Consumer Spending in U.S. Rises More Than Forecast (Jobless claims 14 month low)

[denem]

Source: Bloomberg

Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Spending by U.S. consumers rebounded in October more than anticipated, an indication that mounting unemployment has yet to stifle American’s willingness to buy.

The 0.7 percent increase in purchases was larger than the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and followed a 0.6 percent September drop, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. Incomes climbed 0.2 percent, also exceeding expectations...

A separate report from the Labor Department today showed the number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level since September 2008. Claims declined to 466,000 in the week ended Nov. 21 from 501,000 a week earlier, the report showed.

Another Commerce Department report showed orders for long- lasting goods unexpectedly dropped last month, depressed by a slump in bookings for defense gear.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=akw6wsLMsus8&pos=3

---

425,000 job losses per week is estimated to be about the level of stable unemployment, given current new hires. Historically 4% growth corresponds to about 300,000 in losses per week, with many more finding employment. The raw figures however, say noting about the quality of the new jobs, nor those lost.

[AllentownJake]

1. So it fell by .6% in September than went up .7% in October

so the translation is it went back to a little less than August levels.

That is the thing you have to keep in mind with these statistics. If something falls 1% one month than goes up another 1% the next, you didn't break even.

When things are in the .1% range, and it goes to .2% it is little more than statistical noise. If it would have be 0 it still would be noise, you are looking at such small movements.

If you take out inflation it went up .4% following a .7% drop in September. Translation, we are below August levels.

[havocmom]

2. Buying less but paying more? Oh yeah.

That's what I have noticed. Even the almost rich person I know has been grumbling about inflation on items she was going to buy. She is saying no to retailers.

[AllentownJake]

3. There is something always screwy about these numbers when they come out

They come out with fanfare, are revised a week later, generally downward, and than other evidence suggest they were a lie to begin with.

[havocmom]

4. They understand that the correction seldom registers with the masses.

Over my life, I have oft noticed the figures show an increase in spending, which is met with much glee. But the consumer has also just noticed big jumps in prices, while the index for gaging inflation has been tinkered with and won't show reality.

Statisticians doing the economic reports fudge 'em.

[pattmarty]

5. Look, this economy is built and dependent on consumer spending..........

............It's like a circle, people work, spend, buy and that keeps our "phony" economy going. And what the hell, this has worked since WWII. The problem with this is that ever since st ronnie, we have been "sending" our manufacturing jobs overseas to lower wage countries. How in the fuck are we going to lower our unemployment rate if there are no manufacturing jobs anymore? What, is my three HS dropout sons gonna get work at Goldman Sachs?????? C'mon, most of the people in this country DON'T have a college education and the ONLY jobs left here that they can qualify for is Wal-mart, McDonald's, certain manual labor which is dependent on any number of things. The only decent jobs are in construction such as electricians, carpenters which by the way are no longer "union" good paying jobs. So let's not kid ourselves here and ask one very important question: Where in the fuck are the jobs going to come from to lower the unemployment rate back down to Even 6%??? Get fucking real, this is gonna be bad for poor/middle class workers for a ling, long time especially with the "policies" of this and past administrations.

[tom_paine]

7. Unquestionably so, pattmarty. But the M$M will be there to coo our fears away

and remake history so we peasants cannot understand the past which makes repeating history easier.

And I love your signature line, which is of course why the Global Aristiocracy is returning education back as a province for the rich only.

I am beginning to think Hitler really screwed them and their plans when he "went off the reservation" and started fighting other white people. He made them have to pretend so hard and he threw the situation into such chaos (not with his butcheries or atrocities, but the fact that he performed them against OTHER WHITE PEOPLE and stopped working with the Medeval Power Structure, including the German Industrialists who put him in power), that it is only now that the Medeval Power Structure has fully righted the ship and returned us to properly slaughtering only brown people again, as well asrestored the nonsense of Christian vs. Muslim as a good distraction and target for peasant rage on both sides.

Conspiracy theory? I would have thought so ten years ago. But then, I also believed the media was "liberal" and Tim Russert was a "jounalist".

What an idiot I was!

[pattmarty]

9. WHAT???????????? Tim Russert wasn't a journalist????..............

.........This isn't change we can believe in??????? I feel like Dorothy in the land of Oz.:sarcasm: :sarcasm:
:sarcasm:
:sarcasm:

[tom_paine]

6. Sounds like the merger of State & Corporate propaganda is pretty complete

From where I am sitting, this complete merging process has not even slowed a bit during Obama's tenure.

