Market Talk

Shut your eyes, citizens. Just shut your eyes.

Not so hot, friends and countrymen, not so hot at all.

This morning’s reports on consumer prices and inflation-adjusted earnings, what they call “real” earnings, were both broadly flat, and when flat is not what you’re looking for, not what you’re looking for at all, that’s not a very good thing.

Consumer prices excluding food and energy, the s0-called core prices that get so much derision when everybody thinks the government’s trying to mask inflation by excluding those two categories, were flat, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. On a yearly basis, prices were up 0.9%. When you consider, too, that the Fed kept its fed funds interest rate at zero that whole time, then those numbers are very precarious indeed.

The news on wages wasn’t any better. Average hourly wages were flat in August compared to July, and up 0.5% compared to a year ago. If you think a 0.5% raise over a year is enough to cover all the necessities of life, then God bless you.

What these two reports show is an economy that is basically stagnant, with a not-insignificant chance of getting worse. Wages aren’t growing, prices aren’t rising, and all that ties back to the fact that everybody is still in the middle of this great unwind, this broad deleveraging of debts. We aren’t going anywhere. Indeed, even a cursory glance at the news over the past day or two tells you we’re going backward: a Census Bureau report shows that wages fell over the past decade, while the bureau also reported that now one in seven Americans, 43 million people, are living in poverty.

Continue reading…

- “We have the specter of Greece’s finance minister insisting really, no really, it will never ever default, or default via restructuring,” Yves Smith quips at naked capitalism. “Now given the unfortunate accident of timing, these protests sound awfully Dick Fuld like, although the better parallel is probably Mexico, which kept insisting in 1994, no way, no how would it need to restructure, despite having a lot of dollar denominated obligations and an untenable currency peg,” she adds. “And it was OK, until it wasn’t.”

- As chatter ramps up about new stimulus plans, FusionIQ CEO Barry Ritholtz has his own ideas for what he would do if given $1T to stimulate the economy. “Some folks believe the government should do nothing, spend no money, focus on balancing the budget,” Ritholtz says. “But is the ideal time to begin a new diet and exercise regime when you have pneumonia? The time to reduce the government’s economic deficit and footprint is during a robust expansion, not during (or just after) a contraction.”

- S&P 500 still hasn’t eclipsed its August highs, but market breadth has indicated underlying strength in the September rally, Bespoke Investment Group says. About 80% of S&P 500 stocks are trading above their 50-day moving averages, which is higher than last month. “This isn’t quite to the highest levels seen over the last year, but it’s getting close.”

- “It takes jobs to create households, and usually housing is the key driver for employment growth in the early stages of a recovery,” Calculated Risk says. “So this is a trap: the excess supply means weak employment growth, leading to few new households, so the excess supply is absorbed slowly — putting off more robust employment growth.”

- JPMorgan Chase (JPM) finally issues a formal apology for the web problems that plagued its online banking service earlier this week. “We are sorry for the difficulties that recently affected Chase.com, and we apologize for not communicating better with you during this issue,” JPM says on its website. The apology is notable as many bloggers and folks on Twitter had criticized JPM for its failure to properly communicate this issue with its customers.

- Google Voice cofounder Craig Walker is leaving his role as a manager of real-time communications at Google (GOOG) and returning to his entrepreneurial roots. Walker, who was previously chief executive of Grand Central and renamed Google Voice after its acquisition by GOOG in 2007, will become Google Venture’s first resident entrepreneur, TechCrunch reports.

- “With two strong divergent opinions on gold and low implied volatility levels, this could be an excellent time to buy options in order to establish speculative long or short positions in the metal,” Bill Luby writes.

- All Things D blogger Kara Swisher doesn’t sugarcoat her thoughts on Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz. “Her actions in regards to the Internet giant’s Asian relationships are about as bad as it gets these days.”

- Poverty rate climbed to 14.3% last year, while those lacking health insurance rose to 50.7 million from 46.3 million. Incomes fell slightly as households relied on government and family aid to weather the recession.

- For the city that never sleeps, take a look at some of Central Park’s midnight runners.