There's a round table talk show on CNBC every weekday morning, Squawk Box, starting at 6 AM. I tune in because the hosts are quite bright, very well informed and they present significant amounts of information on not only business, but all kinds of current events. They always have guests, including top business, political, and personality types making news. Between the regular cast and guests, all spectrum's of belief, political and otherwise, are presented, and there doesn't seem to be particular bias.
I mention the show because on Thursdays they discuss the employment and housing starts numbers, as soon as they are released at 8:30 AM. A discussion then follows wherein five or six analysts present their opinions of the data and interpretations of what the figures mean to them.
For quite some time now, new weekly unemployment claims have consistently been over 9% and new housing starts have risen, except for last month, but not anywhere near where they should be to reflect real economic improvement.
Today's unemployment data showed a slight hiring rise, yet was still above 9% and housing starts blipped up a bit. In all, not really a very good showing. In discussing the results, one of the guest panelists said he thought there might be some good news in the numbers however, because the continual dismal state of the economy almost guarantees the president's election loss in 2012. And then, once he's really out, the economy will certainly rebound.
The reason for today's entry is that I reached the same conclusion about a year ago, and have written here about it many times since then. Consequently, I don't know why a panel as well informed and as bright as these folks are seems to have just woken up. I hope it's because that although they'd all concluded the same thing I did way back when, they didn't want to discuss it. Because, if the reason is that they just figured this out, I should be doing their show myself.
That's it for today folks.
Adios
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