I am far from defending the corrupt actions of those who run financial institutions. But trying to enforce a criminal charge against a corporation consisting of a complicated chain of commands is difficult. You cannot send the entire board of directors, the plant and the line manager, and any sub-contractors inadvertently responsible for safety violations, to prison for manslaughter through negligence. US prisons are already full to bursting - though admittedly some room could be made if you released those locked up for possessing small amounts of illegal substances.

As a legal entity, a company has to be treated differently from a single person - not in the sentence, but in the punishment enforced. But yes, more needs to be done to ensure that safety and preventive measures, against criminal malpractice, are properly enforced by regulators.

HSBC just reached a deal (or is about to). Will pay fine at $1 billion + for its business of money laundering. And the stock is up on the news. Again, how is aiding terrorism or drug trafficking by laundering criminal proceeds and then returning them to terrorists and drug traffickers not subject to federal conspiracy laws? How does that not make everyone involved a co-conspirator and accomplice to terrorist acts and drug trafficking along with subject to every other law the feds love (e.g., tax evasion, mail and wire fraud, lying to federal agents, using interstate communication devices to commit crimes, etc.)? How do people helping terrorists and drug traffickers not spend one day in jail or a year of probation or suffer job losses or any forfeiture acts or get bashed in the media? No need to answer. The speed with which these deals were wrapped up sure does establish justice is swift and easy for big banksters. There are people waiting for trials for a year on charges of one sale or one count of laundering money in amounts 1/10000 the amount these banks handled in state courts, so if you break the law and want sweet, easy justice, GO BIG and make sure you let your representatives and lobbying groups know what you're up to so they can help you out ASAP if needed. In fact, no need to expose yourself to public rage. Everything will be handled behind the scenes and your attorneys will appear in a public courtroom at the very end to admit something really vague so business can go on as usual. Seems only yesterday we had the S&L crisis, mortgage fraud, derivatives, FinCEN being set up solely to fight money laundering, gung-ho "follow the money" following 9/11 because the feds wanted to appear to care about terrorism financing. But every day it's shown who wields the power.

1.) When you separate industrial engineers from generic engineering, what's the result?

2.) Do finance and consulting count as math jobs?

3.) Any statistics on the relative strength of resumes of Americans vs. foreigners?

4.) The large percentages of STEM workers who don't go into a related field, is that by choice or forced by unemployment?

5.) Why should a company hire an American as opposed to a foreigner?

No fan of State AGs because most of them just as bad as fed "enforcement/regulation," but the NY AG and banking authorities back in the summer caused all the commotion when they finally couldn't sit idly by while Standard Chartered continued ignoring the rules and laws for almost a decade now regarding money laundering. Of course Wells Fargo and the other banks also love the money laundering - it's a money maker for all concerned. So what happened as this site and others showed this summer? Well, the Treasury, OFAC, FinCEN, DOJ, or whatever other useless agencies just couldn't have terrorism $ laundering banksters being treated like the citizens. Versailles protects its own, even if they are foreign nobility/banksters headquartered in the UK. So they squashed the NY authorities, got pissed at them (instead of banks aiding and abetting our enemies and compromising our security) and protected the banks with a sweetheart deal. Let me ask, if I can make tens of billions and only get fined millions, why shouldn't I break the law? Cost-benefit analysis says go ahead, break the law, make more money than following the law like suckers, and the feds will protect you. Especially when I can use the same money I just made from crime to help protect me - isn't that the very definition of corruption?

Notice how this story isn't covered on front pages anywhere. But CNN has stories on what it means to be "black" (WTF?) in America in 2012, gay marriages, the phone prank in UK/Australia, some football stories, etc. Now, our government and politicians helping business make $ and protecting them as they break laws and endanger us is important and shows how compromised we are by our "leaders" and govt., but you'd never know it by the stories they want us to care about. They have a ready stock of hundreds of stories that will fire up people because they have no real answers, play off emotions, divide people, and can be brought out in 1990 or 2000 or 2050, whenever they are needed to distract from the corporate criminals bankrolling them.

