by John Galt

November 7, 2009

1. BLS  Table A-12 Section U-6 “The Real” Unemployment Number

This month the number deteriorated to a level of 17.5% which since the proverbial beginning of the crisis in roughly February 2007 indicates that we have seen an over eight standard deviation from the unemployment/underemployment levels at that time. That is unprecedented and has not been seen since the Great Depression if my calculations are correct.

2. Birth Death Model Adjustments

Never discussed in polite circles nor the mainstream media, the computer continues to crank out numbers that requires any sane person to suspend belief and accept that the recovery is not a dwarf driving a Shriner’s car and sprinkling magic fairy dust to make the general population as stoned as an Occidental College freshman.

The 86,000 jobs created would be amusing except for the fact that the claims are so outrageous as assuming 14,000 jobs created in the Financial Services arena and 5,000 in Construction.

3. Speaking of Birth/Death Construction jobs:

Maybe they were all assigned to building a man-made lake to store all the bullcrap Washington D.C. is generating to prevent the fumes from creating a massive surge in Global Warming and temperature increases.

4. Birth/Death Comparison and the Headline Number Minus the Computer Fantasy

So if you minus the Birth/Death fantasy we lost 276,000 jobs on the headline number.  Good luck to all of you employees who had jobs created for you by the BLS computers.

5. The Revisions Continue but Does the Differential Really Matter?

No matter what one thinks of the quality of the BLS statistical models, you have to give them credit as a swing from revisions of -244,000 to positive 44,000 is impressive. If only we could balance our check books and file our taxes using their calculators…….

6. Maybe, just Maybe We can get a Job with the BLS

Because the key number to look at here is that the graph with revisions demonstrates that since December of 2007, we have not had any net job growth in this economy. It is not getting any better and in fact the reality is that the lack of credit access to small businesses will only amplify the problem and continue to aggravate an already tenuous employment situation into the next election.

Got Farmland?

Ya better or you may starve…..

by John Galt

November 6, 2009

Greetings sports fans one and all! It’s time for the Sheila Bowl this week and flushing and swirling financial institutions getting ready to take the final plunge and the ignorant who kept deposits over $250,000 in the banks getting ready to take that death defying dive into the blue (hopefully not yellow) swirling water at the bottom of the bowl as they went above the FDIC deposit insurance guarantees….

Here’s your pregame show, starting with an update of the DIF funding since the failures of August 21st with the balance left from the DIF fund based on the data on June 30th:

Ouch. Almost $8 billion in the hole so Sheila had best collect those fees from the banks before they fail and get that into the bank asap. Maybe, just maybe, should should quadruple the fees on banks without branches, you know, like Goldman Sachs ya know? Well, let’s tune in for tonight’s action because one thing about our neck of the woods in Florida:

She could shut half of them down and still have a boatload of insolvent institutions….

by John Galt

November 6, 2009

Malik….meaning “Master” or “King”‘

Nadal….rough translation to “Noble” from “Nadil”

Hasan….meaning “good” or “handsome”

Major Malik Nadal Hasan is a martyr.

A man and a name which will now live in infamy in the history of the United States, our beloved military and now a hero of the Islamofacist movement. While the American people will be spoon fed excuses about the mental condition of the killer, how this was not terrorism, and of course how the religion of peace had nothing to do with this, the reality that should slap anyone with two ounces of common sense should begin to understand that America has been at war for almost two decades now. Yet so few, except for the families of the dead, wounded  or those engaged in the battle, wish to acknowledge this fact.

America’s war was not one that we sought out for profit, for glory, or for spoils. The war was brought to our shores not because of geopolitical conflict, nor an enemy wishing to conquer our nation’s vast resources. This war was started, engaged in, and amplified on September 11, 2001 because we are the infidels, the evil children of Satan that prevent the world from falling under the veil of a religion based on a child molester’s drunken visions. Sadly, as long as our fellow citizens are pacified by ignorance or bribed with baubles, the citizenry will never understand the enemy that kills our friends, neighbors, and protectors, nor will they act to acknowledge that this war even exists.

