Increase of 1 Million Private Sector Jobs This Year? - Mark Perry - - ... Bottom Line: Whether the increase in private sector jobs this year is 400,000, or 555,000 or 1.098 million, any of those estimates suggest that the improvements in the private sector job market are much better than what the payroll survey is showing: a total increase of 162,000 jobs this year ... - Carpe Diem Blog 

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jimmying unemployment numbers - How to Manufacture a Recovery - Graham Summers - hattip John Cervarich - Last Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that for the month of March, employers added 162,000 jobs. This would be fantastic news… if it were true.  Let’s have a look at these 162,000 jobs.
1.  So without census workers, we added 114,000 jobs in March
2.  Without these adjustments (birth-death) , we added 33,000 jobs in March
3.  Without these (weather) adjustments, we LOST 67,000 jobs in March
4&5.  Has 2 more
Gains Pains & Capital Blog 

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major article on Jefferson County Alabama  debacle - Looting Main Street - MATT TAIBBI - How the nation's biggest banks are ripping off American cities with the same predatory deals that brought down Greece - Rolling Stone

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Federal Reserve Profits - Bob McTeer - It may be my imagination, but every time I’ve argued that the Fed’s lending (including securities purchases) will not cost the taxpayers I’ve felt eyes rolling. The low level of much financial reporting over the past two years has left the impression that Fed lending is done with taxpayer funds and is tantamount to government spending. Not so. ... Bob McTeer's Blog

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Freddie Mac easing lending rules on Fla. condos -  Freddie Mac moved to buoy the battered Florida condo market, waiving lending rules that made it harder to buy and sell units in many condo buildings.  Freddie Mac said Wednesday it will back mortgages on units in financially troubled condo developments as long as the seller's loan is already owned or securitized by the mortgage finance company. - AP Google

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Fed Reveals Bear Stearns Assets It Swallowed in Firm’s Rescue - By Craig Torres, Bob Ivry and Scott Lanman - In a 4:30 p.m. announcement in a week of congressional recess and religious holidays, the central bank released details of securities bought to aid Bear Stearns’s takeover by JPMorgan Chase & Co. Bloomberg News sued the Fed for that information.  The Fed’s vehicle known as Maiden Lane LLC has securities backed by mortgages from lenders including Washington Mutual Inc. and Countrywide Financial Corp., loans that were made with limited borrower documentation. ... - (yes the loans were mostly cr*p - BC) – Bloomberg

JPMorgan’s Dimon Regrets Using FDIC Guarantee Program - by Dawn Kopecki - JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said he regrets using the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s guarantee program to issue $40 billion in unsecured debt during the height of the financial crisis.  “We didn’t need it,” Dimon, 54, said in his annual letter to shareholders, which was released yesterday. “And it just added to the argument that all banks had been bailed out and fueled the anger directed toward banks.” - Bloomberg

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$18.6 Trillion U.S. Fiscal Deficit by 2020 - Paco Ahlgren - Yeah. I said deficit. Not debt. - The Bottom Violation

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secret bailout: Robert Reich: The Fed in Hot Water - The Fed has finally came clean. It now admits it bailed out Bear Stearns – ... The secret Fed bailout came months before Congress authorized the government to spend up to $700 billion of taxpayer dollars bailing out the banks, even months before Lehman Brothers collapsed. The Fed also took on billions of dollars worth of AIG securities, ... The losses from those deals still total tens of billions, and taxpayers are ultimately on the hook. But the public never knew. There was no congressional oversight. ... - RobertReich.org

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The Fed: Invasion of the Inflation Doves - By Peter Coy - In a rare breach of decorum at the central bank, an intellectual rumble breaks out over the Fed's inflation target - BusinessWeek

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Department of "Huh?": Default Discounts in U.S. Treasury Interest Rates????????? Edition - Brad Delong - ... Why is the Term Risk on Long Term US Debt So High?: ... but it's not unreasonable to assume that there's at least some default risk pricing in.  Our entitlement problem is about to open a gaping hole in the budget, and so far our solution is... to enact more entitlements. Unless our politicians start outlining some credible plans for getting our demography-driven disaster under control, bond markets would be perfectly rational to demand a discount that reflects a possible future fiscal crisis... - Brad Delong Blog

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Deflation on the prowl as Bernanke shuts down his printing press - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - The most audacious monetary experiment in modern history ended on April Fools' Day. America must walk without crutches, on gangrenous legs.  - ... My fear is that the Fed will repeat the mistake – in this case by reversing QE too soon. The problem is Mr Bernanke's ideological doctrine of "creditism". ... - Telegraph.co.uk