Post: NYC JOBLESS RATE LEVELING OFF

It ticked down last month to 8 percent, a slight drop from 8.1 percent in March, the state Department of Labor reported.

However, that's still a huge increase from 4.9 percent in April 2008.
Im glad you are so positive SteveF however .1% is nothing to say we are out of the woods....3.2% UP from april!!!

Buy now or be priced out forever!

ridiculous? tell that to the people who have no jobs.

steveF, being shortsighted is dangerous, especially if you were to be responsible for anything besides your post. Before this recession/depression is over, the country at large will have a unemployment percentage of 10.5-12%.

chunder, u6 of 20%. steveF, usually i just think you're an optimist... if we reinflate ourselves out of this without addressing some fundamental problems, we will in all likelihood see a second wave down that will put this one to shame. be careful of what you wish for.

yep, all is better again

People just want the economy to back the way it was and it won't be. This rally and inflated optimism is like building a house on a sand trap, sooner or later all the upward weight will push the bottom further down and we will have to deal with even worse effects. Trust me, being in finance, this is the last thing i want to think about, but putting blinders on won't help the situation.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124294047987244803.html

a good read to see what the next problem will be. Malls, totally empty, another sign that even with ridiculous low sales prices, people aren't buying shit.

Like all things, if you can afford it go buy it. If you can't...wait and save.
Don't let what you 'read/hear' dictate what you do. This is why so many got into trouble from 2003-2007.

so you'd say that in 2007 if you could afford it going and buying it was a grand idea? tell that to all the purchasers in new developments.

It really sounds like you bears(above)want more job losses. It really, really does. Can that possibly be? Are you guys that f'd up?

no, steveF, it really sounds as though you don't spare a fucking thought for the people who are unemployed.

aboutready how do you live with yourself???

very easily, steve.

steveF, man, you really are a retard. Guy, nobody wants job losses, but it is about inevitability at this point. Unlike you, I choose not to believe some news that came out of that rag "The NY Post", i choose to read as much as I can from as many different sources as I can find. Man, you are a snake oil salesman's best friend, a guy that can get suckered into buying anything

want and acknowledging reality are two very different things. Acknowledging realty doesnt mean you want it to happen. It means your head is not in the sand...18 months ago, you denied the severity of this crisis and its potential impact on reality. Now, your argument is the bears WANT it to happen. Thats just wrong

Please. You guys are hoping for prices to come down so anything that makes that happen is okay by you! Now you are also just a bunch of liars.

piss off.

steveF, man, I only hope you're not responsible for the rearing of children. If so, they are certainly destined for failure.

You are a clueless mess of a human, with no hope for success or longevity. You sound unintelligent and believe whatever you are told. You and people like you are the reason this country is in the shape it is in. Please, go back to the hole you came from and stay there till the adults fix the economy. Then, and only then, will you be able to come out, but not without supervision.

stevef is really not smart. he and alpine have gone from doubting the recession to now blaming it on the peopel who were predicting it. just a couple of poor sports.

I think you guys are going after steveF a bit much. He posts some positive economic news once in a while, why all the animosity?

LICC, can you read? Read the entire thread.

ar, you should keep your agenda off these boards. You accuse him of not caring about people who lost their jobs because he posted news about unemployment potentially slowing? Because he thinks that the people who predicted far more catastrophic job losses were wrong?

licc, he accused us FIRST of actively wishing for unemployment.

and i'll take my agenda wherever the hell i want to. you don't like it, use ignore.

LICC...uhoh...stevef has proven to be completely biased to all positives while ignoring all negatives. Even in this crisis. Amazing. I have not seen denial that thick and desire to spin whatever positive everywhere, to maintain the denial stranglehold.

That is why DENIAL is the psychological element in play right after a market rolls over. You cant get through to someone suffering from denial of what this country is facing. I mean stocks plunged 60%, people got murdered, retirement accounts destroyed, and SteveF STILL ignores that and focuses instead on how the current 38% bear rally from the bottom (still down 43% from peak) is a sign of the bottom and that recovery is imminent.

He even stretched so far to say the weaker dollar is bringing in foreign buyers, as if foreigners made out so strongly and didnt lose any jobs during this crisis.