We make excuses for our enemies and excuses for ourselves as they kill, without mercy, without apology and without regard. And this time, as it was in 2003, the new politically correct military suffers another self-inflicted wound. You see, the killing is not without a historical basis, nor is the idiocy of a politicized military new. It has happened before. Within our military. And with dire results.

On March 23, 2003 (ET) Sergeant Asan Akbar rolled two fragmentation grenades and two incendiary grenades into three tents where officers were sleeping at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait. Not long after this attack, Sadam’s Iraqi military launched a Scud missile at our troops in Kuwait which was destroyed by a Patriot missile.  As the bloodied troops stumbled out of their tents, Akbar opened fire with a M4 shooting two of the soldiers.  Captain Christopher Scot Seifert, age 27, died from his wounds and fifteen other soldiers were wounded also before he was subdued.

Quoting the article from the London Times on March 25, 2003:

As Akbar was being led away after the incident, fellow soldiers heard him shout: “You guys are coming into our countries and you’re going to rape our women and kill our children.”

Fast forward six years to tonight,  and numerous incidents around the world and inside the U.S., within the military and in civilian society. The United States military was the target of a planned attack by some Islamic illegal aliens who walked across the Mexican-American border and planned to evolve from their day jobs as pizza delivery men into terrorists to attack our soldiers at Fort Dix, NJ. More rings of suspected terrorists arrested from Colorado, New York, etc.

Yet our politically correct  Obama administration, just as Bush acted,  continue to assure the public that this is not a war with Islam but against the problem children of the “Religion of Peace” and the advocates of violence against all civilized society. Sadly, our political leadership and their cohorts within the mainstream media and educational elitists continue to deny the words of our enemies and dismiss their actions as irrelevant to the world stage. Within this deliberate act of ignorance and malfeasance, the assumption that “all Muslims” who serve within our military are always loyal to the nation first, their religion and its adherents second. Even though this may be true in some cases, the words of the Quran and the leaders within their sect demand the loyalty of the followers to the word of their prophet first, and nations or political leaders secondarily.

The long bloody river of denial continues to flow through our society as the bodies of our soldiers are returned from Iraq, Afghanistan and other nations embroiled in the war against Islam and its radical adherents. But the denial has created a situation within our military that I find disgusting and untenable; we challenge the Muslims in the services  not as to their loyalty to our nation but accept without question their commitments. The failure to understand the over twelve hundred years a of systemic murderous activity in the name of Allah is our Achilles Heel and the enemies of freedom know this. Thus begging the question as to why any member of the Islamic faith is allowed to serve on bases where or near units to be deployed are located, much less within our services as a whole. Why we would deploy “Muslim” Americans to theaters of war where they might be asked to kill one of the zealots defending their same faith, a violation of the word of Allah when done so at the behest of the “infidels” and its leaders?

The answers are simple, sad and tragically for the victims of politics, not war, a statement to the decline and fall of an empire.

America must allow the “diversity” of its forces to insure that it is reflective of society as a whole. That is the twisted Hegelian logic of Marx and Sociologists in the pacified world of academia and influencing the civilian bureaucrats within the Pentagon. The advisers who proclaim this nonsense never will serve within the military and view our soldiers with disdain and demand this policy as a necessity to prevent a racist elite service from evolving. When you take the perverted views of our elitists into account as part of this policy then one must review the economic and geopolitical concerns which influence our weak-kneed cowardly politically correct rulers, then you begin to understand why our military is ordered to adhere to policies inherently dangerous to the survival of our troops within and out of the conflict zones. America’s unwillingness to confront and deny the wishes of our Saudi masters by protecting our troops and securing all avenues of attack invites disasters such as what happened at Fort Hood today. The refusal to engage the Wahhabi sect and other various terrorist organizations funded by the same families that demand American loyalty and protection for their regime illustrates the fallacy of our proverbial “War on Terror” which will never end during my life time or yours.

