We got some moderately good news on the jobs front.
For the week ending October 29, unemployment claims dropped to a seasonally adjusted 397,000, the lowest in more than a month. It’s a modest improvement of 9,000 from the week prior and still alarmingly high, but psychologically, coming in under that 400,000 level is good for confidence.
The stock markets have responded in kind—all the major indices are up slightly on the news.
How disappointing is it when having fewer than 400,000 new jobless claims is good for confidence? In a word, very.
But folks, I’ve said it time and time again: this is the reality under the “leadership” of my fellow Chicagoan, and until the American voters express their discontent on the 2012 presidential ballot, this is what we are going to have to live with.
--
Yesterday on The Jack B. Show, I mentioned how, in hindsight, we could look back at this period of the tech revolution and realize that it makes the Industrial Revolution look like a tiny speck of dust. Last year alone, IT spending around the world totaled $2.7 trillion, and it’s expected to double in the next five years. Of the companies that comprise the Fortune 500, 350 of them spend over $1 billion annually on IT. Of that $2.7 trillion, 3% is currently spent on cloud computing services. But that percentage is expected to go up to about 30% in the next five years. I don’t know about you, but as I see it, 30% of more than $5 trillion is a lot of money.
These figures are from Gartner Research, folks, and when I saw them I was floored. It immediately reminded me of a famous quote by The Great One, Wayne Gretsky: “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”