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/11346-equity-market-absorbing-successful-large-secondary-stock-offerings

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/11324-is-it-me-or-are-se-threads-suddenly-overflowing-with-buyer-inquiries-

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/11319-weakening-spur-foreign-interest-in-manhattan-again-

UD, I'm not saying that I agree with the opinion that everything is rosy again, but I think steveF posts these items as a counterpoint to so much of the over-the-top negativity on these boards. Maybe I am wrong about him, but I take it as him pointing out some good news among the torrent of the bad news that is the usual focus with most of the people here. And it does seem like quite a few posters want things to get worse, either because they just want to say they were right, or to justify their past real estate decisions.

AR, you should tone down your agenda for your own good. I could care less.

About ready...I've been waiting for another of you piss offs! Well placed if I may say so!

don't worry about me, licc. i'm fine.

i would love to be wrong. and i would love for things to get better.

karen23, it's remarkably refreshing, the piss off. one tries to get along, but sometimes you just need to pull out the offism.

AR..It's just that you do it with such panache

well the negativity was/is warranted, unfortunately. thank god we had this forum in mid/late 2007 to discuss all these things. Thing is, stevef and spunky and others fought tooth and nail against the 'negative' forces that were at work, and look now where we are.

it just seems not only were they dead wrong, and argued vehemently for their position just as the state of the economy deteriorated and the fed/treasury are putting us all on a very bad path for the years to come, but now denies where we are, where we came from, and focuses only on the positive silver linings and slowing of the deterioration we are seeing. We went down so fast, so quickly, to a new normal, that it was inevitable for that pace to sustain itself. Now it slowed, but guess what, we are still deteriorating.

it seems stevef has an agenda, thats all. And in turn, he fights back to us that we have an agenda to want things to get worse. And that is just wrong

the best investors are those that make sure their brains are not self-serving and self-congratulatory. how to avoid that is a daily job. it's too easy to exaggerate both ways (our egos always have an agenda!). many bears will miss the improvement when it comes (i don't think is here yet) cause they are still celebrating how well they predicted the crash.

i am so past caring whether i was right or wrong. as i read recently, and in agreement with admin, being right early isn't really being right at all.

admin, improvement is always relative. as an investor i might view improvement much differently than i would as someone interested in, say, sociology.

admin, it isn't that our agenda overrides our powers of deduction or thought processes,(well, sometimes), but it is when a persons agenda doesn't allow said person to incorporate new or contrary data. I don't like to see my friends without a job, or, on a weekly basis seeing 600+k people loosing their jobs and having people like steve come on and tell everyone that all the worrying was for not, and that all will be fine soon. Sure, I do well, but i fear for my family's retirement and condition of their health due to the worrying and stress.

Damnit, things aren't getting better, they are sometimes less worse, then they get ever worse the next week.

UD, aside from the steveF stuff, do you think the Fed shouldn't be inflating? Do you think they shouldn't be supporting the banks to the extent they have? I'm not so sure they have much of a choice given how much of a mess things have been.

"but it is when a persons agenda doesn't allow said person to incorporate new or contrary data....Damnit, things aren't getting better, they are sometimes less worse, then they get ever worse the next week."

great comment chunderboy. EXACTLY! the unintended consequences cant be good, and you are starting to see signs of it in treasury market now. Just one example. What if that gets worse? If anything, what we just went through and where we are now warrants caution.

"Sure, I do well, but i fear for my family's retirement and condition of their health due to the worrying and stress."

that's right on. in Argentina with the crisis on 2001 (maybe shorter but much more intense than this one) there were 50k more deaths due to heart attacks. at the end of the day it's all about expectations. to be able to laugh about the dream of golfing that companies were selling to baby boomers and to embrace a comeback to family solidarity. for example, grandmothers provide childcare to their grand kids so that mothers can work (without asking to be paid for it for god sakes as i heard many doing). the idea that every old couple are able to afford to live in their own house is an affluent one. many will need to move with their adult kids. but it's not like starvation is setting in.

UD, just look at the currency market for example. The dollar has been on a slide for the past 4 weeks or so, and that is the next worrisome issue? With all of the debt and the possibility of the US getting downgraded from its current status will only make things worse. I guess we just have to hold on for the ride, b/c it won't be a smooth one.

