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ADP Job Loss Report Is Worse Than Expected Joe WeisenthalDec. 2, 2009, 8:17 AM We've still got previous few green shoots on the jobs front. The private ADP jobs report indicated a loss of 169,000 private sector jobs in November, which was worse than the 150,000 that analysts had estimated. Also not good: October was revised to a worse 195,000. ------ According to today's ADP National Employment Report®, private sector employment decreased by 169,000 in November. The ADP National Employment Report, created by Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP®), in partnership with Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC, is derived from actual payroll data...

It's one of those numbers that's so unbelievable you have to actually think about it for a while... Within the next 12 months, the U.S. Treasury will have to refinance $2 trillion in short-term debt. And that's not counting any additional deficit spending, which is estimated to be around $1.5 trillion. Put the two numbers together. Then ask yourself, how in the world can the Treasury borrow $3.5 trillion in only one year? That's an amount equal to nearly 30% of our entire GDP. And we're the world's biggest economy. Where will the money come from? How did we end...

And if this is a recovery, it's the worst recovery of all time. David Rosenberg -- who has been getting into fights with other pundits left and right -- digs in and argues that what we're really looking at is a depression. MORE ON THE DEPRESSION Last week, we received some classic guffaws when we responded to whether or not the recession has ended with this: “We’re not convinced, but even if it is statistically over, the depression is ongoing”. We were reprimanded by former Fed Governor Mishkin for breeding “fear”. The eyes were rolling among the Squawk Box crew...

Peak Oil, Climate change and the Greater Depression will pose many challenges to our way of life but let’s get real, for a moment: Golden Hordes aren’t one of them. At least not now. Economic depression brings with it a host of serious problems, and I think you can say quite confidently, without being a chicken little, that most of the world is in a Greater Depression. But still, we’ve got a few years to go before we can say that the USA is no longer a viable culture, when no one wants to live in Paris or London, when...

Gold is on a tear this morning, just breaking $1,182. The dollar is losing serious ground against the Euro during early AM trading. Check out the Euro/Dollar spike in the second chart below.

The gems don't stop coming from SocGen, which has been advising clients how to play the end of the world, while predicting fresh lows in the market in 2010. And (duh) they love gold. Rolfe Winkler: Is gold going to $6,300? Dylan Grice, an analyst with Societe Generale, says it’s possible, given the decline in central bank credibility. But investors need to keep one thing in mind: Gold is merely a vehicle to protect the purchasing power of money. Gold is surging because investors see that the Federal Reserve — more concerned with deflation and unemployment than sound money —...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- AOL may lay off a third of its staff as part of a restructuring related to the company's upcoming spin-off from Time Warner Inc., the unit told regulators Thursday. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, AOL said it had informed employees of the layoffs, which are conditioned upon its successful spin-off from Time Warner (TWX 31.86, -0.96, -2.93%) . The transaction is slated for Dec. 9. AOL told employees it has announced a voluntary layoff program that starts Dec. 4 and goes through Dec. 11. The company is offering buyouts to as many as...

The Great Credit Crunch Is Deepening Minyanville Staff Nov 19, 2009 9:20 am Consumers will feel the effects in the form of tighter credit standards. Editor's Note: This article was written by Richard Suttmeier, chief market strategist at ValuEngine.com, which is a fundamentally-based quant research firm in Princeton, New Jersey, that covers more than 5,000 stocks every day. Within the proposed banking reform bill, the House Financial Services Committee wants banks and funds to make payments in advance for companies deemed “too-big-to-fail”. This fund will be capped at $200 billion, insuring that taxpayers won't wind up paying for a bailout...

The housing market dropped off a cliff in October, as the original Nov. 30th expiration date for the first-time home buyers tax credit approached, according to the Housing Market Monitor of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Add to that the 6.25% 60-day delinquency rate in the third quarter -- 58% above the level of one year ago -- and you've got a recipe for housing disaster: more foreclosures, slower sales and ultimately a greater decline in house prices. "With unemployment virtually certain to remain high well into next year, there is little prospect for any sizable drop in...

