TraderWise

While Washington announced last Friday that unemployment dropped to 8.3% …
And while Wall Street rejoiced with another rally …
The true unemployment in the United States actually rose to an estimated 22.5%, nearly the worst since the Great Depression.
Hard to believe?
Well, thanks largely to John Williams of www.shadowstats.com, we can prove it.
Just consider how the government is lying to us about jobs in America:
Lie #1.

Gold up, Dollar down…? Not entirely…

So the last decade of rising gold prices simply mirrored the US Dollar’s steady decline. Right…?

Well, no actually as I have repeatedly noted…and never less than when clutching a whisky and ginger this past Yuletide…typically to a fast-emptying room.

Yesterday, Carrie made a very interesting comment in response to my review of I Don’t Know What I Want, But I Know It’s Not This:

if being happy is a matter of attitude […] then shouldn’t people be able to make anything work […] by simply changing their attitude?

In January, I told my subscribers why stocks could do well. Unfortunately, things just took a dramatic turn for the worse.

Let me explain briefly…

In the January True Wealth, I told subscribers why I thought stocks could do extremely well:

The world is at relative peace… Prices of assets are the cheapest in a generation… And you can borrow money at the lowest interest rates in as long as anyone can remember. Plus, the government is throwing the kitchen sink at the problem. That is the best recipe I know of for a stock-market boom.

While the U.S. economy is still bogged down by massive federal deficits and a new wave of home foreclosures, key foreign economies are already leaping ahead without those heavy burdens.

Just look at the scoreboard:

The Dow is up 20 percent since the first day of trading of last year, thanks in great measure to government bailouts of the U.S. banking system … brokerage industry … housing and mortgage markets … Detroit … and virtually every other sector that got into big trouble.

The broader measure of US Unemployment Stands at +17.5%

The official jobless rate excludes millions of people who have given up looking for work and part-time workers who want to be working full time.

New York times

For the first time since the second quarter of 2008, the US economy recorded positive growth, expanding 3.5 percent in the quarter ending in September. Despite the upbeat news, analysts suggest that much of the growth can be traced to government stimulus spending which is expected to wind down over the next few months. For this reason, market watchers remain unconvinced that the US can maintain the same rate of growth over the next quarter.

Today’s November employment report from the Labor Department revealed that “only” 11,000 jobs disappeared last month.  This was far better than expected.  Economists had projected a loss of 125,000 jobs, according to a Bloomberg survey.

At the same time, the jobless rate dropped from 10.2% to 10.0%.  Put the numbers together and you may notice something strange.  How can the unemployment rate drop while jobs are still being lost – albeit not as many as expected?  It’s all…
Dovish RBNZ Sends NZD Plummeting 1 year 47 weeks ago

G10 Advancers and Decliners vs USD

JPY
0.18

GBP
-0.03

CHF
-0.11

EUR
-0.18

• Japan’s Tsumura sees signs of self-sustained recovery in domestic demand.

• Japan’s Hirano was more pessimistic; saying economy still in severe state despite positive growth

• Japan Q4 GDP was revised to +0.9% q/q, +3.8% annualized (1.0%/4.0% expected, 1.1%/4.6% prior)

• Reports that the China Statistics Bureau sees mild inflation in the coming year, but no signs of overheating.

• China CPI…

Read More …