And the Band Played On

Peter Schiff’s new commentary from Euro Pacific Capital looks under the surface of the US economic data released in the past week. It should come as no surprise that the mainstream media has focused on the positive numbers that support the narrative of a US recovery, while quietly brushing any contradictory figures under the rug.

“After three months of consistently disappointing jobs numbers, the markets were as keyed up for a good jobs report as a long suffering sailor awaiting shore leave in a tropical port. The just released April jobs report, which claimed that 288,000 jobs were created in the U.S. during the month, provided the apparent good news. However, you don’t have to go too far beneath the surface to find some troubling trends within the data. But even this minor excavation was too much for the media cheerleaders and Wall Street pitchmen to handle.

The dominant narrative held that the prior reports had been so weak because the unusually cold weather (the 10th snowiest in the past 50 years) had prevented consumers from venturing outside to make purchases or employers from hiring workers. Time and again the winter was blamed for the disappointing jobs reports that came in over the 1st quarter. As a result, the consensus of economists predicted a rebound in April with 215,000 net new non-farm jobs. The 288,000 figure that greeted the markets last week – which helped bring down the unemployment rate to a post-crash low of just 6.3% – confirmed the weather hypothesis.

In reality, the desperation in which these tenuous data straws were grasped is a testament to our chronic economic weakness…”

Read the Full Commentary Here

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