By that same token, God forbid an American citizen elect to support a third party, vote for a pro-gun law or candidate, or speak freely about the Founding Fathers though, as that is a terrorist act in the eyes of the current regime in Washington and the prior administration. Thus why we shall continue to suffer attacks such as those on November 5, 2009 and March 23, 2003; infiltration is easy when Sociologists and cowards set policy and attempt to force the greatest military in history to act as a social experiment instead of just letting them do their job as Constitutionally mandated.

America has suffered another self-inflicted gunshot wound thanks to political correctness and submission to internationalism.

Must we bleed to death before we stop reloading the weapon of our own destruction?

By John Galt

November 4, 2009

Today the media celebrated more grandiose economic news.  First, they proclaimed the great news that Government Motor’s sales increased 4.7% month over month. Since year over year numbers are not important now because they do not look so hot and you can not compare a “private” GM to a “Government owned” GM now, let’s ask the question:

If you fall down a 100 foot deep well, climb up 4.7 feet to try to save yourself, does this mean you are saved?

Uh, no, you still have another 95 feet to climb and guess what? Japan, the EU, South Korea and the Obamanation just happen to be pouring slippery doses of competition and tax oil down the sides to insure you fall back to the bottom. When you hear the economic data, let us keep it all in perspective, please.

What do I mean by that? The Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders report from the Department of Commerce (Links to PDF of report) for September was widely reported as a 0.9% increase. For the seasonally adjusted numbers month over month that is true. But in reality, the first table for Manufacturers’ shipments year over year was down from last year’s deep in the recession abysmal number without seasonal adjustments by 14.5%. Thus once again, when you start to dig into the numbers and look at the big picture, it is not as good as you think. If you think that headline number is bad, there is worse news: Machine orders, down; Iron and Steel manufacturing, down; Material Handling equipment, down;  Computers, down;  Semiconductors, down; Automobiles and Light Trucks, down; Non durable goods, down hard. You see where I am going?

Despite the popular Bubblemedia take on the reports, once you dig down, what matters, what moves America forward, what manufacturing we need to restart our economy is declining still. Thus why I think Friday’s unemployment report could put a nail in this bear market rally’s coffin once and for all. If you look at the charts below of the Wilshire 5000 and IWM (Russel 2000 ETF) you will see why I’m now bearish and think the divergence of dollar weakness with equity weakness could become the new theme in the weeks ahead. For comparison’s sake, first my dollar theory as the UUP tanked after a brief rally going against all technical indicators and compared with gold via the GLD ETF:

The two huge volume spikes confirm Gold’s move and despite the need for a respite, geopolitical events and gold’s India party have overtaken the inactivity of the Fed and ECB to prevent such a move. Next the consequences of smart money not believing in this “Obama Economic Miracle” being reflected in the non-internationalized small business indexes of the Wilshire 5000 and Russell 2000:

I think by Monday of next week, the 50 DMA flattens out and rolls over moving south for a while. Just like the IWM:

Although the volume on the IWM seems to be increasing as the selling does, we have not seen any final capitulation despite the intensity of recent selling. I figure we roll over on the unemployment data and could see a rather dramatic sell off in mid and small cap equities by week end.

So keep climbing up the well walls and if you’re lucky, or starving, or thirsty, maybe one of those Indian gold buyers will toss you a smoke.

By John Galt

November 4, 2009

Well, I think China is the one who might want a smoke now.

You see, India, today, enjoyed the ultimate in the equivalent of geopolitical sex. How good is it to be India today? Let’s check out the headline from the Wall Street Journal tonight:

India Buys 200 Tons of IMF’s Gold Allotment

Move Seen as Effort to Diversify Reserves Away From the Dollar

Whoops. That wasn’t supposed to happen. And how China could not have possibly seen this coming and liquidated their positions in the futures as soon as the news leaked out mid-day indicates that they did not expect it, were shocked by it and now have to decide to either commit to the remainder of the IMF gold sale (about 50% is left) or to allow other BRIC nations to fill the void. Just a sec, India is taking another draw on that stick…..exhale, ahhhhhhh…..

