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DAVID WOO: The 'Moment Of Truth' For The US Economy Is Approaching In Just The Next Few Weeks Joe WeisenthalFebruary 7, 2013, 12:05 PM Yesterday at Bloomberg we got the chance to meet David Woo, BofA/ML's brilliant strategist for Global FX and rates. The focus of our segment was on the Japanese yen, but off camera Woo had some interesting thoughts on the US economic situation, and why we're about to approach what he calls a 'moment of truth.' He noted to us that there's been a growing divergence between the S&P 500 and consumer sentiment, and that it may...

A comprehensive new Harvard University report on Americans under 30, the so-called Millennials, shows that the economy is having a crushing impact, with just 62 percent working, and of those, half are toiling at part-time jobs. The report, released by Harvard's Institute of Politics, paints a depressing economic portrait of young Americans, many of whom are stuck with huge college tuition bills and little chance of finding a high-paying job. But over half, or 59 percent of those aged 18-29, have gone to college and The report reveals that time in college is a better sign of social status than...

Gov. Mark Dayton says in his State of the State speech that past state income tax cuts are partly to blame for chronic budget problems in Minnesota and that political leaders cannot afford to keep delaying difficult tax and spending decisions. Dayton is delivering the annual speech Wednesday night in the state House chamber. He says in advance excerpts provided by his office that income tax cuts in the late '90s were followed by a decade where Minnesota's economy fared worse than the nation as a whole and most other states. The speech is largely a pitch for Dayton's proposal...

An old friend Bloom Energy is making news, and not in a good way. The San Jose Mercury News reported today that Bloom Energy, a political heavyweight, paid workers brought in from Mexico in pesos: "Authorities said Bloom Energy paid the Mexican workers in pesos by wiring funds back to bank accounts in Chihuahua. Bloom also paid for the men to stay in a Sunnyvale motel and provided each with a meal stipend of $50 a day." If true, that's stunning for a company with a board of directors that includes former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Silicon Valley...

Layoffs have touched nearly every American household in some fashion over the last few years, according to new survey data to be released Thursday by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. While about 8 percent of Americans are unemployed, nearly a quarter of Americans say they were laid off at some point during the recession or afterward, according to the survey. More broadly, nearly eight in 10 say they know someone in their circle of family and friends who has lost a job. “This to me is why the recession was so all-consuming and is...

Yes, the Dow and S&P500 hit new highs. But the rally’s hiding huge risks: “GDP turns negative as U.S. economic recovery stalls,” screams one headline. Another hears a “Ticking Time Bomb.” World’s central bankers at Davos warn cheap money’s blowing a new asset bubble. Dr. Doom, Marc Faber, “loves the high odds of a ‘big-time’ market crash.” Another, Nouriel Roubini, says “prepare for a perfect storm,” while Bond King Bill Gross sees a “credit supernova” dead ahead. Rally? Bubble? Crash? Global? Is the economy “peaking?” Are we on a long, slow-growth downhill slide to a 1% GDP? Is our banking...

The Japanese have said “Enough.” After a generation of stagnation, they’ve chosen an all-of-the-above policy to boost economic growth. The nation’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is promising a “three arrows” strategy: bold monetary easing, increased public-works spending, and structural changes, such as regulatory reform. He’s throwing the ramen against the shoji and hoping something will stick. Some of those ideas are good ones, some probably aren’t. But it’s clear that Tokyo’s priority is growth, growth, growth. Time to get Nippon moving again. Nations probably never choose decline, at least not consciously. More likely they become victims of a creeping...

SHARONVILLE, OH (FOX19) - Employees at Target World in Sharonville say guns sales have been like nothing they've ever seen before. "You can't take away people's rights without people fighting back," says David Drury, a Target World employee. The increase in sales started just after the Newtown, Connecticut school shootings. "The boom has been pretty incredible. People are wanting to protect their rights while they have them and people are scared. They don't want their rights to be eroded," said Drury. Because of that, even on the night of the Super Bowl, and even at kickoff time, Target World was...

They say that time is money. What they don’t say is that money may be running out of time. There may be a natural evolution to our fractionally reserved credit system that characterizes modern global finance. Much like the universe, which began with a big bang nearly 14 billion years ago, but is expanding so rapidly that scientists predict it will all end in a “big freeze” trillions of years from now, our current monetary system seems to require perpetual expansion to maintain its existence. And too, the advancing entropy in the physical universe may in fact portend a similar...

