The person I recall having the most of that was Elizabeth Warren in her Two Income Trap book, and from reading it (and watching her talks via the internet), I believe she had the help of some researchers and fairly unfettered access to various government data. I'm not sure how much of it is available online, how much she had to request, etc.
If you have not read her book, you should though. She goes through exactly what you describe here, although at this point her numbers are now a few years out of date. Still an extremely worthwhile read.
this report is kind of bland actually, I kind of put what I could determine from it....that consumption, i.e. the plastic laden consumer isn't coming back and the reason savings went down is people are having to pay higher gas, energy bill...
what bothers me is I cannot find some really good raw data from our lovely gov. to show the breakdown and loss of wealth, retirement, income, for the middle class.
If someone knows where those details are hiding, i.e. overall income is $40k retirement savings now equals 0%, income = $500k, wealth = $1.2M, income for $28k, debt=$40k and so on. We know it's there!
the limitations are much less than what you think. The convergence criteria have a lot more bark than bite.
As far as debt, there's the same sort of reluctance to lend right now with the banks. The Cajas, basically large credit unions, don't have the same problem. Also, the government has just put together a direct lending program in which small business will be able to get credit from state. That should be effective in allowing expansion in the small shop manufacturing that supplies the renewable energy and other important sectors.
This is an example of how EU control over policy is less than you might think.
and I think, outside of big time pre-existing conditions, for someone to take COBRA is either lazy or dumb.
Why can't we have an unemployment health benefit. It would have a time value and allow people to make decisions. I doubt if it would hurt to have the person pay a stipend for the insurance. Once the insurance ran out, the person would use the certificate of credible coverage certificate and buy guaranteed private insurance.
are happy. They can report that the unemployment rate has gone. Yep happy days are here again, I hear the admin now, "Please break out your credit card and start spending."
The bankrupting of the American middle class continues.
The argument being made is that if Spain had control of a currency of its own it could devalue it to make their products more competitive. This of course assumes that the problem is that the crisis is in Spain's manufacturing sector, which means that the heart of that in the north (Navarra, Basque Country, etc) should be the areas where unemployment is peaking. In which case the cause of the crisis is that wages have become overinflated.
The problem is that the jobs crisis isn't occurring there, it's happening in the south where the housing boom occurred. So basically, the argument that slashing wages will bring back jobs doesn't play out. The problem was that the employment generated by the housing bubble (every bit as bad, if not worse than our own)wasn't sustainable.
The problem isn't the euro itself, it's that there was an asset bubble that burst. The truth of the matter is that the manufacturing the parts of the country that have developed industrial policies at the regional level have faired better than where the economy depended on building vacation homes.
There is quite a number of policies, same as the U.S. that could be done immediately to improve the trade deficit without wage arbitrage. That's the problem here, the focus is always on wages and it's not wages that are the cure and even further, represses wages are a cause...
So, instead of looking at making it a requirement no offshore outsourcing of government contracts, as one example, to domestic sourcing, another example, to confrontation of currency manipulation, another example, to stop importing foreign guest workers, yet another example..
all of these would have an immediate impact on not only trade deficit, but actually raise wages as well...
So, the answer isn't to do a subtle sigh and say, oh well, need to sacrifice the middle classes.
His post isn't that bad, but all over the place, esp. in Greece, just like you saw UAW workers being attacked....
(come on $14/hr you cannot even pay rent on that!) it's actually a very small part of overall costs, esp. when you get into capital intensive sectors like manufacturing...
they won't look at global free flows of capital or say absurd interest payments on some funky currency swap or derivatives loan-lease deal that should simply be a hair cut or canceled...
I mean Spain is screwed, a host of nations are screwed, we're screwed too, but the #1 sector doing the screwing, yet isn't addressed, is the financial sector and esp. on these derivatives....
UK still can issue debt in its own currency & it has sterling where as Spain doesn't have that flexibility. A weaker sterling may not be such a bad thing for UK exports.
But because Spain as part of the EU cannot run a huge deficit & private sector already running a huge deficit - ie a ton of debt. The writer is saying what Spain's options are since gov't fiscal policy is NOT available:
1) Private sector has spend more & take on more debt; OR
2) Trade balance will have to improve tremendously BUT the only way to do that since demand for tradable goods is very weak is to for wages in tradable goods sector fall and productivity increases.
What Parenteau is showing is the horrible position Spain is in because it gave up its sovereign control over fiscal policy when it joined EU - his conclusion is that workers are basically screwed.
Calculated Risk cranked out a correlation graph to the ISM employment index, vs. the BLS manufacturing employment and thus predicts a 22k jobs increase in manufacturing.
What is most interesting about this graph is to see the differences before bad trade deals and after bad trade deals. Shame the year break points are not on them specifically and also because we do have some technological advances in manufacturing that will account for less hires, that's also in there...so you cannot extrapolate out more than what CR has done....what's the manufacturing jobs gain estimate for this month....
But, still look at the noise in this thing yet you can see a decline in correlation rates from the two decades (although doing a line fitting curve is in order, this puppy is seriously noisy).
Anywho this is most interesting to see the two decades compared when correlating to the Manufacturing ISM emp. survey data.
but the thing is always the dollar, right o, as if our debt to GDP ratio is so fantastic...
There is a post on Naked Capitalism, with the usual claim that "wages must be reduced dramatically, social safety nets cut and productivity must soar" in order to meet their "debt crisis".
Now on this meme, I'm getting pretty friggin' disgusted, esp. on the economics/financial blogs...
How about it's time to cut financial sector taxpayer welfare, it's critical that we shrink this sector globally and how about regulating derivatives and stop these "hide the debt" to sink a nation games by the banksters?
We never see the obvious call out on this, it's always "labor must be sent to serfdom" claims.
This continual claim one must wipe out 1st world nation's middle classes, seriously, con graphorama, w/ statomatic, be called out and put to shame.
(Bloomberg) -- While the eyes of the world focus on Greece’s debt crisis, investors in Edinburgh are busy preparing for the U.K. to be next.
Turcan Connell, which caters to rich families, expects the pound to lose between 20 percent and 30 percent against the dollar once investors turn their sights on Britain as the government sells a record amount of debt. Sterling slid to a 10- month low versus the U.S. currency today.
“Alarm bells were ringing in Greece for a long time and when it happened, it happened very quickly,” Haig Bathgate, head of strategy at Turcan Connell, said at the company’s offices in the Scottish capital. “The U.K. is in a similar predicament. It could be hit very hard.”
Bruce Stout, whose Murray International Trust Plc in Edinburgh has doubled over the past five years, said the chance of a plummeting pound are “better than even” and his biggest holdings are in Asia and Latin America. He called sterling a “very vulnerable currency.”
That should blow your stack. We cannot even get corporate lobbyist written health care reform passed, never mind one that is non-profit....how the heck can we get a direct jobs program? Seriously the AAM study is just the cats meow in terms of efficient, investment, to help long term U.S. economic growth, plus a direct jobs right now....
so, where did that end up in D.C.? Trash? Snowmageddon in D.C. ain't the weather, it's all of the policies in white papers being thrown out in the trash.
Look, please do not promote that site on here. Not only did they do the most outrageous attempt to libel and slander our entire site, I believe they did that out of jealousy because we're pretty popular and they are not as much. (which is ridiculous because there are plenty of great economic blogs out here which are way more popular!) I have no idea what happened to NDD, but I do know there is a huge difference to say someone is incorrect on points A,B,C versus name calling them, insulting them and slandering them, libeling their entire name in a title... on the whole.
Also, once again we have incorrect analysis, there was no, is no "V", as I repeatedly show with the compound, logs, the absolutes and the slope actual value. Even with Industrial production, sure while it's looking really good, that's coming from a trough! It's not a "V" by a long shot, and if one goes past the start of the trough you can see a long overall downward slope growth rate. How the hell does one believe a sector which contributed > 15% to GDP is now 12%? It shrank in relation to the rest of the economy....
anywho, I just don't want to spend any time on this...I think for great graphs, I like EconomPic Data and then Calculated Risk is better than Bloomberg in terms of reporting releases, with graphs as soon as they are released (accurate as hell too!).
To me this is just another way of saying "Jobless Recovery". But we don't have to have one if we would just implement a direct jobs program. I don't believe the private sector will be able to deliver on jobs for quite some time.
And in 1973 came the oil embargo and resultant recession, which masked all this quite nicely.
The person I recall having the most of that was Elizabeth Warren in her Two Income Trap book, and from reading it (and watching her talks via the internet), I believe she had the help of some researchers and fairly unfettered access to various government data. I'm not sure how much of it is available online, how much she had to request, etc.
If you have not read her book, you should though. She goes through exactly what you describe here, although at this point her numbers are now a few years out of date. Still an extremely worthwhile read.
this report is kind of bland actually, I kind of put what I could determine from it....that consumption, i.e. the plastic laden consumer isn't coming back and the reason savings went down is people are having to pay higher gas, energy bill...
what bothers me is I cannot find some really good raw data from our lovely gov. to show the breakdown and loss of wealth, retirement, income, for the middle class.
If someone knows where those details are hiding, i.e. overall income is $40k retirement savings now equals 0%, income = $500k, wealth = $1.2M, income for $28k, debt=$40k and so on. We know it's there!
it was those damn commie policies of FDR and New Deal that saved from having NO income growth.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Imagine if we didn't have the meager social safety net we have now.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
I would not want to be in position of Spain, Greece, Italy, Ireland or Portugal.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
the limitations are much less than what you think. The convergence criteria have a lot more bark than bite.
As far as debt, there's the same sort of reluctance to lend right now with the banks. The Cajas, basically large credit unions, don't have the same problem. Also, the government has just put together a direct lending program in which small business will be able to get credit from state. That should be effective in allowing expansion in the small shop manufacturing that supplies the renewable energy and other important sectors.
This is an example of how EU control over policy is less than you might think.
and I think, outside of big time pre-existing conditions, for someone to take COBRA is either lazy or dumb.
Why can't we have an unemployment health benefit. It would have a time value and allow people to make decisions. I doubt if it would hurt to have the person pay a stipend for the insurance. Once the insurance ran out, the person would use the certificate of credible coverage certificate and buy guaranteed private insurance.
are happy. They can report that the unemployment rate has gone. Yep happy days are here again, I hear the admin now, "Please break out your credit card and start spending."
The bankrupting of the American middle class continues.
It goes to fiscal policy. Spain is very limited in doing anything with fiscal policy because of EU treaty.
The problem for Spain is that private sector is loaded with debt and government sector is limited because of EU treaty obligations.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
The argument being made is that if Spain had control of a currency of its own it could devalue it to make their products more competitive. This of course assumes that the problem is that the crisis is in Spain's manufacturing sector, which means that the heart of that in the north (Navarra, Basque Country, etc) should be the areas where unemployment is peaking. In which case the cause of the crisis is that wages have become overinflated.
The problem is that the jobs crisis isn't occurring there, it's happening in the south where the housing boom occurred. So basically, the argument that slashing wages will bring back jobs doesn't play out. The problem was that the employment generated by the housing bubble (every bit as bad, if not worse than our own)wasn't sustainable.
The problem isn't the euro itself, it's that there was an asset bubble that burst. The truth of the matter is that the manufacturing the parts of the country that have developed industrial policies at the regional level have faired better than where the economy depended on building vacation homes.
There is quite a number of policies, same as the U.S. that could be done immediately to improve the trade deficit without wage arbitrage. That's the problem here, the focus is always on wages and it's not wages that are the cure and even further, represses wages are a cause...
So, instead of looking at making it a requirement no offshore outsourcing of government contracts, as one example, to domestic sourcing, another example, to confrontation of currency manipulation, another example, to stop importing foreign guest workers, yet another example..
all of these would have an immediate impact on not only trade deficit, but actually raise wages as well...
So, the answer isn't to do a subtle sigh and say, oh well, need to sacrifice the middle classes.
His post isn't that bad, but all over the place, esp. in Greece, just like you saw UAW workers being attacked....
(come on $14/hr you cannot even pay rent on that!) it's actually a very small part of overall costs, esp. when you get into capital intensive sectors like manufacturing...
they won't look at global free flows of capital or say absurd interest payments on some funky currency swap or derivatives loan-lease deal that should simply be a hair cut or canceled...
I mean Spain is screwed, a host of nations are screwed, we're screwed too, but the #1 sector doing the screwing, yet isn't addressed, is the financial sector and esp. on these derivatives....
UK still can issue debt in its own currency & it has sterling where as Spain doesn't have that flexibility. A weaker sterling may not be such a bad thing for UK exports.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Government deficits = Private sector savings.
But because Spain as part of the EU cannot run a huge deficit & private sector already running a huge deficit - ie a ton of debt. The writer is saying what Spain's options are since gov't fiscal policy is NOT available:
1) Private sector has spend more & take on more debt; OR
2) Trade balance will have to improve tremendously BUT the only way to do that since demand for tradable goods is very weak is to for wages in tradable goods sector fall and productivity increases.
What Parenteau is showing is the horrible position Spain is in because it gave up its sovereign control over fiscal policy when it joined EU - his conclusion is that workers are basically screwed.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Calculated Risk cranked out a correlation graph to the ISM employment index, vs. the BLS manufacturing employment and thus predicts a 22k jobs increase in manufacturing.
What is most interesting about this graph is to see the differences before bad trade deals and after bad trade deals. Shame the year break points are not on them specifically and also because we do have some technological advances in manufacturing that will account for less hires, that's also in there...so you cannot extrapolate out more than what CR has done....what's the manufacturing jobs gain estimate for this month....
But, still look at the noise in this thing yet you can see a decline in correlation rates from the two decades (although doing a line fitting curve is in order, this puppy is seriously noisy).
Anywho this is most interesting to see the two decades compared when correlating to the Manufacturing ISM emp. survey data.
but the thing is always the dollar, right o, as if our debt to GDP ratio is so fantastic...
There is a post on Naked Capitalism, with the usual claim that "wages must be reduced dramatically, social safety nets cut and productivity must soar" in order to meet their "debt crisis".
Now on this meme, I'm getting pretty friggin' disgusted, esp. on the economics/financial blogs...
How about it's time to cut financial sector taxpayer welfare, it's critical that we shrink this sector globally and how about regulating derivatives and stop these "hide the debt" to sink a nation games by the banksters?
We never see the obvious call out on this, it's always "labor must be sent to serfdom" claims.
This continual claim one must wipe out 1st world nation's middle classes, seriously, con graphorama, w/ statomatic, be called out and put to shame.
Major investors see a decline in the Pound as inevitable.
That should blow your stack. We cannot even get corporate lobbyist written health care reform passed, never mind one that is non-profit....how the heck can we get a direct jobs program? Seriously the AAM study is just the cats meow in terms of efficient, investment, to help long term U.S. economic growth, plus a direct jobs right now....
so, where did that end up in D.C.? Trash? Snowmageddon in D.C. ain't the weather, it's all of the policies in white papers being thrown out in the trash.
Look, please do not promote that site on here. Not only did they do the most outrageous attempt to libel and slander our entire site, I believe they did that out of jealousy because we're pretty popular and they are not as much. (which is ridiculous because there are plenty of great economic blogs out here which are way more popular!) I have no idea what happened to NDD, but I do know there is a huge difference to say someone is incorrect on points A,B,C versus name calling them, insulting them and slandering them, libeling their entire name in a title... on the whole.
Also, once again we have incorrect analysis, there was no, is no "V", as I repeatedly show with the compound, logs, the absolutes and the slope actual value. Even with Industrial production, sure while it's looking really good, that's coming from a trough! It's not a "V" by a long shot, and if one goes past the start of the trough you can see a long overall downward slope growth rate. How the hell does one believe a sector which contributed > 15% to GDP is now 12%? It shrank in relation to the rest of the economy....
anywho, I just don't want to spend any time on this...I think for great graphs, I like EconomPic Data and then Calculated Risk is better than Bloomberg in terms of reporting releases, with graphs as soon as they are released (accurate as hell too!).
To me this is just another way of saying "Jobless Recovery". But we don't have to have one if we would just implement a direct jobs program. I don't believe the private sector will be able to deliver on jobs for quite some time.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
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