Author's posts
Jun 03 2011
Evening Edition
Evening Edition is an Open Thread
Now with 51 Top Stories.
From Yahoo News Top Stories |
1 Syrian opposition demands Assad’s resignation
AFP
Thu Jun 2, 1:14 pm ET
DAMASCUS (AFP) – Syrian opposition groups demanded President Bashar al-Assad’s immediate resignation Thursday, snubbing government concessions after a week in which activists said security forces killed more than 60 people.
Opposition groups called for the “immediate resignation of President Bashar al-Assad from all functions he occupies,” in a joint declaration at the end of a two-day meeting in Turkey’s Mediterranean resort of Antalya. They urged the holding of “parliamentary and presidential elections within a period that will not exceed one year” following Assad’s ouster and vowed to work “to bring down the regime.” |
Jun 02 2011
Evening Edition
Evening Edition is an Open Thread
From Yahoo News Top Stories |
1 Syrian opposition demands Assad’s resignation
AFP
Thu Jun 2, 1:14 pm ET
DAMASCUS (AFP) – Syrian opposition groups demanded President Bashar al-Assad’s immediate resignation Thursday, snubbing government concessions after a week in which activists said security forces killed more than 60 people.
Opposition groups called for the “immediate resignation of President Bashar al-Assad from all functions he occupies,” in a joint declaration at the end of a two-day meeting in Turkey’s Mediterranean resort of Antalya. They urged the holding of “parliamentary and presidential elections within a period that will not exceed one year” following Assad’s ouster and vowed to work “to bring down the regime.” |
Jun 02 2011
9% Unemployed? Try 11.5%!
More job seekers give up, reducing unemployment
By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer
19 mins ago
The percentage of adults in the labor force is a figure that economists call the participation rate. It is 64.2 percent, the smallest since 1984. And that’s become a mystery to economists. Normally after a recession, an improving economy lures job seekers back into the labor market. This time, many are staying on the sidelines.
Their decision not to seek work means the drop in unemployment from 9.8 percent in November to 9 percent in April isn’t as good as it looks.
If the 529,000 missing workers had been out scavenging for a job without success, the unemployment rate would have been 9.3 percent in April, not the reported rate of 9 percent. And if the participation rate were as high as it was when the recession began, 66 percent, in December 2007, the unemployment rate could have been as high as 11.5 percent.
Electoral Victory my ass!
Employment Data May Be the Key to the President’s Job
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM, The New York Times
Published: June 1, 2011
WASHINGTON – No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.
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More than 13.7 million Americans were unable to find work in April; most had been seeking jobs for months. Millions more have stopped trying. Their inability to earn money is a personal catastrophe; studies show that the chance of finding new work slips away with time. It is also a strain on their families, charities and public support programs.
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Ten presidents have stood for re-election since Mr. Roosevelt. In four instances the unemployment rate stood above 6 percent on Election Day. Three presidents lost: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush. But Ronald Reagan won, despite 7.2 percent unemployment in November 1984, because the rate was falling and voters decided he was fixing the problem.
How to Get Washington’s Attention
by Robert Reich
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
The stock market is dropping because corporate earnings are slowing. Corporate earnings are slowing because consumers are pulling back. Consumers are pulling back because they don’t have enough jobs or adequate wages.
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The economy needs 125,000 new jobs a month just to tread water, given that at least 125,000 people join the potential labor force every month. Simply put, if new hires are in the range of five digits, American consumers will not have enough purchasing power to buy what the private sector can produce.The leaders of the Street and big business may now have to wake up to a reality they’ve tried to avoid – that the central economic problem of our time isn’t the long-term budget deficit but the immediate deficit in aggregate demand.
Jun 02 2011
DocuDharma Digest
Regular Features-
- Late Night Karaoke by mishima
- Muse in the Morning by Robyn
- Cartnoon by ek hornbeck
Featured Essays for June 1, 2011-
- Health and Fitness News by TheMomCat
- In Memoriam: Freedom by TheMomCat
- Assad The Sadist w/video by Jack B Nimble
- CFPB Under Attack by Main Street Insider
- The Next Meltdown by ek hornbeck
- CNN Makes Its Debut by TheMomCat
Jun 02 2011
In Case You Missed It
Jun 02 2011
Evening Edition
Evening Edition is an Open Thread
Now with 57 Top Stories.
From Yahoo News Top Stories |
1 Blatter wins landslide vote, vows FIFA clean-up
by Rob Woollard, AFP
1 hr 44 mins ago
ZURICH (AFP) – FIFA president Sepp Blatter was re-elected head of world football on Wednesday, vowing to clean up the body’s tarnished image after months of explosive corruption allegations.
