Far Out, Man

clipped from www.minyanville.com In her daily missive, she wrote to clients this morning that, after perusing the latest data, there were a couple niggling items that she felt curious enough to noodle on. First of all, she wrote, the labor force dropped by 98,000 bodies which is helpful in reeling in the unemployment rate. “Did they hit Power Ball or did they just walk off into the sunset, pack of Luckies and a couple o’ Bud nips tied up in the bindle?” McCullough scribbled. “Take the visual.” The strategist added, “Hours came off the record low to 33.2. And wages added a penny an hour. Big whoop. The seasonally-adjusted labor force participation rate dropped 0.1 to 65. This is another recession low and nothing to crow about.” Finally, McCullough, like us, was a little weirded out by the revisions. “The next thing that is odd is the SIZE of the October and September revisions, i.e., they added a combined 159,000 more bodies,” she said. “That is far out, man, far out. As in: Are they for real?”