What a world, what a world, what a world. Wikileaks has published more secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement documents, revealing more and more how the United States represents large corporations and not the citizens of the nation. The Huffington Post said it best. They published a large front page photo of President Obama with the glaring headline, Company Man.
Welcome to the wild weird current population survey unemployment report where dramatic monthly swings cause paranoia and doubt. We shed light on these woolly figures and this month there is much to flash that light on. First, the unemployment rate dropped 0.3 percentage points to 7.0%. This is the lowest unemployment rate since November 2008.
The BEA released corporate profits for Q3 2013 along with GDP and anyway you slice it, corporate profits are soaring to the stratosphere. Corporate profits after tax increased 2.8% from Q2 2013 to $1,871.7 billion. Corporate profits after tax are also up 5.8% from a year ago.
Q3 2013 real GDP had a blow out revision and is now 3.6%. Originally GDP was reported to be 2.8% for the third quarter. As estimated, dramatically increasing inventory accumulation was the main cause of the large upward revision to GDP. Changes in inventories accounted for 46.5% of Q3 GDP.
ADP's proprietary private payrolls jobs report gives us a monthly gain of 215,000 private sector jobs for November 2013. This is the strongest growth for the year. The goods sector had the best showing in job growth since early 2012 and the service sector showed the largest job gains for the year. This report does not include government, or public jobs.
It is official. Detroit is bankrupt. Detroit is not only bankrupt they can now trash pensions owed to city workers. That is police, fire, hospital and a host of workers counting on those pensions for retirement. The U.S court ruling allows for a bankruptcy type for cities and towns, Chapter 9, to proceed and specifically puts pensions on the fair game bankruptcy chopping block.
The November ISM Manufacturing Survey shows PMI increased 0.9 percentage points to 57.3%. This is another year high. Overall manufacturing looks strong with 15 of the 18 industries reporting growth. The employment index is at a high not seen since December 2012. New orders and production both increased.
In America today there is a crisis. That crisis is economic inequality. The U.S. workforce has been blamed and dismissed for the growing gap between rich and poor. Much effort has gone into blaming the victim. Americans have been called fat, lazy and stupid along with the never ending drumbeat claim U.S. workers are uneducated and do not have enough technological skills.
Recent comments