Recent comments

  • "Then, the Fed is justifying continuing their quantitative easing based on the terrible employment conditions, which all things considered sure doesn't seem to be doing much for American labor."

    Of course not. The fed basically told the banks and multinationals we'll keep giving you free money and buying your worthless paper at par until the job situation improves. Why on earth would they expand hiring when they can get free money from the fed without lifting a finger?

    Reply to: Bernanke's Testimony - Profits are Ahead of Jobs   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • I don't have the error margin off hand, but this is true on many of the economic reports, the revision looks better or worse due to significant digits but figuring out the validity of significant digits on these is a lot of work!

    Reply to: Retail Sales 0.4% June Gain Shows Auto Dealers are Having a Good Year   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • May's sales gain was reportedly revised down from 0.6% to 0.5% but the actual change was from a gain of .00550806991% to .00536788767%, practically unchanged...i bring it up cause i couldnt see the difference until i did the math...

    Reply to: Retail Sales 0.4% June Gain Shows Auto Dealers are Having a Good Year   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • Think about it, you can tell it is corporate controlled. They pick one topic, currently "Zimmerman" and pound it 24/7. Then, they issue "news" about "the incredible new cell phone" or as you point out, the "great Quarterly press release of Yahell" which has done absolutely nothing interesting.

    This blocks out all real news, it used to be on cable you could find "some" real news but not any more. Maybe Bloomberg has some but for the most part, the cable is just corporate sponsored scream streams of empty devoid of information corporate sponsored opinion.

    Reply to: Outrageous Economic Shorts   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • Another symptom of how CEOs get coverage for doing nothing/jack sh*t while US innovation and brains are sold out. Bloomberg gave coverage to Mayer's propaganda speech about how Yahoo! did something like allow people to use Yahoo! on tablets! Wow, awesome! GREAT! I mean full coverage for minute-after-painful minute. Like this was the Model A or T or successful tests at Los Alamos or the creation of the wheel.

    Meanwhile, as you know, American workers and those that want to work are completely destroyed day-after-day. Unemployed or wasting their talents and skills in jobs that could be done by anyone. Meanwhile, our dear leaders and CEO kleptocrats sell our national security and economic future out for a few pieces of silver - TRAITORS. But hey, the CEOs meeting with the leaders in DC and San Jose and Beijing, Brussels, Davos, Hanoi, etc. claim we Americans are lazy and stupid and just can't do a freaking thing. Duh, boogers taste good, let me wipe my ass with my PhD in Chem. E. F these traitors, f em.

    All they know is corruption, narcissism, and cronyism. If they don't serve the US and admit they don't (profits rule, but apparently often fail at obtaining those despite their overpaid miserable attempts), why do we tolerate them selling us out every day? Shouldn't they be punished for treason?

    Reply to: Outrageous Economic Shorts   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • Lest we forget the never ending "tech worker shortage" drumbeat from lobbyists, the layoffs are soaring in tech, Marketwatch.

    IBM has been and is continuing to fire anyone and that means even the most advanced researchers, who are white and American. I'm sorry, but that's how it reads at this point, reverse discrimination and the discrimination against those with U.S. citizenship is obvious.

    What is more amazing is how these once great companies, their products overall just continue to erode. Only a few small pockets of good research left inside them and I believe HP has emptied out all of their good engineers as a result. Went from being a technological innovator to a commonly shorted stock on death watch.

    Reply to: Outrageous Economic Shorts   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • I don't think Obamcare has anything to do with job creation but it sure does look correct that it can cause way more of those jobs to be part-time.

    that said, it's not implemented yet and as I pointed out in the last employment overview, here, most of the jobs created are the most crappy, lowest paying ones and these are also the ones most likely to be part-time.

    Bottom line, Obamacare is a mess and we should have universal single payer, that's not for profit, as other industrialized nations do.

    All of these issues are no surprise since the health care industry and their profits, along with the insurance companies, were fundamentally protected at the expense of America.

    Reply to: Obamacare does NOT create part-time jobs   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • Job Creation and the Affordable Care Act Have Little to Do with Each Other

    "Since the ACA does not require that part-timers are covered, with part-time defined as less than 30 hours/week, there’s an incentive to create part-time as opposed to full-time job slots. Of course, in terms of job counts, this incentive goes the other way—toward more job creation. It also, however, has the potential to lead to more involuntary part-time work."

    http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/job-creation-and-the-affordable-care-act-h...

    Reply to: Obamacare does NOT create part-time jobs   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • having it larger in my workspace didnt change the linked size:

    http://rjsigmund.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/graphics-week-ending-july-13/

    Reply to: May LPS Mortgage Monitor shows Foreclosures and Delinquencies Declining as Time in Default Lengthens   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • This is the place to put the latest outrage du jours that we don't have time to author original material on.

    On health care, I sure know I wheel and deal, cut, cut, cut. It's pretty incredible 2, no where else can you have just trouble in finding out a price! i.e. labs, some of them, really, is that necessary? Plus the prices range from $10 to $300 for the exact same test!

    RIPOFF

    Reply to: Outrageous Economic Shorts   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • RE: U.S. Health is Mediocre - "Americans now live shorter lives than men and women in most of the rest of the developed world. And that gap is growing. Back in 1990, according to a new study published last week in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, the United States ranked just 20th on life expectancy among the world’s 34 industrial nations. The United States now ranks 27th — despite spending much more on health care than any other nation."
    http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/15-4

    RE: Circumventing Wage Laws Through Online Temp Work Sites --- I just read another related article, but I would a better explanation as to what they're saying: (FRBSF Economic Letter: The Path of Wage Growth and Unemployment) --- "After the Great Recession, the fraction of U.S. workers whose wages were frozen reached a record high. Many employers would have preferred to cut wages, but couldn’t do so because of the reluctance of workers to accept reduced compensation. These pent-up wage cuts initially propped up wage growth, reduced hiring, and pushed up unemployment. But, over the past 2½ years, inflation has eroded the real value of frozen wages, slowing wage growth and reducing the unemployment rate. This is similar to, but more pronounced than, the pattern observed in past recessions."
    http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2013...

    RE: House Kills Food Stamps - Another good article: "GOP to Taxpayers: We’re Against Subsidies, Except If They’re For Rich Farmers"
    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/353433/gop-taxpayers-were-against-s...

    Reply to: Outrageous Economic Shorts   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • I'll look into it, but we need images that scale and zoom, automatically from cell phones to the biggest display out there. So, yours I really cannot read but the site needs a better solution. Just be aware I cannot read the table for now.

    Reply to: May LPS Mortgage Monitor shows Foreclosures and Delinquencies Declining as Time in Default Lengthens   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • all my blog posts start as emails, so my methods were developed for that use...my images are screen captured or copied to the paint utility, which i then crop or alter using windows photo gallery as necessary before i post them on my wordpress workspace, in order to be able to copy and mail them...

    maybe i find them easy to read because i'm familiar with the material...but in each case i cite the source and page number of the original document, should readers want a better view...

    Reply to: May LPS Mortgage Monitor shows Foreclosures and Delinquencies Declining as Time in Default Lengthens   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • We need to do something here about images. I cannot read many of these even when clicking on them to display the full image. Email me but no point in going to all of that trouble if we cannot easily view graphs and images.

    Ok, overall, it still looks fairly elevated to me in comparison to 13 years ago, 2002, etc.

    Sure they are dropping but in comparison still quite high for foreclosures, delinquencies..

    Reply to: May LPS Mortgage Monitor shows Foreclosures and Delinquencies Declining as Time in Default Lengthens   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • That certainly is what what I've noticed when analyzing the consumer credit statistics.

    The press just is incredible in not digging into these statistics. Your point that annualization will show huge percentage changes in comparison to monthly percent changes needs to be pounded on for I don't think, honestly, some even know what annualization means and how that gives much larger percentage changes on a month by month basis.

    Nice digging, the Federal Reserve statistical releases are difficult to read, especially the flow of funds and they mix tables and also truncate in financials instead of round.

    I found error margins earlier due to their truncation of figures, and it was fairly amusing, I called up asking why for this is not the normal process for intermediate calculations and the response was "we have always done it this way".

    Generally speaking a little anal detail on using excel plus the role of significant digits in intermediate calculations needs to be had! I've run into this on other reports.

    Great article!

    Reply to: May Consumer Credit Up $19.3 Billion on Unusual Jump in Revolving Credit   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • Agree and add the other "minor" issue that "Manufacturing" is the largest single source of employment for those with STEM skills -- a contingent of our (remaining) work force undergoing an unprecedented rapid decline.

    Without productive jobs, for those with stem skills, we'll be left nothing more than our financial industries' zero-sum ponzi schemes -- with no remaining industry creating the wealth upon which they rely to impose their ever-increasing taxes and rents.

    Reply to: Manufacturing Matters   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • New Study: Unethical behavior can be profitable
    New Study: Competitive people are more unethical
    New Study: Smart people often advantage of less intelligent people
    New Study: Educated people are more unethical

    Wealth is correlated to education, intelligence, and a competitive spirit. Lurking variables pass the sniff test here. They weren't controlled for.

    "But does money really make people more likely to lie, cheat and steal?" The paper doesn't even attempt to answer that question, a question of causation. They only addressed correlation.

    Reply to: New Study: The Wealthy are more Unethical   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • CEO pay has again risen to record levels, as more low-paying and part-time jobs (without benefits) are being created, while food stamps and unemployment benefits for those who are barely getting by are being cut. This generation of unemployed workers are already screwed. New skills will be needed by the next generation to create a new middle-class in America. The 4 articles below pretty much says it all:

    New York Times: The median compensation of CEOs at 200 of the nation’s biggest public companies came in at $15.1 million last year, a 16 percent jump from 2011, according to Equilar, the executive compensation analysis firm. The pay packages — including salary, bonus, benefits, stock and option grants — ranged from $96.2 million at Oracle to $11.1 million at General Motors. 

    Wall Street Journal: Restaurants and bars have been adding an average of 50,000 jobs monthly since April—about double the rate from 2012. Overall, leisure-and-hospitality establishments hired more workers than any other industry in June, accounting for 75,000 of the 195,000 jobs added last month. A number of restaurants and other low-wage employers say they are increasing their staffs by hiring more part-time workers to reduce reliance on full-timers before the health-care law takes effect. 

    New York Times: Missing: The Food Stamp Program - “We’ll get to that later.” That was the dismissive answer of Speaker John Boehner on Thursday, when asked if the House would restore the food stamp program that it had just coldly ripped out of the farm bill. Republicans will deal with the nation’s most important anti-hunger program "later.” Maybe they will think about the needs of 47 million people who can’t afford adequate food --- by cutting the average daily subsidy of $4.39.

    Dancing with Robots: Technology Skills of the Future - Manufacturing and other jobs in the U.S. will continue to be offshored to low-wage countries. In our new economy, the future of middle-class work will have to rely on uniquely human brain strength. The next generation of students will need to learn the foundational skills in problem-solving and communication --- skills that computers don’t have.

    Reply to: Obamacare does NOT create part-time jobs   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • While growing up my dad always told me that if I was honest and worked hard, I could get ahead. For 35 years I worked my ass off but I couldn't figure out why I wasn't gaining any ground, but instead, was always lagging behind. And in the end, what did it get me? An arthritic back and unemployment because I had the nerve to turn 50 years old.

    Reply to: Wages in America and the Attack on Labor   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • The articles in Proceedings are not peer reviewed nor are the author's required to submit data or raw methodology. When I was younger we weren't even allowed to cite PAAS articles in our work unless it was a review, the term we used was 'paas the grain of salt'.

    Reply to: New Study: The Wealthy are more Unethical   11 years 3 months ago
    EPer:

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