Once again our daily barrage of economic injustice news is overwhelming. From lobbyist lies to interest rate swap rigging to killing workers by the hundreds to our best and brightest working jobs flipping burgers, here are some quick economic news shorts that you don't want to miss.
The United Kingdom's bond rating was just downgraded by Moody's from AAA to AA1, in part due to the U.K.'s austerity measures which repressed economic growth.
Nowhere is the evidence of unbridled corporate greed stronger than in what the financial crisis did to the U.S. economy. The losses are staggering. Economic growth was killed to the tune of over $13 trillion. Homeowners lost a whopping $8.1 trillion in home values.
While the Dow hit 14,000 and Wall Street cheered, economic indicators cast a broadening dark shadow. Wall street is partying like it is March 2000. Yet Q4 GDP showed economic contraction.
Superstorm Sandy's economic effects are popping up like the dark clouds of a hurricane. In The Perfect Storm we predicted Sandy would negatively impact Q4 GDP by 0.5 percentage points. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve's survey of professional forecasters recently downgraded their Q4 GDP estimates by 0.4 percentage points to 1.8% annualized Q4 GDP growth. There are some estimates which are as low as 0.5% Q4 GDP, much of the downgrades due to superstorm Sandy.
Now the data is rolling in, like the storm surge itself. Sandy hit the New Jersey coast on October 29th. Even while the damage, loss of power, business closings and economic activity would seem to go negative after that date, October industrial production was hit with a full percentage point of Hurricane Sandy related contraction.
Spain today was suddenly imploding. We should say suddenly with a bit of sarcasm, after all, we've been watching Europe put their fingers in the never ending European financial dike for years now.
The German Bundestag voted Thursday to approve the $122 billion banking bailout, but only if the Spanish government accepted full liability for the loans. “There will be no direct bank financing,” said Volker Kauder, head of the Christian Democratic delegation in the Bundestag.
Truth be told this is just another day in the adventures of Eurozone financial crises. U.S. Treasury bonds are hitting record lows as a mass exodus from Europe seeks safe assets.
U.S. Treasuries yields fell to new record lows on Monday as concern that the euro zone's debt crisis is spiraling out of control led investors to seek out the relative safety of U.S. debt.
Germany and U.K. bonds yields are also hitting record lows as the flight to safe haven continues.
The Federal Reserve will extend their Operation Twist past the June 2012 deadline and downgraded the economic outlook. Originally Operation Twist was $400 billion in Treasuries that were maturity dates of 3 years of less turned into T-bills with maturity dates of 6 to 30 years.
The pathetic jobs report has ushered in a whole new blame game on the weather. January through March 2012 had the warmest temperatures on record for the United States.
Most economic data, including the employment report, is seasonally adjusted. The algorithm is called X-12-ARIMA and is maintained by the Census. Without going into the mathematics, this algorithm takes past cyclical patterns that are predictable and adjusts those spikes, attributed to the seasons. The algorithm takes out of an economic data series those wild swings, so one can more easily compare real growth instead of, say, fall harvesting or Christmas hiring. Construction employment, for example, is highly cyclical due to the nature of the work. Below is a graph of not seasonally adjusted construction employment.
U.S. Corporations made record profits in 2011 while regular people went without jobs. A new study from the International Labor Organization shows Corporate Profits are doing fine and back to pre-recession levels. Yet this is at the expense of American workers and investment in America.
The ILO covers labor internationally. From their report, the world of work, there are some dire predictions. Austerity is one thing killing economies. The authors also found no recovery in sight for labor markets. They also realize as do many, except for those who could actually do something, if policies were enacted that were geared towards labor, we would not be in this mess and finally, the high unemployment and never ending income inequality is brewing up a nasty mix of social unrest.
More than half of 106 countries surveyed by the ILO face a growing risk of social unrest and discontent.
Add to that a new report from the Census, in part sponsored by the ,Kauffman Foundation, shows start-up companies are at record lows, 8%, in the United States.
Spain today was suddenly imploding. We should say suddenly with a bit of sarcasm, after all, we've been watching Europe put their fingers in the never ending European financial dike for years now.
The Federal Reserve will 
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