If you are still listening to Mainstream Media, and for God's sake I hope you are not, but if you are, you may have seen this verbal altercation.
This from Karl Denninger @ The Market Ticker
Steve's claim - that there is no such thing as "emergency" unemployment benefits - is just plain BS.
Rick Santelli is exactly correct:
States reported 4,178,780 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending Nov. 21, an increase of 327,729 from the prior week. There were 729,256 claimants in the comparable week in 2008. EUC weekly claims include first, second, and third tier activity.
No such thing as "Emergency Unemployment Compensation" eh Steve?
Nice try.
The rest of Karl's post is here and as always, well worth the read.
So are these tools towing the corporate/libtard line here or are they just plain stuuuuuuuuupid. You decide.
November Retail Sales...
On its face it looks like a good report. However, the sampling change along with some of the missing internal sub-sets for the current month make it nearly impossible for me to evaluate whether we're seeing broad-based strength on an actual basis or whether gasoline and sampling revisions are responsible for most of it.
I'm deeply skeptical of these numbers, mostly because the other data available that I've cited in recent days - the Gallup Survey, the actual POS data stream analysis, and ShopperTrack's latest - all say that Black Friday was down modestly (or worse.)
Was the front of the month that much better on "hope and change" only to get blown to bits over the Thanksgiving Holiday? I don't buy it and thus far the preponderance of the evidence does not point toward a broad-based consumption recovery.
