Check out this analysis. Productivity soars while unemployment claims jump. AP on the numbers:
The Labor Department reported that new applications for unemployment insurance rose to a seasonally adjusted 444,000, up 15,000 from the previous week. Economists had expected claims to drop to 420,000.
The increase indicates that the slowing economy is taking its toll on the job market. Many economists consider claims above 400,000 to be a sign of a weak economy. Initial claims stood at 320,000 in the same week last year.
Similarly from the BLS stats Productivity jumped to 4.3% annually.
This means that more Americans were fired yet the ones remaining worked their asses off, even more than they already are.
So, how can that possibly be since productivity numbers are already incredibly high and there is no technological advance to justify an entire 1% jump.
Well, labor costs dropped 0.5%. Gets worse.
in Q2, hourly compensation fell 1.3%.
BLS has productivity calculation defined.
most honest report on today's dramatic stock market decline
Blogging Stocks has the best analysis I've ever read on why the stock market dramatically dropped today.
They have no idea
Awesome! Who says blogs are not helping in getting some more objective reporting.
Somebody was forced to liquidate stock positions
Remember January when world markets tumbled, seemingly for no reason at all? There was a mini-panic, and Bernanke made an emergency cut in rates by .75%? It turned out that a French insurer was on the verge of insolvency and had to sell all of their positions in a hurry in a distress sale.
Since nothing that major happened yesterday by way of econ news, my guess is, another player is on the verge of going belly up, and had to liquidate their stock portfolio immediately to raise cash.
sounds plausible
Wouldn't that make a nice graph,the stock market in comparison to bankruptcy of largest investors.
NDD if you hit the reply button when responding to comments, they will be hierarchical. The comments are here are threaded but everyone needs to hit reply versus start a new comment thread attached to the post.