First of all, Money McBags has to apologize for this column’s lack of timeliness but ever since he has gone to the great hedge fund in the sky, he has been way too short of time and thus unable to keep abreast (or two breasts) of the stories that really matter to all of you such as whether Buffett closing his back door will mean BRK will not be undertaking any ATM financing (though with his back door closed, the polyamorous one will surely have none of this ATM financing either), how anyone would know if hackers really broke in to Fox News’ twitter account (hint: the hackers would likely get their American history correct, though to be fair, when one’s exposure to Mr. Revere consists of knowing he did it it with a whiffleball bat, it is what it is), and why California must teach gay history (which should be a boon to the James Buchanan Historical Society and will likely involve many sword fight reenactments).
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The point is, just because the column has been delayed and you have all moved on from the shitacular NFP jobs report to worrying about the debt ceiling (or is it the insolvency floor?), Europe’s banks having reserves more insufficient than the Miami Heat’s reserves, and what will happen to Hummers during the Carmageddon, doesn’t make what is in the column any less valid, and as you can see, the time off has not hampered Money McBags’ ability to uncover very valuable assets or his ability to create run on sentences that would give Charles Dickens a stiffy (or make his Oliver twist, if you will).
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Now that Money McBags is done with the filler (though he is certainly not done filling her), the important point of this column (other than hoping Alice Eve reads it and that she gets off on references to Alan Greenspan’s tainted reputation) is that last week’s NFP job’s report was worse than Meaghan Chung’s investigative skills, worse than John Paulson’s China due diligence, and even worse than being adopted by Casey Anthony (and as a brief aside, Money McBags knows nothing about this Casey Anthony thing because he has way too much other shit to spend his time on, like worrying about the upcoming artilect war and how to avoid getting caught in a haboob (while try to get caught in her boobs), but Money McBags will take the under on 2 years before Ms. Anthony and Amy Fisher make their first lesbian porn film, likely titled Lady Killers, A Spew to a Kill, or, Dial M for Muffdiving. And you know you’d all watch it.).
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Anyway, the jobs report showed the Ponzeconomy™ added only 18k jobs, revised last month’s 54k gain to only a 25k gain in the perpetual government strategy of “Hold the shock and hope for no awe,” and raised the fictitious unemployment rate to a “we’re still fucked-ian” 9.2%. Below are Money McBags’ belated observations on why the jobs report number was actually worse than reported, like Japan’s nuclear meltdown or the smell of Simon Hayes’ luggage.
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1. The labor force participation rate once again dropped to a 25+ year low which is the most brilliant way of holding down the unemployment rate short of, you know, finding people actual fucking jobs (and as a reminder, 25 years was so long ago that derivatives were just things that pissed people off in calculus class and Joan Rivers still had her original sphincter).
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For those of you who have spent the past few years on the Planet Melmac eating pussy: 1. Welcome back, but you may still have some fur in your teeth, and 2. The labor force participation rate counts only those who have jobs and those who are considered to be looking for a job (so it ignores Angelo Mozillo and both Charlie Sheen and Bree Olson, which is also likely the only time Ms. Olson has been ignored). If someone is now “discouraged,” “disgruntled,” “or fucking disgruntled,” and stops looking for a job (and how the B(L)S measures this is beyond Money McBags but he is guessing it involves the amount of ramen noodles a person consumes and where that person rates on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), they are simply not counted as being in the labor force. It is really fucking brilliant.
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So at labor force participation rate of 64.1%, 86.07MM people were no longer in the labor force which is ~385k more than if the labor force participation rate had stayed at the already 25+ year low of 64.2% and 1MM more than if it had stayed at even a slightly more normal 64.5% (though Money McBags finds nothing normal in any of this). If the labor force participation had been 64.2%, the unemployment rate would have been 9.4% and at 64.5%, it would have been 9.8%, and yet overall, THE SAME FUCKING NUMBER OF PEOPLE WOULD HAVE BEEN UNEMPLOYED (seasonally adjusted of course, and Money McBags doesn’t know what seasons the B(L)S is using, but he hopes one of them is saffron, because that shit tastes good).
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So if Money McBags were Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, or the pornstachioed Keith Hall, the first thing he would do is go to Ft. Knox, strip down, lather himself up in WD40, and roll around in the fucking porphyry that is supplying the infinite amounts of this country’s gold (and there must be infinite amounts of gold at Ft. Knox because why else would the government not want it to be audited? Surely they are just being benevolent and saving some poor auditor from a task akin to chasing the horizon or finding out Josef K.’s real crime).