Blatter, 75, was given a free run at another four-year term following the withdrawal on Sunday of Asian football chief Mohamed bin Hammam, who was later suspended amid claims he tried to bribe voters with cash-filled envelopes. Delegates at FIFA’s 61st congress returned Blatter by a landslide of 186 votes out of 203 after an 11th-hour call for a postponement of the election by England’s Football Association ended in a crushing defeat. |
Jun 01 2011
The Next Meltdown
(T)he ECB keeps saying that restructuring is unthinkable. Yet austerity programs are not working; the prospect of a return to normal financing is receding rather than approaching.
If you ask me, the water level has now dropped so far that the fuel rods are exposed. We really are in meltdown territory.
How is that austerity thing working out for you?
Cuts Threatening UK Economic Recovery: OECD
By: Matthew West, Associate Web Producer, CNBC
Published: Thursday, 26 May 2011 | 8:41 AM ET
At the start of the year the OECD forecast growth of 1.7 percent, but in March it lowered its forecast to 1.5 percent. However on Wednesday it lowered its forecast again to 1.4 percent. It also lowered its growth forecast for 2012 from 2 percent to 1.8 percent.
It warned unemployment in the UK would rise from 7.9 percent to 8.1 percent of the population by the end of this year and would rise to 8.3 percent in 2012 as a result of the slow pace of growth.
UK Consumer Recovery to be Slowest in 180 Years
By: Daniel Pimlott, Financial Times
Published: Wednesday, 1 Jun 2011 | 2:19 AM ET
The UK economy is set to experience the slowest pick-up in consumer spending of any post-recession period since 1830, according to a Financial Times analysis of official forecasts.
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“The only sustainable recovery is the kind of recovery that rebalances away from consumer demand and towards external demand,” said one Treasury aide.It is unclear, however, whether trade and business investment will prove sufficient to offset weak consumer spending and public sector cuts – which together account for more than 85 percent of the economy.
Manufacturing Grows at Slowest Pace in Almost Two Years as New Orders Fall
By Svenja O’Donnell, Bloomberg News
Jun 1, 2011 5:55 AM ET
U.K. manufacturing grew at the slowest pace in almost two years in May as weak domestic demand led to a drop in production and new orders, a survey showed.
A gauge based on a survey by Markit Economics and the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply declined to 52.1, the lowest since September 2009, from a downwardly revised 54.4 in April, according to an e-mailed report in London today. Output and new orders fell for the first time since the middle of 2009, and producers of consumer goods and smaller manufacturers were hit hardest.
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“The fact that the output and new orders fell for the first time in two years does raise questions about where economic growth will come from,” Hetal Mehta, an economist at Daiwa Capital Markets Europe in London, said in an e-mailed note.
Manufacturing gloom is moving UK closer to double-dip recession
With firms’ order books on a downward trajectory, and mortgage demand going the same way, Britain’s recovery is in tatters
Larry Elliott, guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 1 June 2011 13.33 BST
The news on the UK economy just gets worse and worse. Wednesday’s dismal snapshot of manufacturing removes one of the last remaining reasons to be modestly upbeat about Britain’s recovery prospects.
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Research out today from Ipsos Mori showed that only 10% of Britons consider the state of the economy to be good, making the UK one of the most pessimistic nations in the world. The gloom seems entirely justified given the ferocious squeeze on real incomes and the severity of the government’s fiscal tightening, and it is resulting in a slowdown in domestic demand. The breakdown of Wednesday’s report showed that consumer goods are being hit harder than investment goods.Up until recently, the softness of home-based demand has been disguised by the buoyancy of exports, with firms able to use the 25% devaluation of sterling to boost overseas sales. But the decline in the European and Chinese PMIs shows that international demand is also slackening, leading to the third successive decline in export order books for UK firms.
Manufacturing accounts for one-eighth of UK output, so we will have to wait for the PMIs for construction and services over the next two days to get a more complete picture of the state of the nation. But the drop in mortgage demand from already depressed levels, revealed by Wednesday’s Bank of England figures, suggests that growth in the second quarter of 2011 is unlikely to match the 0.5% in the first. Indeed, the sharp fall in sterling after the manufacturing PMI was released is a sign that the financial markets believe the UK is moving dangerously close to a double-dip recession.
Oh ek, that’s just the Brits. We’re exceptional!
Home Prices in 20 U.S. Cities Decline to Eight-Year Low, Case-Shiller Says
By Bob Willis, Bloomberg News
May 31, 2011 10:45 AM ET
The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities fell 3.6 percent from March 2010, the biggest year-over-year decline since November 2009, the group said today in New York. At 138.16, the gauge was the weakest since March 2003.
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Nationally, home prices decreased 5.1 percent in the first quarter from the same time in 2010, and were down 4.2 percent from the previous three months, the biggest one-quarter decrease since the first three months of 2009. At 125.41, the index was the lowest since the second quarter of 2002.
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“This month’s report is marked by the confirmation of a double-dip in home prices across much of the nation,” David Blitzer, chairman of the Case-Shiller index committee at S&P, said in a statement.Further declines in home prices are likely to constrain the consumer spending that makes up 70 percent of the economy, as homeowners feel less wealthy and have little home equity to borrow against.
