SAR #11008

'Ignorance' is usually a sufficient explanation.

Crowd Control:   Unemployment is reported to be 9.4% - if you ignore the effect of a quarter million Americans dropping out of the work force, which is now the smallest it has been in 25 years.  Overall the jobs report was a non event.  Even the Bernank realizes that "If we continue at this pace we are not going to see sustained declines to the unemployment rate."

Bath-tubbing:  Sperm counts have dropped by 50% in the last 50 years worldwide and sperm abnormalities and rates of male infertility have increased radically.  A typical young man produces less than half the sperm his father did and up to 85% of it is abnormal.  Rates of testicular cancer have doubled in the last 20 years.   In 20 industrialized nations male fetuses are being miscarried in increasing numbers and male births are declining globally. Scientist believe man-made chemicals are to blame – pesticides and plastics are the main suspects.  Turns out we're not Roundup Ready.

Fulcrum:  The US economy depends on customer spending, and customer spending depends on ever-expanding credit.  What little credit expansion there is seems to be mostly to buy cars and finance education.  Credit card purchases declined again, down $4.2 billion in November, the 27th consecutive month of decline.

Foreshadowing:  The Bernank says he does not have the authority to bail out bankrupt cities.  So?  It isn’t clear he had the authority to do a lot of the stuff he's done.   And with the Republicans in control of the House, there's not going to be any help coming from there, either.

Equally Perverse Actions:  Republicans plan to prohibit the EPA from spending any money to limit the emission of any global warming gases or to control such emissions in any way.  It is going to be a very long two years.

Odds Are:  Detroit's place as the poster-child for the end of the American Dream is being challenged by cites across the nation.  It is joined by Salinas,CA and Naples, FL as cities where house prices won't return to pre-recession highs until about 2038.  In Las Vegas, Phoenix and Stockton, CA the return will take until about 2034.  And these are nominal prices: Inflation-adjusted recovery will take even longer.

Christmas Coal:  Same store retail sales were not significantly better Y/Y and were “disappointing overall” with just a 2.8% y/y increase.

Yawn:   “Hardly anyone has seriously scrutinized either the priorities or the spending patterns of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its junior partner, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), since their hurried creation in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. They continue to grow faster and cost more... Yet there is no evidence whatsoever that the agencies are making Americans any safer.”   This would be shocking if their purpose was to make us safer.  The real purpose is to distract us while we are turned into mindlessly obedient robots.

Entrails:  Some idiot asked Alan Greenspan his opinion of things economic – which he has long since proven a perfect record of being wrong about - then had the effrontery of putting it on the web.  You've been warned.

Porn O'Graph: You want fries with that?