Political Economy category archive
Budget Hawks Hucksters
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What happens when the evul fedrul guvmint tries to save some money and do something sensible and business-like?
Budget hawks turn into attacking budget doves.
A full dose of depression awaits at the link.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
For all practical purposes, no change. Still hovering pretty much where it’s been for a long, long time:
(snip)
The four-week moving average, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figures, dropped to 345,750 last week from 348,500.
The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits was little changed at 2.97 million in the week ended June 15.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
The only constant is that Bloomberg’s “experts” were off the mark.
Again.
(snip)
The four-week moving average, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figures, climbed to 348,250 last week from 345,750.
(snip)
The number of job seekers who have exhausted their traditional benefits and now are collecting emergency and extended aid fell by about 19,550 to 1.68 million in the week ended June 1.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
I defy anyone who claims to see a trend in these numbers to prove it.
(snip)
The four-week moving average, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figures, rose to 352,500 last week from 348,000.
(snip)
The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits fell by 52,000 to 2.95 million in the week ended May 25. The continuing claims figure doesn’t include the number of Americans receiving extended benefits under federal programs.
Driving while Brown 0
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, and right back atcha.
Sequestrian Dressage 0
Clay Bennett:
North Carolina: Life in the Streets 2
The streets are about to get more populated, thanks to the rampant wingnuttery in Raleigh.
The state unemployment compensation has been “overhauled,” hauled right over the backs of the unemployed:
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates 170,000 people in North Carolina could ultimately lose extended federal benefits for which they otherwise would have qualified.
North Carolina’s unemployment rate in April was 8.9 percent, the fifth-highest in the U.S. In Mecklenburg County, with an 8.5 percent unemployment rate, the state said 42,575 people were unemployed in April. That figure doesn’t include people who’ve stopped looking for work.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Still not good.
(snip)
The four-week moving average of claims, a less-volatile measure, climbed to 347,250 from 340,500.
The number of people continuing to collect jobless benefits rose by 63,000 to 2.99 million in the week ended May 18. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of workers receiving extended benefits under federal programs.
Those who’ve used up their traditional benefits and are now collecting emergency and extended payments decreased by about 50,000 to 1.73 million in the week ended May 11.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 1
Heidi Moore distrusts the numbers.
She suspects that reports of recovery are overblown and that the “housing recovery” isn’t so much a “recovery” as the next stage of foreclosure frenzy.
In this case, they may be creating the boom themselves. House-flipping in California has reached levels not seen since 2005, according to the Wall Street Journal. This rise in price is, by all accounts, artificial. Housing, like all products, responds to the laws of supply and demand. When supply decreases – when there are fewer homes on the market – then prices will rise. This is what is happening now.
And I’m still waiting for sequestrian dressage to start affecting the numbers, because it will.
Sequestrian Dressage 0
In The Guardian, Mattea Kramer and Jo Comerford look back from ten years later.
It ain’t a pretty sight.
It’s 2023 – this is America a decade years after the federal budget cuts known as sequestration. They went on for a decade, making no exception for effective programs that were already underfunded, like job training and infrastructure repairs. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Sequestrian Dressage 0
Der Spiegel points out that, come summer, the effects of Sequestration will start to have noticeable effects and looks at the absurdity of the whole darn thing. A nugget:
That, of course, was nonsense.
More sense about nonsense at the link.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
A little better:
(snip)
Economists’ estimates in the Bloomberg survey ranged from 338,000 to 360,000. The Labor Department revised the previous week’s figure to 363,000 from an initially reported 360,000.
The four-week moving average, a less volatile measure than the weekly figures, dropped to 339,500 last week from 340,000.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Not very good.
(snip)
The four-week moving average, a less volatile measure than the weekly figures, rose to 339,250 last week from 338,000.
A Tale of Two Depressions 2
Donald Kaul points out, one more time, that the past is not even past, in a particularly depressing context:
Conservative leaders, then as now, were absolutely clueless as to what regular people were going through. There’s a reason they call what we’ve just experienced the “Great Recession” and the 1930s economy the “Great Depression.” The Depression was much more devastating, with 13-15 million people unemployed, leaving as many as 34 million men, women, and children with no income at all.
Their safety net was often a garbage heap in which they foraged for food, or worse, begged for it. Yet President Herbert Hoover actually said: “Nobody is actually starving. The hobos, for example, are better fed than they have ever been.”
And when it was suggested that the Du Pont family’s corporation sponsor a Sunday afternoon program during the Depression, a member of the clan rejected the idea on grounds that “at three o’clock on Sunday afternoons, everybody is playing polo.”
Does that sound like Mitt Romney talking to his country club friends or what?
Read the rest.
The Laffable Curve Curse
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The evidence is that Reagonics sounds nice, but doesn’t work.
Tim Donovan wonders why, despite the evidence Republicans are considered to be responsible fiscals, despite the evidence of Reaganomics in practice.
A snippet; read the rest.
Afterthought:
Reagonics sounds nice because every successful con has a smooth line of patter.
“Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go” 0
Again, no mention of those who are “furloughed” for the sequestrian dressage.
(snip)
The four-week moving average of claims, a less-volatile measure, dropped to 336,750, the lowest level since November 2007. The worst recession since the Great Depression began the following month and ended in June 2009.
The number of people continuing to collect jobless benefits fell by 27,000 to 3.01 million in the week ended April 27. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of workers receiving extended benefits under federal programs.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
(snip)
Estimates for first-time claims ranged from 335,000 to 365,000 in the Bloomberg survey of 48 economists. The Labor Department revised the previous week’s figure up to 342,000, from an initially reported 339,000.
As near as I can tell, workers doing the sequestrian dressage, who are “furloughed” without pay for a day or two a pay period, are not considered unemployed.
Just screwed.
The Galt and the Lamers 0
At MarketWatch, Paul B. Farrell discusses the difference between a “market economy” and a “market society” and gloomily concludes that we are moving towards the latter:
But unfortunately, market capitalism “has exacted a heavy price … drained public discourse of moral and civic energy.”
The good professor is a great teacher, with only one glaring flaw in his logic: he’s too idealistic, too quixotic. You don’t have to be a fatalist to know that without a total economic collapse, market capitalists — including 1,426 billionaires, Wall Street bankers, hedgers, lobbyists and every other special interest getting rich off the new market society — will never voluntarily surrender their control over the American political system.
(Link fixed.)
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
A little better, but still in the same ballpark:
(snip)
The four-week moving average of claims, a less-volatile measure, fell to 357,500 from 362,000.
The number of people continuing to collect jobless benefits fell by 93,000 to 3 million in the week ended April 13, the lowest since May 2008. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of workers receiving extended benefits under federal programs.