You Can't Print Jobs (Michael Pento)

Thursday, November 4, 2010
By: Michael Pento

Jobless claims rose by 20,000 to 457,000 in the week ended Oct. 30 from an upwardly revised (surprise!) 437,000 in the prior week, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The odds of an upward revision to the previous week’s claim number are now becoming just as likely as it is for the sun to rise.

The four-week moving average for claims rose to 456,000 last week from 454,000 and the number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits dropped by 42,000 in the week ended Oct. 23 to 4.34 million. However, those who’ve used up their traditional benefits and are now collecting emergency and extended payments increased by about 357,700 to 5.01 million in the week ended Oct. 16.

It’s a shame that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has yet to realize that he can’t print jobs as easily as he can counterfeit money. “Currently, the unemployment rate is elevated, and measures of underlying inflation are somewhat low,” the FOMC said. Progress in reaching its dual mandate of stable prices and low unemployment “has been disappointingly slow.”

I’m still not sure why Bernanke believes that Americans will ignore soaring prices all around them and simply assent to his claim that inflation is low. The truth is that the inflation already created by the Fed is sending more people on the unemployment line. And the more money he prints the weaker the economy will eventually become.

Michael Pento, Senior Economist at Euro Pacific Capital is a well-established specialist in the “Austrian School” of economics. He is a regular guest on CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business, and other national media outlets and his market analysis can be read in most major financial publications, including the Wall Street Journal. Prior to joining Euro Pacific, Michael worked for a boutique investment advisory firm to create ETFs and UITs that were sold throughout Wall Street. Earlier in his career, he worked on the floor of the NYSE.