The State Unemployment statistics for July were released by the BLS on Friday. These regions, in order, have unemployment rates at or above 10%: Nevada, 12.9%, California, 12.0%, Michigan 10.9%, South Carolina, 10.9%, District of Columbia, 10.8%, Rhode Island, 10.8%, Florida, 10.7%, Georgia 10.1%, North Carolina, 10.1%, Alabama, 10%. Below is the BLS map of unemployment rates for each state.
Globalism is a conspiracy against First World jobs. It is the process by which capital extracts surplus and appropriates the earnings of labor. By moving offshore the production of goods and services for the home market, corporations benefit from labor arbitrage. Because of large excess supplies of labor, corporations can hire employees in China, India, Indonesia, and elsewhere at wages below the value of the marginal product of labor, thus raising the returns to capital.
Welcome to the weekly roundup of great articles, facts and figures. These are the weekly finds that made our eyes pop.
It Could Have Been Worse
About the only thing Populist Progressive Democrat Congressman Peter DeFazio can say about Obama these days is it could have been worse. Long slide down from the irrational exuberance of 2008.
King of the Click Business Insider has alerted us all to an obscure comment on a proposed SEC rule for Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations. William J. Harrington, is a former Moody's Senior Vice President in the derivatives analyst group from 1999-2010. In Harrington's 80 page comment, he starts with this opening salvo:
Moody’s argues that RMBS committees could not have factored the collapse of real estate prices into their opinions, given that the scale of the collapse was both unprecedented and unforeseeable. This rationale is as unconvincing as it is disingenuous, for it pretends that Moody’s and other financial players were not designing and operating the conveyances that carried real estate prices to unsustainable levels in the first place. A roller coaster inexorably chugs up to stomach-turning heights before it hurtles downward, and both a carnival operator
and a thrill seeker understand the nature of the ride’s operations.
The rationale of “who could know?” is wholly undone through even a cursory examination of the actions of Moody’s and other financial players in the structured finance sector. Moody’s and other financial players took care to protect their earning should the real estate bubble that they were ushering into the world subsequently collapse.
The Philly Fed Survey current business activity index plunged -30.7% for August. The below graph is the Philadelphia Fed Current Business Activity Index against Industrial Production, the national manufacturing and output indicator, released by the Fed.
The July Consumer Price Index increased 0.5% from last month and half of it is gas, which increased 4.7% in a month. Core CPI, or price increases minus food and energy costs, rose 0.2%. Core CPI is a Federal Reserve inflation watch number. For the year, not seasonally adjusted, the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (CPI-U) has risen 3.6%. In May CPI dropped by -0.2%.
Huffington Post reporter Zach Carter did a most unusual thing when reporting on Panama being a tax haven. He called up one of the many firms offering to help him hide his money from the IRS for $2,000 dollars and filmed it.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
King of the Click Business Insider has alerted us all to an obscure
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