Talk about an understated headline

check it out...

U.S. Adds Jobs in May, but Private Hiring Disappoints

so... not good news, for sure, but certainly not disastrous either, right...?

A shadow fell across America’s economic recovery on Friday, as the Labor Department’s monthly report showed that private sector job growth was considerably weaker than expected.

The headline numbers suggested a reason to be optimistic — employers added 431,000 jobs and the jobless rate fell to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent in April.

wrong...

But the underlying numbers showed that almost all of the job growth came from the 411,000 workers hired by the federal government to help with the Census. Most of those jobs will disappear in a few months.

By contrast, the private sector created 41,000, far short of expectations of 150,000 to 180,000 jobs. And the number of long-term unemployed, those who out of work for 27 or more weeks, remained at its highest rate since the Labor Department began collecting such data in the 1940s.

how about a headline a little bit more in line with the truth, like this one for instance...

Long-term unemployment remains highest since the 1940s

our precious stock market isn't easily fooled, however...

The markets were sent skidding immediately after the opening, after the Labor Department’s report on job growth in May fell short of expectations.

[...]

The Dow Jones industrial average closed below 10,000 for the third time this year, ending at 9,931.22, down 324.06, or 3.2 percent. It was the Dow’s lowest close in almost four months. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 3.4 percent, and the Nasdaq composite declined 3.6 percent.

ya gotta love that "short of expectations" part... no shit...

but it ain't only the labor market stats that are weighing things down... no sir...

The euro also continued its decline, dropping to less than $1.20 on concerns about the fiscal troubles in Europe.

While the markets have been bedeviled for weeks by worries mostly over debt problems in Spain, Portugal and Greece, the boundaries of the problem shifted to Hungary after its government sent worrying signals about its finances. Investors fled the country’s assets, and the euro slipped to $1.1992 in afternoon trading in London, its lowest level since March 2006.

our so-called news media, no doubt responding to the urging of our super-rich elites, continue to try to paper over the deepening world financial crisis... but no matter how much they try to soft-pedal it, things just ain't gettin' better...

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The Dow takes another 280-point plunge and there's no end in sight

yowee-zowee...

6,594.44, down –281.40

and the rest of the world is pretty ugly as well...

Key Indexes	At close 03/05/2009	Change	% change	1 month	1 year

FTSE 100 Britain	3,529.86	–116.01	–3.18%	–16.53%	–39.70%
DAX Germany	3,695.49	–195.45	–5.02%	–18.07%	–44.71%
CAC 40 France	2,569.63	–106.05	–3.96%	–16.20%	–45.98%
FTSE Eurofirst 300 Europe	670.72	–25.51	–3.66%	–17.25%	–48.45%

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Dow at 7243.73 at noon today, down -121.94 [UPDATE]

once again, i am sitting in kabul on monday night, 9 1/2 hours ahead of u.s. east coast time, watching the dow plunge... i'll update this post in the morning when i get up which will be approximately five hours after wall street's closing bell...

[UPDATE]

holy shit...! i knew it was going to continue to fall, but i wasn't expecting THIS...!

7,114.78, down -250.89

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The Dow is at 7345 at noon today [UPDATE]

it's currently 9:30 p.m. friday here in kabul... i'll have to wait to see what happened the rest of the day when i wake up in the morning... ain't lookin' good...

At midday, the Dow is down 121 to 7,345. The Standard & Poor's 500 index is down 13 at 766, and the Nasdaq composite index is down 8 at 1,435.

[UPDATE, 5:30 a.m., Saturday, 21 February, Kabul]

i see the dow closed at 7,365.67, down 100.28...

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Yikes...! Dow closes on Thursday at 7465.95

i guess we're going to have to hold our breath and see what's going to happen today...

Dow Jones Industrial Average ... 7,465.95 ... -89.68

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Stock market plunges

i've said repeatedly, we are far from seeing the worst of this... and, not only haven't we seen the worst of it, the full scope of the disaster isn't being accurately reported... if we were getting the real picture, the bottom would fall out lickety-split...


(Click on graph for larger image)

The next wave of losses for the banking sector could be coming from Eastern Europe.

Worries about the deteriorating financial situation in countries like Romania and Hungary led to a huge sell-off on Tuesday that began overseas and crashed ashore on Wall Street.

Every sector sank, with financial stocks leading the way and energy companies falling on tumbling oil prices. Rattled investors rushed to buy safer investments like gold and Treasury debt.

The losses on Wall Street were part of a global wave of selling that dragged down stock markets from Tokyo to London and Frankfurt to Brazil, highlighting fears about how banks, automakers — entire countries — will fare in a deepening global downturn.

