Tag: ek Politics

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.

…

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.

Krugman–

(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.

…

“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.

…

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.

…

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.

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.

Judge Strikes Down Wisconsin Law Curbing Unions

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE, The New York Times

Published: May 26, 2011

Ruling that Republicans in the State Senate had violated the state’s open meetings law, a judge in Wisconsin dealt a blow to them and to Gov. Scott Walker on Thursday by granting a permanent injunction striking down a new law curbing collective bargaining rights for many state and local employees.

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Republican senators asserted that they had enacted the collective bargaining law under emergency conditions, obviating the need to comply with the open meetings law. But Judge Sumi said she found no official evidence of emergency conditions or notice.

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She (Judge Sumi) said the evidence demonstrated a failure to obey even the two-hour notice allowed for good cause if a 24-hour notice was impossible or impractical.

Perhaps temporarily-

“There’s still a much larger separation-of-powers issue: whether one Madison judge can stand in the way of the other two democratically elected branches of government,” he (Republican Scott Fitzgerald, Senate Majority Leader) said in a statement. “The Supreme Court is going to have the ultimate ruling.”

Even in Connecticut $400,000 a year is wealthy.

Deficit May Snap 12-Year Tax Winning Streak for Top-Earning Americans

By Margaret Collins, Bloomberg News

May 25, 2011 1:57 PM ET

For a married couple with two children in Connecticut, which has the third-highest state and local tax burden in the U.S., the increase in rates Obama has proposed, along with levies from health-care reform, mean their tax bill may jump to $142,160 in 2013 from $126,410 this year, or 12.5 percent, according to an analysis Fleming ran for Bloomberg News.

That’s based on $485,000 in earnings, $2,000 in interest on investments, $3,000 in dividend income and $10,000 in long-term capital gains, and the following deductions: $20,000 in mortgage interest and charitable donations of $10,000, said Fleming, who works for PwC’s private company services tax group in Boston and Hartford, Connecticut.

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Under the tax-cut compromise passed in December, individuals generally may gift up to $5 million during their lifetime without paying tax. That threshold will revert to $1 million in 2013 unless Congress acts.

“Move that $5 million now to your children or grandchildren to lock that in if you’re afraid that will go away,” Beerman said. That way the appreciation on those assets is out of an estate, Beerman said.

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The biggest federal tax breaks for individuals include those for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, state and local taxes, incentives for retirement savings and the exclusion for employer-provided health care, said Clint Stretch, managing principal of tax policy at Deloitte Tax LLP in Washington. Each of them would be “politically pretty toxic” to eliminate or reduce, Stretch said.

Phasing out the mortgage interest deduction would increase federal revenue by $214.6 billion over the next 10 years, according to estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation in a March report by the CBO. Curtailing deductions for charitable giving would raise an estimated $219 billion over the next decade, the CBO study said.

Did I mention their $400,000 McMansion?

I have 6 Aces.

The world’s most reckless central bankers

By Colin Barr, Fortune Magazine

May 25, 2011: 6:32 AM ET

Euro area President Jean-Claude Juncker said last month he is willing to mislead the public if the price in terms of market stability is right.

“When it becomes serious, you have to lie,” Juncker said. Either that, or you have to get serious. No prizes for guessing which course Europe will choose.

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As Ireland’s post-bailout death spiral makes clear, austerity alone simply is not going to do the trick. Balancing a budget that is as out of whack as Greece’s “has been known to cause riots if done in a single year,” warns Paolo Manasse, an economics professor at the University of Bologna.

Yet officials at the ECB insist the alternative — inflicting losses on bondholders who until recently were all too happy to foot the bills for the big, fat Greek consumption party — is still too damaging to even contemplate. Taking a book out of the Tim Geithner playbook, ECB board member Juergen Stark last week called a possible restructuring a “catastrophe” because it would do bad things to the banks.

Meanwhile the real catastrophe plays out before our eyes. Every day that goes by without a restructuring that forces investors to share European taxpayers’ pain, the ultimate cleanup tab rises. You only have to survey the mess that is the U.S. housing market — or the wreck that once was the Irish economy — to see how that movie ends.

