Better-than-expected jobs report is bullshit.

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

As Harry Frankfurt duly noted (pdf), “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.”  Obama’s awkward relationship with the truth consists, in part, of bluffing, bullshitting, and lying his way deeper into our economic morass.

Paul Craig Roberts:

If we cannot trust what the government tells us about weapons of mass destruction, terrorist events, and the reasons for its wars and bailouts, can we trust the government’s statement last Friday that the US economy gained 151,000 payroll jobs during October?

Apparently not. After examining the government’s report, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reported that the jobs were “phantom jobs” created by “concurrent seasonal factor adjustments.” In other words, the 151,000 jobs cannot be found in the unadjusted underlying data. The jobs were the product of seasonal adjustments concocted by the BLS.

As usual, the financial press did no investigation and simply reported the number handed to the media by the government.

Discounting the war production shutdown at the end of World War II, which was not a recession in the usual sense, Williams reports that “the current annual decline [in employment] remains the worst since the Great Depression, and should deepen further.”

In short, there is no employment data, and none in the works, unless gimmicked, that supports the recovery myth. The US rate of unemployment, if measured according to the methodology used in 1980, is 22.5%. Even the government’s broader measure of unemployment stands at 17%. The 9.6% reported rate is a concocted measure that does not include discouraged workers who have been unable to find a job after 6 months and workers who want full time jobs but can only find part-time work.

In other news, Obama’s unmaskable auto-mounting instruction device fails to integrate public-key packet for advanced linear encoding of his triple-buffered rendering variable.  Can anyone decode this incompetent bullshit generator?

OBAMA: The reason we’ve got a unparalleled standard of living in the history of the world is because we’ve got a free market that is dynamic and entrepreneurial, and that free market has to be nurtured and cultivated.  And there’s no doubt that when you had the financial crisis on Wall Street, the bonus controversies, the battle around health care, the battle around financial reform, and then you had BP — you just had a successive set of issues in which I think business took the message that, well, gosh, it seems like we may be always painted as the bad guy.

We no longer have an unparalleled standard of living, and before long we’ll all feel a tad more Guatemalan than usual, but gee, gosh, I hope nobody’s feelings got hurt after they destroyed life as we knew it.  Don’t worry beleaguered capitalist little buddies, Obama’s here to nurture, cultivate, and kiss your boo-boos and owies, and make your self-destructive stomping fits all better:

And so I’ve got to take responsibility in terms of making sure that I make clear to the business community as well as to the country that the most important thing we can do is to boost and encourage our business sector and make sure that they’re hiring. And so we do have specific plans in terms of how we can structure that outreach.

Now, keep in mind over the last two years, we’ve been talking to CEOs constantly.  And as I plan for my trip later this week to Asia, the whole focus is on how are we going to open up markets so that American businesses can prosper, and we can sell more goods and create more jobs here in the United States.  And a whole bunch of corporate executives are going to be joining us so that I can help them open up those markets and allow them to sell their products.

Yeah.  Obama and the corporate cry-babies are all going to Asia together to see if they can open markets there in order to create more jobs here in America.  Corporate!  Bullshit!  Generator!  Structure this outreach, nincompoop!

Here’s Roberts, again:

The American working class has been destroyed. The American middle class is in its final stages of destruction. Soon the bottom rungs of the rich themselves will be destroyed.

The entire way through this process the government will lie and the media will lie.

The United States of America has become the country of the Big Lie. Those who facilitate government and corporate lies are well rewarded, but anyone who tells any truth or expresses an impermissible opinion is excoriated and driven away.

But we “have freedom and democracy.” We are the virtuous, indispensable nation, the salt of the earth, the light unto the world.

Does Obama ever tell the fucking truth?  I surely need an upgrade on my bullshit protectors.

Obama has the corporate shaft so far up his ass he’s gonna need reconstructive surgery from his prostate to his ventral tegmental area.   If only they’d shove it a little deeper toward his hypothalamus, they might incidentally arouse some at-least-fictive anger.

Meanwhile, Obama’s shoveling even more money to the corporate looters.   After utterly failing at Quantitative Easing, Round 1, Bernanke announced his Plan B (Plan A again):

Lower corporate bond rates will encourage investment. And higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence, which can also spur spending. Increased spending will lead to higher incomes and profits that, in a virtuous circle, will further support economic expansion.

How many times is Bernanke allowed to be dead wrong?

A constitutional scholar, a student of the Great Depression,  and a hapless Attorney General walk into a Republican nightmare, each carrying a handful of bullshit, and say…