So how bad did India screw China today? Let’s check out the charts….

China which is normally an aggressive investor paused thinking as I did that dollar strength would return on a technical basis and that gold would weaken. Well, so did a lot of other folks but apparently the geopolitical world is shifting overnight.  In one day with this announcement, India was able to screw over all of its historical enemies, the Arabs and radical Muslims of the OPEC infested Gulf and China. Take another draw on that coal New Delhi, you’ve earned it.

In one day, the Indian central bank and government put a FLOOR under the price of gold all but insuring that the 50 DMA is intact now for the short and intermediate term and the 22.6% rally in gold could well explode into a 35% plus annual move if not more considering the instability with the Iranian situation and the serious instability located in the D.C.-New York/Wall Street corridor. They blew up every dollar long that wanted to make a serious move to squash the commodity rally, revived Dr. Copper to validate its recent moves and now forced a potential panic in the coming days and weeks forcing a dollar liquidation and panic to buy gold as rapidly as possible to lock in the price above the new floor (I project that at $1016 to $1030 as the lower end of the range now for at least five months barring a shocking development). “Cough”, watch out for that second hand smoke. How did that taste ChiComs?

Understand also that the FOMC of the Federal Reserve reveals their wisdom tomorrow but this move indicates that the emerging world voted today:

We don’t want your stinkin’  dollars.

So be patient if you’re Dell barfs, your delivery is late or your computer gives you a blue screen because that coughing sound is your customer service rep in Mumbai exhaling one of those evil over-taxed American cigarettes Americans used to enjoy after sex back in the old days. The nation of India got everything it could ever dream of and more; like a stable base of insurance to assure their nation’s survival as the Fed and our corrupt financial and political system elects to destroy our currency to avoid the hard choices.

Hell boys and girls down there, light up one for me. It’s not politically correct to celebrate being smarter than the rest of the world or enjoy oneself in America any more.

Uh, just a reminder about what I’ve said about CIT going Tango Uniform

I’ve given a lot of thought to where we have arrived, and the cognitive dissonance that exists among Americans that refuse to allow themselves to accept a serious reality; that we are at war.

We are at war for our very survival as a culture. A war that will determine if we live as destitute and dependent slaves of a Marxist oligarchy, or fight to retain what is left of our liberties for a little season longer.

It’s not a shooting war – yet. But the machinations set into motion most assuredly guarantee misery and death at the hands of the state and by the consequences of what the state is doing.

What I find disconcerting is the refusal of Americans to accept this reality. We constantly hear by those who think themselves leaders about the need to ‘compromise’; the need to be ‘civil’; the need to be ‘Christian’; the need to be moderate’. What that says to me is that the leaders of the nation are telling us to bend over, take it and enjoy it – because that is what ‘civil’ people do. That is what ‘Christians’ should do.

Of course if you don’t submit to such admonitions, you are called a hypocrite, and extremist and so forth – applying Rule No. 4 under Tactics of Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals: 4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules”. Of course that is done so that they can destroy you and your opposition to what they plan to do to you. It’s called using your own morality against you. They make you fight according to the rules they say you should adhere to – while they move outside those rules to wage the war while forbiding you to defend yourself by misapplication of your rules.

What they essentially want is for us to be carpets and allow tyranny to walk all over you – because as some would say: that is what Jesus would do.

Well that’s nonsense. Biblically speaking all one has to do is read the bible’s accounts of what happens when Jesus returns in Zechariah 14 and in Revelation to understand he’s not coming back as a lamb – but as a warrior seated on a white horse with a sword – to wage war on those who come against Him at His coming. Once again illustrating the true adage that peace comes through the other side of war.

But still we’re told by among our own numbers that we need to stop being confrontational, to be generous to our enemies while they prepare to rape us.

Meanwhile the Marxist juggernaut plows onward, ripping up our solid foundations and imposing with little to no opposition – tyranny of a sort never seen on these shores.

