“Reports last year painted a bright picture of the region’s economy, showing a gain of 33,800 jobs for the metro area between June 2003 and June 2004.

But a more accurate report this month said the bistate region lost jobs during that time - 6,055 to be exact. Both reports were from the U.S. Labor Department.”

Initial Jobs Data Can Be Flawed

Basically the problem is the plug numbers - the birth-death model and others - they put them in for the monthly headlines and then quietly pull them out of the totals later without adjusting the headlines. Your tax money at work.

An exceptional piece; The dangers of exporting democracy. Perhaps a tad political, but the disconnect between the Bush administration and reality is a key issue for financial markets. As this disconnect becomes apparent, look out below. Right now, markets are being sustained (albeit poorly the last few weeks) by faith - faith that nothing will go seriously wrong.

Here we are in 2005, all agog for the earnings results of an Internet company after the close. Amazing. One that is selling at a 100 p/e, 8 times book and 16 times sales. Wonderful bargain. That must be why they’re jamming the market.

With Bush pushing changes, Social Security is on the front page. What really irritates me is people talking about the “Social Security Trust Fund” as if it were something real. BS! It is nothing but an accounting fiction. When the federal government spent the excess of Social Security over disbursements, it gave the “Trust Fund” special bonds that are, in effect, IOUs. But the only source of money to redeem those bonds is tax receipts or additional government borrowing. Just the same as would happen if the IOUs were not there and a Social Security deficit had to be made up from general revenue. The IOUs make no difference whatsoever. How can people swallow this nonsense?

P.S., two arguments I read over the weekend. First, the special bonds are actually “U.S. Treasury bonds, the safest investment”. Buzzzz. They’re not. Interest is not paid (only accrued) and the special bonds are not saleable - the Fund cannot sell them for cash on the open market as they could with a real Treasury bond. Second, the existence of the bonds means the government is obligated to redeem them when Social Security needs them. Otherwise, benefits would have to be reduced if the government chose not to make up any shortfall. Yeah right, if they were real Treasuries and a failure to redeem them would affect the government’s credit, that might be true. But they’re not. If the government doesn’t want them redeemed, they won’t be redeemed. That’s why this is so bogus.

“ROGERS: But you have to remember, Karen, this is one reason I’m so bullish on commodities. There are 30,000 stocks, mutual funds in the world, there are only three or four commodity mutual funds in the world. That’s because nobody is investing in commodities yet. That’s going to change. Some day there will be hundreds or thousands of commodity mutual funds, and then it will be time to get out of commodities again and go back to stocks or bonds, or something else.”

Jim Rogers interviewed by Karen Gibbs