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Ignoring the Big Picture/Disturbing Trend in Graphs
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The war on the middle class
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Ignoring the Big Picture/Disturbing Trend in Graphs
- 30575 reads
BREAKING: Wall Street Mega-Merger!!!
- 23050 reads
A Brief History of Securitization
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At least I think it is; we'll see if this publishes. I only mentioned it to let you know why I wasn't using my Logon and had to bother you to approve the comment. I hope you don't run to the Library for me.
Let's hope Thornton's article helps a lot of people understand the unemployment problem better -- and that some of his readers make their way over here. He used to have something over at Huffington Post occasionally too. He was great about sticking up for the 99ers there and even more so at examiner.com. I am glad to see him back in print talking about unemployment.
The number of people writing about 99ers has dwindled drastically since 2010. I think they just got worn out and discouraged. Look up "99ers unemployment" at Google News and usually now there's almost nothing.
I really appreciate the work you do with unemployment here.
It's great he's reading EP and giving us a call out for sifting through the data to find the missing unemployed. The August JOLTS should have the real "big fat zero" payroll data matching from the unemployment report, so I'll try to run through some methods to extract out those part-time jobs and point out the assumptions, potential flaws at that time. I'll probably have to run at least a regression analysis, for I'll be having to take ratios and apply that to JOLTS. He's right, there is no raw data on those jobs, by aggregate or occupation, which show they are part-time or full-time and it's businesses reporting, it's a survey.
BTW: I always go through the birth-death model and it's understandable why it's controversial. I believe the model is based on past predictors. First, one cannot add/subtract it from seasonally adjusted numbers, which I point out every time. But this has given me an idea for an article, to go through the bowels of the algorithm.
Thanks for letting me know, I certainly agree with him on the press, generally. But that's a huge motivator for this site, we have so much not based on the statistics as "news". That's always why I don't make it to that "breaking news" window. I'm sitting around with spreadsheets, calculators and graphs to make sure my numbers are straight before writing up any overviews. ;)
I personally try to focus on data that isn't mentioned often by the MSM or even CR.
I don't know what's happening with your password at the library, unless the library is blocking a domain specific cookie. I'll run down to my library and see if there is a problem. I have an idea of where it would be coming from if it is, but just let me know you can get on at home, so things are technically ok on the account end.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/152401/11_reasons_why_the_unemployment_c...
Michael Thornton is a familiar name to me. He used to write frequently at examiner.com about the 99ers and unemployment. Like others there who cover unemployment, he doesn't do nearly as many posts as he used to.
In any case, what he has up at Alternet is a lengthy article that touches on quite a few of the points you've made about unemployment statistics recently. At first I thought you'd be excited to be cited, but after I read it, I wasn't so sure if "excited" was the right word. He does mention other sources for things you've also said here.
P.S. I'm at the Library and have tried repeatedly to log on with my user name but was unsuccessful.
2old4okeydoke quoted,
"When a majority of the Congress find that they can vote money to increase concentration of capital in the hands of themselves and their supporters, including foreign interests among those supporters, that will herald the end of the Republic." -- Benjamin Franklin
Could anyone argue that time has NOT arrived.
An ominous bit of fiction, Jack London's "The Iron Heel" would seem to be the road map the U.S. is using for domestic policy and trade policy. Read it again or for the first time if you haven't, it's a good read and prophetic.
At the bottom is the current "push it off to consumers implications", PPI definately foreshadows CPI, or what the inflation is to consumers, although you're right, retail can eat the increases costs and reduce their profit margins, which of course implies more firings. Seems labor is always the first squeeze.
On some of these monthlies, one time events can affect prices although with eggs, I don't get it, they bob up and down with dramatic price increases and this really does affect a lot of baked goods, products. I mean do chickens have cycles? I have no idea except there are plenty of seriously abused chickens at factory farms, (although with pigs, cows, cattle).
I try to give just autos and vehicle dealer sales which also was -0.3% so I think it's reasonable to say auto parts is a small percentage of that number. I believe this is both new and used vehicles, as sold by retail car dealerships. So those scum on craigslist as well as individuals aren't in these figures.
CPI gives used auto price increases as I recall.
Yeah, during 2008, used autos dropped like an absolute stone in price. I personally picked up a "all bells and whistles" older SUV for $4k, 89k mi., because it was a triple whammy, people simply could not get a loan, the credit score requirements were through the roof and many banks just flat out stopped loaning, gas prices were at record highs and everyone believed U.S. autos were about to go bankrupt, i.e. Chrysler and GM.
I think at that time you could also pick up a Jeep for peanuts. My fav was the hyped out Range Rover, used to cost ??? $50k or ?? ...anyway it was going for < $5k all over the place because it was cancelled.
