Russ Smith

CNBC had someone on who said that Larry Summers apparently was going out of his way to say that Friday's jobless numbers could be HUGELY distorted because of all the bad weather. I mentioned this last week when there was an adjustment down in jobless claims because they said the initial number was too low because claims couldn't be processed due to snow.

Summers is saying the amount of claims could be MUCH higher because of weather leading to mass filings in construction. Summers said it could be distored by 100-to 200,000 based on past storms impacts on it.

Note the 2 are separate, last week they said jobless claims were delayed in processing because of storms, Summers is saying there will be substantially more filings because construction workers who can't work due to weather will be filing jobless claims.

Summers is trying to head off a disastrous Wall Street reaction to the numbers on Friday.

__________________
“Your expectations always exceed outside expectations. I feel like you just can’t stop working, can’t stop getting better, because I’ll be a failure in my eyes before I’m a failure in someone else’s eyes.” -- Arron Afflalo

conraddobler

I read about that but on another site, the general take on it was that it's a setup to manage expectations.

He says a figure that he "thinks" and then when it comes in if it's not that bad, presto the market goes up.

I also read on the same site that nothing about the stock market is based on fundamentals now and I agree it's all a giant casino, and things like what he said tend to be just noise or outright manipulations IMO.

__________________
When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity. John F. Kennedy

Russ Smith

California EDD announced yesterday that CA lost 292,000 more jobs in 09 than initially thought.

Yep these numbers are all so flawed and yes Summers is trying to manage reaction so the number looks better than it really is.

__________________
“Your expectations always exceed outside expectations. I feel like you just can’t stop working, can’t stop getting better, because I’ll be a failure in my eyes before I’m a failure in someone else’s eyes.” -- Arron Afflalo

conraddobler

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Feb-pa...&asset=&ccode=

These guys have a pretty predictable schtick.

__________________
When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity. John F. Kennedy

Russ Smith

Yeah I guessed wrong. Cut back to 75% cash in my IRAs on Thursday so I missed most of todays rally in my IRA. oh well, I still think the number is BS.

Tuesday they were telling us it could be 100 to 200K worse than reality because of storms. I'm betting in 10 days they revise this number too.

But I'm glad the market didn't totally tank I was concerned we were going to see the Dow down 250 points.

__________________
“Your expectations always exceed outside expectations. I feel like you just can’t stop working, can’t stop getting better, because I’ll be a failure in my eyes before I’m a failure in someone else’s eyes.” -- Arron Afflalo

Mulli

They are not the only ones.

no offense.

__________________

conraddobler

None taken... from you

__________________
When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity. John F. Kennedy