Mohamed El-Erian video, Fed Missed Window, No October Rate Hike

Mohamed El-Erian: Oct. Fed Rate Hike Won't Happen - Mohamed El-Erian, Pimco's former chief executive officer and a Bloomberg View columnist, comments on what the September jobs report means for Federal Reserve monetary policy. He speaks with Bloomberg's Betty Liu on "Bloomberg Markets," October 2, 2015.

Jobs Report Is Lackluster, Raising Concern on Economy’s Course - The New York Times: "“There’s nothing good in this morning’s report,” said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago. “We had very low levels of job creation, wage growth isn’t budging and the unemployment rate would have risen if the labor force participation rate hadn’t fallen.”" (Oct 2, 2015)

Economists Can't Find the Silver Lining in Today's Jobs Report - Bloomberg Business: "When the U.S. jobs report is released each month, there's typically enough nuance to offer something for everyone — the good and the bad. Today proved to be a feast for the bears. "When you look through all the details of the data, there just isn't anything good to hang your hat on," said Thomas Simons, a money-market economist at Jefferies LLC in New York. "It's been years since we've seen such an unambiguously bad report." Silver linings were tough to come by in the September jobs data. Payrolls came in at a much-weaker-than-forecast 142,000, while August and July figures were revised down. Wage growth was nonexistent for the month, with average hourly earnings actually falling by a penny on average. The softness in manufacturing endured, with factory payrolls falling by 9,000 when they were expected to show no change. With dollar appreciation and sluggish overseas growth providing headwinds, it was the biggest back-to-back decline since 2010... "

It's Been a Terrible Week for the Credit Market - Bloomberg Business: "According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch credit strategists led by Hans Mikkelsen: "The two weakest days in recent memory for high-grade credit occurred this week [on Monday and Thursday]." Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank Strategist Jim Reid pointed out that spreads on corporate debt are nearing levels usually seen during recessions. While credit has often been called the canary in the coal mine for global markets, because of its tendency to show signs of strain before stocks, the question now is whether bond investors are saying something important about deteriorating fundamentals or overshooting in their pessimism."

Gundlach warns of 'another wave down' - Business Insider: ""The reason the markets aren't going lower is people are holding and hoping," Gundlach told Reuters in a telephone interview. "The market bottoms out when people are selling and sold out — not when they are holding and hoping."

Traders Don't See Fed Moving Until at Least March, Futures Show - Bloomberg Business: "“The Fed has been overoptimistic for a long time on their forecasts for growth,” said Gary Pollack, who manages $12 billion as head of fixed-income trading at Deutsche Bank AG’s Private Wealth Management unit in New York. Markets are also signaling expectations for a lower Fed target down the road, according to a note from Jim Vogel, an interest-rate strategist at FTN Financial Capital Markets in Memphis, Tennessee. Last month, the Fed forecast the tightening cycle will end with the funds rate at 3.5 percent. However, Treasuries now indicate a peak of 1.75 percent for almost five years, according to Vogel."

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More on the Obama "Fudge" Jobs Report

More on the Obama Administration's "Fudge" Jobs Report:
US jobless rate falls to lowest level for three years - Telegraph: " . . . there was, inevitably, plenty in the report that offered support for those taking a more cautious stance. The Bureau of Labor Statistics had its annual revision of the total size of the potential working population, which helped flatter Friday's numbers. Another less encouraging indicator was that average hourly earnings edged up only 0.2pc on the month, a pace that economists say is not strong enough to do much for consumer spending. . . "

Comment to the above article:
The only reason the official UE rate "fell" to 8.3% is because 1.2 million workers were removed by BLS from the availalble labor pool during the month. This is the largest single-month drop in history. The Labor Force Participation Rate is now at a 30-year low of 63.7%. That is ABYSMAL!

This was NOT a good report. Far from it. Other measures of unemployment suggest that the actual UE rate increased to 11.5% while measures used prior to 1995 suggest an actual UE rate greater than 22%. (See:http://www.shadowstats.com/alt... )

As one analyst put it, "In fact other than January 2009 there has never been a single month in my table, which dates back to 1999, that put up a worse combined number. This "performance" rates a literal "second from utter despair and disaster", and the employment rate shows it:... This is not a strong report folks, and in fact documents an actual and ongoing collapse in the US labor force, despite the crooning on the mainstream media disinformation channels!" See: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-...

Even the liberal economist Paul Krugman knows it's "fudge"- Better - NYTimes.com:  "The usual caveats apply: it could be a blip, it might be an artifact of seasonal adjustment, etc.. Also, the gap remains huge. Suppose that we need 100,000 jobs a month to keep up with population growth, and that we’re 10 million jobs in the hole — both conservative estimates. Then we need about 7 years of growth at this rate to restore full employment."

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The "Obama Fudge Jobs Report"

As a follow-up to my "Washington Fudge" post on the "January Jobs Report" (they're "fudging" the numbers):

Santelli on the "shrinkage"

Record 1.2 Million People Fall Out Of Labor Force In One Month, Labor Force Participation Rate Tumbles To Fresh 30 Year Low | ZeroHedge: "Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/03/2012 08:51 -0500: A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million."

If you want the truth about the "Obama Fudge Jobs Report," look at the charts posted at Zero Hedge or here or read this.

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You think the December jobs report is good news?

Some might not like his liberal politics, but Paul Krugman knows his economics--his take on today's job report:

The Soft Bigotry of Low Employment Expectations - NYTimes.com: ". . . Let me give two back-of-the-envelope ways to think about how inadequate 200,000 jobs a month is. First, note that there are still about 6 million fewer jobs than there were at the end of 2007 — and that we would normally have expected to have added around 5 million jobs over a four-year period. So we’re 11 million jobs down — and we need at least 100,000 jobs a month just to keep up with working-age population growth. Do the math, and you’ll see that it would take 9 or 10 years of growth at this rate to restore full employment. . . "

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