"No, We Weren't All Born Yesterday", by David Stockman

Note: Below is a small portion of a typical bearish David Stockman column. He presents an interesting high level view of the US recovery from the COVID lock downs that I have not seen anywhere else. This was part of Stockman's analysis of last Friday's June 2021 unemployment numbers, that everyone else saw as good news.  Ye Editor

 

 Source:

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/stockman-no-we-werent-all-born-yesterday

" ... total hours worked in June actually declined from the May level, and, far more importantly, were still down 4.4% from the pre-Covid peak in February 2020.

When expressed in total hours, there is absolutely nothing “strong” at all about the numbers.

... at the end of Q2 2021 total hours employed in the non-farm economy were still down 8 billion hours from the Q4 2019 level.

That’s right.

Eight billion worker hours are MIA, yet the lazy shills at the WSJ, Bloomberg, Reuters et. al. keep pumping out bilge about an awesome economic rebound!

... At the pre-Covid peak in Q4 2019, the nonfarm economy utilized 257.2 billion labor hours at an annualized rate, but that plunged by nearly -12% to just 227.6 billion hours in Q2 2020.

So doing, Fauci & Co (COVID lock down) wiped out all of the aggregate non-farm labor hours gain since Q4 2011.

That is to say, it obliterated the awesome gains that had been contained in 102 monthly Jobs Friday reports in the interim.

And now, after $4 trillion of freshly printed fiat cash and $6 trillion of stimulus and other bailouts and free stuff ,only 73% of the state-imposed shrinkage of hours worked has been recovered as of June 2021."