Way late in this, but I have not been in the mood for posting. My post (4/27/09) about not buying stocks after looking at S & P's earnings forecast was dead wrong. Financial stocks have continued to rally well past where I though they should have tired out. It also appears that my post (3/30/09) about a major bank being nationalized by tomorrow was wrong. In either case, perception is reality. When an economy losing 500,000 jobs in a month is considered good news, anything is possible. I genuinely don't know if the market is getting lulled into a sense of false comfort or the things that I have been writing about simply don't matter. Does the amount of debt matter? Does fractional reserve banking matter? Does a mounting tax burden matter? Do high earnings multiples matter? Do continuing job losses matter? Do falling prices matter? I really shouldn't say "matter", it should be "matter as much as I think it matters."
Anyway, the ADP jobs report came out this morning: 491,000 jobs lost in the month of April. Including the 12/2007 report, the economy has lost 5,218,000 jobs since the recession started. Based on
ADP's numbers: 5,115,000 jobs were created from 11/2004 to 11/2007. So we are basically back to the same amount of jobs that we had 4 and a half years ago.
My forecast for Friday's
BLS number is a loss of 557,000 jobs. This is based on claims data and the ADP number.
Please click to expand.
1 comment:
Recessions do not only bring about tough times financially. Sadly, they set men against men and raise moral issues that most of us would rather not have to consider.
Post a Comment