schreef:
Twenty-one inches of snow in the western suburbs of Philadelphia. Nasty storm Friday and Saturday. But we managed to publish anyway.
Stocks plunged again Friday, down 167 points intraday, then bounced into the close, erasing Friday's losses, closing up 10.05 points to 10,012.23. Friday's intraday decline finished wave {1} down of Micro degree 3 down. The late day bounce was part of submicro degree wave {2} up. Once {2} completes, a nasty decline, wave {3} of 3 down should take the Industrials down hard. Downside targets for 3 are the low 9,000's in the Industrials and the low 1,000 area in the S&P 500.
The Labor Department reported that 14.8 million good folks were unemployed in January 2010. That translated to a reported 9.7 percent unemployment rate. The truth is, that number does not include 2.5 million unemployed people who wanted work, were available for work, and had looked for a job within the past 12 months. If those good folks are included, then January's unemployment rate was actually 11.3 percent. These were not included because the Labor Department only considers someone unemployed if they actively looked for work in the 4 weeks preceding their survey, which of course is nonsense. Then, if we add involuntary part-time workers, which is 8.3 million, we get an underemployed figure of 25.6 million people, or 16.8 percent. Then, if we add discouraged unemployed workers, people who have given up looking for work, we are at 26.7 million un-underemployed people, or 17.5 percent. With consumer spending accounting for 70 percent of GDP under a capitalistic economic system, the U.S. economy remains in deep trouble.