US Jobless Claims Fall To Three-Month Low (Again, For The Umpteenth Time)

How many times in the past six years have we seen that headline: US jobless claims fall to three-month low? Reuters is reporting:

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 315,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was the lowest reading since late November.

Claims for the week ended March 1 were revised to show 1,000 more applications received than previously reported.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast first-time applications for jobless benefits rising to 330,000 in the week ended March 8.

The four-week moving average for new claims, considered a better measure of underlying labor market conditions as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 6,250 to 330,500, the lowest level since early December.

I guess happy days are here again.

Again, for newbies who may have missed it. There are only three "things" that affect American employment in 2014:

• the economy
• ObamaCare
• a third item

First of all, we can dispense with ObamaCare. That is now baked into the plans of US corporations.

Second, is anyone convinced the economy has improved to the extent that it would explain the drop in first time claims? LOL.

And that brings us to the reason why unemployment will drop: Congress did not renew/extend 99+ weeks of unemployment benefits.

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ObamaCare

As long as we're talking about fictitious numbers (unemployment numbers reported by the government), we might as well link today's ObamaCare stories.  Politico is reporting that the Dems don't know if "success" of ObamaCare or "failure" of ObamaCare contributed to the Dems loss in the Florida election this past week. I don't know either, but it's a fairly safe bet ObamaCare will not be a rallying cry in the 2014 elections, much less in the 2016 election.

Posted earlier, HHS Secretary Sebelius says health insurance premiums "will likely" increase in 2015. Yup, they will.

The DailyCaller catches Mr Obama in (another) outright lie when the president says ObamaCare is as cheap as one's cellphone data plan. One can argue that point, but your cellphone data plan does not come with a $12,000 annual deductible. LOL. Or a co-pay for the first 100 minutes of voice or first 2 GB of data.

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Target

Speaking of outright lies, now we learn that Target could have stopped one of the worse security breaches ever. BloombergBusinessweek is reporting:

On Saturday, Nov. 30, the hackers had set their traps and had just one thing to do before starting the attack: plan the data’s escape route. As they uploaded exfiltration malware to move stolen credit card numbers—first to staging points spread around the U.S. to cover their tracks, then into their computers in Russia—FireEye spotted them. Bangalore got an alert and flagged the security team in Minneapolis. And then …

Nothing happened.

In testimony before Congress, Target has said that it was only after the U.S. Department of Justice notified the retailer about the breach in mid-December that company investigators went back to figure out what happened. What it hasn’t publicly revealed: Poring over computer logs, Target found FireEye’s alerts from Nov. 30 and more from Dec. 2, when hackers installed yet another version of the malware. Not only should those alarms have been impossible to miss, they went off early enough that the hackers hadn’t begun transmitting the stolen card data out of Target’s network. Had the company’s security team responded when it was supposed to, the theft that has since engulfed Target, touched as many as one in three American consumers, and led to an international manhunt for the hackers never would have happened at all.

It looks like the Target cyber-security team was taking the week off to go Christmas shopping.

I'm happy to say I haven't used a credit card in Target since the breach was announced. I've saved a lot of money. Target remains my favorite big box store but I seldom visit any more.