'Unemployed' now a valid job description
By The Mogambo Guru
Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) Phil S sent me an article titled "Numbers Racket",
with the subtitle "Why the economy is worse than we know", by Kevin Phillips,
which first appeared in (I assume) Harper's Magazine, and which I had talked
about in a previous MoGu newsletter - although I forget which one, and I am not
going to go find out because I can hardly stand to read that Stupid Mogambo
Crap (SMC), as it is embarrassing enough to write it. I can only imagine your
embarrassment in being caught reading it! Hahaha!
But this article is not about solving that old riddle, "Who is the most stupid:
The Mogambo for writing his stupid crap, or the
people who voluntarily read it?", but about how I am glad JMR Phil sent it to
me, because there was something in it that I had missed before, where the
discussion turned to unemployment.
Mr Phillips writes, "The series nearest to real-world conditions is, not
surprisingly, the highest: U-6, which includes part-timers looking for
full-time employment as well as other members of the 'marginally attached', a
new catchall meaning those not looking for a job but who say they want one",
and which is running at a frightening 9% unemployment.
Well, admittedly, this is not new, but the interesting part that IS new is when
he writes, "Yet this does not even include the Americans who (as Austan
Goolsbee puts it) have been 'bought off the unemployment rolls' by government
programs such as social security disability, whose recipients are classified as
outside the labor force."
That's right! There are lots and lots of people who no longer have to work
because the government supports them! Too bad he doesn't give an estimate of
how many these are!
But the new unemployment numbers came out, and right off the bat I see that the
civil labor force went up by 173,000 and the number of employed went up by
360,000, but non-farm payrolls went down by 20,000 and goods producing payrolls
went down by 110,000! Huh?
Of course, nobody is surprised that government employment went up by 9,000
employees to 22,385,000, which is up 224,000 over the last year.
In fact, there are now more people on government payrolls (22,385,000) than
goods producing payrolls (21,618,000)! Hahaha! We are so freaking doomed! What
makes it So Damned Funny (SDF) is that a conceited, self-absorbed nation like
America, that boasts how smart we are, cannot possibly realize the utter, utter
stupidity of this! Hahaha! And yet, here it is! Dare I repeat myself that we
are freaking doomed? Sure! We're freaking doomed! Hahaha!
Agora Financial's 5- Minute Forecast ignores my jocular outbreak and somberly
reports that "The US economy shed jobs for the fourth-straight month in April"
which they say is important because "in post-Great Depression history, a
four-month losing streak has always preceded a recession."Yikes!
I am always interested in things that use "always" to describe them, which I
have learned the hard way, such as "People always get upset when I tell them
that they are stupid because they are not buying gold, even in response to Alan
Greenspan of the Federal Reserve destroying the dollar by creating so much of
them, so that the damned government can spend us into bankruptcy, and then they
REALLY always get upset when I say that their stupidity has doubtlessly been
passed along to their ugly, mutant children, who are, on average, the most
ignorant, most stupid, most self-absorbed, most violent, most criminal bunch of
worthless trash ever created in America, as indicated by standardized testing
and personal experience, mostly from having a few of the rug-rats myself."
And the fact that I "always" have to defend myself against these stupid people,
including my own wife and kids to show you the kind of treachery I have to put
up with around here every freaking day of my life, makes me perhaps a little
more sensitive to the word "always" being featured so prominently in the
snippet "a four-month losing streak has always preceded a recession."
Maybe this "recession" thing is why the Labor Department reported that the US
lost another 20,000 jobs in April. In fact, the economy has shed 260,000 jobs
since New Year's Day!
I admire the way that John Williams restrains himself from busting out laughing
as he says in his review of the government's Payroll Survey that the "Bureau of
Labor Statistics (BLS) reported a seasonally-adjusted jobs loss of 20,000 (loss
of 28,000 net of revisions) +/- 129,000 for April 2008." Hahahaha! Plus or
minus more than 600% of the estimate? Hahahaha!
I instantly see how I can use this to my advantage the next time my stupid boss
calls me into her stupid little office to get "on my case" about something.
Like yesterday, for example, I could have used this fascinating and powerful
technique when she called me in to ask me about losing the stupid Lindsey
contract, which was because old man Lindsey had a "Hillary Clinton for
President" campaign bumper sticker on his car, and so I politely told him that
he was "stupid, commie-rat Marxist pinko collectivist low-IQ trash", which he
apparently took some exception to, and now it's suddenly important to know how
many OTHER contracts we lost because of me merely giving people what they
deserve.
My first thought, of course, was to politely say, "None of your business, you
stupid old cow, so shut up!", but I realized it WAS her business, and, even
worse, six other instances of this same thing instantly ran through my mind.
Today, now that it is too late to do me any good, I realize that I could have
said, "How many others? None! Give or take six, which should be good enough for
you because your own Leftist trash government says it is good enough when
calculating employment!"
Saving this for another day, I now turn to the Birth/Death Model, which plays
such a prominent role in the government's calculation of employment, and which
showed a surprising gain of 267,000 jobs, which is the biggest increase in the
last 12 months! Wow!
Before you go off shouting "The recession is over! They're hiring again!", the
model showed that 45,000 jobs were added in construction, which makes me laugh
my Big Fat Mogambo Butt (BFMB) off, but not laughing in merriment and joy, but
a dark and scornful laugh of contempt, because this would be the most jobs
created in the construction category in the entire last freaking year, which
makes me laugh even harder and with more scorn! And LOTS more contempt!
Oddly enough, 83,000 jobs were created in the April's Birth/Death Model in the
category of "Leisure and Hospitality", which I figure is a pretty good estimate
of the number of women who have recently become prostitutes because they are so
desperate for money! Welcome to the hell of inflation!
The Mogambo Sez: I feel sorry for those who have not converted their wealth
into gold, silver and oil. Not sorry enough to give them some of mine, however.
Just sorry.
And I will feel sorry for them when gold, silver and oil make me rich and them
poor. Not sorry enough to give them some of mine, however. Just sorry.
Richard Daughty is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group,
serving the financial and medical communities, and the editor of The Mogambo
Guru economic newsletter - an avocational exercise to heap disrespect on those
who desperately deserve it.
(Republished with permission from
The Daily Reckoning. Copyright 2008, The Daily Reckoning.)
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