Yet More on the Phony Jobs Data

This is my regular update to keep you apprised of what is really happening in our economy.  We are skating along with the Bidementia administration trying to convince people that everything is just great because they have spent trillions of dollars trying to pump up the economy.  The reality is that the ice is very thin and rotten and we are all about to plunge into the cold depths.  A clear warning sign is interest rates on federal debt.  Those who think inflation is tamed and rates will soon come down are focused on the wrong thing.  Rates on federal debt, which determine all other rates, are now driven solely by supply and demand.  The US Treasury is selling trillions of dollars of debt every few months and has to find buyers for it.  The pile of debt has gotten so large that the buyers are a little anxious and are insisting on higher rates to take the debt.  That isn’t going to change until we eliminate deficits and actually start reducing debt.

And pretending that the employment market is as strong as the initial data releases suggest is a joke.  Here is the latest in a series of Zero Hedge posts on the topic of rotten Bureau of Labor Statistics data.  In a recent standard revision which received no attention, the BLS once again made a big revision down in the jobs numbers.  Several hundred thousand jobs suddenly disappeared compared to initial releases, and this is just a first revision.  If past practice is a guide, a bigger drop is coming in the second revision.  The survey on which this data is based has a 90% response rate, far more than the 30% rate in the establishment survey used for the monthly headline-grabbing data.  What we are gradually seeing is the real data coming out and showing a weaker labor market.  In addition to the labor data, the post notes in passing similar issues with everything put out by the current administration, including home sales, which were also revised, you guessed it, down.     (ZH Hedge)