CNBC’s long-running ‘jobs Friday’ fetish is getting downright appalling. Each month the BLS puts out a treasure trove of data on the rich and complex mosaic of the US labor market – -a download that embodies a truly frightening trend of economic failure.
Yet the talking heads who assemble in its screen boxes to opine on Hampton Pearson’s 30-second summary of the BLS release never have a clue. In their allotted 15 seconds of fame, they merely bloviate about the single dumbed-down number – -the establishment survey jobs print – that is the sum and substance of the coverage.
Trained seals would be just as effective: ort! ort! ort!
In any event, within seconds the SPX futures are off to the races, flashing the trading algos’ instant take on what the ‘print’ means for one thing alone. Namely, does it portend continued or even more ease at the Fed and a plentitude of juice for Wall Street speculators.
Last Friday CNBC inadvertently indicted it own pandering when the winner of its ‘pick the number’ contest hit 142,000 jobs right on the head, making a mockery of the 200-250k consensus range that had issued from the ‘experts’. The winning viewer’s name was Ronnie Squires, who described himself as ‘retired’ and the owner of a (very) small business through which he occasionally transports unwanted cats and dogs in his pick-up to new out-of-state ‘homes’ for friends. Along the way, he does his own jobs survey:
This post was published at David Stockmans Contra Corner on September 14, 2014.
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