Percent of Permanent Job Losses at Highest in Over 30 Years

The Atlanta Fed’s macroblog has compiled a roundup of evidence showing that the economy is in a jobless recovery. It shows that jobs are scarce, that a higher than average number of jobs have been lost in small businesses (which is a bad sign), and that many workers have been forced into part time status.

However, the data point that really jumps out is this one — the dominant reason for unemployment in the current economy is permanent separation. Permanent separation is when a job is cut and it’s never coming back…versus temporary layoffs, quitting, and other types of job losses.

It’s a unique point because the percent of permanent job losses haven’t been this high in over 30 years, and as the article goes on to say, “Never, in the six recessions preceding the latest one, did permanent separations account for more than 45 percent of the unemployed. The current percentage stands at 56 percent as of September and appears to be still climbing.” (more)

Key China box index drops for first time since June

Alarm bells are ringing for liner firms as one of the most accurate gauges of the container index fell for the first time in more than four months Friday. The China Containerised Freight Index, operated by the Shanghai Shipping Index, dropped for the first time since early June today. Despite lines reporting increased volumes and some being successful with rate increases this news will be a hammer blow for the industry. The CCFI takes data from the leading 20 lines operating out of China. Its numbers have been consistently in line with the fortunes of the container sector over the years, especially since China accounts for one in two boxes moved. With container shipping often a precursor of the world economy, the drop in the CCFI has some analysts suggesting the global economy could be in for a nasty double dip recession.

Source: SeatradeAsia Online

Einhorn: Forget Inflation, Just Buy Gold

Gold prices have soared and some are buying on fears that inflation will weaken the dollar even further.

One hedge fund whiz kid, David Einhorn, says forget about whether the consumer price index rises or falls — just buy gold anyway.

Gold doesn't care about inflation, just if Washington is managing its economy well or not, says the president of Greenlight Capital.

“I have seen many people debate whether gold is a bet on inflation or deflation. As I see it, it is neither.

“Gold does well when monetary and fiscal policies are poor and does poorly when they appear sensible,” Einhorn told The Wall Street Journal. (more)

Fear Monday

As we've been writing about for what? 6-9 months now? The linguistics turn that www.halfpasthuman.com has been tracking for October 25/26 is nearly in vie as processing continues.

Just so you understand how this stuff works in a very general sense the October 'turn' was spotted in the last several data runs and may be as much as 85% economic in nature. But now that we're getting close, Cliff and Igor have been watching the data coming back from the forum scouring spiders which are sending in snips of interest to the servers, where in turn they are distilled and analyzed.

So, the latest from Cliff is:

"latest immediacy data shows it as occurring at 5:12 am 10-26-2009 (time zones are a bitch so let us just say east coast time) and will likely be wrong by about 6 hours as it may actually be 'effective' on the paris meridian (the old rose line). a small visibility spike occurs at 7:02 am on the 26th so damn early Monday morning...."

I plan to get up a little earlier than usual Monday to see how it looks 'going by'. It's always of interest not only to watch something in the 'rickety time machine' pop into reality, but more interesting to is do some propagation mapping.

What's that? Oh, you know: You can get a sense of who is playing 'follow the leader" and who the real leaders are when the Monday story hits (if/when it does at all - since we could be wrong).

Seeing as it arises out of 'globalpop', I am not really expecting it to be a USA-centered event. Maybe something in Asia (huge mega quake or financial lockup - something like that - or heaven forbid Israel takes out the Bushir reactor complex.)

Not only will Cliff & Igor get to see the change of language wash through the internet, but I will be able to see how the story pops and see how it goes from usually only one or two 'first hand' media to the rest of the MSM and then into the blogosphere. I figure if the timing's right, it ought to be on the tongues of about half the world's population by say Tuesday noon US time if we've got the timing clues right.

By George Ure
UrbanSurvival.com

Markets, Money and Life With Grandich and George –

Good afternoon to you all and hope you’re preparing for a great weekend. Please find enclosed our next installment of Money, Markets and Life With Grandich and George . We covered some great topics in just 20 minutes including:

• China’s massive gold imports in 2008
• How Grandich reconciles higher US interest rates AND higher gold
• Answering a ton of questions posted by you earlier today on the blog, including but not limited to:
  • Why didn’t Grandich double-dip by riding the “melt-up” and then ride it down
  • Capital preservation strategies for retired investors
  • Continental Minerals, Formation Capital and others
  • Gold
  • Copper
  • How both New York football teams fared last week
  • An apology to my dentist’s wife for having to wait for our show to be over before he’ll come to bed. Sorry Christine!!

Without further adieu, here is this week’s show.

For those of you whose Flash player isn’t up to snuff, here’s the MP3:

David Morgan, Silver and Stocks

To listen to audio click here

Comparing 1974-75 and 1938-39 vs 2009