Housing starts fall back to lowest level in six months October data show starts down 10.6% and building permits off 4% By Greg Robb, MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- In a blow to the optimism that had surrounded the U.S. housing sector in recent months, housing starts fell a sharp 10.6% in October, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. New construction on housing units dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 529,000, the lowest level since April. The 10.6% drop was the biggest percentage decline for starts since January. Both single-family homes and multifamily units declined last month. Prior to the...

LANSING, Mich. — One frustrated client hurled a piece of concrete through the window of a welfare agency. Another threw her car keys at a welfare worker before being escorted away. At one point, a woman on public assistance even took a swing at a worker. As Michigan struggles with the highest-in-the-nation jobless rate, state workers who deal with unemployment, welfare and other aid programs say they have never been so overwhelmed — or so worried about their safety. Some clients have begun taking their anger out on the very people who are offering help. And caseworkers are seeking extra...

Roubini: The Worst Is Yet To Come! Joe WeisenthalNov. 15, 2009, 6:47 PM Roubini is back! After a summer of mixed messages, he's now firmly back to stark warnings, most recently sounding the alarm about a massive bubble due to the dollar carry trade. And today in the Daily News he has some bad news for the unemployed: the worst is yet to come. Also, remember: The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession. So we can expect that job losses...

Synopsis: US consumers skitish (unexpectedly of course).

WASHINGTON — Fewer people are claiming unemployment benefits — but still too many to signal that the economy is close to gaining jobs. First-time claims for jobless benefits dropped last week to a seasonally adjusted 502,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's the fewest claims since the week ending Jan. 3, and below economists' estimates. Claims would have to fall to the high 400s to indicate the economy could soon produce even a slight gain in jobs, estimates Abiel Reinhart, an economist at JPMorgan Chase. That level of claims could be reached by January, he said, and the economy should...

Economists in the latest Wall Street Journal survey, on average, expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates around September 2010, a politically sensitive time considering midterm elections will be right around the corner and unemployment is forecast to still be over 9.5%. The 52 surveyed economists—not all of whom answer every question—on average expect the unemployment rate to rise to 10.3% by the end of this year from its current 10.2%, and they expect it to stay above 9.5% through 2010. The respondents expect job growth to return over the next 12 months, but the forecast calls for an...

Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg, formerly of Merrill Lynch, thinks the unemployment rate is going to at least 12 percent, maybe even 13 percent. Optimists, Rosenberg explains, underestimate the incredible damage done to the labor market during this downturn. And even before this downturn, the economy was not generating jobs in huge numbers. If he is right, all political bets are off. I think the Democrats could lose the House and effective control of the Senate. I think you would also be talking about the rise of third party and perhaps a challenger to Obama in 2012. So here is...

Report: 10 States Face Looming Budget Disasters By JUDY LIN, Associated Press Wednesday, November 11, 2009SACRAMENTO, Calif. – In Arizona, the budget has grown so gloomy that lawmakers are considering mortgaging Capitol buildings. In Michigan, state officials dealing with the nation's highest unemployment rate are slashing spending on schools and health care. Drastic financial remedies are no longer limited to California, where a historic budget crisis earlier this year grew so bad that state agencies issued IOUs to pay bills. A study released Wednesday warned that at least nine other big states are also barreling toward economic disaster, raising the...

Payroll employment among for-hire trucking companies in October dropped 0.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from September levels – slightly more than the decline the month before. Employment is down 9.3 percent from October 2008, according to preliminary figures released Friday, Nov. 6, by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the estimated 7,500 jobs lost in October, the trucking industry has lost more than 91,000 jobs since the end of 2008 – a decline of 6.8 percent. Job cuts since July 2008 – just before the current decline – total 141,400. The BLS numbers reflect...

In the current fiscal year alone, the U.S. Congress and the administration have created a federal deficit of $1.4 trillion — more than TRIPLE the size of America's largest deficit in history. Worse, they now admit that the cumulative deficits through 2019 will be at least $9 trillion, and that they have no plan in place to reduce this monster in our midst. This is the greatest threat to your financial future of all time. As experts like Warren Buffett have noted, the only way Washington politicians know how to solve the debt crisis is by creating inflation. They are...