LICC - no, I think they had to do something, but I think they went a bit too far, compromised their balance sheet too much, and risk moral hazard, removal of facilities, and over stimulating causing the kind of inflation that is not good when it first hits. Everyone wants inflation, to reflate us out of this deflationary spiral, and the fed is doing exactly that, to the extreme. I dont think they get the form of inflation that will come at first - higher food, energy, commodities, health care, rates, etc..profit margins will get squeezed and consumer will get squeezed. I dont see inflation rearing its ugly head in wages or housing, because of the nature of this crisis and the credit BUST that just occurred.

there are no free lunches. and there will be consequences to what they are doing that will negatively affect us all and prolong the duration of this episode. Yes we will have a stimulus enhancing effect, but that wont be sustainable, and then we still have problems to deal with and record deficits and record treasury issuance to fund them. Not good.

Put it this way, at first we will not see the type of inflation that is evident when an economy is too strong and overheating!

admin, i really could have used that Argentina reference on a thread the other day. it is already happening on a fairly large scale. household size is increasing, and household creation is decreasing.

ud, yes, prices will go up but wages won't. we will have to make due with less, which isn't exactly a platform for robust growth.

"Everyone wants inflation"

not me. i bet neither those on fixed income.

admin, I mean, I look at my father and mothers face when I go home to see them, and it breaks my efing heart. Working hard your whole life and not being able to retire or at the very least get a good nights sleep b/c you are worried about where your company is going scares the shit out of me. As for me, my main motivation to be successful is not for my ego or toy collection, it is JIC shit goes pear shaped I will be able to take care of the parents. As it stands now, I could cover their mortgage and other stuff, but not their pride.

But hey, there was a 1% uptick in unemployment, so all is fine.

those that want inflation i doubt they understand that there's no control on where it will show up and that deflation is absolutely needed when you have massive over capacity in fragmented sectors. the idea that people will consume more cause of inflation is ridiculous. do these guys even bother to study how people behave under high inflation? if they consume more is only on those items you can hoard, like soup cans. is that a recipe for growth? (aside from campbell)

people consume more when prices go down to a place where the mkt clears. it's idiotic to think that high prices can be sustained. these guys believe they are superman.

admin, i am absolutely mystified. sometimes i think that this administration is so afraid of a repeat of Clinton's first mid-term election that they'll do anything to avoid it. this will, and must, be painful.

UD, I agree that structural changes beyond Fed policy are needed. You may disagree with the degree to which the Fed attacked the problem from a monetary standpoint, but I would rather they had taken the actions they did rather than provide too little monetary support. It is the better of two evils. Like you have said, there was no easy way out of this. Maybe the deficits can force government's hand to more aggressively implement the spending and tax changes needed to fundamentally improve the system. I think the regulatory problems will be addressed regardless.

This POST article is highly suspect. It says unemployment in the U.S dropped to 8.6% from 9% in March. Says who? Unemployment rose to 8.9% in April, 2009, it didn't drop at all! Makes me suspect error in the article's other claims.

"afraid of a repeat of Clinton's first mid-term election"

oh, elaborate please.

they are more concerned about keeping things floated so that they will be able to retain/add seats in congress than they are about structurally fixing the problems. fixing the problems will be painful, and they seem intent as hell at minimizing near-term pain, of course at the potential expense of much greater long-term pain.

this thought depresses the hell out of me, though. so i'm just going to assume that the economic team is misguided.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aQJzd0DkdWuQ&refer=home

Great article, just in time for this thread

this is what scares me:

"A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only last until the citizens discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that the Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, to be followed by a dictatorship, and then a monarchy."

when you have seniors voting benefits to themselves (prescription drug is $8Trillion is totally unfunded, for ex) with total disregard to their own grand kids and a huge portion of the population (i think we are close to 50%) receiving more wealth transfers than the taxes they pay... where is it going? bankruptcy is the natural consequence. unless self-discipline shows up from somewhere, but where?

many homeowners that were counting on that home equity and now it's gone and want their government to bring it back... that's a benefit they give themselves through voting. the politicians have short-term bias only cause most of the voters have it.

that's not the case in japan nor germany, for example.

voters have it because politicians pander to it. it's cyclical.

and japan and germany have very good health care. ironic, isn't it.

where is it going? bankruptcy is the natural consequence. unless self-discipline shows up from somewhere, but where?
----
You're asking people to be disciplined? Man, America is the Land of the Greed, that will never happen.
It's like trying to convince people to change mentality regarding Global warming. Everybody feels for it, but nobody changes its daily habits.

