Bangladesh and Ethiopia struggle to survive on such meager income, the growing ranks of America’s ultrapoor may be shocking, given that the U.S. is considered one of the most developed capitalist countries in the world.

How can that be possible if we are close to “full employment”?

In a recent article on the Economic Collapse Blog, I explained that 46 million Americans used food banks in one recent year, and that lines start forming at some U.S. food banks as early as 6:30 in the morning because people want to get something before the food supplies run out.

No, economic conditions are definitely not “good” in this nation.

We are being told lies by our politicians and by the mainstream media.  The numbers simply do not match what is going on in the real world.

We can even see this in some of the wealthiest areas of the entire country.  In New York City, for example, they are dealing with an explosion in the number of people that are sleeping on the streets…

They are sleeping in front of the Empire State building, sprawled in front of the doors of Macy’s, and panhandling outside Grand Central.

New York is in the grip of a homeless epidemic so bad that it has raised fears of the city slipping back into the disorder of the 1970s and 1980s.

The city’s police chief this week said that as many as 4,000 people are now sleeping rough in the city, in a crisis which even the city’s ultra-liberal mayor has finally acknowledged after months of denials.

Police officers have identified 80 separate homeless encampments in the city, 20 of which are so entrenched that they have their own furniture, while its former mayor Rudolph Giuliani has spoken scathingly of how his successor is failing to keep order.

Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad“, recently told Newsmax that the “global economy is in a collapse right now”.  And he is right.  Things are getting worse in Asia, in Europe and in South America.

Things are also getting worse for the U.S. economy.  The “employment recovery” that we have already seen is all the employment recovery that we are going to get.

From here on out, millions upon millions of American workers are going to be losing their jobs and the suffering in this country is going to be off the charts.

So don’t fall for the lies that Obama and his minions are telling you.

All you have to do to see the truth is to open up your eyes and look at what is happening all around us.

Credit to End Of the American Dream

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/if-you-want-to-know-the-truth-about-the-unemployment-rate-read-this-article

Naples pummelled by hailstones the size of ping pong balls

Video footage has emerged of extreme weather hitting the coast around Naples, Italy, on Saturday. 

Hailstones pummelled the water and nearby towns on the coast, the size of ping-pong balls. 

Some hailstones measured 5cm in diameter. 

 

^{Man picks up hailstones in his hands}

Windows were smashed, roof tiles damaged and some people and animals were injured. 

Meteorologistsforweather.com said the storm was brought on by a vigorous southward plunge of a jet-stream which carved in to western Europe, sending a potent upper disturbance in to the Italian peninsula. 

The instability charged up a thunderstorm over the Mediterranean sea which swept in to Italy and caused the hailstones.

Credit to The Telegraph

Europe's Biggest Bank Dares To Ask: Is The Fed Preparing For A "Controlled Demolition" Of The Market

Why did we focus so much attention yesterday on a post in which the IMF confirmed what we had said since last October, namely that the BOJ's days of ravenous debt monetization are coming to a tapering end as soon as 2017 (as willing sellers simply run out of product)? Simple: because in the global fiat regime, asset prices are nothing more than an indication of central bank generosity. Or, as Deutsche Bank puts it: "Ultimately in a fiat money system asset prices reflect “outside” i.e. central bank money and the extent to which it multiplied through the banking system."

The problem is that the BOJ and the ECB are the only two remaining central banks in a world in which Reverse QE aka "Quantitative Tightening" in China, and the Fed's tightening in the form of an upcoming rate hike (unless the Fed loses all credibility and reverts its pro-rate hike bias), are now actively involved in reducing global liquidity. It is only a matter of time before the market starts pricing in that the Bank of Japan's open-ended QE has begun its tapering (followed by a QE-ending) countdown, which will lead to devastating risk-asset consequences. The ECB, which is also greatly supply constrained as Ewald Nowotny admitted yesterday, will follow closely behind.

But while we expanded on the Japanese problem to come in detail yesterday, here are some key observations on what is going on in both the US and China as of this moment - the two places which all now admit are the culprit for the recent equity selloff, and which the market has finally realized are actively soaking up global liquidity.