I think we’ve all been broke before. Large men come and break your thumbs and threaten your family, and then you hide out in a dumpster until it all blows over. That’s all well and good for an individual, but what happens if our entire country goes broke? Robert J. Samuelson raised this concern in the Washington Post, and it got me worried, even though I didn’t quite understand it all (which perhaps actually increases the worry). We can’t just hide America in a dumpster (and even if we could, I bet that goody-two-shoes Canada would rat us out); we...

Synopsis: Over 66% will be dependent on government [for salary, pension or entitlement] by 2018. This is not sustainable .... no really.

Nov. 9, 2009, 10:52 a.m. EST Dollar reached 15-month low in wake of G20 meeting Euro presses back above $1.50 By Deborah Levine & William L. Watts, MarketWatch NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The dollar weakened Monday, pushing an index of the greenback down more than 1% and to the lowest in 15 months, after a weekend meeting of Group of 20 policy makers offered no support for the U.S. unit. Traders also took heed of an International Monetary Fund report issued at the G20 meeting that said the dollar has moved closer to "medium-term equilibrium" but "still remains on the...

To hear President Obama tell it, he's been busy creating jobs since taking office. The $787 billion stimulus package, he said last winter, would "save or create 3.5 million jobs." The White House is touting reports from recipients of stimulus funds asserting that they have created or saved 640,000 jobs so far. Yet the national unemployment rate has now hit 10.2 percent, helping explain why Republicans won the governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey last week, just a year after the party's 2008 drubbing. And Obama declared Friday that more action is needed. "History tells us that job growth...

A look at the numbers inside the unemployment report including a report that claims 190,000 job losses while also reporting an increase of more than 550,000 unemployed americans. The numbers are staggering. 27 million Americans without full-time work, real unemployment tops 17.5%

For months he had warned it was coming but that didn't ease the political shockwaves for President Barack Obama when unemployment topped 10 percent. A year after his election Obama finds it increasingly difficult to blame the sour economy on George W. Bush or offer reassurances that jobless Americans will soon find work.

The number of new jobless claims fell to the lowest level in 10 months last week, figures analysts say point to job cuts easing on the economy's slow road to recovery. The Labor Department reports first-time unemployment claims fell by 20,000 to 512,000 last week, better than the 523,000 economists predicted.

Four Reasons Hyperinflation Hasn’t Hit The US... Yet Keith Fitz-Gerald Nov 04, 2009 11:30 am This uncertain limbo isn't good now, or ever. Everything we know about classic economic theory suggests the US economy should be experiencing Zimbabwe-like hyperinflation right now, thanks to the nearly $2.2 trillion the US Federal Reserve has pumped into the system. But we’re not... yet. Classic economic theory says that money supply can be used to stimulate the economy and our central bankers seem to agree. That’s why they’ve pumped more than $1 trillion dollars into the economy, engineered countless bailout bonanzas for zombie institutions,...

Up 5.5% this month. Delinquencies in commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) accelerated in October, according to a report from Barclays Capital (BarCap). The 30-plus day delinquency rate jumped 41bps to 5.5% in October as current loans deteriorated and transferred to special servicers. Continue reading »

Scary Specter Of '30s-Style Economic Depression Commodities / Gold & Silver Stocks Nov 04, 2009 - 02:24 AM By: The_Gold_Report Jay Taylor, who publishes Gold, Energy & Technology Stocks and hosts his "Turning Hard Times into Good Times" radio program each week, is hoping and praying for deflation to help the U.S. heal its wounds and find its way back to prosperity. He has reasons to think the dollar might bounce back, too. Nevertheless, Jay reminds The Gold Report readers about frightening parallels to the 1930s and doesn't dismiss the possibility of a hyperinflation that renders the U.S. dollar about...

Eric Sprott: "Dead Government Walking" Joe WeisenthalNov. 3, 2009, 12:48 PM If you're looking for something to cheer you up, don't read the latest letter from ultra-bear Eric Sprott (via Market Folly). Basically he argues, a US default is coming sooner, rather than later, and that there's just no hope of averting this. The projected US deficit from 2009 to 2019 is now slated to be almost $9 trillion dollars.3 How on earth does anyone expect them to raise this capital? As we stated in a previous article, in order to satisfy US capital requirements, all existing investors would have...