Americans are willfully oblivious to what is happening to them. They refuse to recognize the war that the Left have waged upon their liberties for decades.

It’s not too dissimilar from the indifference we and our leaders held towards radical Islam in the 80’s and 90’s, even though the leaders of Jihadist Islam declared war on America and the West in both word, thought and deed. We slept in the face of a clear and present danger – and ultimately thousands lost their lives by their hands and we awoke one bright September morning to horror that bewildered the majority of the nation that never saw it coming.

Likewise the Marxists in this nation have declared war on We The People, Our Constitution, our Rights and Liberty itself. They have done so in word, thought and deed, and we would understand what they are doing if only we paid attention to what they were actually doing via stealth and double-speak. They have achieved via deceit, the highest positions of power in the land, and thus having control of our education system, the media and government – have gone from subtle sabateurs – to in-your-face warfare.

They are bold in their declared war of “hope and Change” against the foundations of America. They have gone to war against God and Christian Principles and values in our society. They have lofted up government above God and made the people dependent upon them for their sustenance. They protect sin and abomination by law – and are about the task of criminalizing our faith and our very thoughts.

All under our very noses, while we watch them do it.

And yet we are told to be civil. To compromise. To engage in dialogue, so that we might somehow persuade those that support tyrants to our way of thinking.

Such is madness!

It’s a tool of the enemy to divide and conquer us from within. Men with no loyalty except to their power and ideology preying upon those who always want to see the better angels of mankind; who pervert the scriptures and preach to the biblically ignorant that Jesus was a Socialist – and to be a good Christian means we must adopt the Marxist plank – to eschew war but to wage it on those who refuse to convert to the new religion of ‘compassion’.

We have lost the language, and allow the enemy to define it for us – whereby we play by their ever-changing rules. Then we have those among us who tell us it’s all rotten and wrong unless we follow them and their “truths”. They assail those who stand up to tyranny because they do not follow specific ‘chosen’ leaders, so the opposition to a clear enemy becomes muddied and lost as we battle among ourselves and afford the Marxists the achievement of their goals without hardly any opposition.

Anarchy is being bred, along with the portents of a bloodbath that will make the French blush in astonishment.

One day, a majority are going to wake up to an absolute horror that their lives are in, and they will suddenly ask themselves “how could this happen?”. I fear by the time that happens, it will be too late to stop the things that will be visited upon us – things our minds cannot wrap themselves around.

For now a majority refuse to recognize reality, because they assume their lives will somehow return to what they were – as if that was the way the world resides normally. They have no clue that our very short 70 year stint of prosperity and world leader is an anomaly in world history. Those that are aware – are perhaps planning to go grey, sit on the fence and let the tyrants march on through so they can remain unnoticed and untouched – but eventually they too, will be left to beg for whatever bread crumbs they can obtain from the Oligarch’s table.

If we are to avoid that fate – we must be at war.

Before that war turns hot, or before we are being loaded into camps or prisons – the war has to be fought here and now on the battlefield of ideas and discourse. If we do not fight it now, then into bloodshed, camps and prisons we will go. That is the fate the Marxists have envisioned for those of us beholden to liberty, who openly defy them.

We cannot pussyfoot around with playing nice with Marxists and their supporters. We cannot pretend this is a civil society where we can all agree to disagree about the trunk of the tree. The trunk of the tree of liberty is what sustains and keeps us, and we cannot entertain those that say we need to cut it down and replant it – or waste time arguing with those who pretend to be of us – while preaching that the fruit you freely choose to eat from the tree is rotten and to eat the fruit of their tree instead.

They need to be opposed and fought. We need to reject the calls for compromise with those who work to undermine our liberties and refuse to engage fools in debate when their clear motive is to ridicule and sow discord among us. Ideas and agendas anathema to liberty need to be cut down, stomped on and rendered irrelevant.

