Political Economy category archive

I said it then and I say it now.

Republicanism equates wealth with virtue; therefore, the gaining of wealth by any means possible is the acquisition of virtue; and that virtue in turn magically washes clean sins committed in acquiring the wealth that begot the virtue.

It’s a touching “Heads I win tails you lose” canon: Their rewards on Earth ensure their rewards in Heaven. Q. E. D.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., points out that it is to demonize those who struggle.

Romney’s remarks, then, are of a piece with a narrative — poverty as character defect — favored by many who know exactly jack about the reality of poverty, but who have discovered that demonizing the faceless poor, giving us someone new to resent and blame, is good politics.

They wrap their attacks in rags of righteousness and pretensions of pragmatism, but there is something viscerally wrong, morally shrunken, in a nation where the most fortunate are encouraged to treat the least fortunate as some enemy race.

So the big story here is not about what damage Romney did to his campaign. Yes, the fact that he used condemnation of the poor as a lever of political advantage shames him.

This deserves to be in Bartlett’s.

Pass it on.

Nice seven per cent solution–whoops, my fault, Sherlock drop, but still in the same general more that 350k range:

Applications for jobless benefits decreased 26,000 to 359,000 in the week ended Sept. 22, the lowest since July, Labor Department figures showed today. Economists forecast 375,000 claims, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey. There was nothing unusual in last week’s data, a Labor Department spokesman said as the figures were released to the press.

(snip)

The four-week moving average for jobless claims, a less- volatile measure, dropped to 374,000 from 378,500.

The number of people continuing to collect jobless benefits fell by 4,000 to 3.27 million in the week ended Sept. 15. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of workers receiving extended benefits under federal programs.

In other news, Bloomberg’s experts were farther off the mark than usual.

It’s the job creators.

They ain’t.

Jobless claims decreased by 3,000 in the week ended Sept. 15 to 382,000, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 49 economists surveyed by Bloomberg projected 375,000.

(snip)

“The problems are more on the hiring side than the layoffs side,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania . . . .

A member of the 47%, those so derided by Mitt the Flip(pant), speaks:

So here I am, an elderly shutin on a fixed income, eking out a drab existence on the dole — government “handouts” in the form of Social Security and Medicare, my VA Disability pension and a state government retirement pension — so I guess that I’m in that 47%, too. Pretty much ALL of my income is from “the gubmint”. And all of those income sources are apparently “entitlements” that I didn’t earn and that I don’t deserve and that I’m foolishly squandering on my riotous lifestyle.

Read the rest. I had trouble deciding which bit to excerpt.

Much agony and many strategies to victimize public (and private) employees are expended on the cost of pensions.

At the Sacramento Bee, David Crane reminds us of who’s to blame–the politicians (and, in private firms, executives) whose words were most decidedly not their bond:

Anyone who reads the papers knows that cities and states are being hit hard by fast-rising pension and retirement health care costs for public employees. Cities such as Stockton and San Bernardino have even declared bankruptcy.

But few of those papers make clear that this crisis was not caused by the public employees on the receiving end of those benefits. Instead, the crisis was caused by politicians and pension fund boards that made retirement promises without setting aside sufficient funding to meet those promises.

(snip)

Neither public employees nor their unions forced governments to underfund promises. It was Stockton’s (California–ed.) politicians who didn’t set aside money to meet promises for post- retirement health care costs, and it was the pension fund board overseeing Stockton’s pension that forecast what Warren Buffett refers to as “Alice-in-Wonderland” investment returns.

And the victims get to be punished, forced to live on pittances and in penury, because they had the absolute, unmitigated gall to live to retirement age.

They have their own definition of “middle.”

“No one can say my plan is going to raise taxes on middle-income people, because principle number one is (to) keep the burden down on middle-income taxpayers,” Romney told host George Stephanopoulos.

“Is $100,000 middle income?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“No, middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less,” Romney responded.

His campaign later clarified that Romney was referencing household income, not individual income.

The Census Bureau reported this week that the median household income — the midpoint for the nation — is just over $50,000.

In Romney world, “middle class” means that you can only afford a car escalator.

Process servers are nearing full employment in Florida (emphasis added).

Foreclosures continue to bruise Tampa Bay’s limping housing market, with foreclosure starts, auctions and repossessions last month growing 25 percent over August 2011.

Tampa Bay saw more than 2,000 foreclosure starts, nearly 300 more than the previous August, new data from RealtyTrac shows. Nearly 1,000 Tampa Bay homes were repossessed, twice as many as August 2011.

(snip)

But real-estate agents see the continued foreclosures as a stabilizing force for the housing market, clearing the logjam of distressed homes and opening them up to sale.

It’s certainly a stabilizing force for real estate agent commissions.

Up a bit, but basically in the same range. Note that two-thirds of the rise was attributed to Hurricane Isaac (emphasis added):

Jobless claims increased 15,000 in the week ended Sept. 8, the biggest gain in almost two months, to 382,000, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 50 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 370,000 claims. Tropical Storm Isaac resulted in about 9,000 applications for benefits, the agency said.