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Secondly, Money McBags would find Elizabeth Warren and ask if that is Frank-Dodd in her pants or if she is just happy to see him. But finally, Money McBags would log on to the B(L)S database and with the touch of a button simply change the labor force participation rate to 58.4% thereby making measured unemployment 0%. Yes, just like that, with the click of one button, Money McBags could give the US full employment which would make even John Maynard Keynes’ dick hard (and likely untrap his liquidity). While nothing will have changed in the Ponzeconomy™, all that matters is that the optics will look cocktactularly better (even better than the optics on this), and that is all anyone cares about anyway.
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2. The Birth/Death Model showed 131k jobs were somehow added to the economy and that number is derived from rigorous data and analysis that involves thoroughly manicuring one’s nails before opening Excel and goalseeking for something called “hopium.” Money McBags has no idea how the BLS generates this number as his only experience with black box models is through his diligent research in to such important news sources as Sugah and Black Tail magazines, but he is sure it is more ricockulous than acting like the debt ceiling isn’t going to be raised or trying to figure out who qualifies for a gay softball league (Dear Seattle Softball League, You ever hear of the hummer test? Try that and then get back to Money McBags if you still can’t figure out who qualifies). So when calculating the unemployment rate, take the reported 18k jobs added and deduct somewhere between 0 and 131k from it to adjust for this preposterous birth/death number driven by a calculation more undefined than Christina Romer’s chin or dividing anything by Ben Bernanke’s credibility.
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3. 39k government jobs were lost and if you think it is hard for private sector unemployed people to find a job, good luck handing someone a resume with a skills section that includes “four hour lunches,” “bitching,” and “bitching during four hour lunches.” Honestly, government workers have to be worse trained than Andy Dick so this is going to create a bigger (yet less delicious) overhang than Heidi Montag’s chest.
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4. The U6 unemployment rate which isn’t so quick to subtract out things like discouraged workers, marginally attached workers, and Charles Prince, was 16.2%. As this is a more real rate than the reported 9.2% (though more real in the sense that a unicorn is more real than Courtney Stodden’s age, because Money McBags doesn’t believe any number that comes out of the B(L)S), it should be monitored more closely than the announced number. That said, one year ago the U6 rate was 16.7% and now it is 16.2%, so as always, buy the fucking dip.
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5. Money McBags has no idea what is going on in this barely SFW picture, but he would love to find out. In fact, he thinks it could be the start of a better tradition than gold. And while this has nothing to do with the jobs report, you can all admit it is very important.
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6. 14.1MM people were unemployed which is more than last month and down just 500k from last year despite the titriffic recovery that has rallied the market (and that recovery apparently relies on what Money McBags is calling the inefficent-market hypothesis which is very similar to the efficient-market hypothesis, only the exact fucking opposite, and right).
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7. Once again, every fucking guess from a witch doctor was way above the actual reported jobs number which shows that either the ponzeconomy’s™ Gaussian curve has fatter tails than the Brazilian women’s soccer team or that we no longer live in a normal curve environment and thus these old economic models are more useless than the Principles of Macro Economics (unless being used as a paperweight), or Catherine Kieu Becker’s husband’s penis.
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If this were a normal environment with actual working models (and this model could work for Money McBags in any environment), the jobs number would have been somewhere around the median guess by witch doctors, or at least within a standard deviation or two. Instead, the number wasn’t even in the fucking sample set, shit, the witch doctors would have more credibility if they’d just guess the letter B or what is behind door number 2. And yet somehow people both pay, and pay attention to these dingbats.
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8. Weekly initial claims for unemployment are still running at >400k which means in June about 1.8MM people became unemployed and yet somehow the NFP report showed net 38k new hires, so um, huh? Is Money McBags supposed to believe that ~1.8MM jobs were added canceling out the initial claims for unemployment, or should Money McBags just continue to turn his fucking head and cough at the fact that numbers from different surveys make less sense than anyone lauding C’s quarter (because paying a reserve release today for a assfucking tomorrow is really not the best strategy) or complaining about this.
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So there you have it. The reported number of 18k is really closer to somewhere between 18k and a 113k loss when you layer in the birth/death model goal seek, and somewhere around “oh shit” when you add in common sense. But hey, at least the government teetering towards bankruptcy and cutting off support to those without Goldman on their resumes won’t make things worse, oh wait, this is probably not good, so investors should be very careful as they take their assets on a flight to safety (especially as one never knows who they may be sitting next to on that flight).
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Again, Money McBags apologizes for the delay and his absence, he hopes to be able to write more frequently and on a more timely basis in the future. Hopefully you all read his interview with KITD’s CEO earlier in the week (and yes, it is real, and no, Money McBags has no idea why a CEO would want to come on his site (figuratively, not literally), but it is what it is) where he did things to interviews about which Barbara Walters only dreams. And don’t forget to follow Money McBags on the twitter and the facebook where he gets a few spare minutes a night to share his thoughts, his hopes, and his analysis.
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