What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[trysail]

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=asSyYJghIOig&pos=5


Gundlach, Klarman See Bull Market Undermined by U.S. Budget Gap
By Charles Stein

March 15 (Bloomberg) -- As signs of a sustained U.S. recovery increase, so do the ranks of big-name investors warning that economic growth will be undercut by the rising federal budget deficit.

Shrinking the gap between government revenues and spending will reduce the nation’s standard of living, slow the economy and crimp returns on stocks and bonds, according to... Jeffrey Gundlach... Failing to fix the problem could trigger another financial crisis, said Robert Rodriguez...

“Unless we get government under control, we will see negative consequences in the form of higher inflation and higher interest rates,” Rodriguez... said...

Prominent investors including Seth Klarman... and David Einhorn... have sounded similar alarms. Concern that the expansion will be hurt by the deficit...

...U.S. net government debt will equal 74 percent of gross domestic product this year, compared with 42 percent in 2007... Japan, at 120 percent, has the highest debt burden among developed countries...

“When you are addicted to living beyond your means and you fill the gap with debt, you reach a point where you are going to feel the pain,” Gundlach said...

...higher debt-service payments will create an additional burden...

Blunt Assessment
...Klarman... is blunt in acknowledging the costs of cutting the deficit.

“Restoring fiscal sanity will be bad for the economy and financial markets,” he wrote in a Jan. 26 letter to clients. The alternative is worse, he said.

Positive Signs
“Governments that run huge deficits, promise entitlements that will be next-to-impossible to deliver and depend on the beneficence of foreigners to stay afloat inevitably must collapse -- perhaps not imminently, but eventually as Greece and Ireland have recently discovered,” he wrote.

Greece and Ireland accepted bailouts after the cost of financing their debt became unsustainable...

...Rodriguez told clients in 2009 that if the U.S. government didn’t get its finances in order, the nation would face a crisis in three to seven years that could rival the financial meltdown of 2008...

Music May Stop
“I haven’t changed my opinion,” Rodriguez said. He believes the next crisis could be triggered by investors balking at buying U.S. debt, which in turn could cause the dollar to plummet and interest rates to soar.

“You never know when the music is going to stop,” Rodriguez said...

...Rodriguez isn’t alone in warning that the next crisis could involve government debt.

“The global economy is in a period between two crises,” Greenlight’s Einhorn said...

‘Tough Spot’
The debt problems that caused the 2008 crisis have shifted from the private to the public sector without being addressed, Einhorn told Charlie Rose. The combination of “a very large budget deficit and a monetary policy that is extremely easy” could eventually bring the economy “to a tough spot,” Einhorn said.

The Federal Reserve has kept its benchmark lending rate at between zero and 0.25 percent since December 2008...

...Rodriguez says there are glimmers of hope on the fiscal front. States such as Wisconsin, New Jersey and Ohio, he said, are trimming their deficits with spending cuts, potentially providing a road map for politicians in Washington.

“I don’t say it is impossible to change course, but the time frame is growing short,” he said.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Sean Renaud]

So your logic is that Obama causes earthquakes and riots in Libya? Cus otherwise the stock markets the last couple of weeks pretty much have nothing to do with nothing. Oh wait Bush did cause Katrina. . .

 

[trysail]

So your logic is that Obama causes earthquakes and riots in Libya? Cus otherwise the stock markets the last couple of weeks pretty much have nothing to do with nothing. Oh wait Bush did cause Katrina. . .

The short run course of the stock market has nothing to do with it. The remarks of Seth Klarman ( see below ) have everything to do with the LONG RUN.

In the short run, the stock market is a voting machine. In the long run, it's a weighing machine.

-Benjamin Graham​

As frequently quoted by Benjamin Graham's student, some rube by the name of Buffett.





http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=asSyYJghIOig&pos=5


Gundlach, Klarman See Bull Market Undermined by U.S. Budget Gap
By Charles Stein

March 15 (Bloomberg) -- As signs of a sustained U.S. recovery increase, so do the ranks of big-name investors warning that economic growth will be undercut by the rising federal budget deficit.

