The Employment Report

I woke up today and flipped on the TV. I wanted to know how bad the employment situation was. That's all I wanted to know.

I flipped back and forth between CNBC and Bloomberg. All I managed to find out was that it was "miserable".

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein

At the five minute mark I started to question my sanity but I kept flipping anyway. Surely they would tell me. It is such an important report. Another few minutes elapsed. A cost benefit analysis was going on inside my head. I'd invested a good seven minutes and that time is permenantly gone. I'll never get it back.

You don't have to make money back the same way you lost it. - Warren Buffett

That also works with time apparently. At about the ten minute mark I finally capitulated. I gave up and turned on my computer. It was and continues to be the top news story. Go figure.

U.S. job losses accelerate

"The economy is just falling into oblivion and it will get worse," said Greg Salvaggio, vice president for trading at Tempus Consulting in Washington.

I did hear a lot of commentary on TV about the stock market and reasons why it might be rallying though. The common theory seemed to be that the employment report was SO bad that Congress MUST do something immediately. Nobody wanted to be short the market heading into what looks to be a very busy weekend for our leaders.

598,000 jobs lost in January. December's losses were revised upwards to 577,000. November's losses were revised upwards to 597,000. That's nearly 1.8 million jobs in just three months. Funny that the financial news on TV didn't wish to repeatedly show me the gory details. Had it been an actual train wreck the cameras would have never turned away. I'm quite certain of that.