Here the problem, as we initially discussed last November in "How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed", is that as a result of the soaring US dollar and collapse in oil prices, Petrodollar recycling has crashed, leading to an outright liquidation of FX reserves, read US Treasurys by emerging market nations. This was reinforced on August 11th when China joined the global liquidation push as a result of its devaluation announcement, a topic which we also covered far ahead of everyone else with our May report "Revealing The Identity Of The Mystery "Belgian" Buyer Of US Treasurys", exposing Chinese dumping of US Treasurys via Belgium. 

We also hope to have made it quite clear that China's reserve liquidation and that of the EM petro-exporters is really two sides of the same coin: in a world in which the USD is soaring as a result of Fed tightening concerns, other central banks have no choice but to liquidate FX reserve assets: this includes both EMs, and most recently, China. 

Needless to say, these key trends covered here over the past year have finally become the biggest mainstream topic, and have led to the biggest equity drop in years, including the first correction in the S&P since 2011. Elsewhere, the risk devastation is much more profound, with emerging market equity markets and currencies crashing around the globe at a pace reminiscent of the Asian 1998 crisis, while in China both the housing and credit, not to mention the stock market, bubble have all long burst. 

Before we continue, we present a brief detour from Deutsche Bank's Dominic Konstam on precisely how it is that in the current fiat system, global central bank liquidity is fungible and until a few months ago, had led to record equity asset prices in most places around the globe. To wit:

Let’s start from some basics. Global liquidity can be thought of as the sum of all central banks’ balance sheets (liabilities side) expressed in dollar terms. We then have the case of completely flexible exchange rates versus one of fixed exchange rates. In the event that one central bank, say the Fed, is expanding its balance sheet, they will add to global liquidity directly. If exchange rates are flexible this will also mean the dollar tends to weaken so that the value of other central banks’ liabilities in the global system goes up in dollar terms. Dollar weakness thus might contribute to a higher dollar price for dollar denominated global commodities, as an example. If exchange rates are pegged then to achieve that peg other central banks will need to expand their own balance sheets and take on dollar FX reserves on the asset side. Global liquidity is therefore increased initially by the Fed but, secondly, by further liability expansion, by the other central banks. Depending on the sensitivity of exchange rates to relative balance sheet adjustments, it is not an a priori case that the same balance sheet expansion by the Fed leads to greater or less global liquidity expansion under either exchange rate regime. Hence the mere existence of a massive build up in FX reserves shouldn’t be viewed as a massive expansion of global liquidity per se – although as we shall show later, the empirical observation is that this is a more powerful force for the “impact” of changes in global liquidity on financial assets.

That, in broad strokes, explains how and why the Fed's easing, or tightening, terms have such profound implications not only on every asset class, and currency pair, but on global economic output.

Liquidity in the broadest sense tends to support growth momentum, particularly when it is in excess of current nominal growth. Positive changes in liquidity should therefore be equity bullish and bond price negative. Central bank liquidity is a large part of broad liquidity and, subject to bank multipliers, the same holds true. Both Fed tightening and China’s FX adjustment imply a tightening of liquidity conditions that, all else equal, implies a loss in output momentum.

But while the impact on global economic growth is tangible, there is also a substantial delay before its full impact is observed. When it comes to asset prices, however, the market is far faster at discounting the disappearance of the "invisible hand":

Ultimately in a fiat money system asset prices reflect “outside” i.e. central bank money and the extent to which it multiplied through the banking system. The loss of reserves represents not just a direct loss of outside money but also a reduction in the multiplier. There should be no expectation that the multiplier is quickly restored through offsetting central bank operations.

Here Deutsche Bank suggests your panic, because according to its estimates, while the US equity market may have corrected, it has a long ways to go just to catch up to the dramatic slowdown in global plus Fed reserves (that does not even take in account the reality that soon both the BOJ and the ECB will be forced by the market to taper and slow down their own liquidity injections):

Let’s start with risk assets, proxied by global equity prices. It would appear at  first glance that the correlation is negative in that when central bank liquidity is expanding, equities are falling and vice versa. Of course this likely suggests a policy response in that central banks are typically “late” so that they react once equities are falling and then equities tend to recover. If we shift liquidity forward 6 quarters we can see that the market “leads” anticipated” additional liquidity by something similar. This is very worrying now in that it suggests that equity price appreciation could decelerate easily to -20 or even 40 percent based on near zero central bank liquidity, assuming similar multipliers to the post crisis period.