Well, I for one HOPE that unemployment gets better in NYC...right after I move.

"steveF, man, I only hope you're not responsible for the rearing of children. If so, they are certainly destined for failure.

You are a clueless mess of a human, with no hope for success or longevity. You sound unintelligent and believe whatever you are told. You and people like you are the reason this country is in the shape it is in. Please, go back to the hole you came from and stay there till the adults fix the economy. Then, and only then, will you be able to come out, but not without supervision.
"

hee hee

It seemed like yesterday everyone was saying we will enter a full blown depression, New York would become a boarded up Detroit and people would be dying on the streets.

LOL, idiots. Every couple of years someone declares that New York City or America is over but if those stupid experts were so smart, they wouldn't be so poor.

Prada, bravo.

Just take a look at the 10 year yield and read between the lines...

Its payback time

"It seemed like yesterday everyone was saying we will enter a full blown depression, New York would become a boarded up Detroit and people would be dying on the streets.

LOL, idiots. Every couple of years someone declares that New York City or America is over but if those stupid experts were so smart, they wouldn't be so poor."

Wow, nothing like a good strawman argument to start the day!

The folks who said the economy would decline at all were ridiculed here. Now they have proven right several times over, prada makes up nonsense about becoming Detroit?

Sorry, but a number of bears on this board called it right... resorting to hyperbole is a pretty pathetic move to try and discredit those who were RIGHT.

The only ones who said NYC would equal detroit were Alipne (super-bull) and Rufus (super-tool.) NO ONE who has been on the pessimistic side has said NYC woudl be like Detroit. I for one think NYC real estate will bounce back...just in 2011 or 2012, and it won't be like the bubble years.

Exactly. Stupid hyperbolic strawman arguments. The bears that have made cases here have pretty much ALL noted that we won't decline forever, the question is just how much we decline and for how long.

That bulls have to resort to the hyperbole because they lost the argument is just getting really old.

Yea, sure.

I also remember most of you saying Wall Street will NEVER come back. Big salaries are over. No new Wall-Street money will flow into Manhattan because big money in finance is dead. Truth is, Wall Street will come back strong. None of you know what you're talking about. Watch.

You will be proven wrong again while I sit back laughing.

That's all.

Prada, I hope you're right, truly. Wall St $ is very important to the city & the state on many levels.

Prada, who is "most of us?" Certainly not me.

Again, Prada, stop with the dumb hyperbole strawman stuff.
Now you're just lying to try and prove some sort of point.

Most folks said, well, the opposite.

That you have to resort to lying, sorta says the argument is garbage.

I'm going to add your last post next to "strawman argument" in the dictionary.

I agree with Pradaaddict - Wall Street will come back. And already is coming back.
I don't know why that makes him a strawman that he (or she?) believes that.

come back as what? and when did it ever go away?

The straw man arguement is this: " also remember most of you saying Wall Street will NEVER come back. Big salaries are over. No new Wall-Street money will flow into Manhattan because big money in finance is dead. "

you can't be that stupid, trembling, to know that this is the sort of thing we a quibbling about. None of the bears (or in my case, RATIONALists) on this board or thread said anything of the sort.

Absolutely.

Same thing happened with decline numbers. Before the crash, bears were mostly predicting 15-30% declines (look it up). When stuff started hitting, there were a couple who said 50% down.

Now you have folks - ALL of whom were the ones who denied the crash and have since been proven wrong - saying 'well, we're not down 99% like all the bears were saying'.

Classic strawman arguments. It generally means you lost the argument, so you have to resort to a made up one to fight.

I'm sorry nyc10022, but did you not just attack juice man for using straw man arguments? And here you are using them again...

"Like all things, if you can afford it go buy it. If you can't...wait and save."

If you can afford it buy it? Words to live by. Man you are a fucking idiot.

Alpine, are you joking?

I was POINTING OUT the second strawman argument.

The funny thing is, I think it was yours!