We do not need to answer fools according to their folly, we simply need to kill their foolishness and not permit it to remain or give it any legitimacy. Marxist thoughts, ideas and plans need to be shown what they are and burned in a fury of outrage and contempt. No quarter must be given to the enemy and his ideas, for assuredly – they will give yours no quarter. They are actively engaged in demonizing you. They will demonize and criminalize you regardless of how reasonable you sound, no matter whether you remain silent or not. They wage war on us – whether we want it or not.

They want us to lie down and compromise and capitulate. They want us to surrender by sitting down and shutting up while they move to tighten the noose around your neck.

If you struggle and oppose these efforts – they may charge you with hate crimes, hating the poor, being racists and Nazis. The truth is they are projecting what they themselves are. So call them on it. They hate us anyway – so why pretend otherwise? They are at war with us – let’s start acting like it!

We can choose not to fight and be at war – but that makes little difference to the Marxists and the Politburo in power, because THEY are assuredly at war with you and liberty in this nation.

It’s time to fight this war.

Sharpen your swords and cut down the nonsense when you read it. Train your guns on the enemy’s ideology and show it no mercy.

God does not compromise with the Devil, and neither should we.

Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.

October 30, 2009

by John Galt

From demotivatorsite.com comes the only appropriate answer to Mr. “Buy Bear Stearns at 32″……

by John Galt

October 30, 2009

Even though the Bubblemedia might have you believe that all is improving with the housing market, unless there’s a whole lotta birthin’ going on, we’re in some serious trouble with 18, 843, 000 vacant homes per the latest Census Bureau Report for Q3 2009(PDF File).  As you can see below, the raw numbers do not look that bad at first glance:

That chart, for those who wonder is direct from the report. When you start to review the historical data back to 2000 though, you get a better picture of the condition of our housing markets and realize that this will take years to dig through the inventory, even if we stopped building tomorrow. In the graph below, I decided to post the quarterly data along with the Census Bureau’s category for “Held Off Market” which is a subset of the massive vacant inventory number:

With the Cash for Clunk Houses tax credit soon to expire, a wee bit more of the inventory was put on the market but as you can see, the total number still being held is at a historic high and with the demographics of a retiring population, unless these homes are in prime retiree regions (which some are by the way) and affordable and less than the 2900 square foot McMansions than they will not move. Unless the economic “expansion” gets real and creates millions of new jobs soon, this number will continue to grow and act like an anchor on our economy, creating such a drastic drag that the statistical recovery will be dragged into a prolonged period of flat to negative GDP for many years to come.

By John Galt

October 30, 2009

I’m often told that I blabber too much and don’t let the facts speak for themselves. Well, too bad, I’ll blabber less though and let three key figures do the talking from today’s BEA GDP report.

1. Durable Goods/Non-Durable Goods

Basically we are still below the quarter when the recession started. As many love to say on the financial media only to be shouted down, this is a “Statistical” recovery as this chart and the next two shall bear out.

None too impressive, eh? Stick that in  your Liesman and smoke it.

2. Residential and Non-Residential Structures

Both are still far below the beginning quarter of the recession thus officially making GDP a Bubblevision “lagging” indicator. Wait until they find out that commercial and residential construction still has further to fall.

3. Gross Private Domestic Investment

Uh, that’s not what I would call a “V” shaped recovery in that number. Nor is it that awe inspiring a future indicator for the quarters which follow. Perhaps Obama can double down and get the Congressional spendpigs to double down and add another $2 trillion to the deficit to insure their re-election.

And just for fun, I’ll drag out an oldie but goodie private chart that I shared last year just to illustrate that when you start to compare economic growth via the Nominal GDP numbers compared to the equivalent in 1982 and 1967 (Gold Standard era) dollars, you realize just how much destruction we’ve imposed on our society by diluting our currency:

Woo-Hoo! Rip roaring happy days are here again times return.

Once again boys and girls, don’t believe everything you hear. Once the government trough is taken away and the realization that risk has been assigned to taxpayers while profit assigned to campaign contributors, the capitalist system some of us grew up with will fade quickly into the background.

Parlez-vous Francais?

Say around 1973?

Ugh.