Some more dire predictions from Deutsche on what will happen next to equity prices:

If we only consider the FX and Fed components of liquidity there appears to be a tighter and more contemporaneous relationship with equity prices. The suggestion is at one level still the same, absent Fed and FX reserve expansion, equity prices look more likely to decelerate and quite sharply.

The Fed’s balance sheet for example could easily be negative 5 percent this time next year, depending on how they manage the SOMA portfolio and would be associated with further FX reserve loss unless countries, including China allowed for a much weaker currency. This would be a great concern for global (central bank liquidity).

Once again, all of this assumes a status quo for the QE out of Europe and Japan, which as we pounded the table yesterday, are both in the process of being "timed out"

The tie out, presumably with the “leading” indicator of other central bank action is that other central banks have been instrumental in supporting equities in the past. The largest of course being the ECB and BoJ. If the Fed isn’t going doing its job, it is good to know someone is willing to do the job for them, albeit there is a “lag” before they appreciate the extent of someone else’s policy “failure”.

Worse, as noted yesterday soon there will be nobody left to mask everyone one's failure: the global liquidity circle jerk is coming to an end.

What does this mean for bond yields? Well, as we explained previously, clearly the selling of TSYs by China is a clear negative for bond prices. However, what Deutsche Bank accurately notes, is that should the world undergo a dramatic plunge in risk assets, the resulting tsunami of residual liquidity will most likely end up in the long-end, sending Treasury yields lower. To wit:

... if investors believe that liquidity is likely to continue to fall one should not sell real yields but buy them and be more worried about risk assets than anything else. This flies in the face of recent concerns that China’s potential liquidation of Treasuries for FX intervention is a Treasury negative and should drive real yields higher.... More generally the simple point is that falling reserves should be the least of worries for rates – as they have so far proven to be since late 2014 and instead, rates need to focus more on risk assets.

The relationship between central bank liquidity and the byproduct of FX reserve accumulation is clearly central to risk asset performance and therefore interest rates. The simplistic error is to assume that all assets are treated equally. They are not – or at least have not been especially since the crisis. If liquidity weakens and risk assets trade badly, rates are most likely to rally not sell off. It doesn’t matter how many Treasury bills are redeemed or USD cash is liquidated from foreign central bank assets, US rates are more likely to fall than rise especially further out the curve. In some ways this really shouldn’t be that hard to appreciate. After all central bank liquidity drives broader measures of liquidity that also drives, with a lag, economic activity.

Two points: we agree with DB that if the market were to price in collapsing "outside" money, i.e. central bank liquidity, that risk assets would crush (and far more than just the 20-40% hinted above). After all it was central bank intervention and only central bank intervention that pushed the S&P from 666 to its all time high of just above 2100. 

However, we also disagree for one simple reason: as we explained in "What Would Happen If Everyone Joins China In Dumping Treasurys", the real question is what would everyone else do. If the other EMs join China in liquidating the combined $7.5 trillion in FX reserves (i.e., mostly US Trasurys but also those of Europe and Japan) shown below...

... into an illiquid Treasury bond market where central banks already hold 30% or more of all 10 Year equivalents (the BOJ will own 60% by 2018), then it is debatable whether the mere outflow from stocks into bonds will offset the rate carnage. 

And, as we showed before, all else equal, the unwinding of the past decade's accumulation of EM reserves, some $8 trillion, could possibly lead to a surge in yields from the current 2% back to 6% or higher.

In other words, inductively reserve liquidation may not be a concern, but practically - when taking in account just how illiquid the global TSY market has become - said liquidation will without doubt lead to a surge in yields, if only occasionally due to illiquidity driven demand discontinuities.

Credit to Zero Hedge

COMING SHEMITAH MARKET COLLAPSE: “ONLY 8 TRADING DAYS UNTIL WIPE OUT DAY”

ANOTHER HYSTERICALLY FALSE UNEMPLOYMENT REPORT

It’s that time of the month again, where the Bureau of Lies and Scams issues their latest manipulated, massaged, and falsified unemployment data to the willfully ignorant masses. The MSM will unquestioningly regurgitate the lies with breathless enthusiasm. The Wall Street hucksters will interpret any data as positive for the stock market.

