Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,
How is it that seemingly intelligent people, of apparent sound mind and rational thought, can stray so far off the beam? How come there are certain professions that reward their practitioners for their failures?
The central banking and monetary policy vocation rings the bell on both accounts. Today we offer a brief case study in this regard.
Having pointed out a glaring error in today's payrolls report, which indicated that there was at least one math error in calculating the average hourly earnings number, and as a result casts doubt on every other piece of data released by the BLS, we urge algos and the handful of carbon-based traders, to take anything released by the BLS with a boulder of salt, especially data on wage inflation, until the BLS provides an explanation for what is going on.
Crude Oil has rallied for the past few months, could it be peaking? Joe Friday suggests Crude finds itself at a key inflection point for it and its Fear Index (OVX).
Below looks at Crude Oil futures over the past decade-
CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE
Not only was there much confusion ahead of the September payrolls report, there was just as much confusion inside it, because while the market decided to ignore the 33,000 drop in payrolls (as per the Establishment Survey), the first monthly decline in 7 years and instead focus on the just as widely expected spike in average hourly earnings, a result of hurricane-induced labor shortages, what it appears to have forgotten is the "other" Household Survey, which showed a vastly different picture.
As noted earlier, Wall Street was completely clueless ahead of today's payroll, with most expecting a small positive print but two brave forecasters went so far as to predict that the recent hurricanes would result in a negative print, and sure enough, moments ago the BLS reported that in September, the US economy lost 33,000 hurricane distorted jobs, the first payrolls decline since September 2010.