Uncle Sam/Chicago ISM Play "Hide The Sausage" With The Markets

Once again the media promotes more Government-released garbage as an indication of economic recovery.  The weekly jobless claims statistic dropped "to the lowest level since 2008."  The dopes on CNBC were beside themselves with glee.  Two comments there:  1)  432,000 new jobless benefit claims is still one helluva lot of folks losing their jobs and 2) At some point, the rate of jobs lost will begin to slow down just because our economy won't grind down to zero and some average level employment will be maintained until the next financial disaster (coming this year, in my view).

Now let's look at The Golden Truth behind the numbers. Kudos to Zerohedge.com for making an issue of this.  While the number of jobless claims declined a bit, the number Extended Unemployment Claims is shooting higher every week.   These are the people who can't find jobs and for whom initial jobless benefits have expired.  Obama recently signed a bill which contained legislation enabling someone to receive jobless benefits for up to two and a half years.  Here's the data from Zerohedge - you'll notice that EUC applications soared to a new record high this past week, climbing by over 191,000:  The Golden Truth.   It's great that the "front-end" of jobless claims might be declining (at least for now) BUT the "back end" is swelling up just like number of Obama's lies.

Even more disgusting was the Chicago Purchasing Manager's Index revision, which was revised significantly downward, just ONE DAY after it was initially released and celebrated by the dopes on CNBC/Bloomberg:

U.S. stocks added to losses in late morning trade Thursday, after the Chicago Institute for Supply Management revised lower its December business activity index to take into account seasonal factors, only a day after issuing its initial assessment. The December index was revised to 58.7 from Wednesday's reported 60.0. Readings from September to November were also revised lower.  Here's the news link:  (Chicago ISM Lies)

The tragedy here is that the initial number released yesterday gave the stock market a boost, but the initial number turns out to be a fraud.  Of course, very few will be around today to take notice of this and those who celebrated the number yesterday still have the impression that the economy is doing better than it really is.  Please note that the readings from September to November were also revised lower.  So, to the extent that investors plowed into stocks based on this data, they invested based on data that was, best case incorrect and, most likely case, intentionally fraudulent (you can not convince me that the highly educated people who publish the Chicago PMI accidentally released an incorrect number that the whole world watches - I can buy into Government employees like Janet Napolitano making stupid mistakes, but not a private organization of well-educated professionals).

Our whole system is now predicated on the Orwellian Doctrine which was successfully propagated by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda:  “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."