Economics Update

Well, I will start of with Mr. Ritholtz's trenchant analysis of the scary statistics I've been throwing about recently. He looks at them and, concludes that the employment numbers are tweaked to make things look less dire.

Basically, he is saying that the birth/death (of small firms, not people) adjustments and the seasonal adjustments are bunk, and the numbers on workforce participation as a percentage of the economy bear him out.

Additionally, you have people leaving the labor force, or being underemployed, which is not counted in the normally covered statistics.

BTW, the fact that foreclosures rose 76% year over year in the 3rd quarter bodes ill for the housing to recover any time soon. (chart pr0n captured by Barry Ritholtz, I highly recommend his site)

Of course, the results of Manpower, Inc. survey of employers does not point to an increasing in hiring in any segment of the economy.

About the only bright news is that looks poised to approve the various bank rescue plans in the Euro zone, they just approved France's plan.

Going further east, however, things get grim, with S&P downgrading Russian government debt and downgrading 6 of the larger Russian banks.

Despite the news, oil was up today, largely on reports of a bailout of the Big 3 (Big 2½), but retail gasoline is continuing to head down.

Gasoline will continue to lag oil on the way down for 2 reasons: It takes time for oil to get shipped from a refinery and become gasoline, and people are extracting profits on the way down, because what was expensive seems cheap to the consumer now.