North American economy in retreat

This is an amazing article by The Atlantic on a fed survey that showed 47% of Americans would have to borrow or sell something to come up with $400 emergency funds.

This is not what you find in a good economy or one that is supposedly at 5% unemployment which is a bigger joke than this cover story picture

A good interview with Fed member Bullard here
www.cnbc.com/2016/05/05/outspoken-fed-of...ing-japans-path.html

James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, doesn't know when the American economy will fall into another recession. But he says it's increasingly likely that it will happen before the Fed has a chance to return its benchmark interest rate to a historically normal level.

He is probably right there as we may be headed into one right now

On raising rates - "If you talk to people in Tokyo, they say, 'Well, we've been through this and tried all these things and you guys are just following us,'" he said in the interview. "I hope that's not exactly true."

The general rule of thumb within the Fed is that labor market data trumps G.D.P. data. But when you're talking over a four-quarter sequence where you've had weak growth, that starts to become more suspect. We've projected 3 percent growth around the corner for the last several years in a row. But that just hasn't materialized, and I think at some point you have to take the signal that's being sent.

What amazes me, those counted as not in the labor force surged by 562,000 for the month to more than 94 million. They make it look good by not counting all these with no jobs, and in most cases they just gave up looking for now

The population of Canada is 33 million. In the US that is like 3 Canada's sitting there with no job or if you look at the Canadian labour force at about 19 million.

It is like having 5 Canadas sitting there with no jobs and they talk about 5% unemployment rate.

I am not falling for that bluff and I bet those 94 million Americans are not being fooled either

Good comments folks, Lynnsa they have no choice to fudge the numbers. How would it look if they reported job losses just 4 months after an interest rate hike?

They would look like idiots for the bad mistake they made.

We now have a better idea why retails sales have been falling, the job market sucks

They will fudge them short term to drag it out and hope for a turn around and gradually drag out bad numbers and blame it on the Global economy

I must have looked at 20 stories in the main stream on the Jobs report and not one mentions all the jobs with the birth death rate model. My God is the whole media under control or biased?

Most were pretty upbeat and said it was not that bad, only 1 month, economy still expanding and most of then dwelt on the better that expected wage growth of 2.5%, only the Bank in Germany mentioned any decent analysis.

The wage increase could have been because of a calendar quirk. Deutsche Bank's Torsten Sløk noted ahead of the report that because April 15 — payday for those on a biweekly schedule — fell early in the survey week for the jobs report, it was likely to cause an upward bias in earnings.

Amazing, how weak the economy is, just 0.5% GDP reported for 1st qtr.

Previous months' numbers also were revised lower. The BLS cuts the February count from 245,000 to 233,000, while the March total fell from 215,000 to 208,000.

April jobs report what a joke at 160.000. They had to majically create 233,000 jobs withe Birth/death rate model to get 160,000, without that would have been job losses

www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesbd.htm

Dent says deflation and Bill Gross syas helicopter money and then inflation.

in his latest Investment Outlook note published Wednesday, he said the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury should engage in another round of quantitative easing (QE), printing trillions of dollars to buy government bonds and thereby boost the economy.

"Drop the money from helicopters," wrote Gross, manager of the $1.3 billion Janus Global Unconstrained Bond fund.

www.reuters.com/article/us-funds-janus-gross-idUSKCN0XV1AL ?

This video by Dent is good and gives some good clues about whats wrong with the economy. I have read most of his books and he is real good on long term cycles. He can be off on the short term, but as he puts it, government intervention can alter timings.

He say major downturn in markets between now and early 2017

I listened to a video - a link in the link above that was with Larry Summers, who was puzzled why lower oil has not helped the US economy. They talked about economic conditions around the world and although they were sure to emphazise they were not predicting anything bad.

They had nothing good to talk about and seemed pretty dismal to me, here it is, but an hour long

When Oil prices began a big decline I commented that this may be a ploy by the central planners to boost the US economy. My arguement then - it probably would not work this time becuase of the offset of the oil shale boom.

I just noticed the first article I seen about low Oil not rescuing the US economy

qz.com/604657/why-cheap-oil-hasnt-saved-the-us-economy/

This is a good video on paper money and Gold. It is a bit long, 50 minutes. Pretty solid argument on why the US$ will collapse