SuperSteve

Not seasonally adjusted, we have lost 3 million jobs the past two months. The 1.2 number I provided is not seasonally adjusted for January.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 5, 2012 -> 03:56 PM) The most recent deadline was supposed to be today. I honestly cannot see any way to save Greece at this point. They're terminally ill.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 4, 2012 -> 09:51 AM) 150k What number are you referring to? I've read multiple places referring to 1.2 million falling off in January, leading to a ~63% participation rate.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Feb 1, 2012 -> 07:51 AM) I don't watch much Big 10 basketball but decided to watch the Illinois-MSU game last night. Wow, what an awful, awful game. That was one of the worst games i've seen in a long time and I just sat through the UCONN-ND game on Sunday. That being said, that Leonard kid looks to have a lot of potential down the road. Being a Spartan, this game made me sad. The only remotely enjoyable part of it was listenting to Mike Tirico say he ran out of ways to say someone missed a shot or layup. Two McDonald's All-Americans plus Green and State puts out an effort like that?! My goodness!!

Sign a couple more Cubans and replace "Sox" with "Cuba" on those bad boys!

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 3, 2012 -> 04:01 PM) It's pretty sad that the right-wing response to teachers earning a decent living isn't to fight for everyone to raise up, but to drag teachers down. But I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the election! It seems like teaching is a massively popular major in college with colleges creating a large number of new teachers every year. Supply and demand right? I know it's kind of cruel but you're worth what someone is willing to pay you.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 3, 2012 -> 04:17 PM) The Liveroided-upstrong campaign has chipped in another $100k to Planned Parenthood. Mentally, I give Armstrong a pass about lying to us all these years because of all the good he seemingly has done for the world. It's like he has a hall pass in my head.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 3, 2012 -> 09:36 PM) Small redemption for the Volcker rule fail. I never enjoyed tax in college so it seems I cannot even fully read a tax article to this day without getting distracted!

QUOTE (G&T @ Jan 30, 2012 -> 03:10 PM) Chicago has a ton a Bells. The beauty of Bells and Founders is that they are awesome, and a lot of people ignore them in favor of 3 Floyds. That's too funny, the Chicago folks are talking about Bell's and I'm drinking a 312 right now! Big fan of Bell's, sometimes I bring some back to Illinois for people when I visit.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 3, 2012 -> 08:42 PM) I'm gonna call you on a misread here, ecause everything I've found says the so called buffet rule, aka amt2: electric boogaloo would raise $40-$50 billion per year, not per decade. Here's a far rightwing link. Can you add a link saying why that estimate is wrong by a factor of 10? Correct. I was remembering just a bit. The real reference after re-reading was deficit of $1.249t being decreased to $1.209t had it been enacted for the year ending Dec 31st so basically a rounding error. Thanks for the catch Balta.

1.2 million people fell off the unemployment rolls. Participation rate is 63.7%. Government jobs fell 14k, manufacturing rose 50k, construction rose 21k, trade and transport rose 37k, business services rose 70k, education and health rose 36k, leisure and hospitality rose 44k. Overtime hours increased to 3.4 ours with manufacturing hours rising to 40.9. The birth/death model had a net adjustment of -367k. Potential non-farm increase could have been 600k without the birth/death adjustment. ISM index of nonmanufacturing activity rose from 53 to 56.8 from December to January. Jacobsen of Wells Fargo viewed the reports as positive and genuine. I have read other color pleasantly surprised with the non-farm numbers. An interesting piece from one of them was the 2010 census changes. 671k women were added to the labor force while 413k men were subtracted. Over 1 million Asians were added, over 1.3 millions Hispanics were added, over 400k blacks were added while over 1 million whites were subtracted. *please note I simply compiled the data from commentary from a couple banks today.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 3, 2012 -> 08:34 PM) You realize this isn't hard to find right? Yep, too lazy on my iPad. I'll post to it shortly.

