These facts are not a mystery to economists, but economists aren't traders or institutional investors. I would not be suprised if the facts listed by Amerman were not sitting front and center for investors.
The US political establishment is supporting the DOW/SP500. The DOW/SP500 is not a 1:1 measure of US economic/employment health. That is also no mystery. The DOW/SP500 valuation reflects global earnings prospects..
This dovetails nicely with our talk on the Chinese working class, their strike activities and their emergence as a consumer class. Capital is not by definition tied to US economic health, though it tests fate by ignoring it. If the US consumer changes composition for the worse <socially>, but earnings abroad more than offset it, then the DOW/SP500 will go up.
The US administration doesn't have to care directly about US employment if the DOW/SP500 goes up, and those entities financing campaigns continue to have money. So Amerman's analysis is important for the US nation, less so for global capital (though the US consumer is still a really big factor, not to be ignored). I'm being a little glib here, hedging my position a bit, because OWS movements etc.. are actually affecting political discourse, but ultimately I don't think investors are losing too much sleep.
Likewise for the U6 data.
Just my take.
On 3/20/12, socialismorbarbarism <socialismorbarbarism at gmail.com> wrote:
> Doug: "The unemployment rate is meant as a measure of labor market
> slack, not human deprivation."
>
> Yes, but everywhere people are likely to hear about it--the media,
> politicians--it is presented as the latter.
>
> " It's really not anything approaching a secret, though I suppose it's
> fun to dress it up as one."
>
> Sure, it's not really a secret if one knows how to dig through BLS
> data, let alone fully understand the ideological assumption of
> bourgeois economics (not a trivial task, which is one of the many
> reasons why LBO is so important, yes?). It's only a secret if one gets
> her information from the sources of 99% of the information of the
> average person.
>
> Most people need data explained to them. This is as it should be, BTW.
> Everyone shouldn't have to go through data independently to figure out
> what is happening in the world--the expert is not a meaningless
> category. And what people think of as "unemployment" they think of as
> "total number of people without jobs"--a very reasonable assumption.
> And that's how the media present it. And it's incorrect.
>
> This is from the article in question:
>
> "In an extraordinarily cynical act, the government is effectively
> saying that because the job situation has been so bad for many
> millions of unemployed people in their 40s, 30s, 20s and teens, they
> can no longer be considered to be potential participants in the work
> force at all. Because there is no hope for them - they no longer need
> to be counted. And it is this steady statistical cleansing from the
> workforce of the worst of the economic casualties - of these very real
> millions of individual tragedies - that is being presented as a
> rapidly improving jobs picture."
>
> Take away the first clause, the first five words. Do you have any
> serious argument with this paragraph?
>
> The url is here, BTW:
>
> http://danielamerman.com/articles/2012/WorkC.html
>
> On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 6:22 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Mar 20, 2012, at 11:46 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>>
>>> But Doug's logic is the stupid logic of someone who is utterly in the
>>> dark
>>> of how public opinion gets formed. If those 9 million (or 3000) have to
>>> be
> .....
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