The news helped send the Dow Jones industrial average to nearly the same low that it hit amid the credit crisis last fall. The Dow fell 297.81 points, or 3.8 percent, to 7,552.60, which was almost the same as the 7,552.29 close for the Dow on Nov. 20.

something else i've said repeatedly: let's get on with it... the era of capitalist greed deserves to die and the sooner the better...

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C'mon, dammit, let's let the friggin' house of cards FALL already...!

geeeez, louise...! get 'er done, will ya...?

The churn of a rapidly changing financial landscape left Wall Street cold on Monday, as a late afternoon sell-off sent the stock market to its worst daily loss in seven years.

The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted more than 500 points — its worst session since the days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The blue-chip index spent the entire day in negative territory, but the losses did not begin approaching dramatic levels until late in the afternoon. In the last 30 minutes of trading, investors seemed to give in to their fears about the health of the financial system, sparking a wave of selling that sent the Dow, already about 300 points lower, to a 504.48 point decline for the day.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fared even worse, losing 4.7 percent, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index fell 3.2 percent. In Europe, benchmark stock indexes were off nearly 4 percent in London and Paris and almost 3 percent in Frankfurt.

meanwhile, hank paulson, the flaming bush mouthpiece that he is, tries to pour oil on the troubled waters...

In a briefing in Washington, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said the financial markets were going through a tough time “as we work off some of the past excesses,” but that Americans could “remain confident in the soundness and the resilience of our financial system.”

“Let me step back a bit and provide a little perspective,” Mr. Paulson said. “As I’ve long said, the housing correction is at the root of the challenges facing our markets and our financial institutions. I believe that we’ve taken very important steps with respect to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and they’re amongst the most important actions we can take to work through this turmoil.”

if hankie-poo is expecting us to swallow that enormous load of fresh, steaming shit, when every time we've watched yet another financial bridge burn in the past nine months, he's said the very same goddam thing, and, each time, the next bridge that catches fire is a bigger bridge and the span of water that it crosses is increadingly unnavigable, i ain't buyin' a single goddam syllable that passes his lying lips...

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Let's get on with the economic melt-down and the financial collapse

a follow-on from the previous post about the dow jones free-fall...

So much for that second-half rebound.

Truth be told, that was always more of a wish than a serious forecast, happy talk from the Fed and Wall Street desperate to get things back to normal.

It ain't gonna happen. Not this summer. Not this fall. Not even next winter.

This thing's going down, fast and hard. Corporate bankruptcies, bond defaults, bank failures, hedge fund meltdowns and 6 percent unemployment. We're caught in one of those vicious, downward spirals that, once it gets going, is very hard to pull out of.

Only this will be a different kind of recession -- a recession with an overlay of inflation. That combo puts the Federal Reserve in a Catch-22 -- whatever it does to solve one problem only makes the other worse. Emerging from a two-day meeting this week, Fed officials signaled that further recession-fighting rate cuts are unlikely and that their next move will be to raise rates to contain inflationary expectations.

and then there's that $142 a barrel oil...

Oil leapt to a new record high above $142 a barrel on Friday, extending gains after surging nearly 4 percent in the previous session, as tumbling global stock markets helped to trigger a wider commodities rally.

U.S. light crude for August delivery was $1.70 up at $141.34 a barrel by 8:12 a.m. EDT, off a record high of $142.26.

London Brent crude was $1.39 up at $141.22, off a record high of $142.13.

World stocks fell to a three-month low as a fast deteriorating global inflation picture intensified concerns over the outlook for corporate profits, hastening the rush of investors' funds into commodities.

i don't wish anyone any pain, but, c'mon... the house of cards is tumbling down and i'm sick and tired of watching those who continue to profit the most scrambling to preserve their super-rich, elite status at the expense of the peasantry...

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Dow down 190 points right out of the gate

here we go...

Dow Jones Index Drops 190 Points at Opening

Concerns about the fallout from the bargain-basement sale of
Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase drove Wall Street shares lower
in early trading.

when more bad news shit hits the fan - as it is bound to - look out... the avalanche is only beginning to pick up speed...

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Here we go some more

last week on wall street, now asia and europe...

Stock Markets in Europe Plunge 7 Percent

Stocks fell steeply in Europe on Monday after sharp overnight declines in Asia, reacting to fears that an American recession was unavoidable and would crimp global growth. The DAX index in Germany closed off 7.16 percent and the CAC 40 in France lost 6.83 percent. British stocks fared slightly less badly; the FTSE 100 lost 5.48 percent. United States financial markets are closed today; Canadian and Mexican stocks were off sharply at midday.

hang on to the side of the toilet bowl if you can...

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