Property Values Set to Fall 43% From Current Depressed Levels Michael David White November 02, 2009 Price Trends / WAR OF THE WORLDS: If you use a 20-year time horizon, and assume prices will return to the trend line, then our residential property bubble will bottom after values fall over 40% from current levels (see above (c) aka “(y) - (z)” aka “Loss Today to Bottom”). I make no predictions. I do watch numbers. The chart shows a catastrophe of falling real estate values loaded up on top of our current catastrophe in real estate values. No one would question...

Major Companies Hoarding Cash, Preparing for Second Wave of Financial Crisis By Rocky Vega 11/02/09 Stockholm, Sweden – If you’re looking for insight into how you should be responding to the “recovery” in the US economy, there’s actually a glimmer of sanity coming leading US companies. Right now major American companies are storing up more cash than at any other time within the past 40 years. According to media reports, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase among others are saving “as if another financial crisis were on the way.” Even the vice president of equity research at Rochdale Securities Dick Bove said,...

Here's a puzzle: The stock markets are doing very well, yet the performance of the underlying economy doesn't seem to justify optimism. The buoyant S&P 500 has risen 53 percent since the March bottom. And while the economy expanded at a 3.5 percent rate in the third quarter, unemployment is high, incomes are stagnant, and consumers are shaky.

Economic Recovery, The Great Hoax of 2009-2010 Economics / Economic Recovery Nov 02, 2009 - 07:40 AM By: Martin_D_Weiss Before he died, Dad warned me of false profits … and fake promises. “Beware,” he said, “of shaky gains hyped up by Wall Street. “Watch out,” he insisted, “for unsustainable economic recoveries trumpeted by Washington. “And no matter when or where you may be, don’t be fooled by illusions of wealth and prosperity. “If they’re built on a foundation of shaky debt, they’re suspect. If they’re driven by unbridled speculation, they’re pure fluff. And if they’re bought and paid for by...

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday that more U.S. jobs will be lost in coming weeks and months but stressed the economy has recovered a lot of ground since he took office in January. Speaking at a White House meeting of his Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Obama said the current pace of job losses was "distressing" and the labor market would not improve quickly

The idea that the government of a major advanced country would default on its debt -- that is, tell lenders that it won't repay them all they're owed -- was, until recently, a preposterous proposition. Argentina and Russia have stiffed their creditors, but surely the likes of the United States, Japan or Britain wouldn't. Well, it's still a very, very long shot, but it's no longer entirely unimaginable. Governments of rich countries are borrowing so much that it's conceivable that one day the twin assumptions underlying their burgeoning debt (that lenders will continue to lend and that governments will continue...

Its make-it or break-it time next week when investors look to the Labor Department's Unemployment Report for October, let's hope its good. With the market jumping 200 points in either direction on bascially "headlines" this week, the October payrolls report that is delivered next Friday (Nov 6th) could really jolt the system. Even as other parts of the economy show signs of stabilizing, rising unemployment may keep overall wages and benefits subdued and weigh on consumer spending. The U.S. has lost 7.2 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, and the government is scheduled to release the October...

As I walked home recently from a weekend trip to the grocery store, I passed a total of 13 vacant offices with signs saying "for lease" or "for sale." These spaces ranged from approximately 500 to 5,000 square feet according to their signs, and they are stretched along a main, commercial street in the center of Tucson, AZ. There is also an eight-screen movie theater that sits empty as well. These empty commercial spaces ... are empty now, and have been for quite some time. I found it intriguing that both in the central portion of Tucson and also in...

The U.S. economy expanded in the third quarter for the first time in more than a year thanks to a bounce back in consumer spending, but a weak labor market is expected to keep the recovery subdued. Gross domestic product rose by a higher-than-expected seasonally adjusted 3.5% annual rate July through September, the Commerce Department said Thursday in its first estimate of third-quarter GDP.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sales of newly built U.S. single-family homes unexpectedly tumbled 3.6 percent in September in their first drop since March, but the inventory of new homes available at the end of the month shrank to the smallest in 27 years, government data showed on Wednesday. September single-family home sales totaled 402,000 units at an annual pace. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected new home sales to rise to a 440,000 unit annual pace from a revised 417,000 units in August, which was originally reported as 429,000 units. The median sales price rose in September to $204,800 from $199,900,...

