July 2009

Help Build The Economic Populist

Hi Folks,

I think we have dynamite authors, well thought out, cited posts plus a lot of good outrage going on EP.

Please help others find the site, read the posts and encourage participation.

When you see someone on another site who clearly has good input on economic policy, stats, issues, invite them over to join. Use the share buttons on posts you particularly like.

Link over to posts on EP in your other discussions when referencing something you read. List EP in your blog rolls and tell other sites who are covering economics or economic policy about EP so maybe we can get more cross over participation.

EP is a community site, anyone can write a post, the comments are user tracked so people can have individual conversations and we even have the Instapopulist, so one can write without the pressure of an article level of Journalism.

Retail Sales & Inventories - June 2009

June 2009 retail sales data:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for June, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $342.1 billion, an increase of 0.6 percent (±0.5%) from the previous month, but 9.0 percent (±0.7%) below June 2008. Total sales for the April through June 2009 period were down 9.6 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The April to May 2009 percent change was unrevised from 0.5 percent (±0.3%).

retail sales comparison of may vs. june 2009

Gasoline sales are down 33% from the previous year, but recall that was hitting $5 dollar gas and now gas sales are up 5% since May 2009. Autos recovered slightly, still down ~20% from a year ago.

Is Elliot Spitzer Channeling The Economic Populist?

One must wonder if Elliot Spitzer is an EP lurker. Today Spitzer wrote a column about how states are headed for disaster. The post has statistics which were outlined by manfrommiddletown a few days ago.

Or is it more many of us are astutely aware of coming implosions, trying to warn and show repeatedly, like some 3rd mind, a conscious social brain, all examining trends and data who end up screaming bloody murder in synchronous unison....
a glorified Cassandra group speak yelp spike?

Whatever the reason, one must congratulate manfrommmiddletown in writing such a relevant post, complete with maps and also be grateful Spitzer is emerging from his personal fallibility cave to come out with guns ablazin'.

Goldman Sachs - Biggest Profits Ever - How?

Today Goldman Sachs posted record profits.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. posted record earnings as revenue from trading and stock underwriting reached all-time highs less than a year after the firm took $10 billion in U.S. rescue funds.

Second-quarter net income was $3.44 billion, or $4.93 a share, the New York-based bank said today in a statement. That surpassed the $3.65 per-share average estimate of 22 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg and was 65 percent higher than last year’s second quarter.

Oops, not so fast! Goldman is being blasted for using the same risky trading model that caused so many other firms to bring the economy to it's knees. Bloomberg:

The Wall Street Journal Argues for Brown Weeds

Here on the Economic Populist, dueling posts of green shoots, i.e. the recession is at a bottom and recovery will happen and brown weeds, i.e. it's getting worse and is most assuredly not a recovery, has been going on for some time.

Well, the Wall Street Journal, that holy bible of finance readers everywhere has stepped in and pronounced the ground salted and barren.

In the article, WSJ points out the average length of unemployment is higher than it's been since government began tracking the data in 1948.. The article then goes through the jobs numbers and shows why the real rate is much worse than what is being reported.

Finally, the Justice Department Investigating Credit Default Swaps

Bloomberg is reporting Credit-Default Swaps Probed by Justice Department:

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the market for credit-default swaps, according to Markit Group Ltd., the data provider majority-owned by Wall Street’s largest banks.

“Markit has been informed of an investigation by the Department of Justice into the credit-derivatives and related markets,” spokeswoman Teresa Chick said yesterday in an e- mailed statement in response to questions from Bloomberg News. She declined to comment on the nature of the investigation. “We will work with the Department to provide any information requested of us.”

The antitrust division sent civil investigative notices this month to banks that own London-based Markit to determine if they have unfair access to price information, according to three people familiar with the matter

Manufacturing Update: Foreign investment as an industrial policy?

Hello everyone, happy Monday to you all on Economic Populist. Today marks the return of a series I had put off for health reasons (actually this is the second attempt, sorry). On this inaugural I would like to focus on the foreign investor. As many readers of my past columns know, Manufacturing Monday has been a staunch advocate of building products here. Primarily focusing on promoting our current captains of industry to open up a shop here instead of say Asia or Mexico. Or in getting new (green) industries going. If they (being foreign countries) are "taking" our jobs, how about us getting some from their companies?

A smart kid and KIA

Fed's Follies & Systemic Risk Regulation

The administration’s proposal sets out to restore the shadow banking system and all the various securities markets that have arisen in the past fifteen years or so, including credit default swaps. The underlying presumption is that these markets serve public purpose, that they can be restored, and that they should, in fact, be restored.

The presumption is not correct. - James K. Galbraith

Against the backdrop of blocking a Federal Reserve audit by the Senate, we have additional questions being raised on the Federal Reserve as Systemic Risk Regulator.

War of the Audit

 

The Coming $50 Billion State Unemployment Bill

$10.9 Billion.

That's the amount of money currently lent by Federal Department of Labor (DOL) to a group of 15 states whose unemployment insurance (UI) trust funds have run dry. And it's about to get a whole hell of a lot worse. By the end of the year that number will likely have have grown to 35 states. Total DOL emergency loans to states at that time? Nearly $50 billion dollars. The situation will be far worse for some states than others. The states appearing in red on the map below are those that will need DOL loans to keep unemployment benefits rolling.

Will the government let CIT fall

According to Reuters, the FDIC may not allow CIT to access TLGP funds thereby propelling CIT into bankruptcy.

 

The government has made it clear that a possible bankruptcy by CIT is not seen as a systemic risk to the financial system, the Wall Street Journal reported, since other lenders including JPMorgan Chase & Co or Deutsche Bank AG can take on many of the same loans in which CIT specializes.

Pages