May I translate:

HEY! You overfed, overentertained, easily-fooled moron-consumers: go out and spend your last dime on more crap you don't need! Everything will be fine. Cooooo-cooooo-widdwe-baby-uggums-snuggums.

The funny thing is, our economy, media and virtually every aspect of our nation is a complete 100%(OK, to be fair 99.99%) lie now, and that has not changed a whit since Bushler, though "Good Cop" Obama is always preferable to "Bad Cop" Palin (or Huckabee or whoever) that is coming to further our direct path to whatever is planned for us.

Anyway, the Corporate State is complete, now that they have near total control of the vote counts with their Black Boxes and near-total control of the M$M (Paddy Cheyefsky had it right way back in '76).

Just remember this: The TV lies, at least 95% of the time, probably 99% of the time, not counting sports & Iron Chef, which might lower the percentage of lies a point or two.

Who would have guessed it? Not me. I would have laughed at these comments a decade ago.

But that was before the Medeval Eurpoean Power Structure that continues to run the world exposed itself so thoroughly in an age of information.

Where are we going? Back where we were and before. The wave has crested and is now receeding. The Medeval Power Structure is preparing to bunker down while we play Mad Max outside their gated walls and electrified fences.

How long until that? Who knows? Trends are easy to see and predict; exact timelines are not. I wouldn't want to be alive in 2100, that much is for sure, and I pity the poor bastards who are.

[Igel]

16. It's simple.

If people constantly say the government is responsible for the economy, it will become responsible for the economy. The kind of people that want to be politicians only say "no" to power when they see that the only two options are to say "no" and get screwed over or to say "yes" and get screwed over so deeply, thoroughly, and painfully and, above all, *immediately* (since politicians have the attention span of 4-year-olds) that you won't be able to walk, talk, or defecate until their grandkids are again wearing diapers.

The people tend to like it because it removes a sense of anxiety. Daddy'll take care of us, we can go back to sucking our thumbs. In this, the electorate tends to be like a 2-year-old. Unfortunately, to a 2-year-old a 4-year-old often seems like an adult. The more a family or community feels like it needs a protector, needs a daddy, can tattle on others to their daddy so that the others get time outs, the greater the drive to not only allowing politicians to be their guardians, the greater the drive to actively yield as much power as possible (especially if you think you have daddy wrapped around your finger).

In other words, almost everybody is in agreement, to some extent: The politicians are in charge. Then it's only a matter of time and working out exactly *how* to actually make them in charge.

Some politicians are a bit more humble. They realize the job is daunting and, after getting placed in a wheelchair because of their last screwing over decide perhaps they'd rather take the less of the two choices--and opt for 'no' instead of 'hell, bring it on!' They also see that various constituencies differ in how thorough the screwing meted out is--if you really, really want a daddy then you set the bar lower, as long as you still get what you want.

But for most politicians failure simply cannot be because of their stupidity, incompetence, or the sheer impossibility of having 100,000 people pushing pencils and monitoring the producting, shipping, and consumption of bubble gum, I-beams, amoxicillin, zippers, and dowels doing a tolerable job. After all, they have aids and acolytes saying how brilliant they are. They *know* they can do this, because they're better. So failure must be denied, and if undeniable then externalized. The first line of defense is to require greater and greater authority and power, greater ability to command the economy. In some countries that finally fails when the leadership has nearly absolute control--then any deviation has to be because of sabotage and treason. After all, it can't be the leadership. It might be the laws and regulations, but only for so long--then the laws/regs reflect the leadership and also cannot be at fault.

This is the lesson of much of the 20th century outside the US. It's a set-up for disaster when we think we're different, we're special, we're us and not them and the mistakes were theirs and not ours (as opposed to, "We're human and they're human and while the mistakes where theirs they were human mistakes and could have been ours"). It may be possible to thread the needle, to find that fulcrum, that concentration of extreme politico-economic power where hubris and competence balance, or to at least oscillate back and forth in a narrow band. But it's tricky.

[madrchsod]

8. it`s the holiday season and it`s fall going into winter....

people start buying more stuff. it`s the dark days in january,febuary,and march that is the indication of where the economy is heading....

