Giving Away the Future

I struggle sometimes to keep coming up with fresh ways to describe what I see happening to the US economy. I try to stay on top of economics news and try to make some semblance of the conflicting reports presented, the PR spin and more spin.

Today's (Thursday, April 21) Initial Unemployment Claims report for last week is out and once again, the economists have their rose colored glasses on:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- First-time filings for unemployment claims declined in the most recent week, but were above the key 400,000 level for the second straight week, according to a government report issued Thursday.

There were 403,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended April 16, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was down 13,000 from the previous week's revised 416,000.

Please note that the 416K from last week was an upward revision from the initial report of 412K.

If It Sounds Too Good to Be True...

I assume that by now, many folks are aware of the hoax press release purportedly from GE declaring that they were going to be ("press release" from BusinessInsider):

...gifting its entire 2010 tax refund, worth $3.2 Billion, to the US Treasury on April 18, Tax Day, and will furthermore adopt a host of new policies that secure its position as a leader in corporate social responsibility.

If you are unaware of the source of the $3.2 Billion figure, this NY Times story from March explains things.

Now, as soon as I saw this "press release" I started looking for the "April Fools" tag. For me, the tells were:

Immelt acknowledged no wrongdoing. “All seven of our foreign tax havens are entirely legal,” Immelt noted. “But Americans have made it clear that they deplore laws that enable tax avoidance.

and

In tandem with the gift, the company is also announcing a host of new policies to restore public faith in the GE brand, including a commitment to keep American jobs in America, and to create one U.S. job for each new job created abroad.

Other folks (like emptywheel) who saw it had their own tells of course but those two really jumped out at me. Earlier this month (April 4) the NY Times Economix blog had a post on Tax Havens...

Trying to Avoid Incoherent Rage

As I read news sites across the toobz and see the occasional cable talking heads populated by the Beltway Village Idiots Pundits, it is often difficult to keep myself from dissolving into a mass of protoplasm due to simple rage.

First up today is this article from Reuters on Sunday, March 27:

(Reuters) - The U.S. labor market is finally improving, just when many of the other economic indicators are wavering.

Jobs are considered a lagging indicator. They typically recover many months after the economy comes out of a recession, and this cycle was no exception. So will troubles in Japan, Libya and elsewhere push up U.S. unemployment later this year?

...snip...

Friday brings the March employment report, and economists polled by Reuters are looking for growth of about 188,000 jobs, with the unemployment rate holding steady at 8.9 percent.

Any bets on how the headlines Friday will include some variant of "economists surprised"? I'm betting right now that the 188K figure will be way high for the entire economy. Of course, since the BLS jobs numbers will be first out this month ahead of the ADP Jobs reports on private sector jobs created for the previous month which appears the first Wednesday of each month, my bet will also be that the ADP report will be more positive than the BLS report so that will get all the good publicity next week and folks will forget the reality of the BLS report.