(snip)

The four-week moving average, a less volatile measure than the weekly figures, climbed to 375,000 last week, the highest in almost two months, from 371,750.

In the Roanoke Times, Asim Esen explains how the attempt of Republicans to blame President Obama for not somehow magically creating jobs is so much hooey.

Here’s one of his four arguments, along with a question:

Finally, the only way the president can create jobs is to increase the number of nonmilitary federal employees. Would the Republicans in Congress vote for it? Republicans and their parrots complain about the infamous big government; government is the problem, not the solution; government cannot do anything right and other blanket statements.

If government is such an evil, why do they run for office? Do they know there are now fewer nonmilitary federal employees under Obama than were under President Reagan although the U.S. population has grown about 35 percent in the past 30 years?

Flip this flop:

Metro Atlanta’s depressed home prices are drawing the interest of a new type of buyer – companies that buy houses in volume.

Such companies have snapped up foreclosures and short sales in the last few months from Gwinnett to Clayton counties, as well homes listed conventionally by realtors. And they say they plan to spend hundreds of millions on homes in the next two years.

Some of the purchasers expect that a strong long-term rental market; they are renting out the properties, often to the persons from whom they bought them.

Others are carrion-eaters, letting houses sit, empty and forlorn, waiting for the market to go up.

A little better. Reuters:

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 365,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

It was the first drop in new claims since the week that ended August 4 and the lowest level since then as well.

(snip)

However, the four-week moving average for new claims, a better measure of labor market trends, edged up to 371,250.

Aside, He Grumped:

I also looked at the Bloomberg story and could not understand what they were trying to say. The item started with (emphasis added):

Jobless claims decreased by 12,000 to 365,000 in the week ended Sept. 1, the fewest in a month, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. The median estimate of 48 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a drop to 370,000.

The fewest what in a month since when?

Bloomberg could help the situation by dropping a couple of its “experts,” all of whom likely have day jobs, and hiring a copy editor or two.

It’s not who you think.

It’s Republicans and their corporate masters, who believe that they are entitled to take away what little old folks have. (By the way, the link points to the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch dot com, hardly a fount of radical thinking.)

The Rude Truth, as told by Delaware Liberal.

For all practical purposes, status quo ante.

Jobless claims were little changed at 374,000 in the week ended Aug. 25, matching the upwardly revised figure from the prior week, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. The median forecast of 50 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for 370,000. The four-week moving average, a less volatile measure, climbed to a six-week high.

(snip)

Today’s report showed the number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits declined by 5,000 in the week ended Aug. 18 to 3.32 million.

The continuing claims figure does not include the number of Americans receiving extended benefits under federal programs.

Bloomberg’s “experts” were closer than usual to hitting their number.

Which reminds me of the classic definition of an “expert”:

• “X” is the mathematical symbol for an unknown quantity.
• A “spurt” is a drip under pressure.
• Thus an expert is an unknown drip under pressure.

Der Spiegel analyzes the fight in Congress of serving fat pills fried potatoes in various forms to school children and finds unexpected metaphors. A nugget:

Since the eruption of the financial crisis, paranoia has taken hold in American politics. Americans’ faith in institutions has been shaken. The government has become the adversary of the citizens, and the elites the enemies of ordinary people. Rallying cries characterize both left-wing and right-wing protest movements, from the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street. Those who do not shout these slogans, at least in part, find it difficult to be heard at all.

Politicians, such as former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, exploit the divisions. They invoke the US Constitution and America’s long-outdated clichés, such as the values of small-town life and the days when a handshake was still considered a word of honor.

The world has become more complicated and complex, but the political debate in America has become more simplistic — wilfully ignorant of climate change, inattentive to the new requirements of an immigrant society, wary of science and even unknowledgeable about the insights of food science.

Change versus idyll: That’s the new dichotomy of the political discourse, which consists of only two incompatible categories: American and un-American. When Michelle Obama recommended that Americans eat more vegetables and fewer sweets, and perhaps occasionally skip dessert, Sarah Palin acted as if the First Lady had declared war on freedom. Now Michelle Obama was trying to deprive Americans of their desserts, Palin claimed, and her fellow citizens in many parts of the country agreed.

I was setting up a computer to dual boot Windows 7 and Linux Mint and forgot that it was Thursday.

No significant change, but it can’t make Republicans, who want President Obama to fail, happy (emphasis added):

The number of people seeking first-time unemployment benefits rose a slight 4,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 372,000, evidence that the job market’s recovery remains modest and uneven.

The Labor Department said Thursday that the four-week average, a less volatile measure, increased 3,750 to 368,000.

Applications are a measure of the pace of layoffs. When they fall consistently below 375,000, it generally suggests hiring is strong enough to lower the unemployment rate.

Robert Reich explains Paul Ryan’s blueprint for destroying the middle class.

Via C&L.