Quiet Week - Time to reflect and look forward.

There is an adage in sales, and public speaking, "Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them."This column began as a simple "Blogger" column two years ago. The first column was published on January 1, 2014. If you ignore the simplicity of the column, this first column points to the direction where it has headed. The idea was that as a writer I was anxious regarding the direction the country was heading and where we would be during 2016.

It took a while to set up the format of the columns. Early during the creation process it became apparent that a daily column would be ideal, until such time that the readership grew and I could moderate to 3-5 columns a week. I knew I did not want to work seven days a week, so I created the week in review column. The first Week in Review Column was penned February 22, 2014 with the column "Numbers, Numbers Everywhere - Whose Do You Trust?"

This column has published roughly 30 columns a month since its inception The week in review columns created interest in various topics long past their initial release. It wasn't Until April Fools' Day that the idea of a Month in Review Column became self-evident with the Release of "March's Top Ten  Stories by What you Are Viewing - Selling the Internet and Lying with Statistics."

This worked very well for the remainder of the year. Daily columns, weekly columns, and monthly columns.became normal. The inevitable annual column was published: "Top Ten Columns from "Reclaiming Common Sense" during 2014." The most popular article ever written, to date, was "Federal Debt - Mortgaging Our Future - $117 billion Monthly Mortgage Payment." It used the monthly mortgage payment for a $200,000 home a vehicle of comparison for a $20,000,000,000,000 debt. It supposed that we have a 10% down payment, a $180,000 mortgage, Private Mortgage insurance , and calculated the monthly payment at $117 billion a month for 360 consecutive months. We owe $17.954 Trillion on November 24, 2014. . We owe $19.938 trillion as of the most recent Treasury Report released this month.It is interesting to note that the top column for 2015 was the "Mortgaging Our Future" column from 2014.

This week was a slow week for data. Sure the revised GDP number was released for 2016Q3. Sure there was a Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report released. Seriously, nobody spent much time on the reports, why should I? The three most consistent articles written since the inception of this , in addition to the week in review and month in review articles, are the weekly unemployment claims report article and the jobs report "forecast" and "results" articles.

(Dec 29) Thursdays, except for Thanksgiving and other Major Holidays,  is the release day for the weekly unemployment claims report. They still write and publish that report even if very few headlines are made of the numbers released.  First-time unemployment claims have been rising for four weeks. Continuing claims have been rising for two weeks.The article "Fake Unemployment Claims Drop, Real Unemployment Claims Rise" digs into the numbers and shows that the official number could have, and should have, been reported higher. It also includes a link to the four part  series that dispels the "First-time Unemployment Claims Streak" FACT (False Assertion Considered to be True." Ironically, we have had four weeks of non-seasonally adjusted weeks of first-time unemployment (FTU) claims over 300,000 and the FTU Streak for seasonally adjusted FTU claims restarted four weeks ago.

(Dec 30) There has been some discussion in the media that forecast columns and jobs predictions are a bunch of wasted time and effort. Does the ADP number really matter? (This column has written numerous articles that say "no.")The thing is  "everyone knows" that we need 200,000 seasonally adjusted "jobs" added to the economy every month to keep up with the monthly workforce population growth. "Everyone knows" that there is a difference between private sector "job" growth and "non-farm payroll" growth. And "everyone knows" that the data is seasonally adjusted. Does everyone realize that there are two distinct data sets used to create the monthly report - the Current Population Survey and the Current Employment Statistics data?  Does everyone realize that the data that is released is the advance data plus the preliminary data for the prior month and the "final" data for the month prior to that? The President has been touting a "private sector job creation streak" for years. The article "Potential Real Dec Job Loss Converted to fake Worker Gains" analyzes the data for both data sets and finds that we should experience full-time job losses even though they will report full-time job gains, both unemployment and participation should fall, and that the president's "jobs streak" may have a chance to end, even though they control the seasonal factors, so we know that that is not going to happen. It also includes links to the May, June, July, August, September, October, and November Jobs report articles that reveal that the Jobs Streak did not begin when they say it did, it may have ended during January 2015, it did end during May of this year, and the data has been skewed high this year.

Tomorrow is New Year's Day. It is also Sunday. I don't normally write on Sundays unless I am inspired to do so.I have researched my Top Ten Columns for 2016 column. I have researched my Top Ten of December Column. Right know the best of 2016 have come from January and February this year with a few other columns from later this year. You can also access the columns by month using the "Blog Archive button" on the right side of those screens.The columns that are published on the www.itstheeconomy.info website can be found from August through November on the home page.

Read, Relax, Enjoy. Have a safe and prosperous New Year.

Remember, it's the economy.