Treasurys fell Monday after the government kicked off a record weekly offering of $123 billion in U.S. debt. In the first of four auctions to be held this week, the U.S. sold $7 billion worth of reopened 5-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS.

Caterpillar Inc. said it expects to call 550 laid-off employees back to work by the end of next year, but will permanently trim about 2,500 idle employees. The company on Monday began notifying the employees designated for permanent separation from the construction machinery maker. The company said it will provide severance benefits to those employees, but it didn't specify whether they are from the hourly or salaried employee ranks or where they worked.

"This is a sucker's flame," Celente said from his office in Kingston, N.Y. "It's a false-flag recovery. The stimulus, bailout and buyout packages being forced on the nation, by an administration that misread how bad the economy was, will only lead to Obamageddon: The Fall of Empire America." Celente cites the global financial system as terminally ill because it has been built on endless supplies of cheap money, rampant speculation, fraud, greed and delusion. He sees a collapse coming, and predicts that by 2012 everyone will face the truth, and we will be in the midst of the Greatest Depression...

Tent cities in Sacramento, CA.

Drawing striking comparisons between the Japanese economy in 1988 and the American economy today, a new book by an author who predicted the current crisis warns it's going to get much worse before it gets better. Vox Day, a WND columnist, asserts in "The Return of the Great Depression," by WND Books, the U.S. is only now entering the early stages of the Second Great Depression. Day presents a fact-rich case, rooted in economic history and time-tested theory, in which he concludes that an economic contraction of very large proportions is presently developing. But he contends that "due to a...

How Much Juice Is Left In This Bear Market Rally? By Bill BonnerOctober 23, 2009 10/23/09 Waterford, Ireland – Since it peaked in 2007, the UK stock market lost 60% of its value. As of yesterday, it had recovered half of what it had lost. All over the world, the story is about the same. Markets have recovered half or more of what they gave up. The US is a laggard. While the S&P is up 60%, the Dow isn’t yet at the halfway point. Some foreign markets, meanwhile, have 100% + gains. Fund managers who missed the rally are...

It is difficult to know what to be most shocked by in the gross domestic product figures published by the Office for National Statistics this morning: the fact that we are in the longest-lasting deepest continuous recession in recorded history or that no-one in the City foresaw it*. Leaving aside the City’s failings, with which we are intimately familiar, the scale of the economic collapse is disturbing. The National Institute for Economic and Social Research has been calling this a “depression” rather than a recession for some time – these figures surely now underline such a description. A brief look...

3 signs of the next real estate collapse The latest bubble is about to burst, but this time it's in the commercial market. Here's how to see it coming. By Katie Benner, writer-reporter October 22, 2009: 10:16 AM ET NEW YORK (Fortune) -- When the FDIC closed Chicago's Corus Bank last month, it may have signaled the beginning of the next shock to the banking system: commercial real estate defaults. Corus, whose balance sheet was larded with bad construction loans, is just one of many banks that have a slew of this debt on their books. Refinancing the $2 trillion...

Unemployment rose in 23 states last month as the economy struggled to create jobs in the early stages of the recovery. While layoffs have slowed, companies remain reluctant to hire. Forty-three states reported job losses in September, while only seven gained jobs, the Labor Department said Wednesday. Some of the states that lost jobs still saw their unemployment rates decline, as discouraged workers gave up looking for work. People who are out of work but no longer looking for jobs aren't counted as officially unemployed. That trend was evident nationwide in September, as nearly 600,000 people dropped out of the...

Research Firms Predict Sad Christmas David BodamerOct. 20, 2009, 3:09 PM Most of the major predictions are now in for the holiday shopping season. Here we’ve put together a roundup of what various trade associations and research outlets are predicting. Projections range a bit this year. Some groups are calling for a slight decline, other say sales will be flat and some say sales will show a slight uptick. In part, the differences stem from the different way the groups look at the numbers. ICSC and Retail Forward, for example, looks at same-store sales while the National Retail Federation looks...