“You cannot really afford to keep buying time, because it is so expensive,” says Daniel Gros, who runs the Center for European Policy Studies think tank in Brussels. “Paying out 100% to existing bondholders is just too big a burden to bear in this situation.”

I often find it’s better to read him bottom to top, like stack language or a blog.

The ‘elite’ economists are arrogant morons-

If Greek banks collapse, that might well force Greece out of the euro area – and it’s all too easy to see how it could start financial dominoes falling across much of Europe. So what is the E.C.B. thinking?

My guess is that it’s just not willing to face up to the failure of its fantasies.

What are those fantasies?

European leaders offered emergency loans to nations in crisis, but only in exchange for promises to impose savage austerity programs, mainly consisting of huge spending cuts. Objections that these programs would be self-defeating – not only would they impose large direct pain, but they also would, by worsening the economic slump, reduce revenues – were waved away. Austerity would actually be expansionary, it was claimed, because it would improve confidence.

What are the results?

(T)he confidence fairy hasn’t shown up. Europe’s troubled debtor nations are, as we should have expected, suffering further economic decline thanks to those austerity programs, and confidence is plunging instead of rising. It’s now clear that Greece, Ireland and Portugal can’t and won’t repay their debts in full, although Spain might manage to tough it out.

Realistically, then, Europe needs to prepare for some kind of debt reduction, involving a combination of aid from stronger economies and “haircuts” imposed on private creditors, who will have to accept less than full repayment. Realism, however, appears to be in short supply.

Clinging to a thin reed of hope.

I often complain, with reason, about the state of economic discussion in the United States. And the irresponsibility of certain politicians – like those Republicans claiming that defaulting on U.S. debt would be no big deal – is scary.

But at least in America members of the pain caucus, those who claim that raising interest rates and slashing government spending in the face of mass unemployment will somehow make things better instead of worse, get some pushback from the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration.

“Realism, however, appears to be in short supply.”

State and local governments may cut 450,000 jobs in FY2012

Reuters

Mon May 23, 4:23 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Around 450,000 people who work for U.S. states, counties, cities, towns and villages could get pink slips in fiscal 2012, sharply up from the 300,000 positions shed this year, a report said on Monday.

Tibet celebrates 60th anniversary of peaceful liberation

Xinhua

2011-05-24

On May 23rd, 1951, representatives of both the central government and the former local government of Tibet signed a 17-Article Agreement in Beijing, marking the region’s peaceful liberation. It fundamentally expelled imperialist forces, safeguarded the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, cracked down on various secessionist forces and maintained national unification and ethnic unity.

China Focus: Tibet marks 60th anniversary of peaceful liberation

Xinhua

2011-05-23

“It’s a historic date for all the Tibetans,” said Qiangba Puncog, chairman of Tibet’s regional legislature, while addressing the crowd. “Tibet’s peaceful liberation laid a solid foundation for the subsequent democratic reform, building of socialism and the modernization drive.”

…

The number of serfs and slaves accounted for 95 percent of the Tibetan population in 1951. The lords, including the Dalai Lama’s relatives, owned all the land, forests, rivers and slaves. The lords could torture and even kill the serfs and slaves freely, though all were devout Buddhists.

…

“Rumors had it that the PLA were cannibals — some of them wore face masks that kept them from eating humans alive,” said Tseten Dorje, 76. Those frightening cannibals, he said, turned out to be friendly and even offered candies and biscuits to the children.

…

Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme himself wrote in an article entitled “Return to the warm embrace of the Motherland” published in 1981: “We held earnest and friendly negotiations on the basis of equality and consultation…and correctly resolved all complicated issues according to the policy of the Chinese Communist Party on resolving issues related to domestic ethnic groups and in line with the special conditions in Tibet.”

Witnessing "arrival of dawn" — memories of Tibet’s peaceful liberation in 1951

by Xinhua writers Yuan Ye, Bai Xu, Li Keyong

2011-05-24

In January 1950, merely three months after the establishment of the PRC, Mao Zedong and the Central Military Commission made the decision to liberate Tibet, a move resisted by Tibet’s aristocrats who intended to seek support from Britain and the United States.

