The Five Graphs of Doom

Runner-up Headline: The Genius of Obamanomics: If You Incent People to Stay Unemployed, They Stay Unemployed

Gee, these are such stellar results, how about we extend unemployment benefits to, say, 200 weeks? Or maybe... 20 years to life?

Unemployment Rises to 9.8%

"Private payrolls +50K on expectations of +160K! Retail Manufacturing payrolls plunge 13K on expectations of +5K. Previous revised down to -7K. As Zero Hedge expected the ADP was totally and completely off. And so the myth of the recovery can suck it"

Record Foodstamp Usage

"For those seeking a perfect explanation of what is happening in United Banana States of America right now, then look no further: the just released September Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program data is out and we are happy to report that the number of poor Americans has never been higher - SNAP recipients just hit a fresh all time high of 42.9 million. Naturally, the market celebrates the record number of poor Americans by closing at 2010 highs."

Biggest Non-Farm Payroll Miss In Over Two Years

"Today's actual [Non-Farm Payroll] NFP result, which was at 111,000 jobs below the economist estimate of 150,000, was the worst miss in over two and a half years."

Money-Printing 101, 202, and 303

"So now that two years of QE (in their 1, Lite and 2 iterations) are in the history [books], we finally can run some correlation analyses to see just what asset class the Fed had been targeting all along. The attached chart presents the very simple result... The [accompanying] chart ... shows total Fed holdings of USTs and of the [S&P 500]... Now here's a thought: the Fed has another $800 billion in UST purchasing dry powder left under QE2 alone... ...Of course the chart above excludes the price of gold in US currency, which confirms that on a real basis, the value of the black line has declined over the same period as it has gotten progressively more diluted with pieces of linen courtesy of the red line."

And the Winner Is... Gold

As Ben Bernanke's magic printing press continues to churn out paper buckos backed by nothing less than the full faith and credit of hope'n'change, gold (and silver, for that matter) continues to ratchet ever higher.


Update: "We've never had a longer stretch of 9%-plus unemployment since... World... War... II." -- Gerri Willis, describing 19 straight months of devastating unemployment thanks to Obamanomics.