Cartoon: Useless things

Should have been “snake oil samples”

Tabloids: jobs, stocks,bombs, leaks, floods

The cover of the day goes to Miami herald for the most brazen corruption story from “I won’t stop fighting the spill” Obama

I will give Arkansas Democrat Gazette runner upcover of the day – just for simply and clearly stating all the relevant  topics of the day

another runner up for NY Post  for keeping the oil leak front and center

.Less relevant, WaPo adds the “peace breaking in the Senate” over banks bill – I think Wall Street showed them all who is the boss yesterday

.The Floods in Tennessee – the forgotten disaster – is still only covered locally

.Stars and Stripes reminds us of the nonsense of the was again

.while NY Times is a jumble with a pretty picture again

.Trying to figure who started the market fall  (cough, cough, Chicago!) is on The Wall Street page

.while Boston Herald looks at Census Waste

.

The phony accounting in the jobs report – half of it – an accounting trick

Obama Times and the rest of the media reports victoriously

Economy Gains Impetus as U.S. Employers Add 290,000 Jobs

The problem with that headline is that is a lie. Who worked on this? Anderson?

At the very best, employers added 192,000 jobs, the other 188,000 were added by some accountant on a guess

The birth/death adjustment (guess) added 188,000 jobs,

Yes, the word “guess” is from the report, which is nothing more than a survey – a more extensive poll. It leads to ridiculously self-contradicting headlines such as this one

Second, there is a number of jobs the economy has to add monthly just to keep up with population growth. Looking at Robert Reich’s analysis for the March report

Second, since the start of the Great Recession, the economy has lost 8.4 million jobs and failed to create another 2.7 million needed just to keep up with population growth. That means we’re more than 11 million in the hole right now. And that hole keeps deepening every month we fail to add at least 150,000 new jobs, again reflecting population growth.

A census-taking job is better than no job, but it’s no substitute for the real thing.

In other words, 150,000 is the number needed to just keep stagnating rather than further sinking. And the rest of the 42.000 is less than the number of census jobs.

If Jake Tapper’s facebook entry is based on solid facts

More on job numbers — 65k of those new jobs are govt jobs, such as census, 231k private sector, including 44k in manufacturing

then indeed, the actual number of jobs created (not adjusted by technicality) is under the maintenance level.

Which is why the unemployment is at 9.9 and there’s a more interesting number buried in the actual report

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) con-
tinued to trend up over the month, reaching 6.7 million. In April, 45.9 percent
of unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more.

Tabloids:Dow crashes karmically

It was a case of chicken coming home to roost – anyone remembers Goldmam Sachs causing Greece’s crisis?

In 2001, Goldman’s financial alchemists formulated a scheme to allow the Greek government to hide the extent of its rising debt from the public and the European Community’s budget overseers. Under this diabolical deal, Goldman funneled new capital from super-wealthy investors into the government’s coffers.

Now, it comes back :

.really came back full circle

.USA Today has a complete explanation

.while Boston Herald zeroed on the funny part

.while Wall Street Journal is “baffled”

.Obama Times draws pretty pictures in oily water

.and Newsday has a deceiving headline

while The Express takes on Twitter

Click here to add text

Click here to add text

.the rest of NYC tabloids are on police blotter stuff.

Where in the world is Goldman Sachs?

After days and days of headlines, I was struck by its absence on the tabloids today.

Especially after reading this news from an overenthusiastic Obama flunkie in the media

Obama Takes on Goldman Sachs Through Clever Internet Ad

A new White House ad that pops up on Google searches for “Goldman Sachs SEC” features a plea by President Obama for financial reform, and is creating its own controversy. The ad is triggering praise as a smart bit of cyber marketing, but is also being cited as possible evidence of White House pressure in a financial investigation.

I did the search and what startled me was not the add – I never pay attention to those, but the fact that there was only one article for today, and from a  local paper  from New Jersey.

I didn’t find WSJ cover on Newseum today, but my search revealed only one brief note about the German equivalent on SEC preparing to investigate them.

We were warned  the “R”s will seek to tie Obama to Goldman Sachs – a ridiculously easy task – but there’s little evidence of that.

Except for this article from yesterday’s Examiner, inspiringly titled

Is Goldman Obama’s Enron? No, it’s worse

.where we find out that

Campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs employees to President Obama are nearly seven times as much as President Bush received from Enron workers, according to numbers on OpenSecrets.org.

after outrageously claiming that Bush was somewhat tarred an feathered in the media for his Enron connection, the article does go a bit in the Obama/sachs connections

Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff, was paid $35,000 as a consultant to Goldman while also working as Bill Clinton’s top fundraiser. Obama’s fundraiser and economic adviser Warren Buffett is very long on Goldman, having bet on them in 2008 in the expectation of a bailout. Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, was a Goldman Sachs lobbyist until months before joining Team Obama.

What does that add up to? Getting a hand in making the regulations:

Politico quoted a Goldman lobbyist Monday saying, “We’re not against regulation. We’re for regulation. We partner with regulators.”

Which is a good start, but where’s the follow up today?

What gives? Is Obama trying to back of the “R”s accusations of bad timing by silencing his media? Did Goldman use its leverage to accomplish this?

Which makes me wonder about the efficiency of Gregg Craig’s rolodex: could the omerta been put on the coverage so fast?

Update

Verified that Goldman is missing from WSJ page one as well.

But it’s on the low circulation pink Financial Times