By the way, why do banks and other corporations even bother with the pretense of having compliance departments and general counsels? If you are honest and work there, you'd get fired. No one that cares will make it past computer screening in the first place. And the banks make money by purposely ignoring rules and regulations. So save the salaries, cut the entire compliance and legal staff, and have at it. In fact, get rid of the Treasury OFAC, FinCEN, DOJ (especially organized crime because if big banks aren't "organized crime," nothing is), and every other agency paying $50,000 - millions in the private sector. It's a waste, it's a joke, and we all know it.

"See something, say something" - the govt. doesn't care about anything except helping its corporate sponsors make more money for the people in the boardrooms at the expense of our financial and physical safety and welfare. Now act on that DHS. . .

Rules of the game - incorporate along with a few other people, conduct some legitimate business (although that doesn't have to generate profits, or even a majority of your business activities), break as many laws as you want, or to avoid any problems, write the laws yourself and have your paid-for-politicians adopt them directly, and reap those profits. If you don't generate profits, loot the company before you destroy it. You are a "job creator," after all, and that comes with privileges. Lobby and fund raise for international charities. In fact, name a charity after yourself or your corporation - no need to check your ego at the door, you are godlike, it's time to let everyone else know it. People with charities don't get in trouble with the law, how many CEOs and key donors are ever arrested or locked up in a real prison? If you get in trouble ever, despite lobbying Congress, your local, county, and state politicians, international groups such as the IMF, EU, World Bank, UN, etc., lobby the DOJ and your politicians harder.

Make sure your corporation's big law firm has a habit of hiring federal prosecutors and regulators and that federal prosecutors and regulators hire from those same law firms. Regular revolving door hiring policies ensure everyone gets along and no real enforcement, prosecution, or changes happen. Troublemakers aren't hired by the feds, and people that ask questions are exactly that. Adversarial justice and litigation is for the 99%, not the plutocratic big dogs in the boardrooms. Hire one or two feds on your staff directly and the illusion is even better. If they dare make waves (and who would if they want that big paycheck), show them the door. Opensecrets shows the lobbying that our govt. accepts. Who knew law enforcement agencies like the DOJ could actually be lobbied? Funny, everyday citizens surely aren't gaining access to the AG's office and meetings rooms. The DOJ and others will step in and claim federal preemption and supremacy over other agencies even though that's incorrect and states can prosecute criminal matters even when the Feds choose to or not to (still waiting for the NY AG to prosecute Corzine or anyone that had a victim he stole from live in their county or state - guess we'll keep waiting).

If you get called in for a hearing, make sure your PR and lobbying team has hundreds of secret meetings before you ever step into a chamber. Donate to their friends and families and give them sweet jobs in your corporation or in a friend's corporation. And when you appear, blame everything on underlings and claim "you forgot" and "mistakes were made by other people, changes will be made, but it's not the fault of the company or top people." Make sure you appear repeatedly on TV and radio to plead your case to people on your payroll. Repeat "job creator" and "uncertainty" 100+ times per media appearance and how the threat of facing law enforcement or regulatory enforcement might prevent you from building a new vacation home, and that might not create 100 here or in Tahiti. Wear your flag lapel pins at all times. After all, how can a bank CEO raise money for Iran or drug cartels or make $40 million + for doing exactly that if he's wearing a flag lapel pin and his interviewer is also wearing a flag lapel pin? People that wear flag lapel pins would never launder money for people that build IEDs or blow up buildings or cars or launch missiles against allies or run an entire country based on meth production, right? If they ask tough questions (i.e., questions off script), fire them and their producers for hiring people with a modicum of integrity. Continue collecting massive loot while paying fines less than 1% of the ill-gotten wealth. Never fear incarceration or forfeiture or a raised voice. Rinse and repeat.

