It was easy to miss this little tidbit. If Rick Santelli hadn't mentioned it on CNBC I doubt anyone would have caught it. Of course it will be sold as the benevolent government trying to help the poor citizens.
Lawmakers have proposed changes, and the Obama administration will seek ways to promote conversion of 401(k) accounts after their average value fell in the past three years alongside a 46 percent drop in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.
Recently there has been several stories about 2000s being the Lost Decade of Jobs. No kidding. But what the stories fail to discuss is what are the reasons for the lack of job growth. Could it be because of economic policy? Heck, yeah - our current economic policy relies on wage suppression, cheap imports, more debt, abandonment of manufacturing sector (part of wage suppression strategy) and asset price inflation. But why don't we hear about this in the traditional media?
One wonders how an economy that is 70% based on consumer spending can grow when consumers are paying down debt rather than spending.
(AP) -- Americans borrowed less for a 10th consecutive month in November with total credit and borrowing on credit cards falling by the largest amounts on records going back nearly seven decades.
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November's $17.5 billion drop in total credit was the biggest amount in dollars terms since records began in 1943. That represents an 8.5 percent fall from the October borrowing level. That was the biggest percentage drop since total credit declined 9 percent in May 1980.
The deeper and longer the recession goes on, the more questionable the numbers get.
Today the headline number was a loss of 85,000 jobs in December and a steady unemployment rate of 10%.
The market only expected to lose 3,000 jobs, so this was a negative report. However, like most unemployment reports, the Devil is in the details.
By far the largest change in the employment numbers was the number of people no longer in the workforce. Using the non-seasonally adjusted numbers 1,027,000 people stopped being counted as part of the labor force last month even though 321,000 of them say they still want a job.
Chris Bowers at Open Left had a post yesterday about a spokespersons response to this AIG-NY Fed email scandal. Chris rightfully points out the complete and utter disconnect between Wall Street-Washington DC mafia and what the rest of us are experiencing.
Remember how the nation's GDP was supposed to have grown by 2.2% in Q3 2009? Well then how come state tax revenue fell of a cliff in Q3 2009?
(Bloomberg) -- U.S. state tax collections fell the most in 46 years in the first three quarters of 2009 as the recession shrank revenue from sources including personal income, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government said.
Revenue dropped 13.3 percent, or $80 billion, compared with the same nine months of 2008, to $523 billion, the institute said. Collections in the third quarter alone sank 10.9 percent to about $162 billion, according to the report released today by the Albany-based body.
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The first three quarters of 2009 were the worst on record for states in terms of the decline in overall state tax collections, as well as the change in personal income and sales tax collections.
Isn't this strange? The Federal Reserve issues an interest rate risk advisory.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), in coordination with the other member agencies of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), released an advisory today reminding institutions of supervisory expectations for sound practices to manage interest rate risk (IRR). This advisory, adopted by each of the financial regulators, reiterates the importance of effective corporate governance, policies and procedures, risk measuring and monitoring systems, stress testing, and internal controls related to the IRR exposures of depository institutions. It also clarifies elements of existing guidance and describes some IRR management techniques used by effective risk managers.
Timothy Geithner did what was he was President of Federal Reserve Bank of New York? Well according to this Bloomberg report the NY Fed, led by Mr. Geithner:
told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.
AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008.
Make sure you are sitting down when you read this story and if you have high blood pressure that you take your medicine before reading it.
Nonfarm private employment decreased 84,000 from November to December 2009 on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the ADP National Employment Report®. The estimated change of employment from October to November was revised by 24,000, from a decline of 169,000 to a decline of 145,000.
The decline in December was the smallest since March of 2008. Employment losses are now rapidly diminishing and, if recent trends continue, private employment will begin rising within the next few months.
December’s ADP Report estimates nonfarm private employment in the service-providing sector increased by 12,000, the first increase since March of 2008. However, this employment growth
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