Anyway, that's what I did personally, jumped on a true 4WD over it. ;) (yes I'm sorry all of you environmentalists!)
But now I think used have gone up because it's just insane for the typical salary to take on a $400/mon car payment, up to $700, so of course used becomes more in demand as do leases.
The infamous home price situation is ridiculous. They won't let people stay in their homes, take a hair cut so now a new wave of foreclosures is going on that will further repress prices.
I think prices plain need to come down but there is a huge problem with underwater mortgages and home values for those who are already paid up. These are huge losses to Americans, #1 pocket book killer.
People don't much notice marginal wholesale price increases from month to month. Marginal increases maybe don't even occur month to month at the retail level. I remember the first time that I bought a loaf of bread for more than a dollar and pretty soon almost all the bread was more than a dollar. (Of course, there's bread and then there's bread, and it's been a while since the choice was between vanilla and chocolate.) My friend who ran a grocery explained that there had been resistance to the dollar cap for quite a while, but then it went. It would be like now, there's resistance (I hope) at the $10/loaf level.
I think what people are really noticing is tires and insurance. Especially tires. You can go a long time between purchasing a set of tires. Similarly, insurance, because of annual premiums. Another of these non-distributed-over-time things is propane. Propane vs. wood pellets vs. heating fuel vs. your local wood cutter. Summer break.
With tires, it's delayed or accumulated increases in crude oil. It's unclear why the drop in thermoplastics as tires continue up. Maybe that's a technical chemical process thing, replacing costlier materials with less expensive. Maybe that's to do with recycling. Maybe it's a fluke having to do with inventories.
With insurance including life annuities, it's much more complicated. It has to do with the global re-insurance game, I suspect. Which has a lot to do with currency exchange, liquidity crisis, equity values and everything, really. Pooling of risk ultimately reduces to pooling of the costs of recouping from disasters, such as the nuclear thing in Japan. That has to affect, for example, expected mortality rates in Japan (and elsewhere). One way or another, the big re-insurers are not going to go broke. Greece will go bankrupt first.
Of course, there may be exclusions for natural disasters, as there are for wars and insurrections, but that may reemerge in other forms of insurance. Deep pockets must be replenished. "Law of averages" rules.
30,000 of you morons are being laid off so that BOA can get rid of the "evidence"--the thousands of scripted workers who LIED to the American Homeowners. As to your insults to minorities-It only shows that BOA never paid you ENOUGH TO TRAVEL!!
Originally brilliant work. Thanks a bunch !
Yah, I guess that BOA must have been a step-up from Mickey D's for you!!. And Your putting down minorities tells me you must be some confederate flag lover yahoo!
It's confusing to me to lump auto parts with autos. The category of "auto and home supply stores" shows how different "autos" are from "auto parts." The great thing about the "auto" or "vehicle" categories is that they are well-defined by law and regulation, so can be tracked fairly accurately ... and separately from "parts" or "supplies." Of course, to some extent parts sales compete with auto or appliance sales, so there are interrelations.
Ratios of used to new autos -- or other durable goods -- are also interesting. It's puzzling to me (an impression that I have) that prices of used autos have not dropped as much as prices of existing homes during the current recession. I think it has something to do with the thing that Rep. Dennis Kucinich recounts about his childhood, that sometimes his parents had no residence, so they lived in cars. I am pretty sure that many working people have a greater bottom-line need for a car than for (any other) residence. Of course, people also live in boats ... and, I guess, international arms dealers live in airplanes (personal jumbo jets).
Without at least a national goal of full employment, supported by consensus of the people and of our elected representatives, "equal opportunity" is a farce, a contradiction in terms.
See, Full employment: Don't give it up without a fight by Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein (2002, Economic Policy Institute)
http://www.epi.org/publication/workingpapers_full-employment/
"Eleftheria i thanatos"
The national motto of Greece, meaning "Freedom or death," hails back to the 1820s and the Greek War of Independence (from Ottoman tyranny). "The motto symbolized and still symbolizes the resolve of the people of Greece against tyranny and oppression." The motto was well known in Revolutionary times and often accredited to Patrick Henry's famous "Give me liberty or give me death!"
Wiki link
Also see, wiki link --
Disclosure: Please do not interpret anything in this comment as endorsing or opposing any candidate(s) for political office. Especially, please do not interpret anything herein as endorsing or opposing any candidate for the presidency. See e.g., Fletcher on Romney on trade
Commenting on Jersey's writing about what "we" can or could do, Odin says:
Benjamin Franklin, a grand experimenter, is well known for bequeathing us a legacy of great quotes.
