U.S. Small Business is......small

Contrary to public perception, America's small business is actually....small. From a new CEPR press release on their small business in the United States study:

Layoff Nation

A couple of economists verified the obvious, when people are laid off they basically don't recover ...(oh, financially of course!).

In Long-Term Earnings Losses due to Mass Layoffs During the 1982 Recession: An Analysis Using U.S. Administrative Data from 1974 to 2004 (this is a preliminary paper), Researchers Wachter, Song & Manchester discover workers after 15-20 years still are not earning income at the level they were before being canned.

This has potentially important implications for the costs of economic adjustment in the U.S. economy. In particular, while the ability to fire ‘at will’ may benefit adjustment in the labor market as a whole, the costs in terms of lost productivity and earnings of individual workers may be much higher than typical replacement rates of unemployment insurance or other programs designed to smooth temporary earnings fluctuations.

Mathematical Equations on EP

EP has a new feature! The ability to format mathematical equations via mimeTeX and primitive graphing from WZgrapher. LaTeX is commonly used by mathematicians as well as economists to format complex mathematical equations in Academic papers. Of course using HTML codes or good old fashioned export to image from Excel or even Matlab still works great on EP!

To figure out the syntax to display complex mathematical equations, you can start with the above links, the graph link is slightly more clear.

Then, this wikipedia on math markup gives some more short cuts on how to format mathematical formulas using LaTeX syntax. (Note, the syntax for the formulas should (pretty much) be LaTeX, this is a faster version for server CPU load reduction). Then, this howto on LaTeX has some basic mathematical symbols.

You wrap your LaTex syntax in [tex] [/tex] special tags.

Here is an example:

syntax:

[tex]\frac{\partial^2 y}{\partial x_1\,\partial x_2}[/tex]

produces the partial derivative symbol:
$\frac{\partial^2 y}{\partial x_1\,\partial x_2}$

National Guard troops may be needed in Alabama county

Some of you might remember the troubles of Jefferson County, and how they are going bankrupt because of a sewer system and tax cuts.
Now the 3rd-world price may about to be paid - machine gun carrying troops on the streets.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The sheriff in Alabama's most populous county may call for the National Guard to help maintain order, a spokesman said Tuesday, after a judge cleared the way for cuts in the sheriff's budget and hopes dimmed for a quick end to a budget crisis.

The Ultimate Stock Market Sucker's Rally

By now we've all seen reports about the amazing stock market rally of 2009.

The widely followed stock market measure broke above 1,000 on Monday for the first time in nine months as reports on manufacturing, construction and banking sent investors more signals that the economy is gathering strength.
...
The day's reports were the latest indications that the recession that began in December 2007 could be retreating. Better corporate earnings reports and economic data propelled the Dow Jones industrial average 725 points in July to its best month in nearly seven years and restarted spring rally that had stalled in June.

If you listen to the financial news long enough you would know that the all-seeing, all-knowing stock market has declared the Great Recession to be over.

FDIC Chairman: 500 bank failures to come

We've seen 69 bank failures so far this year. That's nothing compared to what we are going to see in the coming months.

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair is predicting that the bank failure rate will increase tenfold, according to a U.S. Senator.

Bair said up to 500 more banks could fail, Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky, said in a meeting, reported Dow Jones Newswires.

That would put the current crisis close to the level achieved during the late-1980s savings and loan crisis, when 745 thrifts were shut.

Personal Income drops 1.3% in July

Things cost more. People have less money. This is bad.

New statistics on June 2009 personal income were released today.

Personal income decreased $159.8 billion, or 1.3 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) decreased $143.8 billion, or 1.3 percent, in June, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $41.4 billion, or 0.4 percent. In May, personal income increased $155.1 billion, or 1.3 percent, DPI increased $168.7 billion, or 1.6 percent, and PCE increased $9.0 billion, or 0.1 percent, based on revised estimates.

The MSM will blame the worst month-to-month drop in 4 years to Stimulus one time payments.

Taunter shreds health insurers' claims that recission is rare

A big tip'o the hat to okanogen at CorrenteWire for picking up this one:

Death by Math (that should get Oaks' attention!). Taunter analyzes the statement by Assurant CEO Don Hamm’s that "Rescission is rare." Rescission is when a health insurer cancels a policy, usually because the insured "lied" on the original application, usually by failing to disclose a previous condition. If you haven't heard the horror stories of people who required costly medical care only to be dropped by their health insurer, you haven't been paying attention to the world around you. Here is what Hamm told Congress in his prepared remarks:

The Politics of Shame

^{warning, major rant ahead}

The Obama administration, with all of it's weighty might, the Presidency of the United States, wants to really bear down on mortgage lenders and use shame to force financial institutions to help homeowners.

....are you f@#king kidding me? Shame?

How can you provoke shame in corporate entities? They have no soul! That's like thinking one will get remorse from a serial killer. Seriously.

What happened to good old fashioned regulation, oversight and legality? As I recall the government makes the laws...right? How about plain make their current scheme, which is sucking up huge profits from late fees and foreclosures, not profitable?

Commercial paper market still broken

Despite all that you might have heard, the credit markets have been broken since August 2007.

Companies usually borrow in the commercial paper market to rebuild inventories in anticipation of rising sales, but sales have fallen even faster.

"That shows there is a long way to go," said Robert C. King an economist at the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center in Mount Kisco, New York. "Although eventually inventories will get down to some point where they will have to be rebuilt, we are not there yet."

"That could be some explanation for the commercial paper market (trends) because it is used to finance inventories," King said.

August 2009