Recent comments

  • Ritholtz covered it, with graph.

    I know I wrote it up somewhere on EP too.

    BTW: you can do a site specific search with Google.

    That's on my "To Do" list to replace the EP search with a site specific Google one....

    we just have too much information at this point and indexing it needs major improvement.

    Reply to: Where are the Jobs? - BLS JOLTS August 2009 report   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • I didn't cover it in this post, but if you follow the links to the CBO budget deficit recent report, you will see individual and corporate tax revenues way down, adding to the deficit.

    Doing a detailed post on tax revenues, as well as lost revenues due to tax havens, manipulating nations as well as states on tax "incentives" (I wrote some on how IBM gets these yet never delivers on the deal on why they got state tax breaks, i.e. supposedly to create jobs).

    But yeah, once upon a time the government was pay for by taxes....

    Reply to: Where are the Jobs? - BLS JOLTS August 2009 report   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • the last ten years we had meager to now non-existent job growth.

    But we love our neo-liberal economic growth model and those tax cuts.

    RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

    Reply to: Where are the Jobs? - BLS JOLTS August 2009 report   15 years 3 weeks ago
  • To paraphrase that old political slogan: "What economy, stupid?" (Not directed to you, Mr. Oak, but to you know who.)

    With the "official" number of unemployed at 263,000 for last month, but with the household survey showing 738,000, and the numbers at the BLS site, when one includes those "seasonally-adjusted" numbers, even higher, it does well to compare the obvious.

    The tax base has been disassembled and destroyed over the past 30 years with the offshoring of jobs, since only 30% to 35% of corporations actually pay their fed taxes (thanks to profit laundering at all those offshore finance centers), and their fed tax revenues are down by 58% (so 42% of 30% is what they paid in fed taxes - and that's usually the lower end corporations; the ones either too honest, or too poor to get a tax attorny, or too ignorant of profit laundering procedures).

    And person fed revenues are logically down by 21% -- with all that unemployment.

    So what happened to the tax base? Pretty obvious to those of us paying attention.

    Reply to: Where are the Jobs? - BLS JOLTS August 2009 report   15 years 3 weeks ago
  • This gets better. EconomPic Data cranked the U6 unemployment numbers and came up with an even more damning graph and statistic. 10.9 people per job. (U6 is a broader unemployment measure and has the rate about 17% at the moment).

    check out the graph.

    Reply to: Where are the Jobs? - BLS JOLTS August 2009 report   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • Over on his economics website:

    U.S. unemployment rate, September, 2009: 9.8 %

    Monthly job creation needed to reduce U.S. unemployment to 5 percent within 5 years: 250,000

    Number of U.S. jobs lost, September, 2009: 263,000

    Number of ten-year periods in U.S. history when average monthly job creation totaled even 150,000: 1*

    *1991-2000 – the 1990s expansion

    That is some very cold, stark reality. 250k jobs per month to even get the unemployment rate to 5% in 5 years. Ain't gonna happen. Not without some major jobs, WPA style program or some major industry creation where U.S. citizens, U.S. workers are required and all of the production must be domestic.

    Reply to: Where are the Jobs? - BLS JOLTS August 2009 report   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • how interconnecting those firms were to Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. I also think you're missing the entire AIGFP unit.

    Also, no one is saying "just" reinstate Glass-Stegall and that solves all things. It's one of many regulatory changes, the biggest being on derivatives being regulated.

    Reply to: Loopholes Will Be A Problem for Derivatives Bill   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • It's amusing to see people calling for a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall as a solution to TBTF. It's as if they don't realize that Lehman was a pure investment bank. So was Bear Stearns. Glass-Steagall would've done absolutely nothing to prevent the risk-taking and eventual downfall of either Lehman or Bear.

    Try again.

    Reply to: Loopholes Will Be A Problem for Derivatives Bill   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • I agree, its time to break up the banks

    Reply to: Fed to Tighten Monetary Policy   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • What social purpose do banks serve now? They are not lending. Their existence, particularly the financial conglomerates are a huge social and economic liability that we just can't afford any more.

    BREAK THEM UP!

    RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

    Reply to: Fed to Tighten Monetary Policy   15 years 3 weeks ago
  • that's because for a very long time, we did not have bank seizures announce after 5pm on Friday!

    Astounding isn't it? Be assured Bank Failure Friday will be back, just this week, the country caught a break.

    Reply to: Fed to Tighten Monetary Policy   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • I image banks have to use all the FED and TARP money to back up all the losses their polices accrued.

    Reply to: Banks continue to cut lending   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • This is pretty cool because you can zero in on any county with just a mouse over.

    here.

    San Bernardino it's 12.91%.

    Reply to: Fed to Tighten Monetary Policy   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • We are well beyond a "moral hazard" problem re: borrowers. Eliminate the negative equity problem with system-wide debt forgiveness.

    Forget these weak-ass loan modification programs. They are not working because loan servicers don't want them to work. It's well past time to dole out some pain in the financial sector.

    RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

    Reply to: Banks continue to cut lending   15 years 3 weeks ago
  • We never resolved the root cause of the problem - toxic loans. Toxic stuff is still on the books. Unless, of course, PPIF purchases toxic stuff at a huge premium.

    RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

    Reply to: Banks continue to cut lending   15 years 3 weeks ago
  • in a host of other terminology, such as productivity (and listen to those idiots on cable TV claiming it's all just "technological advances...BS!".....now this "income elasticity". I need to study this some more in terms of what it's really saying but that's what I get out of it...

    Ya know, the entire U.S. economy is basically being transferred to China....the results are in and this ain't too good for America here.

    Myself, I am not so strong on tariffs and surprise, surprise, one tool to help level trade is a VAT and Pelosi just endorsed a VAT recently.

    Now anyone who endorses a VAT gets it from both ends...

    the left mistakes it as a regressive tax instead of an "at the border" adjustment tax and the right calls it a "tax" and then rails against people claiming they are "raising taxes" and how they should get rid of the "income tax" ...
    for a straight "flat tax" is not a VAT and would be absurdly regressive...

    so anyway, that was surprising because in the U.S. a VAT is just not understood as a trade tool...

    but there are a host of tools they could do without resorting to tariffs.

    Reply to: Loopholes Will Be A Problem for Derivatives Bill   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • a lie and a joke.

    Me, I'm just thrilled that I could tell Chase to stick it and finally got rid of everything I had with WaMu which was transferred to Chase. They took away of course the free FICO monitoring that came with WaMu credit card.

    I celebrated with a frugal pizza. I just "deleveraged" because I could but I feel very sorry for those who are stuck having to live off of loans and credit/debt because they are getting it from both ends right now.

    Reply to: Banks continue to cut lending   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • For the longest time I have ben stymied by the exports data and how it never appears to correlate to employment, either state-by-state or federally. One of those red herring arguments against tariffs has been the "necessity of exports" to the economy.

    Recently I learned how they have been running this scam (not unlike the "profit laundering" at offshore finance centers): they count every item shipped out of the country to their foreign factories as an "export" and list its price --- which is clearly fraudulent as they are not being paid for it (why does this seem so familiar????).

    So, take Boeing for instance: a goodly portion of their jets are built overseas, so if less than 50% of each jet is manufactured in the USA, then when they sell it they are falsely claiming full price as an export (thereby doubling the amount of exports at this point).

    BUT, they have counted any and all items shipped out to various offshore factories as exports (thereby quadrupling, or more, the number of falsely identified exports).

    This may not be EXACTLY how it works, but it is the gist of the reporting process, such that the number and value of exports never makes sense in light of constant and continuing unemployment in the USA (think back to that BLS study the NY Times reported on a few weeks ago, stating that effectively ZERO jobs had been created in the Private Sector during the period of July 1999 to July 2009 -- begins to make more sense now...).

    Multiply this by ALL those items shipped back and forth from US corporations to offshore factories and facilities and everything begins to fall in place.

    Reply to: Loopholes Will Be A Problem for Derivatives Bill   15 years 3 weeks ago
  • Peterson, who heads the Ag committee is clearly trying an end run on the House finance committee...

    which is what you have to do if one has a corrupt committee chair who will kill any meaningful reform in committee...

    The bill procedures in Congress are just ridiculous in that each committee, which gives just a few really a lot of control on what bills will even make it to the floor for a vote and that's how a lot of lobbyists get bills killed...in committee.

    To bring a bill to the floor to bypass committee requires an enormous among of cosponsors and even then, House leadership can kill a bill.

    Reply to: Loopholes Will Be A Problem for Derivatives Bill   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:
  • Derivatives, the shadow banking system only just almost caused (and did cause) a global financial collapse, yet these jokers want to continue and expand on their Ponzi scheme game.

    We already know the credit ratings agencies wrote fiction on these things....

    and it gets worse. The models themselves, from the mathematics are not valid and create systemic risk in and of themselves!

    So, the fact we're a year out and now have these same idiots trying to block any reforms is just beyond the pale. Not only is it stupid, it's putting the entire global economy at risk, never mind the U.S. economy.

    Reply to: Loopholes Will Be A Problem for Derivatives Bill   15 years 3 weeks ago
    EPer:

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