As the signers walked out of Constitution Hall, a woman (who has remained anonymous to this day) asked what type of government the American people were going to have. Franlkin famously replied, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."
Here's another quote, in this case, a quote often incorrectly attributed to Franklin:
"When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic."
I wish!
Wikiquote has had a standing challenge out, since 2007, to anyone to provide a source for this attribution to Franklin, but instead has determined only that the earliest attribution that can be found is dated 1988! (Hmmm ... the memory hole of corporate-media-cum-internet-GIGO not only can 'disappear' facts, it can regurgitate lies to take their place.)
This idea that democracy would be the death of the Republic has nothing to do with Benjamin Franklin, who decidedly was no monarchist, despite his popularity at the Court of Louis XVI of France! (Of course, in the last days of the ancien regime, we see that the creation of currency to benefit a politically favored few is hardly limited to democracies.)
In any event, where is the quote that really fits the occasion today?
We'll have to start it here, as a grand experiment ...
Quote and attribution are from an article by John Grover Roberts, Jr., and Antonin Scalia (National Review, October 1787)
See seriously, Justice Stevens' Dissenting Opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
See also, blog by Rick Hasen, 23 January 2010, at ElectionLawBlog.org, "Chief Justice Roberts' Concurring Opinion in Citizens United: Two Mysteries" --
http://electionlawblog.org/archives/015118.html
I hate to be political here at EP, but to me transparency is a fundamental economic issue, and I do bear a grudge! Moreover, I cite factual data to prove it!
See, Uncomfortable truth
[Links checked and functional as of posting]
Blue helmets? What next, Panzers to take the Acropolis? (shades of Aticle V -- does Obama have to send in troops to protect the Greeks?) Yes, the drachma would be a hard swallow, but to have EU countries begin seizing assets by an act of war? How about the Corinth Canal? These are civil matters, debt is not a crime and last time I looked, Greece was a sovereign member of NATO. The Greeks should tell the Germans to stick it, and start making payments on those reparations. Impose a stiff tax on those German tourists who come to the Greek islands for their suntans.
It really makes the point come home about how many wrong roads we've taken. Your statement "Australian currency and basic national sovereignty and integrity are unquestioned" was like a punch in the gut because we've clearly ceded partial control of our sovereignty to Mexico. That's just an unarguable point.
I also agree with your suggested "cures": look around the world and imitate what others are doing that works (true healthcare reform that would take our costs down to Europe #1 candidate for that) and stop doing that same things that didn't work before.
I'm going to go over income but I want to do some additional calculations. Then, if you notice in the press, no one is really talking about those horrific statistics for women. So much for equality and equal opportunity eh?
aren't going to make up for that debt. As far as blue helmets go, we're grabbed raw video from various news sources. They all show massive protests, violence in Greece. I'm not there, but those videos are hard to make up.
I´m getting sick and tired of reading this on blog after blog.
After reading this the first time I actually went and read the interview.
A real sacrifice since I try to avoid the website of the tabloid "Bild". :)
(It´s somewhat comparable to "The Sun" in the UK if that helps.)
The source for the "blue helmets" is the British Daily Telegraph. A newspaper that sometimes isn´t that accurate when reporting about Germany, to say it politely.
If you want an older example:
http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp
In reality Oettinger simply said that obviously the Greek bureaucracy isn´t very effective in collecting outstanding taxes and selling state assets. So he proposed in that interview with the German tabloid “Bild” to send qualified public servants from other Eurozone countries to advise and assist in these tasks.
(And saying that in an interview with a tabloid doesn´t make it an official German proposal or "literally talking about seizing assets" by the way.)
According to newspaper articles (including Greek ones) the Greek state is owned Euro 41 billion in outstanding overdue taxes and fines right now. Other newspaper articles mention estimates of around Euro 20 billion taxes per year lost due to tax evasion. Collecting even half or a third of that would represent serious money, I´d say.
Now that proposal doesn´t seem very practicable to me (foreign language, different tax laws etc.). Oettinger isn´t considered the brightest bulb here in Germany after all. :)
But I understand the frustration.
Instead of announcing more and more austerity measures and higher taxes on the population (and blaming the Eurozone, especially Germany for it) the Greek government perhaps could start with actually enforcing the already existing Greek tax laws?
I have a funny feeling BoA won't take too kindly to an employee deciding to be their spokesperson on a public site. You'll see what kind of attitude they have then.
Lest we not forget the guy who blew his brains out in the BoA parking lot after being displaced by a H-1B and BoA offshore outsourced jobs in droves.
Oh yeah, they care about you. right o. They care about you about as much as they cared about home owners and mortgage holders.
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