South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism pays attention and states the obvious while wondering while it isn’t so obvious to many.

I’m a bit surprised that anyone can be surprised by the lousy jobs numbers for August. Consumers are worried and too many economists have been trying to draw trend lines through noise in retail spending data and call it proof that a recovery in under way. Broad measures of unemployment are stuck in the upper teens, big companies are continuing to shed jobs, small businesses on the whole are pessimistic, state budgets are under pressure and federal deficit spending is set to be reined in. With housing in most markets not having bottomed, the overwhelming majority of consumers having taking a wealth hit, businesses not investing and government not taking up the slack, where exactly is growth supposed to come from? The tooth fairy?
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But why has the media been so clueless? Cynics might argue that they are paid to be clueless, and there is more than a bit of truth in that. However, I suspect at least as powerful is that the overwhelming majority of reporters live in New York or Washington DC, two cities relatively unaffected by the downturn. DC is awash in lobbyist dollars and New York has been kept afloat by super low interest rates and other sops to the banks.