From the very beginning the central government made clear that “every effort must be made to realize negotiations with the local Tibetan government” for a peaceful liberation, said Qie Jinwu, a former high-ranking officer at the 18th Corps.

But the envoys sent to Lhasa for peace talks were all turned away. One of them, highly respected living Buddha Gedar Tulku, was even poisoned to death in Qamdo.

“We’ve made every effort. Even the purpose of Qamdo Battle in October 1950 was to urge the Kasha to come to the negotiation table,” said Qie, now 91.

The battle in the eastern Tibet town, in which the PLA defeated the Tibetan regional government’s army, quickly shook the Tibetan rulers’ confidence to resist.

…

But after his exile to India in 1959, the Dalai Lama insisted the agreement had been signed under duress.

Phundre said he did not agree with the “duress” claim because both sides were allowed to debate, sometimes fiercely, for the final version of the agreement.

…

In September 1950, a small fight broke out between a detachment of the 18th Corps and a dozen Tibetan soldiers in Dorje Chosphel’s home village of Kamthok, Jomda County.

“Bullets flew over my head, yet I managed to pick up a cartridge case out of curiosity,” said the now 79-year-old man. The Tibetan soldiers were soon defeated and fled.

…

“The successful entry of the 18th Corps is the result of a complete and earnest implementation of the central government’s policies toward Tibet and accordingly, the sincere support from the people,” said Ngawang Tenzin.

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In the course of entering Tibet’s plateau region, known as “the world’ s roof,” more than 3,000 PLA soldiers died of high altitude sickness, hunger, or accidents while building roads.

…

Now even the most remote village in Tibet could be connected with the outside world with satellite TV and mobile phones.

Fukushima Update- Part 1

First of all let’s survey the damage.  Reactors 1, 2, and 3 suffered core meltdowns that breached the steel containment vessels leaving leaks that have been releasing highly radioactive cooling water AND molten nuclear fuel into the concrete basement below the vessel.

This is kind of a containment vessel too and while there are no current indications that nuclear reactions are continuing in the escaped fuel slag that would burn through this floor and into the uncontained earth foundation of the plants, they’re not waterproof and there is no doubt at all that millions of gallons of highly radioactive water and perhaps some fine particulates are leaking into the environment uncontrolled.

This has led to a re-evaluation of cooling and clean-up strategies that continues because there are no really good answers.  Several radiation peaks indicating continued nuclear reactions in the melted and puddled fuel mean you can’t stop pumping water and the leaking makes it difficult to maintain a sufficient amount in the containment vessel to moderate the reaction (that’s why you get the peaks when the level dips too low).

There’s a continued risk of hydrogen explosions too and one of the reasons I mention that is because the one bit of good news is that it does not look as if the large spent fuel pond at the non working (at the time of the accident) Reactor 4 is having uncontrolled reactions.

At the moment.

A lot of the damage was caused by hydrogen explosions which in turn was caused by malfunctioning vents of the same type currently in use at many U.S. Nuclear Power Plants.

Japan Nuclear Watch, May 19: Critical Safety Vent Failures Could Happen Here Too

By: Scarecrow, Firedog Lake

Thursday May 19, 2011 7:19 am

As we’ve explained in previous Japan Watch posts, that sequence led inexorably to near total meltdown of the fuel core inside the reactor vessels at Units 1-3. (All of Unit 4’s fuel was in the storage pool, which presents problems.) TEPCO now concedes these meltdowns were likely total.

…

Although earlier expert analyses and TEPCO announcements suggested only partial meltdowns and varying levels of water covering parts of each reactor’s core, it now appears the cores were completely uncovered for some period early on - within the first hours or days - resulting in near total meltdown at each unit. That means the melted fuel is now puddled at the bottom of each reactor vessel, though it is thought (because of low temperatures) to be covered with whatever cooling water can be injected into each reactor vessel.

