By Wednesday morning, it's already old news, though it bears a closer look, especially coming on the heels of the prior revision, from April, 2023 to March, 2024, of 818,000 fewer jobs than had been reported for that period.
Wall Street, always casual about numbers that might show the true state of the U.S. economy, shrugged off the data and sent the major indices to record closing highs. Do they - the major brokerages and banks that dominate trading in the stock market - know something the average investor is somehow missing?
It could be that Wall Street traders focus more on earnings from various companies, or that they're piled into a select few stocks unencumbered by employment data, or maybe they just make more money when stocks go up than when they do the opposite. The most likely explanation is that the reality of the employment situation, now revealed, will likely force the Fed's hand at next week's FOMC meeting, into a 50 basis point cut to the federal funds target rate, lowering it from 4.25-4.50% down to 3.75-4.00%.
Whatever it is, it appears that any indication that the U.S. economy isn't as powerful, dynamic, and exceptional as one is led to believe is essentially a great thing for stocks. This kind of thinking - that bad news is good - leads one to the conclusion that if Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles were nuked from outer space, the Fed would lower interest rates to something in the range of -5.25-5.50% (negative), so that companies would be paid to borrow. That way, the money the companies borrow to buy back more of their own stocks would come with an added bonus.
Free money! What could be better? Why not blow the whole country to smithereens and hand out $1 billion chacks to the remaining survivors?
As anyone with two brain cells to rub together understands, economics just doesn't work that way. Wall Street's job is to sell stocks to the general, unsuspecting public, so, in the event of bad news, even worse news, or outright horrible news, they just boost the prices a little more, hoping to lure in even more suckers. They're doing a bang-up job and have turned the stock market from a measuring instrument into a completely fake representation of the value of the associated companies on any given index. Sure enough, this works for them, and for the passive investors who see their retirement savings growing by leaps and bounds. Stocks are waaaaaaaay up. Everybody's happy... just like it was in 1929, or 1999, or 2007. We all know what happened next.
There is about a 100% probability that stocks will retreat from these lofty levels at some point, though it is also highly probable that stocks will rise significantly before then.
In light of the BLS revisions, a slew of economists are now expressing opinions stating that the U.S. has actually been in a recession since April of last year. That's revealing, because, since the revision prior to that was nearly as bad, shouldn't they have been saying the U.S. was in a recession as far back as April, 2023? It would stand to reason, but anybody in terms of economics business knows they couldn't say that because it might actually be true. In any case, this little bit of drama is yet another example of just how phony anything and everything having to do with Wall Street and Washington, D.C. really is.
There's so little truth to money and government these days it's a wonder the country still exists.
Maybe it actually doesn't.
This morning the world of economics and business will be treated to more fakery from the BLS, this time in the form of the August Producer Price Index (PPI).
Here's the statement from the July release, put out for public consumption on August 14:
The Producer Price Index for final demand rose 0.9 percent in July. Prices for final demand services advanced 1.1 percent, and the index for final demand goods increased 0.7 percent. On an unadjusted basis, the index for final demand moved up 3.3 percent for the 12 months ended in July.
Those were pretty sobering numbers, so what happened on Wall Street?
Stocks actually declined after that piece of news for about a week, before rising well past the original level and onward to new all-time highs. The investing class apparently has about the same memory capacity as a gnat.
The PPI figures were released at 8:30 am ET.
The Producer Price Index for final demand edged down 0.1 percent in August, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Final demand prices advanced 0.7 percent in July and 0.1 percent in June. (See table A.) On an unadjusted basis, the index for final demand rose 2.6 percent for the 12 months ended in August.
So, now, we can all believe the BLS. Inflation is under control. 50 basis points it will be.
As expected, stock futures took off like an Elon Musk rocketships to Mars.
As they say, "you can't make this stuff up." Unless you're the government, that is.
At the Close, Tuesday, September 9, 2025:
Dow: 45,711.34, +196.39 (+0.43%)
NASDAQ: 21,879.49, +80.79 (+0.37%)
S&P 500: 6,512.61, +17.46 (+0.27%)
NYSE Composite: 21,193.11, +19.47 (+0.09%)
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