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US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
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Greece For Sale
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China's Quest for Oil
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Monetary Indicators give some hope?
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US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
- 182224 reads
Greece For Sale
- 23131 reads
China's Quest for Oil
- 14432 reads
Monetary Indicators give some hope?
- 34577 reads
The Golden Rule
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Will the NY Attorney General Bring Doomsday Charges Against Wall Street? If So, How Long Will He Survive?
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New York Post Claims Census Falsifies Unemployment Figures
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How Many Jobs Are Needed to Keep Up with Population Growth?
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VAT or Value Added Tax is Getting a Look in D.C.
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U3 and U6 Unemployment during the Great Depression
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The war on the middle class
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House discusses 401k/IRA confiscation
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Tax Cuts for the Rich Do Not Generate Jobs
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Ghandi, Martin Luther King both showed the effectiveness of non-violent protest. What America needs is for all of us to stand together against the economic genocide that is going on in this country. Right now the control technique is to divide and conquer. Working people are pitted against each other by conservative and liberal terminology. The reality is the U.S. middle class has been wiped out, economic inequality is at an all time high and in spite of some politicians using that rhetoric, they are not doing anything to make the situation better.
If you harm yourself, you silence your oh so important voice forever. What needs to happen is America needs to be heard. Occupy Wall Street was systematically shut down by a coordinated effort between Federal and local governments. What America needs is every one working for a living to stand in solidarity and demand policy, action for jobs, jobs, jobs, higher wages and better working conditions, retirement that cannot be raided and a better social safety net.
This isn't a political philosophy, it is practical, what works, what has been proved to work in the past. America needs jobs, income and work needs to be the most important element in our society. Good work, well paying work for all.
In particular people who are over 40 and those under 30, the U.S. needs to enforce age discrimination laws. People live much longer and are able bodied way past 65, unlike the past. Employers and policy makers need to get on the ball and recognize the new life spans and how longer lives need longer work lives. Young need work and the time to train, learn, grow into the job.
This was standard up to the start of squeezing workers, firing them, layoffs, which really went into full force starting with Reagan firing the Air control tower workers. That gave the message it was open season on workers and work in America.
Harming oneself does nothing except insure the bastards win.
I have worked since 16. I am a professional and was laid off in June. I send 100 emails a day network but the job prospects for a 53 year old unemployed worker are dim. I hear the word overqualified so much I am thinking of getting my first tattoo- if I could afford it. Ny unemployment of 405 is laughable especially as conn. And nj are over 600. Thanks gov coumo. The political discourse on this has been outrageous ..from paul saying that I just need more incentive to work and Ryan saying giving me extension is a disservice to me from comments saying we all prefer not to work. I am a republican but no republican will ever get my vote again. Pelosi embrace the suck isn't much better. I am scared. I have applied for jobs at 1/2 my former salary, I just don't understand how they think me going on welfare and Medicaid will help the economy
Robert I really liked your article. At least you asked the big question what are the unemployed to do without the extensions. Jobs are limited...I'm the only one in my house getting money. My husband has not been able to find work either. The fat cats are not worried they have heat, food, gifts for their kids, & other essentials needed to live. I'm tired of telling my kids they can't do this or that because the money we have is to pay bills & keep the house. We are below water & sinking fast!!! Congress needs to think how this will effect the country!!! They really want a GREAT DEPRESSION again!!! People sleeping in the streets..are they willing to take some in? Hell no, Just one poor working stiff to get stiffed again!!!
There are no jobs for us unemployed who are 60 yrs. old or older. No one wants to hire us because they can get younger people to fill the jobs. With no unemployment extension there will be NO happiness for the holidays & next year we will end up homeless & starving on the streets. Congress doesn't care, they get their big fat paychecks for doing nothing but causing the US citizens heartache and despair. So I say we should all commit MASS SUICIDE and maybe then congress will actually do something positive for the US citizens!
Agree. The lawmakers say that helping the unemployed who are so due to no fault of their own by giving them more time until they finally get a job offer costs them too much money. Well, how about if those same people end up homeless, enter the group of the food stamps recipients, applicants for fully subsidized health care and other down to poverty level benefits because they end up with no other choice, will not all of this cost them a lot more money in the end? And not talking about more crime that will require more money to keep the streets and neighborhoods safe, etc, etc, etc? Those intelligent people are not as bright as they think they are, after all!
Very well written article. It says it all! "... refusal to extend benefits will have a negative economic impact on the overall economy as well." Very true! This weekend an unemployed friend of mine unwrapped all the little gifts she had bought to her family for Christmas, took all back to the stores she had bought them from, and returned them. She said that that money would be a life saving to put the food on the table for her family, especially for Christmas. It was heart breaking. No job is safe to anyone (only for the politicians...). Anyone can end up in the unemployment line, and be left with 26 weeks or less to get a job to put food on the table and keep the roof over his/head. And I say, ANYONE! God bless America, as God is needed...
Nice article and straight to the point on how congress is ignoring the U.S. Citizens. There are a lot of homeless people in America and congress may add more to the ranks.
Robert, Yours is the best article written on unemployment and labor I've read in ages. I'm part of the long-term unemployed, and waiting anxiously to see if my already limited unemployment benefits will be extended in the new year.
What makes your article all the more relevant, is your courage to mention the immigration factor. The United States takes in 1.1 LEGAL immigrants per year--a massive figure, yet it does not include illegal immigrants, and those who arrive on "temporary" work, student, and other visas. While immigrants of course did not create America's legal problems, the reality is they need jobs just like the rest of us, and America can only grow so big and maintain its (steadily declining) standard of living. In short, the pie is only so big.
Thank you again, and please keep writing!
Timothy
Portland, Oregon, USA
sorry, i didn't know there was any trouble...i can read any NYT article that someone else links to without login or interference...however, since i dont subscribe, i cant go directly to their site and read articles of my own choosing
We need to stop linking to the New York Times, they are requiring logins and other to read even the most basic thing, irritating.
yes i saw his reply today... the whole matter is to me, Krugman as a self-proclaimed progressive, he hasn't, or at least i have not seen it, acknowledged the damage to the middle class that is so obvious to us here on the ground delivered by "free trade"... at lease my ground anyway
perhaps the good professor should descend from his ivory tower and take a walk about Detroit, Camden New Jersey, Bridgeport CT to name a very few (Gary Indiana??)
here we have perhaps the loudest voice in progressive economics who staked his claim on free trade for his nobel prize and for all the evidence, it looks to be a massive failure ... now i'm not proclaiming to understand if his theory lines up with US policy, but he certainly was FOR free trade.
As the good professor himself has claimed in his own posts, economist's should acknowledge when their models do not accurately predict outcomes and change them accordingly ... perhaps Mr. Krugman should reevaluate his models and suck it up nobel prize be damned
says maybe he should do his homework first: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/tpp-and-ip-a-brief-note/
last weeks Incomes and Outlays for October had real durable goods PCE up .8% and non-durable PCE up .7...
end of table 7: http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/pi/2013/pdf/pi1013.pdf (Percent change from preceding period in chained (2009) dollars, seasonally adjusted at monthly rates)
my guess at ~.75 wasnt half bad...
the November retail revision will add about .2 to that...means the goods part of PCE was growing at near a 12% annual rate...revise 4th quarter GDP forecasts upwards..
i wasnt conflating payrolls with employed, just pointing out that they were moving in different directions by over 2.7 million over the last four months, which is clearly evident even on the historical graph:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?graph_id=144994&category_id=0
employers are reporting more jobs, households are reporting less working (unadjusted)
employed persons can be working 2, 3 jobs. Payrolls are W-2, employed includes self-employed, AG workers, "unpaid household workers" (my favorite).
Actually employed, SA is 1.11 million increase from a year ago. for Nov.
I might do an overview of the differences and trying to compare the CPS against the CES. I have a few of my own questions here, specifically job "destruction" on CES.
Bottom line, the press and politicians are trying to act like all is well and beyond Wall street soaring and the rich get richer (thx Fed), the overall economy is still lukewarm and there are millions of hidden unemployed, whether you go full bore with shadowstats and simply look at the CPS/CES detail.
there was an increase of 1,226,000 employed in the household survey over the last year..meanwhile, there was an increase of 2,306,000 payroll jobs over the same November to November time frame...
historically, the household survey has had marginally larger increases...
Speak of the devil, Economist Dean Baker points out almost exactly my previous comment, how corporations are trying to wipe out generic drugs which will kill millions and hold the globe hostage on prescription drug prices. He also mentions more attempts to circumvent environmental law through TPP.
Generally speaking Baker is worth reading, he nails issues over and over, quick study.
He has a tendency to deny the damage done by trade, in part because his dissertation was on some of this theory and he won the Nobel Prize for trade pattern theory. Uh, unfortunately this has a tendency to dismiss the "localized pockets of disruption", which well, are nation-states, not just local industries, firms and towns. It does that as things "adjust", certain "local economies" will be "negatively impacted" and certain "sectors", but oh, those will enable creation of "new industries" which are "more competitive".
For those interested, the Krugman post is here, but he dismisses the corporate monopoly on IP and especially drug patents.
He is trying to compare this to the China PNTR or NAFTA but ignores the massive increase in the trade deficit, especially from the China PNTR. He's just looking at tariffs, seems he just blew off the sweetheart corporate deals in any of these agreements.
So, he is saying this is small potatoes due to those large bad trade deals but that is wrong in that TPP protests are really about ALL of these trade deals.
He's also missing the point in that large multinational corporations are writing and circumventing national policy again through trade.
so Krugman finally chimed up with a piece about TPP basically saying "nothing to see here move along"
I cannot fathom that this champion of US leftist economics does not understand the damage free trade has done to working class americans ,,,?
somebody please explain! for all i can tell he doesn't descend from his ivory tower to see what free trade has really delivered ...
thank you
If you look at JOLTS the net gain is always 2 million jobs for the year. Generally speaking it seems annual gains are the real valid number to look at in CPS survey versus the monthly figures.
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