ANTIESTABLISHMENTARIAN

Some Truly Awful Numbers

In the week ending Dec. 20, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims was 586,000, an increase of 30,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 556,000. The 4-week moving average was 558,000, an increase of 13,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 544,250. That gobbledygook translated means this:

Wk 1 – 544,250

Wk 2 – 556,000

Wk 3 – 586,000

Wk 4 ?

Assuming Week 4 is as bad as the rest, that puts the December job loss rate at 2,200,000. Most “economists” predict that unemployment will hit 8%. I ask, do those numbers look like 8% to you? Going forward into 2009 and carry that rate forward, we are looking at a job loss of over 30 million, and that doesn’t include the self-employed who do not have unemployment insurance and are not counted. They account for 22% of the workforce, so add in another half million per month or 6 million for the year, or 36 million. The total civilian workforce is 154 million thereby yielding a probable unemployment rate of 23%.

The November unemployment rate was 6.7% so adding in December’s totals, that brings the official rate to 8.2% right now. So how will it be only 8% at the bottom of this depression?

Retail Sales

As usual there are a hodge podge of conflicting Christmas numbers put out by associations with obvious interest in gilding a lump of coal. Notice that when they report CPI they pull out gasoline, housing and food. When they want the numbers to go in the opposite direction, they add those items back in. After reporting huge declines in clothing and electronics, somehow they manage to come up with only a 4% total decline. Here are some categorical numbers

Women’s clothing -28%

Men’s clothing -14%

Electronics -27%

Luxury – 34%

It would seem to me that those three categories make up the bulk of gifts given, so how do you get 4%?

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Retailing Index fell less than 1 percent in trading, giving it a 34 percent decline this year.

Do you see anything wrong with this statement? “Amazon.com Inc. said today it posted its ‘best ever’ holiday season in terms of sales, with a record number of orders on Dec. 15, its peak day.”

Right! Its applies to just one day! Add to that it covers ‘number of orders’, which every retailer reports are of lesser value this year than last. What we want to know, but they weren’t about to tell us (don’t want to tank our stock price, ya know) is the total dollar sales. That leaves us to suspect that they sold more cheap widgets rather than expensive ones. Only fools will continue buying stock of companies like this that have become chronic liars. Its time to dispense with PC and call them for what they are, liars.

The S&P index decline of 34% pretty much proves that retail sales have, like the stock market, collapsed. Resulting from this we will see very substantial numbers of retail bankruptcies and commercial property owners in a glutted retail space market. Too many shops, too many stores. At least 25% of them will go, taking many more banks with them.