Into Iran. Israel is going to strike in the next few months, and the US has the chance of being dragged in. The US and Israel disagree on when Iran's nuclear program will hit the "immunity" stage. Bloomberg had an article on it today.

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 3, 2012 -> 09:40 AM) http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/0...-to-8-3-percent edit: private added 257k, 243 net job gains. November revised upward to 157,000 added (previously at 100k) and december slightly upward to 203k up from 200. The real question is how many people fell off from being counted.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 3, 2012 -> 09:05 AM) Despite the Fed saying otherwise, the Fed Funds have priced in a 100% chance of a 50 bps rate increase by the end of 2013. I do not agree with this. Where do you see it priced in? All of the bank commentary I have read is expecting more like a 25 bp increase around Q2 of 2014. The real question that arises is what Fed Presidents have voting rights in 2013. Right now it's a dovish Fed. If more hawks rotate in for 2013, it's possible but im not sure who has voting rights next year.

I could support a more progressive tax however I would want it to be accompanied by a true review of entitlements. I'm truly concerned about Medicaid and Medicare expenses. I think that's where our government falters. It seems like the folks in power see it as one or the other rather than a compromise using a combination of revenue increases (taxes) and spending responsibly (entitlement and defense cuts). Jim Bianco's research (Bianco Researh/Arbor Research) had some tremendous commentary on the Buffet Tax off a WSJ article that expectied the Buffet Tax to raise $40b over ten years. That's just a drop in the bucket.

Voelker Rule is getting crushed. The Govenor of the Bank of Canadacame out against it as well as other CBs. Treasuries would be exempt but not other sovereign debt, countries are scared!

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 1, 2012 -> 10:59 AM) Most of those funds aren't actually based in oil though. All of those ETFs that scream about gold or oil, don't actually own gold or oil. They are immaterial to the real price of the commodity they claim to represent. And especially in oil, the futures go out for years. I can go out to 2020 in crude and 2017 in gold. Ding ding ding! If gold starts to get called, a lot of people would find out they're just holding a piece of paper.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Jan 30, 2012 -> 10:17 PM) Punk-Bryan absolute epicness ends with the start of the Punk-Jericho feud. Absolutely fantastic. I didn't like Jericho running in there. It felt like the feud just started out of nothingness since we were all waiting for it (and knew it was coming).

Great, HHH will wrestle at WM. He's in the WM promo on Raw.

I have in issues with someone cheering for the country of their heritage. Cheer for whoever makes you happy, it's all ultimately entertainment and if you enjoy it, I respect that.

It came out today that Greece needs 145b EUR for their next bailout, 15b EUR more than agreed to. The German fin min said about a week ago they will not get more than the 130b EUR. This will be interesting. Portugal's bonds were beat up today (as we're Italy and Spain's). That situation has the potential to be another Greece.

QUOTE (SuperSteve @ Jan 30, 2012 -> 07:31 PM) Santino has basically Mr. Sacko but his is colored like a cobra and it's not a sock. Same concept. His finisher is he pokes people in the chest. He's hysterical and they definitely have him in the right role on SD. I love it! They had him in a blindfold mask and he had a blindfold for the cobra. It was priceless!

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Jan 30, 2012 -> 07:55 AM) Cobra? Santino has basically Mr. Sacko but his is colored like a cobra and it's not a sock. Same concept. His finisher is he pokes people in the chest. He's hysterical and they definitely have him in the right role on SD. I love it!

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Jan 29, 2012 -> 11:20 PM) Sheamus bores the hell out of me but oh well. Kofi's spot was cool, Morrison still has the coolest spot ever at las years rumble but Kingstons was neat too. And the goofball fest was fun too. Besides that, it sucked. I think Sheamus is best served in a versatile role. Someone's acting like a peacock, Sheamus is game for a fight type roles. What I love about Sheamus is he truly comes off as he's enjoying himself in the ring.