Canned Goods Translation: The crappier the economy, the more likely the Fed will announce Quantitative Easing 3 (QE3), which effectively manipulates interest rates, punishes savers, raises prices on food and oil, and rewards banks with carry trades where they borrow billions of dollars at near 0% and buy US Treasuries yielding 0.5% to 2% (depending on the note/bond) and pocket the difference (note $1 billion at 0.5% equals a gain of $0.5 million for doing nothing; now imagine hundreds of billions, or trillions, if you believe QE3 will be the same size as prior QEs).
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CNBC (May 4, 2012): "Job Growth Just 115,000 in April, Rate Drops to 8.1%"
Canned Goods Translation: Great! A drop to 8.1%! Don't look at the fact that it was driven by people leaving the workforce. Leaving the workforce? Great! That means they're retiring early! Nope. That means they're collecting unemployment insurance (up to 99 weeks, still, until next year when they expire and Congress extends the benefits, again) and when that runs out, they go to our handy entitlements program called Social Security and collect disability!
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Bloomberg (May 3, 2012): The number of workers receiving SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance) jumped 22% to 8.7 million in April from 7.1 million in December 2007, Social Security data show. That helps explain as much as one quarter of the decline in the U.S. labor-force participation rate during the period, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley.
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Federal Reserve's Data of People Not in the Labor Force (for those that are old enough to have a job):
Data going back to 2007 (last employment peak):
And the one that matters, Participation as a % of Eligible going back to 1980 (this is a terrible chart for those saying anything bullish about the job market):
Unemployment Percentages Compared to the Employment Level from March 2012 (those percentages looks pretty fishy to me; I guess that Labor Participation Rate might be true):
Social Security Disability:
Source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/47294515
Source: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?s[1][id]=LNS15000000
Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/its-official-st-louis-feds-not-labor-force-data-officially-chart
Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/people-not-labor-force-soar-522000-labor-force-participation-rate-lowest-1981
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-03/disabled-americans-shrink-size-of-u-s-labor-force.html
Source: http://news.investors.com/article/608418/201204200802/ssdi-disability-rolls-skyrocket-under-obama.htm?p=full
Source: http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/icp.html
Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-what-data-can-we-trust
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