Earlier this week, they realized Unit 1’s vessel has one or more holes, leaks, allowing water and possibly melted fuel to leak out of the vessel onto the containment structure floor. The reports vary, but they suggest that tons of water, which they’ve been injecting into the core in desperate efforts to keep the core covered, have now found its way into the reactor building’s basement. Water from other units has leaked from other places, including adjacent turbine buildings and some has reached the ocean.

…

As we know, there were hydrogen-related explosions in all four units – that is, they waited too long, or, as they’re now discovering, the venting systems failed.

…

The Times report very helpfully reminds readers that all of the US reactors with the same GE design have essentially the same (new! improved!) venting systems as the ones that failed at Fukushima Daiichi. GE didn’t comment on the story.

So the next time someone tells you that, unlike those careless Japanese utilities and not too diligent regulators, we have much safer systems and our safety measures are “safer,” just remember this story, because it ain’t so.

The Times report to which Scarecrow refers is this one-

In Japan Reactor Failings, Danger Signs for the U.S.

By HIROKO TABUCHI, KEITH BRADSHER and MATTHEW L. WALD, The New York Times

Published: May 17, 2011

TOKYO – Emergency vents that American officials have said would prevent devastating hydrogen explosions at nuclear plants in the United States were put to the test in Japan – and failed to work, according to experts and officials with the company that operates the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The failure of the vents calls into question the safety of similar nuclear power plants in the United States and Japan. After the venting failed at the Fukushima plant, the hydrogen gas fueled explosions that spewed radioactive materials into the atmosphere, reaching levels about 10 percent of estimated emissions at Chernobyl, according to Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency.

…

Tokyo Electric in recent days has acknowledged that damage at the plant was worse than previously thought, with fuel rods most likely melting completely at Reactors 1, 2 and 3 in the early hours of the crisis, raising the danger of more catastrophic releases of radioactive materials. The company also said new evidence seemed to confirm that at Reactor No. 1, the pressure vessel, the last layer of protection, was broken and leaking radioactive water.

The improved venting system at the Fukushima plant was first mandated for use in the United States in the late 1980s as part of a “safety enhancement program” for boiling-water reactors that used the Mark I containment system, which had been designed by General Electric in the 1960s. Between 1998 and 2001, Tokyo Electric followed suit at Fukushima Daiichi, where five of six reactors use the Mark I design.

Most the damage at Reactor 4 was cased by an explosion in the vents that it SHARED with Reactor 3.

But there is also this follow up report, also from the Times–

NRC Finds Many U.S. Nuclear Plants Ill-Prepared to Handle Simultaneous Threats

By PETER BEHR of ClimateWire, The New York Times

Published: May 19, 2011

Something under one-third of the 104 U.S. reactors were found to have some vulnerabilities to extreme emergencies, according to the NRC, which is preparing a summary of its post-Fukushima findings.

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At a time when the NRC and industry leaders are calling for a rigorous safety culture within the U.S. nuclear industry, the inspection findings raise questions about whether some plants were following the letter of requirements but not prepared for “unthinkable” events.

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The plant owners’ responses to beyond design basis threats are usually voluntary. “We keep saying, ‘Oh, these are beyond basis events therefore we don’t’ get involved.’ We are happy that the industry responded. We look at it once. That’s it. In the future it’s up to them. I am really bothered by that.”

This piece contains details safety issues at a number of U.S. Nuclear Plants including Indian Point (NYC) and Millstone (Connecticut).

Coming next- The Big TEPCO Bailout.

Oh… wait.

Spain’s Governing Party Suffers Heavy Losses

By RAPHAEL MINDER, The New York Times

Published: May 22, 2011

MADRID – The governing Socialist Party suffered heavy losses on Sunday in regional and municipal elections, even as tens of thousands of Spaniards calling themselves the “indignant” said they would pursue their protests to force an overhaul of the country’s political system.

Conceding defeat on Sunday night, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said that his Socialist Party had been understandably punished by voters for overseeing an economic crisis that had left Spain with a 21 percent jobless rate, more than twice the European average.

…

Mr. Zapatero, who has been in office since 2004, announced in April that he would not seek a third term, and the extent of the Socialists’ loss suggests that, even with a new leader, the party will struggle to hold on to power in the general election, expected next March.

Never mind.