The two headlines flashing across TV screens and websites are diametrically opposed, but none of the talking heads will reveal they can’t both be true. Here are the two headlines from Marketwatch:

U.S. economy adds 173,000 jobs in August

Unemployment rate falls to 5.1%

It is too bad that most Americans are so preoccupied with the latest App on their iGadget, frantically finalizing their fantasy football roster, or so dumbed down by our so called public education system, they have absolutely no clue that it is mathematically impossible for the REAL unemployment rate to fall when only 173,000 jobs are added. The only way this can happen is if the BLS blatantly lies and tells you that hundreds of thousands of working age Americans again decided their lives were so fulfilled and finances so solid, that they don’t want to work anymore. As we all know, this is complete and utter bullshit.

U.S. politicians and government apparatchiks are following the advice of Jean-Claude Juncker:

“When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”
Let’s dig into the BLS reported bullshit and extract some facts which will obliterate the government reported lies:

The BLS is reporting an unemployment rate of 5.1%, the lowest since April of 2008. If the unemployment rate is really 5.1%, then why does the Federal Reserve need to keep interest rates at 0%? The Fed Discount rate in April 2008 was 2.5%. GDP was only growing at 2.0% in 2008. Today it is supposedly growing at 3.7%. The Fed would not have emergency level interest rates in place if the unemployment rate was really 5.1%.
The Establishment Survey says we added 173,000 jobs in August. You won’t hear the bimbos on CNBC or Fox mention that the excel spreadsheet generated fake guess birth death adjustment totaled 111,000 in August. Even though we know for an absolute fact that more small businesses have been closing than opening over the last five years, the BLS continues to use historical data to pretend that small businesses are creating more jobs. The 111,000 is absolutely false. In reality, there are 50,000 or more small business jobs being destroyed each month. If the BLS was forced to be truthful, the total number of new jobs in August would be about ZERO.

Now for the plunge in the unemployment rate. That comes from the household survey. The fact is that 220,000 more Americans entered the work force in August. According to this survey, 196,000 more Americans were employed. In the real world this would result in the unemployment rate going UP. Not in the Bizarro world of the BLS. They expect the peasants to believe that 261,000 Americans, of their own free will, voluntarily left the workforce in August because they don’t need a job to pay the bills, feed themselves, and keep a roof over their heads. The idiocy of this ridiculous assumption is breathtaking to behold. Only an Ivy League educated economist, CNBC shill, or complete and utter moron could believe this drivel.

The government wants you to believe the economy is improving. Since January, 1.5 million Americans have supposedly dropped out of the workforce. Meanwhile, only 835,000 more Americans got jobs. But the unemployment rate has supposedly dropped from 5.7% to 5.1%. It would be hysterical if it wasn’t so sad. They are going with the Big Lie.
The Participation rate of 62.6% is the lowest since 1977. Since December 2007, 14.9 million Americans have “willingly” left the workforce while only 4 million new jobs have been created. That’s a recovery in the oligarch books.


Average hourly earnings rose a “fantastic” 2.2% over the last year. I’m sure the average household, experiencing inflation of 5% or more per year, are thrilled to see their wages going up by 2.2%. Wages of the 140 million non-supervisors was below 2.0%. The chart below reveals the fraud of a reported 5.1% unemployment rate. The law of supply and demand applies in all economic areas. If there really were so few unemployed people in America, wage increases would not be stagnant for the last six years. In 2007/2008 when the unemployment rate was this low, wage increases were in the 3.5% range.


There are now 94 million Americans supposedly not in the workforce, there are another 8 million classified as unemployed. So we have 149 million employed Americans going to work to support 102 million non-working Americans, and their offspring. It’s even worse than that. Of the 149 million employed Americans, 26 million are working part-time and another 9 million are self employed (selling their old shit on Ebay). That sure sounds like a healthy prosperous economy to me.

