Courtesy of Lee Adler of the Wall Street Examiner
Let’s play “guess the nonfarm payrolls.” After all, our guess is as good as the conomists’, whose forecasts nicely fit a random distribution of hits and misses month in and month out.
My guess? The headline non farm payrolls number would be reported as a drop of 337,000 tomorrow if you believe the withholding tax data for the period covered by the survey. That would be a huge miss versus the consensus estimate of a gain of 201,000 according to Hizzoner the Mayor’s tout sheet. Rupert Hacker Murdoch’s rags are even more bullish, posting an expected gain of 210,000.
The number will be nowhere near a drop of 377,000, of course. It is an election year after all, and the February number that is the basis for the comparison will probably revised down so that the headlines aren’t screaming bad news. In addition, a big part of the reason my swag is that low has to do with the survey date. There was some weakness in early March withholding tax data that was solidly reversed late in the month. So if the number is weak, it’s probably a head fake. The withholding data was much stronger by the end of the month and if this continues April would be up huge.
I’m not a conomist, but given their record, my guess is as good as theirs, so I thought, let’s play “guess the number.” You can play along with me and place your bets accordingly. But, even assuming I’m right, which
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-14-05/nonfarm-payrolls-should-fall-377000-they-won%E2%80%99t?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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