One of the current problems in the developed world is that there is too little work to go around. As the two biggest areas of traditional enterprise (manufacturing and agriculture) have become increasingly mechanized, the number of people needed has declined.
In much of the industrialized world agriculture now requires under 5% of the workforce. Many industrial firms typically run at 70-80% of capacity. Societies have adapted in two ways, the most commonly considered is the rise of services, the other is the creation of new products of marginal utility. Even these steps have not solved the problem, the unemployment rate is kept at a modest level, but the percentage of people employed continues to decline. The two numbers don't track because official reporting agencies exclude various categories of the non-working from the labor force.
Carlyle Group said creditors plan to seize the assets of its mortgage-bond fund after it failed to meet more than $400 million of margin calls, heightening concern about a lending freeze that led to a plunge in the dollar and global stock markets
Attached are my analyses of the January jobs data for the 50 states and Washington DC that were released yesterday by the BLS.
Note that Rhode Island, Vermont and Florida now join long-suffering Michigan having lost jobs yr/yr, with stagnation in job growth in Wisconsin and Ohio.
The Manufacturing sector continues to be the hardest hit yr/yr with only 39 states losing or having no gain in Manufacturing jobs; 31 states lost jobs in Financial Activities including real estate and 28 states lost Construction jobs -- including a -10.5% plunge in Florida.
While the markets rallied and folks cheered the Feds, proclaimed they saved the day, a dissenter emerges in the form of Winter Watch via Dr. Strangelove: Trial Ballooning More Disasters.
Today, the Fed announced a new liquidity plan.
the Fed announced a plan to resuscitate the ailing credit markets by lending $200 billion to battered financial firms in exchange for debt- or mortgage-backed securities. Starting March 27, the central bank is planning to offer weekly auctions, which could exceed $200 billion if there is sufficient demand, the Fed said.
I felt alone in the perception of an enabled ponzi subprime mortgage game continuing unabated, a shell game to push off this greedy disaster onto the taxpayer. Was I wrong? Did I just not understand? After all the market went up the highest 1 day rise in 5 years.
a massive new derivatives bubble is driving the domestic and global economies, a bubble that continues growing today parallel with the subprime-credit meltdown triggering a bear-recession.
Data on the five-fold growth of derivatives to $516 trillion in five years comes from the most recent survey by the Bank of International Settlements, the world's clearinghouse for central banks in Basel, Switzerland. The BIS is like the cashier's window at a racetrack or casino, where you'd place a bet or cash in chips, except on a massive scale: BIS is where the U.S. settles trade imbalances with Saudi Arabia for all that oil we guzzle and gives China IOUs for the tainted drugs and lead-based toys we buy.
The origins of the present subprime crisis can be found in the Nixon Administration when his appointment to the SEC, Mitchell, removed the prohibitions to trades in futures and similar "bets" that has made our markets so unstable. A number of academics including Fisher Black, created a series of formulas by which traders could manipulate the markets and make huge profits. The result of this behavior would led to our crisis by creating the impression that risk could be eliminated.
Here is a new industry-by-industry analysis of US/Mexico Manufacturing trade before and after NAFTA.
With the Manufacturing sector in crisis as the US enters a new recession, you may find of interest my attached analysis of US/Mexico Manufacturing and other goods trade for the three years before Nafta compared with the most recent three years.
In the three years prior to Nafta, 1991-1993, the US Manufacturing sector enjoyed a combined surplus of $19.2 billion with Mexico. However, over the most recent three years, 2005-2007, US Manufacturing continued to suffer successive record deficits totaling -$188.3 billion for the three years. Note that the US Manufacturing deficit with Mexico now far exceeds even the US deficit with Mexico for Mineral Fuels. Indeed, in 2007 the US deficit with Mexico in Electrical Machinery alone was larger than the US deficit with Mexico in Mineral Fuels.
Congress was blocked from changing the bankruptcy code last week but this report says the bill may once again have hope as Republicans are pressured to do something.
To allow bankruptcy judges to restructure mortgages to me is critical. Anybody tracking this, I'd love to learn more details.
Forget arguing wages, economics and trashing the middle class with "free-trade" Republicans and deaf, dumb and blind Democrats. They could care less what happens to us!
Focus on this: The most obvious legal problem with the H-1B/L-1 is that it enables age and racial discrimination. Besides, this is what the Democratic Party has to respond to.
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