Suitably Flip

FoxNews.com Live - SCOTUS ObamaCare Decision Edition

I'll be on FoxNews.com Live Thursday from 12:30 - 1 pm to discuss - perhaps among other things - what should be the hot-off-the-presses Supreme Court decision on the individual mandate and the Affordable Care Act in toto.  If you miss it live, you can catch a replay at the link until Friday morning (dial the wheel back to 12:30:00).

I'll update with any clips that hit the highlight reel.

Update:  Well that was a surprise.  Mandate upheld, tossing aside both sides' argument that it's not a tax, thus avoiding the Commerce Clause logical pretzel that requires lack of participation in commerce to be deemed participation in commerce.

We'll have a lot to talk about at 12:30.  In the meantime, here's a chart of today's equity market reaction.  Note the frenzy just after 10 am when the decision came down.  Broadly, stocks downgraded from a moderate selloff into a full-fledged rout (not surprising, since the ACA will now continue to present significant uncertainty as to future costs for businesses of all stripes).  Among the healthcare subsectors, providers are riding high (more people on the insurance rolls means more business, even if that business is subject to more bureaucratic oversight and control), healthcare device manufacturers are swooning (the ACA imposes an excise tax on their products), and insurers are somewhere in between, unable to make heads or tails of what it all means.  They'll still have to conform to the mandatory gold-plating of all insurance products, but they'll presumably have their ranks swelled by the mandate (the original quid pro quo that ostensibly made it worth their while).  That said, an hour after the decision, they'd given up the entirety of the 2% pop they initially saw, perhaps the result of uncertainty creeping back in over whether being ever more under the warm thumb of federal government is really such a net positive.

(Green = providers; Red = devices; Purple = insurers)

Update: Here's a clip:

 

 

SCOTUS Pick'em

No guarantee today will be the day, but just in case, I didn't want to risk depriving posterity of my official predictions on the Obamacare rulings.

Does the Anti-Injuction Act prevent the court from ruling now?

• No, 8-1.

Is the mandate unconsitutional?

• Yes, 6-3.

Does the whole law go down as a result?

• Yes, 5-4.

Update:  Nope, we wait until Thursday.  And it certainly sounds like it's being struck down:

SCOTUSBlog writes: “From the opinion authorship, health care is almost certainly being written by CJ Roberts, perhaps in part with Justice Kennedy.”  That sounds like a big loss for the White House.

Jobless Thursday

Ah, one-way revisions, you've spun your magic once again.

Thanks to the 66th upward revision in 67 weeks, last week's estimate of weekly jobless claims (at 386,000, already a jump of 6,000, 11,000 worse than consensus estimates) was less-than-shockingly goosed to 389,000.  The good news?  That enables the Labor Department to report today's 387,000 as a decline of 2,000 from last week, rather than an increase of 1,000 (at least until it gets adjusted to 390,000 or worse next week, but by then we'll be onto the next round of misleading unrevised-vs-revised comparisons).

In the week ending June 16, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 387,000, a decrease of 2,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 389,000.

It's harder to massage the 4-week average though, as only 25% of its component data points are knowingly underestimated.

The 4-week moving average was 386,250, an increase of 3,500 from the previous week's revised average of 382,750.

This is a noisy bit of weekly data, but the trend is getting harder to ignore.  The downtrend people had hoped would take us into the 350,000 range not only sputtered, but reversed, leaving us squarely back in the 375-400k range.  If you visually back out the warm winter borrowing some hiring from spring, this chart might show us leveling off around 380,000 at the end of 2011 and not moving much in the size months since.

(For illustrative purposes, I've gone ahead and applied next week's inevitable upward revision to the most recent reading.)

Update:  Two additional bummers in the data:

That jump in the 4-week average puts it at a year-to-date high.

Worse, anyone expecting a turnaround in the swiftly deteriorating monthly jobs report is probably in for a disappointment.

The claims data covered the survey week for June's nonfarm payrolls and the report pointed to little or no improvement on the paltry 69,000 jobs added in May. Claims rose 15,000 between the May and June survey periods.

Let's Twist Again?

Stocks have climbed more than 5% since early June, with the major indices back within a few percent of their 2012 highs.  The reasons cited typically include growing consensus that a) a socialist victory in Greece would spark coordinated international central bank action, and b) the continually crummy economic news would force the Fed to either continue Operation Twist or even to announce a new round of quantitative easing.

Setting aside the bad-news-is-good-news logic that relies on the precarious premises that whatever ammo the Fed retains will have a meaningful economic impact and that coordinated monetary action would've spared the euro crackup, two problems remain: 1) the anti-bailout crowd did not prevail in the Greek election and 2) it's still not a given that the Fed will announce any further accommodation this afternoon.  Nonetheless, stocks have continued to push higher (though they're down fractionally this morning), which seems to suggest we could be in for a rude awakening if Bernanke doesn't promise to move heaven and earth by day's end.  Yes, the jobs data does continue to look uglier and uglier, perhaps just ugly enough to convince a few more Fed governors to pull some kind of trigger.  But pinning hopes of maintaining the recent run-up on ever worsening economic news serving as the catalyst for one of the few remaining gestures the central bank can make, when the efficacy of such gestures is in genuine doubt and when any potency they do have is perhaps better saved for looming rainy days in the Eurozone, seems fairly self-deluding.

If the Fed tweaks nothing but language in their statement, I'd brace for a cratering.  Even if they announce just an extension of Twist, that too would seem insufficient to sate the markets' inflated expectations.  Ironically, perhaps the least responsible course of action - announcing a new round of quantitative easing - may be the only way to fuel another leg up.  With the quiver then virtually empty, a likely muted-at-best true economic impact, and no change to approaching Eurogeddon, any pop off of an especially accommodative Fed statement might be a fine time to cash out and/or get short.

FoxNews.com Live 9-10

Likely for the last time until the conventions later this summer, I'll be on FoxNews.com Live this morning from 9-10, discussing immigration and the national security leak probe.  If you miss it live, you can catch a replay at the link until Tuesdaymorning (dial the wheel back to 9:00:00).

I'll update with any clips that hit the highlight reel.

FoxNews.com Live 9-10

I'll be on FoxNews.com Live this morning from 9-10.  If you miss it live, you can catch a replay at the link until Wednesday morning (dial the wheel back to 9:00:00).

I'll update with any clips that hit the highlight reel.

Update:  Here's a clip.

Vous le Faites Mal

France cuts retirement age.

I Can't Remember If I Cried When I Read About Democracy's Widowed Bride

But something touched this guy deep inside.

FoxNews.com Live - Walker Recall, Presidential Race

I was on FoxNews.com Live this morning from 9 - 9:30, discussing tomorrow's recall election in Wisconsin and the Presidential race.  If you missed it live, you can catch a replay at the link until Tuesday morning (dial the wheel back to 9:00:00).

A clip is below.