All’s Well?...

Here are a couple of uplifting titles to stories in today’s mainstream media:

From MSNBC: “Stocks boosted by upbeat economic reports”

From CNNMoney.com: “Stocks pop on jobless claims”

Wow. I don’t know about you, but I’m optimistic.

But wait. Could these titles be misleading? I don’t think I need to answer that.

Apparently the good news was 439,000 new people filed jobless claims in the week ended March 27, down 6,000 from an upwardly revised 445,000 the previous week. And outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. showed that planned job cuts accelerated substantially in March.

So, almost half a million people file new jobless claims in a week and employers accelerate layoffs and that’s considered good news these days. I’d really hate to hear some bad news.

In addition to this “good” news, we have a new national employment report published by payroll giant Automatic Data Processing Inc. that indicates private employers unexpectedly shed 23,000 jobs in March despite concensus analysis calling for an increase in jobs. And the Commerce Department reports that U.S. construction spending fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $846.23 billion, the slowest rate in over seven years, as activity softened in every major sector from homebuilding to public construction projects. Meanwhile, personal consumption expenditures increased 21.7 times more than personal income over the most recently reported month according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

That’s not to say that every bit of news that comes out is completely negative. The Commerce Department reported yesterday that a barometer of capital spending by businesses climbed. Non-defense capital goods orders, excluding airplanes, rose 2.0% in February. But that followed a big drop in January of 4.4%, suggesting businesses uncertain about the economy remain cautious about spending plans.

And there’s even some actual good news out there. The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index rose to 59.6 in March from 56.5 in February, marking eight straight months of expansion in the sector.

All in all, however, we still firmly believe that the bad seriously outweighs the good. None of the real issues that brought us into the 2008 financial meltdown have been addressed. Banks’ balance sheets are still terrible, especially if you take out the impact of accounting changes that were allowed last year. The overhang of derivatives continues to grow. And as bad as the real estate situation is, it’s about to get a lot worse.

Look, we don’t like to be the bearer of bad news all time. But we have to tell you what we really think based on all the research and analysis that goes on over here. And what we think is that the far wall of the hurricane is still heading toward the economy. When it’s going to hit we really can’t say, though it will probably be sooner rather than later. The catalyst will likely be fear caused by one single and unforeseen or known but ignored event (a black swan). The event will create a panic in the markets that will then create a chain reaction like a house of cards falling. So as painful as it may be for your psyche, it’s prudent for you to remain wary of this “recovery.” All is certainly not well.

http://www.caseyresearch.com/displayCdd.php?id=389