Learning And Labor

That's the school motto of my alma mater, Oberlin College.  Everyone has seen the headline jobs report number, which looked just peachy on the surface.  But I thought I would highlight a couple of data points which show the horrifying golden Truth lurking beneath the shiny albeit highly manipulated headline number that Obama will no doubt do an endzone dance over later on t.v. that would make Terrell Owens blush.  Also, I had an interesting conversation yesterday at the tennis club with a partner at a major law firm here in Denver who was asking me why gold didn't move up higher yesterday as a flight-to-safety harbor during the stock market storm.

On an aside, before I get to the jobs report and gold, I see Fannie Mae is back asking the Taxpayers for ANOTHER $5 billion in Government subsidy.  THIS after Tim Geithner said a few months ago that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were no longer a burden on the Treasury.  Geithner is not only a tax-dodging idiot, he's a liar.  Obama is now a worse President than Bush in my mind since he won't fire Geithner, who should've never been appointed in the first place.  By the way, the FNM/FRE bailout plan was brought to you, the Taxpayer, courtesy of Tiny-brain Tim.  If there's a hell, Geithner will burn there after he dies.

Everyone now knows that the mainstream media just loves the jobs report today.  But here's some statistics that most Americans will not see (not to mention the fact that Government headline number itself is highly manipulated):  Although the unemployment rate was reported as "dropping" to 9.1%, the Labor Force Participation Rate dropped to 63.9%, which is the lowest it's been since 1984;  the average length of unemployment jumped to over 40 weeks, a new all-time high.

Recall that those who have dropped off unemployment benefits and those who have given up looking for a job are no longer counted in the Government's definition of Labor Force.  So not only is the total size of the workforce declining, thereby significantly undermining the accuracy of the actual rate of joblessness, but those still looking for a job are finding it even more difficult and taking a record amount of time.  In short, there are a LOT more unemployed than is being counted by the Government AND the unemployment rate is a substantially higher than is being reported in the headlines.

Now for the kicker:  There are 3.7 million "workers" who are on the 99 week jobless benefits bandwagon who will be losing those benefits over the next couple of months.  Here's the report:  LINK   What this means is that either Obama tries to get Congress to extend the benefits again or expect to see rising unemployment and a lower jobless rate - lower because the Labor Force could decline as those millions drop off the jobless welfare program.   Good work Obama!

Now for gold.  Is gold, or is it not, delivering it's flight-to-safety characteristics this year?  Here's a series of three charts that show gold is indeed shining (you can click on each chart to enlarge):

DOW YTD

GOLD YTD

DOW/GOLD YTD

As you can see, not only is gold up this year while the Dow Jones Industrial index is down, when you express the level the Dow index using the dollar price of gold, the Dow is down a whopping 28.6%.  Another way of looking at this is if you started with $100,000 invested in both the Dow and Gold, your Dow investment would be worth $71,400 while your gold maintained it's $100k value. 

To circle back to my conversation with this white-shoe law firm partner, with markets you can't look at one day and use that as your barometer for whether or not something is doing what you think it should be doing.  As my charts show, gold is not only sparkling, it is functioning perfectly as an investment that's designed to preserve your wealth.