Equity futures are close to even this morning with the dollar slightly higher, bonds flat, oil flat, gold & silver are lower, and food commodities are mixed with corn up for the tenth day in a row.
The complicit media sure is talking a lot about the Italian debt auction as if by some miracle a debt saturated country is going to sell $400 billion in bonds to… Hello, what a joke. Those bonds are going to the central banks who are simply making money from nothing to buy them. LOL, they are even taking money from Italy then leveraging (making money from nothing) to buy more debt from Italy that the people are then responsible to pay. Why would any sane and rational individual care about the activities of the narcissists at this point? They should be run out of town at the end of a hot poker. Enron, Madoff, and Ponzi are pikers compared to the central criminals. Not real, none of it.
There’s a lot of data out today but most of it comes out later so will be reported inside of today’s Daily Thread.
Weekly Jobless Claims came out substantially higher than expected at 381,000. Here’s Econoexcuse:
Highlights
Estimates were needed in the December 24 week for a large number of states, seven states which isn’t unusual for a holiday week but nevertheless still cloud a large 15,000 rise in initial claims to 381,000 (prior week revised 2,000 higher). The four-week average for this series grows in importance during the holidays and, despite the rise in the latest week, shows a sizable decline of 5,750 to a 375,000 level that’s the best of the recovery. This is the fourth straight decline for the four-week average and the eighth decline in the last nine weeks.Continuing claims in data for the December 17 week rose 34,000 to 3.601 million, still the four-week average is down 39,000 to 3.599 million in what is another recovery best. The unemployment rate for insured workers rose one tenth from the prior week’s recovery low to 2.9 percent.
The steady downtrend in the four-week average for initial claims is tangible evidence of improvement in the labor market. Markets are showing no significant reaction to today’s results.
Excuses, excuses, excuses… but still not even close to the break even mark of 350k. Unadjusted claims rose by very large numbers.
Chicago PMI, Pending Home Sales, Kansas City “Fed” Manufacturing Index, and an assortment of other indicators are released throughout the morning.
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