Shrinking the gap between government revenues and spending will reduce the nation’s standard of living, slow the economy and crimp returns on stocks and bonds, according to... Jeffrey Gundlach... Failing to fix the problem could trigger another financial crisis, said Robert Rodriguez...

“Unless we get government under control, we will see negative consequences in the form of higher inflation and higher interest rates,” Rodriguez... said...

Prominent investors including Seth Klarman... and David Einhorn... have sounded similar alarms. Concern that the expansion will be hurt by the deficit...

...U.S. net government debt will equal 74 percent of gross domestic product this year, compared with 42 percent in 2007... Japan, at 120 percent, has the highest debt burden among developed countries...

“When you are addicted to living beyond your means and you fill the gap with debt, you reach a point where you are going to feel the pain,” Gundlach said...

...higher debt-service payments will create an additional burden...

Blunt Assessment
...Klarman... is blunt in acknowledging the costs of cutting the deficit.

“Restoring fiscal sanity will be bad for the economy and financial markets,” he wrote in a Jan. 26 letter to clients. The alternative is worse, he said.

Positive Signs
“Governments that run huge deficits, promise entitlements that will be next-to-impossible to deliver and depend on the beneficence of foreigners to stay afloat inevitably must collapse -- perhaps not imminently, but eventually as Greece and Ireland have recently discovered,” he wrote.

Greece and Ireland accepted bailouts after the cost of financing their debt became unsustainable...

...Rodriguez told clients in 2009 that if the U.S. government didn’t get its finances in order, the nation would face a crisis in three to seven years that could rival the financial meltdown of 2008...

Music May Stop
“I haven’t changed my opinion,” Rodriguez said. He believes the next crisis could be triggered by investors balking at buying U.S. debt, which in turn could cause the dollar to plummet and interest rates to soar.

“You never know when the music is going to stop,” Rodriguez said...

...Rodriguez isn’t alone in warning that the next crisis could involve government debt.

“The global economy is in a period between two crises,” Greenlight’s Einhorn said...

‘Tough Spot’
The debt problems that caused the 2008 crisis have shifted from the private to the public sector without being addressed, Einhorn told Charlie Rose. The combination of “a very large budget deficit and a monetary policy that is extremely easy” could eventually bring the economy “to a tough spot,” Einhorn said.

The Federal Reserve has kept its benchmark lending rate at between zero and 0.25 percent since December 2008...

...Rodriguez says there are glimmers of hope on the fiscal front. States such as Wisconsin, New Jersey and Ohio, he said, are trimming their deficits with spending cuts, potentially providing a road map for politicians in Washington.

“I don’t say it is impossible to change course, but the time frame is growing short,” he said.

 

[unregistered]

 

[koalabear]

DOW futures looking at a 200 plus open to the downside today.

Wait till Japan wants to cash in their treasury notes.

 

[RightField]

So your logic is that Obama causes earthquakes and riots in Libya? Cus otherwise the stock markets the last couple of weeks pretty much have nothing to do with nothing. Oh wait Bush did cause Katrina. . .

No, clearly all earthquakes are Bush's fault.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Really? I'll make you a deal. I'll vote Republican if he promises not to do to California what he did to Japan.

 

[eyer]

Is Obama Doing to the U.S. What My Dad Ronald Reagan Did to the Soviet Union?

By Michael Reagan

"Is President Obama deliberately trying to throw our economy into an inflationary spiral? After all, an inflationary crisis tacked onto the ongoing financial crisis amid a looming Middle East oil crisis is a recipe for doom. The idea of an American president tipping America into a Great Depression is unthinkable—isn't it?"

"Here's what frightens me: Everything Ronald Reagan did to the Soviet Union, Barack Obama is doing to America today."

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011...ama-doing-dad-ronald-reagan-did-soviet-union/

 

[unregistered]

 

[trysail]

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticke...t-Wasting-Time"-on-Budget,-BUs-Kotlikoff-Says


Enron Accounting
By Aaron Task

The Senate on Thursday is expected to pass another continuing resolution that will fund the government until April 8 and avert a shutdown. But that won't solve the need for a budget to fund the remainder of the fiscal year, much less address America's true fiscal woes, says Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff.

The ongoing budget debate in Washington is "really a food fight between Democrats and Republicans in order to shield what's going on, which is we are stealing from our kids," Kotlikoff says. "What these guys in Washington are doing is just wasting time."

As with Columbia's Jeffrey Sachs and many others on both sides of the political spectrum, Kotlikoff is frustrated with President Obama and Congress for bickering about relatively small portions of the budget while failing to deal with the true causes of the deficit.

Including projected payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlement programs, America's true budget gap is $202 trillion, or 14 times GDP, Kotlikoff says, citing CBO data. That's far worse than the 9% of GDP reported in 2010 and official projections of 90 percent of GDP in 2020.

Worse Than Advertised

America is in "worst fiscal shape than Greece, Ireland, Portugal" or just about any other developed economy, he says. "The unofficial debts are staggering. Our implicit debts, the ones hidden off the books by Enron accounting show a much worse picture than the official debt."

To close the federal budget deficit, the professor and author of Jimmy Stewart Is Dead, says the government could take the following steps:

-- A) Immediately and permanently raise all taxes by 77%
-- B) Immediately and permanently cut all government spending by 40%
-- C) Some Combination of A & B
Kotlikoff also recommends the government adopt the Ryan-Rivlin health-care plan for all Americans, not just seniors, as we discuss in a forthcoming segment.

Unless and until D.C. politicians are willing to adopt such dramatic, controversial and (some say) draconian measures, "they might as well go home and tell us to leave the country or just print money out the wazoo to pay these bills and leave us with hyperinflation," he laments. "That seems to be the game plan."

 

[koalabear]

New home sales hit record low, outlook gloomy

http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=OBR&date=20110323&id=13151823&gt1=33009

 

[trysail]

I didn't write this. I know the person who did. That person wouldn't want to be credited here.

...Domestically, our government has been attempting to intervene in the economy in many different ways since the recession began. Most have failed to help in a significant way. Several have been counterproductive. Although several programs began with good intentions, they have been undercut by unintended consequences. Let me explain.

On the fiscal side, there have been various stimulus programs. Some have been straight out intentions by the government to increase spending and create a direct one-on-one impact on GDP. While they have increased activity temporarily, few of the funded programs have had lasting impact and all have added materially to our deficits and debt. Thus, they created a set of short term sugar highs that quickly dissipated. But the debt remains and it will have to be services until it is paid off. In some cases, there were direct handouts of a one-time nature. Cash-for-clunkers and first-time homebuyer tax credits fit into that category. These were great for the thousands of people who could take advantage and a financial burden to the millions that paid the bill.

Since the start of the recession, the biggest sore spots have been the banks and housing. The government handed out checks to many banks. Not all the payments have been returned yet (with interest!) but a lot has. Of all the programs, TARP and its satellite programs did the most good. They were targeted temporary payments that have since been repaid. They filled a liquidity void. When that gap was filled, the money was paid back. The payments were instituted with enough incentives to encourage early repayment. In a similar vein, investments in General Motors helped to right the ship. Repayments have started and it is likely that the government will be repaid in full. AIG was an even bigger mess. It still isn’t clear whether the government will recover that entire payment but it should be close.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are two completely different kettles of fish. The government didn’t invest in them; it took them over and ran them. It hasn’t run them as economic businesses; it has chosen to run them with a social agenda in mind, namely to spur the recovery of the housing market as quickly as possible and to continue to allow low and moderate income families to continue to have some access to mortgage funds. These two entities had a partner in crime, namely the Federal Reserve. Operating with a duel mandate of currency stability and helping to restart growth, the Fed has kept the Treasury printing money while it keeps feeding funds into the economy in an effort to maintain interest rates as close to zero as possible.

But as the TV ad says, “It is not nice to fool with Mother Nature”. Man simply isn’t powerful enough to do it. Printing money may stoke the fires of economic activity but it also fans the flames of inflation and weakens the dollar. A weak dollar chases capital offshore. It chases foreign capital away and it chases American capital away.

Unlike the company which behaves almost entirely in a reactive manner, corporations act in a proactive manner. If the government wants to make interest rates zero, companies will sell bonds at negative real rates and build a war chest for the future. Investors are also proactive. When the Fed announces it intends to flood the market with money to encourage investments, investors buy stocks in front of the government’s moves.

The government doesn’t just react, it overreacts. Look at housing. We all know the root of the problem. No one believed prices could fall. In a rising market, leverage is a good thing. Unchecked, it got out of hand. Down payments were too small and loan quality was too weak. Regulation was too lax. Maybe non-existent is a better word. The obvious reaction would have been to raise down payments and tighten credit standards. But the government used a heavy hand and a club as it always seems to do. After the Internet bubble burst and Enron and WorldCom were exposed, Sarbanes-Oxley was passed to create a hugely expensive oversight structure that never worked. Similarly, as banks failed and the housing market collapsed, bank regulators have deemed all mortgages to be high risk assets. Banks could continue to write new mortgages but only if they added a huge amount of capital. No one wanted to go that far, leaving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to control 90% of the market.

The government fretted about banks that might be too big to fail but the four largest banks now control a greater amount of deposits than ever. The same can be said for the three largest investment banks. They are more resistant to failure today than they were three years ago simply based on size. In 2004-2007, less than half of all mortgages were made to buyers with FICO credit scores below 740. Today, only about a quarter of loans are made to people with scores below 740. In a range of 300-800, 740 was always considered prime. If there was a category better than prime, 740 would fit. Today, the odds are better than 50-50 that someone with a 740 score will be rejected.

Home prices are falling once again. Most market watchers blame it on oversupply. But the inventory of homes for sale, both new and used, has been on the decline since last summer and the courts are clogged with foreclosures that can’t be resolved. Supply isn’t rising; it’s falling. So why are home prices falling? Obviously, demand is down. Demand is down because a wide swath of Americans who in normal times going back decades could get a mortgage, can’t do so today because of the heavy hand of regulators.

Because of the heavy hand, at least it can be argued that banks aren’t making bad new mortgage loans. That may be true. But if demand reduction is causing prices to fall, the loans already on the books are becoming weaker as prices fall to the value of collateral. Since the volume of loans already on the books is far greater than the volume of new loans, the perverse unintended consequence of this heavy handed regulation is to reduce housing activity, lower prices, and weaken existing loan portfolios. It isn’t nice to fool with Mother Nature.

Similarly, the Fed’s QE2 efforts to keep Fed Funds rates near zero and lower mortgage rates to stimulate housing aren’t working either. Most Americans cannot take advantage of today’s low rates to buy homes or refinancing existing mortgages. Their FICO score is too low. Not too low historically, just too low today. Someone with a 780 score can refinance and reduce his cost of ownership but someone with a score of 680 can’t even if he still has equity in his home and never missed a payment. Which borrower is potentially more stressed and needs the relief more? You know the answer!

Big corporations can go to the unregulated bond market for capital. Small businesses can only go to the banks with heavy handed overseers preventing their access to credit.

Look. There is no question that lax oversight and bad behavior led to the worst recession since the Great Depression. But the solution isn’t more rules, more laws and more regulatory burden. It is simply enforcing what’s already there! Congress created OFEO two decades ago to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That was its one and only task. But Congress interfered, the two GSEs doled out millions in favors and lobbying money and the system broke down. Most of the time, the marketplace will set the correct value. Mandating an independent appraiser to set home values rather than market competition is downright nuts. A reason a third of existing home sales are for cash is that a good part of that third can afford to pay cash but can’t qualify for a mortgage. How perverse is that?

The good news is that pendulums swing back and forth. The Fed is just taking a few steps back from its oversight of the largest banks in good financial shape. That doesn’t mean regulation is over. It just means the Fed is beginning to retreat toward normal. It isn’t ready to do the same for medium or small banks quite yet but it is moving in that direction.

I wish I could offer hope regarding Fannie and Freddie...

 

[trysail]

Do you want to know what the chart below says?

It says, "Don't bother saving. The government is going to steal your savings." It also says, "Don't save. Spend."

This is a chart of the Federal funds rate less the trailing 12-month rate of inflation as measured by the CPI. Unlike Bernanke/Greenspan's little fib ( "we're not going to pay attention
to the costs of food and energy 'cause we don't believe that y'all eat or heat your house or drive" ), this is calculated using the CPI inflation WITH food and energy. In case you haven't
looked at the left-hand axis, during almost the entire decade that began in 2000, a dollar saved has become worth less than a dollar because of the combination of inflation and the Fed's
low interest rate policy.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?&chart_type=line&graph_id=30397&category_id=0&recession_bars=Off&width=1000&height=600&bgcolor=%23B3CDE7&graph_bgcolor=%23FFFFFF&txtcolor=%23000000&ts=8&preserve_ratio=false&fo=ve&id=CPIAUCSL_FEDFUNDS&transformation=ch1_lin&scale=Left&range=Custom&cosd=2000-01-01&coed=2011-02-01&line_color=%230000FF&link_values=&mark_type=NONE&mw=4&line_style=Solid&lw=3&vintage_date=2011-03-28_2011-03-28&revision_date=2011-03-28_2011-03-28&mma=0&nd=_&ost=&oet=&fml=b-a&fq=Monthly&fam=avg&fgst=lin​

 

[unregistered]

 

[trysail]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011...them-bury-them-the-rise-of-fannie-and-freddie



'Kill Them, Bury Them': The Rise Of Fannie And Freddie

How a ferocious lobbying effort helped Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac grow rich and powerful.

by Alex Blumberg

Before the financial crisis, many Americans had never heard of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Today, we own them.

The federal government took over Fannie and Freddie after bailing them out in 2008. The bailout cost taxpayers more than the bailouts of GM, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Citigroup combined.
By 2010, roughly 90 percent of all new mortgages issued in this country went through the U.S. government. For all intents and purposes, the $1.5 trillion U.S. mortgage market is now a government-run industry.

http://npr.org/news/graphics/2011/03/gr-pm-bailout-462.gif

How did we get here?...


more...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011...them-bury-them-the-rise-of-fannie-and-freddie

Answer:
Corruption on a scale so massive that it is beyond the comprehension of those who haven't watched it rise and who don't witness it on a daily basis. You can draw a straight line starting with Franklin Roosevelt straight through Lyndon Johnson to Franklin Raines to Daniel Mudd to Jamie Gorelick to Barney Frank. That's how we got here.

 

[trysail]

I didn't write this. I know the person who did. That person would not want to be credited here.

...I want to end with a brief mention of this weekend’s New York Times article noting that GE paid no U.S. taxes last year. Obviously, the headline has a certain nasty overtone aimed at GE, but the reality is that GE is simply doing what the U.S. tax code allows. GE didn’t create a convoluted tax code; Congress did. With that noted, the real message of the story is that GE and many others pay less in U.S. taxes by shifting income out of the U.S. where the tax burden is less. To make a simple point, growth is faster overseas, earnings are taxed less overseas, and a weak dollar policy chases capital overseas. Add the three together and it is easy to see that jobs head overseas as well. For every major company you show me where job growth in the U.S. is greater than job growth outside the U.S., I will show you 20 companies where the reverse is true. In fact, there are many where jobs are decreasing in absolute numbers in the U.S., while growing outside the U.S.

Today the focus in Washington is on reducing the current budget by $20 billion or so and setting the stage to write 300 or more regulations mandated by Dodd-Frank. Health care costs are rising faster than at any point in the past decade. The dollar is sinking. Washington continues to talk about job creation, but everything it does works against job creation...

 

[trysail]

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aLgG6z14Ou4c


Bill Gross Says Treasuries Have Little Value, Echoing Buffett
By Wes Goodman

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said Treasuries “have little value” because of the growing U.S. debt burden.

The U.S. has unrecorded debt of $75 trillion, or close to 500 percent of gross domestic product, counting what it owes on its bonds plus obligations for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Gross said in his monthly investment outlook. The U.S. will experience inflation, currency devaluation and low-to- negative interest rates after accounting for consumer-price gains if it doesn’t reform its entitlement programs, he wrote.

Gross “has been selling Treasuries because they have little value within the context of a $75 trillion total debt burden,” he wrote in the report published on Newport Beach, California-based Pimco’s website. Congress "must make ‘debt’ a four-letter word."

The comment echoes Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor who recommended avoiding long-term fixed-income bets in U.S. dollars because its purchasing power will drop. Treasuries have handed investors a 0.1 percent loss this quarter, adding to a 2.7 percent decline in the final three months of 2010, based on Bank of America Merrill Lynch data.

President Barack Obama’s government has increased the U.S. publicly traded debt to a record $9.05 trillion, leading Gross to compare the nation to Greece, which had its credit ratings cut two steps by Standard and Poor’s on March 29.

“We are out-Greeking the Greeks,” he wrote.

Inflation Risk
Gross said in an interview March 11 that he eliminated government-related debt from his Total Return Fund because investors aren’t being adequately compensated for the risk of inflation.

Buffett has shortened the maturities of Omaha, Nebraska- based Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s bond holdings as the Federal Reserve eased monetary policy to stimulate the economy, according to regulatory filings.

“I would recommend against buying long-term fixed-dollar investments,” Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire, said March 25 in New Delhi. “If you ask me if the U.S. dollar is going to hold its purchasing power fully at the level of 2011, 5 years, 10 years or 20 years from now, I would tell you it will not.”

The Fed said in November that it would pump $600 billion into the U.S. economy by purchasing Treasury securities to sustain the economic expansion.

The difference between yields on 10-year notes and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, a gauge of trader expectations for consumer prices over the life of the debt, has widened to 2.45 percentage points from 1.82 percentage points six months ago. The five-year average is 2.03 percentage points.

Treasury 10-year notes pay 1.33 percent after subtracting consumer-price increases, the so-called real yield. That’s down from last year’s high of 2.39 percent in December.

Pimco’s record $236.9 billion Total Return Fund gained 7 percent in the past year, beating 82 percent of its competitors, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company is a unit of insurer Allianz SE in Munich.

 

[eyer]

There is truly only one way to deal with the fatal mess we've put ourselves in:

Congress must vote NO on enlarging our debt limit...

...and Americans must discover how to live unspoiled, so that our progeny may have at least a chance to know liberty first hand.

If Congress does extend our debt limit this time...

...we are done. Period.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Europe is undergoing inflation.

We are undergoing inflation.

Walmart says to expect more:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2011-03-30-wal-mart-ceo-expects-inflation_N.htm

It's not a matter of if the market will correct itself, but when...

The only thing holding the value of our dollar in place was the agreement for every government to inflate its currency...
__________________
"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."
John Maynard Keynes

 

[Saint Peter]

This fucks up my savings in the Mason jar plan.


Big time.

 

[JenAltArmy]

obama loves Enron math & accounting rules

then again, obama doesn't have the mental capacity to run a Circle K for a week, sure he could enjoy a circle jerk with joe biteme and his other terrorist friends, guess that is why islamic men wear skirts.....makes it easier to enjoy a circle jerk? just a thought.....


QUOTE=trysail;37016649]http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticke...t-Wasting-Time"-on-Budget,-BUs-Kotlikoff-Says


Enron Accounting
By Aaron Task[/QUOTE]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

This fucks up my savings in the Mason jar plan.


Big time.

On the upside, I went into dividend funds heavy, putting me closer to the source of the inflation...

 

[rosco rathbone]

not one man in a million is able to diagnose

......

 

[Luk]

Solid jobs growth in March shows recovery is for real

MSNBC says so.

Neither tsunami nor Libyan turmoil nor higher oil prices have shaken businesses from hiring more workers.

After more than two years of a bleak prospects for job seekers, the economy's slow, steady growth is finally creating jobs at a healthy pace.