The breakdown of the 173,000 new jobs is even more revealing. The number of high paying goods producing jobs grew by NEGATIVE 24,000. That’s right. We don’t need to produce anything in this country. We added 164,000 low paying Obama shit jobs. We added fry cooks, housekeepers, bed pan emptiers, bartenders, social workers and government union teachers. And you will be thrilled to know there was a surge in government drone employment by 33,000. The Federal, State, and Local governments are bloated and they’re essentially bankrupt, but they keep hiring more drones to control us. Great news!!!
Now for another smell test. The number of people on food stamps has historically been correlated to how well the economy is really doing. When the economy is improving and unemployment is low, the number of people on food stamps falls. The last time the unemployment rate was this low was April 2008. At that time there were 27 million Americans on foodstamps, costing American taxpayers $35 billion per year. Today there are 46 million Americans on foodstamps, costing American taxpayers $70 billion per year. The number of people on foodstamps has barely budged in the last four years of dramatic economic recovery and plunging unemployment rate.



The lies will continue until morale improves. At the current rate, the BLS will be reporting a 0% unemployment rate in another couple years, as 200 million Americans sit at home watching Jerry Springer and living the good life.

Credit to theburningplatform.com

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/09/04/another-hysterically-false-bls-unemployment-report/

Preppers and the Redemption: How to Ready Yourself and Your Family for the Days Ahead

“Guard yourself and watch your soul very well.” (Deuteronomy 4:9)




A young girl plays with a gas mask as Israeli postal workers distribute gas masks to residents of Jerusalem, August 12, 2012. (Photo: Noam Moskowitz/Flash90)

With the recent stock market slump, the dangerous Iran deal, the end of the shmittah year and the final blood moon coinciding, preppers, also known as survivalists, can look to the Bible just in case things get worse before they get better.

Preppers are people who actively prepare for local, national and international emergencies. They were once thought of as conspiracy theorist crazies stocking up hundreds of cans of beans and dozens of rounds of ammunition. Today, preppers are gaining credibility in the increasingly chaotic world in which we live.

Preparation is nothing new to the Jewish people. The Israelite slaves prepared for the exodus from Egypt by taking a year-old lamb into their homes on the 10th of the Hebrew month of Nisan and slaughtering it on the 14th day (Exodus 12:3-6). The Jews prepared for three days at the foot of Mount Sinai in advance of receiving the Torah (Exodus 19:15). And today, Sabbath observant Jews prepare in advance each week for the Sabbath.

If it’s prudent to be prepared, what are some reasonable acts average people can take to ready themselves for what might be coming, as the possible End of Days approaches?

Most people think of food and water first. Water is critical and should be the first thing you store. Calculate a gallon (4 liters) of water per person per day. For most people, that’s going to take a lot of space. As an example, you would need 18 six-packs of 2-liter bottles of water for a family of four for two weeks.

Although recommendations vary from three days to six months, typical advice is to have two weeks worth of canned or other non-perishable food, such as peanut butter, dried fruit, nuts and seeds set aside for emergency use. Honey doesn’t spoil and some people suggest having salt as part of your emergency food kit.

What about cash? Depending on your cash flow, it’s good to keep cash in small bills in a safe place, because banks and ATMs may shut down. Food and fuel shortages could also cause sharp increases in prices.


Fuel could turn out to be life-saving. Keep your car’s fuel tank full and consider storing extra gasoline if you have a way to do so safely. Consider purchasing a generator and definitely keep candles with matches and lighters in your prep kit.

Other things to consider including with your household preparation kit – essential medications, basic first aid supplies and toilet paper. If you live in Israel, it’s important to make sure your gas masks are up to date and are the right size for children.

None of these suggestions are intended to cause alarm and are prudent steps most anyone can take. If you research prepping, it’s easy to get overwhelmed at the number of things that are possible to do to prepare. Don’t get caught up in apocalyptic scenarios.

Bottom line, take reasonable precautions and have faith, along with having a Bible, a prayer book and other religious articles at the ready.

Credit to breakingisraelnews.com
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/48003/preppers-redemption-ready-your-family-days-ahead-jewish-world/#d3lmHfCT3JMPFzy7.99

Dems to Vote for Iran Deal, Middle East Slides Towards War