Why housing is in a depression
Commentary: New data says the double dip is even worse than the 1930s
Brett Arends, Market Watch
June 1, 2011, 12:01 a.m. EDT
Writes Capital Economics’ senior economist Paul Dales, “On the Case-Shiller measure, prices are now 33% below the 2006 peak and are back at a level last seen in the third quarter of 2002. This means that prices have now fallen by more than the 31% decline endured during the Great Depression.”
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Capital Economics says the latest double-dip in housing should come as no surprise. It’s very much following a pattern seen in the early 30s, when a brief recovery also petered out. The same has also happened in other big housing busts around the world, the think-tank says. It believes prices are going to fall even further before we hit rock bottom, maybe sometime next year.
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Capital Economics says, back in the Depression, it took 19 years for house prices to recover to their previous peaks.
Private Jobs Post Tepid Rise
By KATHLEEN MADIGAN, The Wall Street Journal
JUNE 1, 2011, 8:53 A.M. ET
Private businesses barely added jobs in May as large companies cut workers, according to a report released Wednesday.
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Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected ADP to report a much larger job gain of 190,000 last month. The April data were revised to show a rise of 177,000 versus 179,000 first reported.
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The ADP survey tallies only private-sector jobs, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ nonfarm payroll data, to be released Friday, include government workers. In recent months, state and local governments have been laying off workers to close budget gaps.As a result, economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expect total nonfarm payrolls increased by 183,000 in May, down from the 244,000 gain reported in April.
Current Obama economic policy deserves nothing but whispers, giggles, and contempt.
What Davies doesn’t say is that there’s a good reason Lucas won’t even consider the obvious explanation in terms of a shortfall in demand. More than 30 years ago, in a burst of radically premature triumphalism, Lucas and his colleagues declared the “Death of Keynesian economics”. As cited by Greg Mankiw (pdf), Lucas wrote that Keynesian theorizing was so passe that people would giggle and whisper if it came up in seminars.
Since then, as is obvious to everyone but the hermetic inhabitants of the freshwater (Chicago School of Economics) world, the attempt to explain business cycles in terms of rational expectations and frictionless markets has failed; and Keynesian economics continues to be very useful. But to concede that, to even consider the possibility that we’re in a demand-shortfall slump of the kind Keynes diagnosed, would be an incredible comedown for Lucas.
So he can’t and won’t consider the possibility.
Jun 01 2011
Le Tour Update
Evidently it’s ok for professional bike racers to dope as long as their name isn’t Lance Armstrong who has never, ever tested positive for a banned substance despite the testimony of embittered rivals and former team mates.
You see there is no doubt at all that Alberto Contador tested positive for clenbuterol, a steroid given to cattle to promote faster weight (muscle) gain and used in humans to treat asthma by increasing aerobic capacity and improving the flow of oxygen in the bloodstream.
And this was not just some random off season test. He actually tested positive during the Tour.
But because he’s not Lance Armstrong the Court of Arbitration for Sport has decided to delay his hearing until safely after this year’s Tour (July 2nd to 24th) so he can defend the title he should be stripped of.
Bad beef my ass.
Jun 01 2011
More Lies
This is why I no longer watch Talking Head Sundays. Krugman opines–
(E)ven I am surprised by this. When the gaping holes in the Ryan plan were revealed, I expected the Very Serious People to move on and find a new GOP daddy to idolize. Instead, however, they’ve mostly dug in, condemning anyone who points out that the plan is a piece of junk as being somehow out of bounds.
Steve Benen (whom Krugman hat tips) says–
It’s exasperating, but it’s worth reemphasizing what too many establishment types simply refuse to understand: Democrats are telling the truth. Indeed, Dems are doing what the media is reluctant to do: offering an accurate assessment of the Republican plan for Medicare. If voters find the GOP proposal frightening, the problem is with the plan, not with Democrats’ rhetoric.
I’m at a loss to understand what, exactly, Ruth Marcus, David Brooks, and their cohorts would have Dems do. Congressional Republicans have a plan to end Medicare and replace it with a privatized voucher scheme. The proposal would not only help rewrite the social contract, it would also shift crushing costs onto the backs of seniors, freeing up money for tax breaks for the wealthy. The plan is needlessly cruel, and any serious evaluation of the GOP’s arithmetic shows that the policy is a fraud.
Which part of this description is false? None of it, but apparently, Democrats just aren’t supposed to mention any of this.
Jun 01 2011
DocuDharma Digest
Regular Features-
- Late Night Karaoke by mishima
- Muse in the Morning by Robyn
- Six In The Morning by mishima
- Cartnoon by ek hornbeck
Featured Essays for May 31, 2011-
- There’s No Place Like Home by ek hornbeck
- Memorial Day Parade by ek hornbeck
- Protecting The Constitution & Our Internet Rights by TheMomCat
- Memorial Day by Lasthorseman
- Le Tour Update by ek hornbeck
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