Political Economy category archive
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Reaching for the skies:
The 1,023-foot Bank of America Plaza in Atlanta is scheduled to be auctioned Tuesday on the steps of the Fulton County Courthouse.
The picture would be complete if it were owned by Bank of America, but it isn’t. It’s owned by some Los Angeles outfit that bought it at just the wrong time.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Creamy foreclosure goodness for everyone:
More than 1,500 Bay Area homes with mortgages of $1 million or more were scheduled for auction last year, more than double the number in 2008, according to ForeclosureRadar, a foreclosure tracking service.
“The fact is, upper-end folks are starting to feel the crunch,” said Barbara Safran, president of the Contra Costa County Association of Realtors.
iStuffed 0
Asia Times reports on Apple’s off-shoring.
After addressing the notion that there are two economies, a “financial” economy (companies such as Goldman Sachs, which make money by playing with money) and a “real” economy (companies that make money by making stuff), they look at Apple and other tech companies:
A nugget:
Long before the banking collapse of 2008, such important US industries as machine tools, consumer electronics, auto parts, appliances, furniture, telecommunications equipment, and many others that had once dominated the global marketplace suffered their own economic collapse. Manufacturing employment dropped to 11.7 million in October 2009, a loss of 5.5 million or 32% of all manufacturing jobs since October 2000. The last time fewer than 12 million people worked in the manufacturing sector was in 1941. In October 2009, more people were officially unemployed (15.7 million) than were working in manufacturing.
This decimation of the manufacturing sector, which involved the elimination a massive number of well-paying manufacturing jobs, played a central role in the stagnation of income, wages, and purchasing power in the United States. In the three decades prior to the crash of 2008, Robert Reich notes, the wages of the typical American hardly increased, and actually dropped in the 2000s.
One result is that the number of persons who can afford the stuff that the “real” economy produces is decreasing apace.
Follow the link for the rest.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Slightly better:
(snip)
The four-week moving average for jobless claims, a less volatile measure than the weekly figures, fell to 375,750 last week from 377,750. It was the second-lowest average since 2008, after a 374,000 reading in the last week of December.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Foreclosures continue to work their magic.
(snip)
A key reason for the dismal 2011 sales is that builders must compete with foreclosures and short sales—when lenders accept less for a house than what is owed on the mortgage.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Still holding under 400k.
(snip)
The four-week moving average, a less volatile measure than the weekly figures, fell to 377,500 last week from 380,000.
Food Stamps by the Numbers 2
Facing South takes on the Newtonian lies with facts.* Here’s a few; follow the link for the rest (emphasis in the original):
Number of people who became SNAP beneficiaries under President George W. Bush: 14,700,000
Number of people added to the SNAP rolls in the 12 months before Obama took office in January 2009: 4,400,000
Percentage by which that exceeds the number added in 2007, when the economic downturn began: 300
________________
*Fact: noun. Concept irrelevant to Republican campaigns.
Down Perryscope 0
Daniel Ruth pens a brilliant, acerbic obituary for Rick Perry’s candidacy.
Here’s a bit.
Perry didn’t run a presidential campaign. He ran as the poster child for civics illiteracy in America, and by the time he quit the race Thursday he had made the George W. Bush years look like the Age of Enlightenment. This was too much even for the voters of South Carolina.
Read the whole thing, not just for the bits about Perry, but for what it says about the clown car that the nominating process has become.
The Fee Shiv of the Market 0
How regulations are killing the Mafia:
The Resilience of the Faithful, Conventional Wisdom Dept. 0
The touching faith in developer magic–the childlike belief that someone in a business suit waving a PowerPoint presentation will miraculously transform a city–never dies.
Witness this, which the resident curmudgeon at my local rag demolishes most convincingly.
I think the belief in developer magic is the belief of the desperate. The city fathers can’t make the Ford plant reopen; new plants don’t seem to get built except in far away places with strange sounding names.
Heck, they can’t even keep track of who’s on the payroll.
So they turn to burning money to developer gods to attract the conventions that will never come.
Once again, persons go to hotels to visit cities. They don’t go to cities to visit hotels.
Conventions go to Chicago, Las Vegas, San Franscisco, and other cities because the conventioneers want to go to cities like Chicago, Las Vegas, and San Francisco. Their convention centers have succeeded because persons want to visit the cities; the cities haven’t succeeded because persons want to visit the convention centers.
Virginia Beach is a nice town with a nice beach; visitors come for the beach, not for the hotels.
Norfolk is a nice little city (unlike Virginia Beach, Norfolk feels like a city) with a Naval base or two or three; visitors come to see their friends and family off to deployment.
As great a museum as the Chrysler is, the Smithsonian it’s not; as nice an urban neighborhood as is Norfolk’sHistoricGhent (I swear, the way it’s described by all the radio announcers it is one word), it is no Greenwich Village–it’s not even Fort Washington.
Nevertheless, desperate persons do desperate things, so I expect that City Fathers throughout the nation will continue to worship at PowerPoint rites and to burn money on the altar of developer magic, hoping to conjure up a replacement for that defunct industry or missing plant now decamped abroad.
Afterthought:
If developer magic is such a sure thing, why are the developers not able to cast their spells over private investors?
![[Two smiling people at a table. One is saying “I’m so happy we live in a world without slavery and imperialism.” There are boxes pointing to various objects around and on the people. They read:
COTTON: Picked in Uzbekistan where 2 million children as young as 7 are forced to pick cotton for 3p a kilo.
APPLES: Picked in California by Mexican migrant workers, not being paid minimum wage nor provided housing.
LAPTOP: Made in China by adults working 18 hours a day at 32p an hour. The laptop will end up back in China’s landfills, where children will dismantle it for its valuable metals including lead.
MOBILE PHONE: Gold, tantalum, tin, and tungsten mined in Congo in abysmal working conditions, causing disease and the regional conflict responsible for the deaths of over 5 million people and systematic rape of women.
ORANGE JUICE: Picked in Chile by women working 60 hours a week, below minimum wage.
FACE: Detoxed with Dead Sea salts sourced in occupied West Bank; land stolen by Israel from Palestinians, who are subject to continual and severe human rights violations.
COFFEE: Picked in Guatemala where entire families with children as young as 6 are forced to pick a 100-pound quota in order to get the minimum wage of less than £2/day
SHIRT: Sewn in India under forced labour conditions by people earning less than 25p an hour, for 16 hours a day, while being unable to send their children to school.
DIAMOND: Mined in Sierra Leone by children as young as 7, working in dangerous conditions for 10p an hour, six days a week.]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxp6bd9syN1qfu6vwo1_500.jpg)
Crawling with Cats 0
This is sad.
“Before the foreclosure crisis, we had 200, 250 in care,” Pierantozzi said. “Now we’re close to 400. … It’s not just a Delaware problem. It’s nationwide.”
When I was moving two years ago, Faithful Friends helped me find a home for one of my dogs. They do good.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
A turnaround. Of sorts.
The experts who could not predict this reckon it was the temporary Christmas help being let go.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Looking slightly better.
(snip)
The less-volatile four-week moving average (INJCJC4) decreased to 373,250, the lowest since June 2008, from 376,500.
The number of people continuing (INJCSP) to collect jobless benefits fell by 22,000 in the week ended Dec. 24 to 3.6 million. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of workers receiving extended benefits under federal programs.
