Yearly Archives: 2013
European Pundits Starting to Give Up on the Eurozone
We’ve been pointing out for some time that Germany has refused to budge from wanting contradictory things relative to the Eurozone. Now something still has to break, but some of my correspondents who’ve just been in Europe now think that we will see a political crisis in Europe before we see an economic one, and that, like objects in your rear view mirror, may be closer than it appears.
Read more...The BLS Jobs Report Covering July 2013: Slow Build But In Poor Quality Jobs
By Hugh, who is a long-time commenter at Naked Capitalism. Originally published at Corrente. A complete archive of Hugh’s reports can be found here.
The short version:
In July, unemployment fell to 7.4%. This was because the labor force seasonally adjusted (trendline) was largely unchanged and so most of the 227,000 increase in employment came from net hiring among the unemployed and not those entering the labor force. Employment remains 2 million below the last peak in January 2008.
Unadjusted actual, full time employment rose by 288,000 and part time employment fell by 17,000. The trendline showed the opposite of this: a 92,000 increase in full time and a 172,000 increase in part time workers. The trendline is the future maybe. The actual unadjusted numbers are where we live month to month. There is no evidence for a bump in part time work due to the Obamacare corporate mandate. Besides, this mandate has been put on hold for a year.
My various real measures for unemployment (~12%) and disemployment (~17%), that is un- and under employment have been gradually improving, but 2013 is shaping up as not quite as good as 2012. Employment growth this year could be at or a few hundred thousand below what is needed to keep up with population growth, unless there is a larger than usual spurt at the end of the year.
Read more...Links 8/2/13
Trader Describes How Dishonesty Pays in Finance, Big Time
Yves here. It may seem like a “dog bites man” account to describe yet again how traders are fixated on their bonuses, often have tawdry personal habits (cocaine, whores, flashy cars) and have no compunction about leaving rubble in their wake, be it customers or the firms for which they work.
However, it’s one thing to hear it from outsiders or people who’ve managed to spend some time on a dealing room floor, and another to have someone in the industry describe what goes on.
Read more...Congressional Student Debt Deal Perpetuates Predatory Practices, Higher Education Cost Inflation
Yves here. This Real News Network interview with Alan Collinge, author of Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History and How We Can Fight Back, gives a short and clear overview of how student borrowers lack the protections that exist in other types of consumer lending, and how the Congressional deal to tinker with interest rates completely sidestepped the real problems in this market.
Read more...More Good News from Europe
Yves here. I don’t want to be withholding good news when there is good news to be had. But remember, the ISM results for Europe are just over 50, which is the difference between growth and contraction. So in this context, “good news,” given how high unemployment is in the Eurozone periphery, is sort of like “the vital signs are improving enough that the patient might be able to leave intensive care and go into a regular hospital room.”
Read more...Dan Kervick: The Fed is the Central Bank, and President Obama Should Treat It That Way
Too many of the ideas of what would make for a good Fed chairman are based on overly ambitious and wrongheaded goals for the central bank.
Read more...Links 8/1/13
Obama Starting to Lose It Over Snowden
Thanks to Obama’s famed “no drama” coolness, it’s hard to detect when he’s breaking a sweat. But if you look at the substance of his actions, it’s clear the President is losing his famed poise, at least as far as Snowden and the surveillance state revelations are concerned.
Read more...Ilargi: Capitalism, A Norwegian Rat And Some Cockroaches
Yves here. Ilargi takes up one of our favorite topics, how the fetishization of numbers and measurement is at best misguided and at worst profoundly dysfunctional, as we discussed in a 2006 article, Management’s Great Addiction.
Read more...“The Media Just Won’t Report on This Crappy Economy,” Such As 80% of US Adults Near Poverty, GDP Funny Business
Reader Cathryn Mataga complained yesterday in comments about the under-reporting of how bad things are out in the real world where most people live. It’s not hard to find proof of her thesis.
Read more...The Hidden Credit Report That Shuts People Out of the Banking System
Jessica Silver-Greenberg at the New York Times has an important account of how a system created by banks to catch scam artists like check-kiters has morphed over 20 years into a shadow credit reporting system.
Read more...Links 7/31/13
ObamaCare’s Relentless Creation of Second-Class Citizens (4)
By lambert strether of Corrente.
And we go to Happyville, instead of to Pain City. –Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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