The wishes of the BRIC nations have finally been fulfilled.
(Bloomberg) -- The International Monetary Fund’s board of directors approved the issuance of bonds to the lender’s 186 members for the first time as it seeks additional sources of money to lend during the global recession.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the June 2009 unemployment statistics. The rate is unchanged at 9.5%. The long term unemployment has increased.
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 433,000 over the month to 4.4 million. In June, 3in 10 unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more.
What's interesting is the number of people not in the workforce has increased 358,000.
The employment-population ratio, at 59.5 per-
cent, continued to trend down over the month. The employment-population ratio has declined by 3.2 percentage points since the start of the recession in December 2007.
According to Bloomberg of those left with a job, their hours are dropping as well as their wages:
U.S. mortgage applications fell last week by the most since February, defying efforts by President Barack Obama’s administration to revive the housing market.
The Mortgage Bankers Association’s index of applications to purchase a home or refinance a loan dropped 19 percent to 444.8 in the week ended June 26 from 548.2 the prior week. The group’s refinancing gauge declined 30 percent to the lowest in seven months, while the index of purchases fell 4.5 percent.
It was the morning of January 22, 1932, in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood of the Bronx. A crowd was gathering in front of 2302 Olinville Avenue, near the Bronx Park.
City Marshals and Police had moved in to evict 17 tenants who were on a "rent strike". A crowd of 4,000 had gathered nearby.
When the marshals moved into the building and the first stick of furniture appeared on the street, the crowd charged the police and began pummeling them with fists, stones, and sticks, while the "non-combatants urged the belligerents to greater fury with anathemas for capitalism, the police and landlords." The outnumbered police barely held their lines until reinforcements arrived.
Every single reserve police officer in the Bronx had to be called in to prevent being routed by the rioters.
The recent increases in health care costs look a lot like what happens in a market when an oligarchy or monopoly raises barriers of entry to squeeze out competition. The reason for this may be accidental- they might all be using the best scientific statistics possible to set prices, thus making all their prices close to the same. But the end result is the same- increased cost to consumer due to a lack of choice, resulting in incredible profits being returned to stockholders, who then reward C-level executives with outlandish compensation packages.
So far, the reasoning is sound. But the solution seems to be novel: Add a low-cost/low-value public option to cover those who can't get insurance otherwise or for whom the low-cost option is sufficient, to add competition to the marketplace.
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