Nearly Half Of American Families Live On The Edge Of Financial Ruin Mandi WoodruffFebruary 4, 2013, 1:19 PM In the past few years, Americans have learned a thing or two about how quickly disaster can strike. And with each Hurricane Sandy, housing crisis, and stock market crash that rocks our world, we're faced with the realization that many of us simply aren't prepared for the worst. A sobering new report by the Corporation for Enterprise Development shows nearly half of U.S. households (132.1 million people) don't have enough savings to weather emergencies, or finance long-term needs like college tuition, health...

Now that the federal government is playing an ever larger role in the economy, a look at Washington's track record seems to be long overdue. The recent release of the Federal Reserve Board's transcripts of its deliberations back in 2007 shows that their economic prophecies were way off. How much faith should we put in their prophecies today — or the policies based on those prophecies? Even after the housing market began its collapse in 2006, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in 2007, "The impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market...

THIRTY YEARS AGO Margaret Thatcher turned Britain into the world’s leading centre of “thinking the unthinkable”. Today that distinction has passed to Sweden. The streets of Stockholm are awash with the blood of sacred cows. The think-tanks are brimful of new ideas. The erstwhile champion of the “third way” is now pursuing a far more interesting brand of politics. Sweden has reduced public spending as a proportion of GDP from 67% in 1993 to 49% today. It could soon have a smaller state than Britain. It has also cut the top marginal tax rate by 27 percentage points since 1983,...

Getting our heads around apparent irrational exuberance on Wall Street... On Friday, February 1, the market rally continued as the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 14,010. Many investors rejoiced, and conservatives wondered if they were living on the same planet as the investment community. Unemployment is, after all, still at a publicly-declared 8%, a number that can only be reached if you stop counting a jobless person if his unemployment checks have run out, and if you consider an unemployed lawyer, accountant, salesman or buyer as “employed” if he bags groceries or delivers newspapers. The real number can be...

White House Council of Economic Adviser Chair Alan Krueger has begun his monthly statements on the nation’s employment situation with nearly the exact same sentences almost every month since November 2011, just after he was installed as one of Obama’s most senior economic advisers. With the exception of some variation in the May 2012 statement, Krueger has mailed it in every month, not bothering to change a thing in the opening lines of his commentary on the statistic that is perhaps more important to Americans. Krueger’s statements are released by the White House the morning the latest employment numbers become...

JEFF SAUT: The Stock Market Will Probably Tank After Obama's State Of The Union Joe WeisenthalJanuary 4, 2013 Raymond James strategist Jeff Saut offers his take on where the market is headed next. Today is session 23 in the typical 17- to 25-session duration of a "buying stampede." Such skeins only have one- to three-session pauses or pullbacks before they exhaust themselves on the upside. While a few have lasted for 25 - 30 sessions, it is very rare to have one last for more than 30 sessions. That said, this one feels like it will extend towards the State...

Every year, employment drops by almost 3 million during January. While the drop was worse than 2012, it is on par with the drops in 2010 and 2011. Of course, the Census Bureau whips out the old X-12 ARIMA smoothing models (maybe even the new and improved X-13!) and produces this much more palatable chart. Phew! That is much better for the media (and economy cheerleaders like Mark Zandi) to tout. Thanks to the ARIMA smoothing model, employment INCREASED by +157.000! As my students know, I like the raw, unsmoothed numbers. All the smoothed numbers tell you is … over...

When it comes to reversing the economy’s fourth-quarter growth decline, shale gas is the answer, says Wilbur Ross, chief of private equity firm WL Ross. “The best way to overcome the negative gross domestic product figures that were just released would be to encourage the exploitation of shale gas both for domestic and for international purposes,” he tells Fox Business Network. The clean energy concerns that have stifled permit issuance for shale gas extraction can easily be solved, Ross notes. “The greenies worry that shale gas would drive the price of electricity down and make sun power and wind power...

An Applebee's diner refused to leave a tip for religious reasons. The waitress who exposed it wonders if Jesus will pay her bills. I was a waitress at Applebee's restaurant in Saint Louis. I was fired Wednesday for posting a picture on Reddit.com of a note a customer left on a bill. I posted it on the web as a light-hearted joke. This didn't even happen at my table. The note was left for another server, who allowed me to take a picture of it at the end of the night. Someone had scribbled on the receipt, "I give God...

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan Senate plan to dramatically expand a visa program for highly skilled foreign workers resembles a proposal unveiled by Microsoft last fall, but well exceeds the company’s own goals. Led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, five Republicans and five Democrats rolled out the Immigration Innovation Act on Tuesday to lift the annual quota of H-1B visas for those workers from 65,000 to 115,000. That new cap would grow each year if demand outstrips supply, potentially up to 300,000 visas annually.

Following the governmemt's Employment Situation Summary yesterday, two words were noticeably absent at the Associated Press (here, here, and here), Bloomberg, Reuters, CNBC, and the New York Times: "seasonally adjusted."