[pattmarty]

10. Well, Jesus, if it's this "good" now, I can hardly wait for the dark days..........

.........Question now is; will "Bill" Obama get off his ass and do ANYTHING for the people on "main st" or just maybe give one of his really neat, changiness speeches.

[kestrel91316]

11. More evidence that Obama is a complete failure.

:sarcasm:

[tom_paine]

13. My dear, Obama has been a complete success!

At being Good Cop, but our rest will soon be over and Bad Cop will be back to help usher in whatever destiny the Global Aristiocracy has planned for us.

Obama tosses us a few crumbs (while tossing the banksters the whole bakery) and for the most part the Democrats (I'd say OUR Democrats, but the number of them that actually represent we peasants as opposed to the aristocracy is so small, I can't justify it anymore) continue to play their appointed roles as the Washington Generals vs The Harlem Globetrotters (The Global Aristocracy)

Kes, you know I respect you (and will always be grateful for the kitty advice you gave me), but Obama is indeed a complete success. As "Good Cop" he reset the clock on much of America's rage which will give Bad Cop greater opportunity for fraud and theft later on, when he or she returns to get back to the REAL BUSINESS of transforming America into God-Knows-What-But-It-Won't-Be-Good-For-Us-Peasants.

By letting him and the Democrats win, knowing he and they were NEVER any kind of threat to their plans (it doesn't matter whether it's an explicit conspiracy hatched out behind closed doors at Bilderberger meetings or just a hub-and-spoke conpsiracy of the 100 or so families that actually run things behind the dog-and-pony show, all acting in the same concert of self-interest) they also further docilized the people by allowing them to pretendfurther the fiction of voting in this country is real and that every vote matters.

Actually, I will continue voting and voting for Democrats because

1) I prefer Good Cop over Bad Cop

and

2) I like participating in rigged Reality TV - it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside

Anyway, Obama has performed several functions for the Global Aristiocracy, and they have all been a complete success. Plus he tossed us a few crumbs from Master's Table.

But Bad Cop is coming, Obama is insuring it and he is supposed to insure because whatever is planned for us, it's clear it is closer to the RW authoritarianims that Hitler thena nd the Republicnas now represent. If Authoritarian Socialism were the goal, then the roles would be reversed and it would be the Republicans who could never seem to win even when they "won".

But it would still be the same Good Cop/Bad Cop game.

Maybe that sounds like crazy conspiracy theory, but after 10 years of close watching, it's the only thing that makes the remotest bit of sese, that the Medeval European Power Structure continues to pretty much run things, though they have had to add layers of snakeskin and disguise to kep we peasants docile and in line.

Now we have TV and Prozac to further assist the process.

Crazy, eh? I would have thought so, too. But as Obama continues to inexplicably "fail" or continue Cheney policies on the issues that really matter, and Bad Cop comes back in 2012 or 2016 (much less likely as I think the Global Aristocracy is in a hurry due to environment & population & Peak Everything, so our "rest" is only slated to be 4 years) comes back to finish the job, amybe you'll see, too, that the truth is more horrific than we peasants could ever be allowed to imagine.

Oh, and don't forget perpetual war!

[treestar]

12. What's defense gear?

Guns? Well, we do make guns in this country.

[AllentownJake]

14. We certainly do

[showpan]

15. Those unemployment numbers

mean very little because they are a lie. They held onto the extension long enough for them to say that unemployment dropped as a 1/2 million people got the boot from the total number of claims. Next month, they will spike again.
There is no conspiracy, it's just the New World Order and they have been telling us for years but nobody wants to listen.
The FED has been back dooring us and the collapse of our dollar is very near.
This is deliberate as they want this country to fail so they can come in and finish their take over.
The Republicans tried to extend the assault rifle ban at the end of Bushco's term, but it went into committee and didn't come up for a vote. Look for this to happen sometime soon as our dollar nears it's eventual collapse.
Ross Perot was right and tried to warn us about Clinton (NWO) and now Ron Paul is right and has been warning us all along.
It's been a slow, deliberate process, of turning us all into peasants.




In England a King hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which, in plain terms, is to empoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.
- Common Sense by Thomas Paine Feb. 14, 1776.

[Kahuna]

17. Can't be! The DU Doom and Gloom Squad won't like this, one little bit.

:applause: