12/10/09 Midday Report: Take our cheap shit, please

The market is off to the races again as a rise in US exports turned on the cold water and created some shrinkage to the US trade deficit.  The trade deficit dropped by 7% which was better than expectations of a rising deficit (and I know, it is hard to believe expectations were wrong much like it is hard to believe printing money will lead to inflation, but let's all just take deep breaths and try to move on from this).

So basically, with a weakened dollar, the US is becoming China without the lead paint and bad drivers (As an aside, the Chinese are forecast to buy more cars in 2010 than Americans, so now would be a good time to buy that auto body shop in Shanghai) as we can make much cheaper crap that other countries want to purchase.  This isn't a bad thing as any sales are better than no sales, and if it can create demand and jobs then we'll have some people no longer sucking on the teet of good ole Uncle Sam (and hopefully earning enough money to suck on the teet of good ole Aunt Sam).  So as long as people don't want to travel out of the country since the dollar can now only buy about fifteen minutes in an Amsterdam motel room and a half a croissant, this is decent news.

As far as jobs, the average number of Americans filing first-time jobless claims over the past four weeks fell to a one-year low and the number of newly laid-off workers seeking jobless benefits rose more than expected last week and were higher than expectations.  So it fell to a one-year low and it rose in the same week.  That's a neat fucking trick.  Next up, jobless claims will prove that 2+2 does not always equal 4 (in honor of the Underground Man), will walk and chew gum at the same time, and will create a building to scale based on MC Escher's blueprints.  The point is,  depending on which news source you read (one is using an average 4 week number, and I assume one just using last week's number), we're either still fucked or a bit less fucked, yet definitely totally confused.

In the market, C thinks they are going to raise $15B-$20B to pay back their TARP funds (and honestly, I would rather burn money and dip my balls in the searing hot ashes than buy any securities offering from C, so good luck with that) and RIMM is creating jobs by launching in China which has the stock moving up.

There's still a bunch of noise as the economy tries to figure out just how stimulated it is (it has had its GDP tickled and been shown pictures of some hot growing economies, but it may also need an insertion in it's back door lending policies), so be careful out there.