**This is good for all crimes involving large corporations (in funds, not necessarily in number of legitimate business activities or number of employees). If you are a small Mom-and-Pop corporation incorporated solely to conduct legitimate business and avoid personal liability, forget this advice, you're screwed. Individuals, break the law, you're screwed. However, big enough and corrupt enough (sorry, "lobby" enough) the world is your oyster. Commit fraud on a massive scale in securities, banking, housing, or any other sector your heart desires across towns, counties, states, and nations, forge documents and bribe or intimidate witnesses, help arm criminals and rogue nations and launder their money, bribe here and overseas, destroy environments, break wage and labor laws, directly endanger the lives of those you employ (or your subcontractors' subs employ), skimp on safety, loot corporate $ at the expense of shareholders, eavesdrop on people to make more loot, hinder investigations, etc. You get the message. Now go rape and pillage big kleptocrats, we paid for it and pay for it every day the rule of law is shown for the farce it is.

We now have an official history of the $1 trillion coin idea and where it came from. This is assuredly true for we know many of our original posts magically appear elsewhere, the content, calculations uncredited.

Our apologizes for not getting it right on the coinage idea attribution.

If we add up, from table A. the unemployed by duration of time, we get -392,000. Yet also from table A, the unemployed only dropped -229,000. What happened?

The first thing to know is these are separate series. The total unemployed are aggregate figures from 4 separate series and then are seasonally adjusted after aggregation.

The unemployed by duration are separate survey questions and data series and they are also seasonally adjusted as their own separate survey responses.

So, they don't always add.

When one looks at duration it often will not add to the drop in those unemployed. The reason is some moved from different time periods, i.e. those unemployed less than 5 weeks moved to those unemployed 5-14 weeks. Then some did obtain jobs, but others dropped out of the labor force and are no longer counted as employed or unemployed. They may have worked a short temporary job in the reference week, hence moved from long term unemployed to < 5 weeks doing some very short temporary job.

If one notices the civilian labor force overall dropped by the total employed and unemployed., -350,000. Yet if one notices those "not in the labor force" increased by the same amount as the drop in employed, unemployed and the growth in the civilian noninstitutional population, or 542,000.

So, the survey askes 60,000 households each month and those figures are then extrapolated to apply to the total U.S. population. In the CPS, the total unemployment and unemployment series are aggregated by independently adjusted components.

Since you are referencing the tables, if you pull up the complete report, also linked here at the top of this article then go down to about page 10, after table A and B

you will see "technical note" and then look under Seasonal adjustment and that's why these figures do not add.

Additionally, there is a funky little fact. If you look at part-time in the tables, that doesn't add up to table A either and the reason is one is asking is your job part-time while the other is asking did you work part-time hours in the survey reference week.

Good eye! The BLS employment report as are many government statistics are little mini jigsaw puzzles, it can get tricky and at least you're reading their statistical release!

Mr.Crown's ideas are oblivously reasonable to stakeholders. Thank you stating them. While you seem to be discussing on a policy level, an application came to my mind: That is, a formerly proposed "accounting" mechanism of a point-of-origin recycling principle. For example, an corporation utilizing coal in its production process, would automatically include the costs of recycling, or, neutralizing the harmful by-products, of coal, such as dust, sulfulic acid in the air, ...

Indeed, this re-cycling mandate could be costed into the R&D. Such technological information is probably already available, if adapted. Besides the element of coal, other ingredients of produced products could be recycled from the point-of-origin by embedding during the prod. process neutralizing organisms, or mechanical processes, that when the intended use of the product is completed, would netralize the toxicity of the product. Just thinking.

This is an interesting story on how Microsoft eventually is going down.

More interesting there is a pattern. Corporations hire H-1Bs, labor arbitrage their engineers, churn them, fire them and replace them with younger, cheaper ones.

Anyone else notice that eventually they lose market share, stop being a leader? I can think of a host of companies that labor arbitraged their engineers and then this happened, HP being the largest example. Lucent, Motorola, the list goes on and on.