Political Economy category archive

Jobless claims rose by 2,000 to 414,000 in the week ended Sept. 3, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News projected a drop in claims to 405,000, according to the median forecast. The number of people on unemployment benefit rolls and those receiving extended payments fell.

Clearly more firefighters must be laid off to correct this.

Hanlon:

Business owners want as few employees as possible. This is why they automate, outsource, and downsize whenever possible. From a business perspective, an employee is an expense, period.

Read the rest at the link.

Steve Chapman, who normally seems sane and reasonable, manages to convince himself that a merger of Southwestern Bell Cingular AT&T and T-Mobile, which would reduce the number of major cell phone carries to two and a half (with Sprint being the half) would increase competition in the cell phone industry.

Next, he will quantify the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin.

Also, pigs, wings.

On this Labor Day, remember that Republicans want to hand the fruits of your labor over to Wall Street.

Thom Hartmann explains:

In a follow-up to this:

Last week, Bank of America apologized for mistakenly foreclosing on an elderly couple because they had made their mortgage payment too early. But that apology didn’t include reimbursing them $1,800 in legal fees or waiving late fees caused by the bank’s blunder.

After supporters of James and Sharon Bullington cried foul, the country’s biggest lender decided today to reimburse the legal fees and waive all late fees connected to its error.

McClatchy discusses the apparent trend of blaming unemployed persons for, apparently, laying themselves off.

One manifestation of this is complaining that persons with no income pay no income taxes.

A nugget:

“There are statements about UI (unemployment insurance–ed.) recipients that are similar to statements about ‘welfare queens,’ and that shows a certain lack of sympathy with the situation of the unemployed,” said Wayne Vroman, an economist at the Urban Institute who specializes in unemployment insurance. “Any human endeavor has people who game the system, but to attribute this as a massive kind of rip-off by the unemployed doesn’t really match reality.”

The reality is that the economy isn’t creating jobs fast enough to re-employ the 8 million-plus who lost jobs in the Great Recession of 2007-09.

“People blame the chronically unemployed when, in fact, they’re the victim of a much larger economic calamity that’s beyond their control,” said Harold Pollack, a professor at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration.

Still high:

Jobless claims fell by 12,000 to 409,000 in the week ended Aug. 27, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News projected a drop to 410,000, according to the median forecast. The figure remains higher than it was three weeks earlier, before the labor dispute at Verizon pushed the numbers up.

Laying off more highway workers will no doubt fix this.

From the write-up:

America’s wealthiest could learn a thing or two from a nation across the pond. In my Daily Take – I’ll tell you why the wealthiest in France DIDN’T need a memo from Warren Buffett to do the right thing for their country!

Holding steady except for that short Verizon strike:

Jobless claims climbed by 5,000 to 417,000 in the week ended Aug. 20, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News projected a drop in claims to 405,000, according to the median forecast. At least 8,500 applications were filed by workers at Verizon last week, compared with 12,500 the prior week, the agency said.

The report signals that excluding the communications dispute, companies are slowing the pace of firings, which may ease concern that consumers will cut back on spending. At the same time, an unemployment rate at 9.1 percent is a reminder that a sustained labor-market rebound has yet to develop two years into the economic recovery.

The Republican campaign to destroy the economy for political gain continues.

Thom Hartmann discusses Foxy falsities on economics.

Indicators are up.

The number of Americans at risk of foreclosure is rising, reflecting the U.S. economy’s continued struggles.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said Monday that 8.44 percent of homeowners missed at least one mortgage payment in the April-June quarter. That figure, which is adjusted for seasonal factors, rose 0.12 percentage point from the January-March period.

No, not the horse race.

It seems to me that the incidence of overt racist conduct and comments has increased in the past two years; I don’t have the resources to do a valid study, but I do believe that a cursory reading of the news during that period supports my impression.

The election of President Obama, rather than signaling an America transcending racism, has shown how deeply invested are some folks in perpetuating and propagating bigotry.

Chancey de Vega explores this in a long article. I’ve excerpted his descriptions of two of the concepts he uses in his analysis, because I think many white folks just don’t want to look at the evidence.

If they don’t see white sheets and burning crosses, they don’t see racism.

There are two concepts that students of race and politics find particularly useful as they work through how race and power intersect in American life. The more recent of the two is Joe Feagin’s “white racial frame.” This is really a foundational concept for understanding the many ways that whiteness is legitimated, and in turn quite literally frames how White America understands social reality and the very idea of what “normal” is.

The second concept is symbolic racism. Because racism has evolved over time from the classic slavery, hood and sheets type known as dominative racism, to the more contemporary “colorblind” variety, the language and theory has had to shift as well. These types of White racism often overlap, and one does not necessarily preclude the other. I would suggest that as we unpack the hostility of the White Right and the Tea Party GOP to President Obama, symbolic racism, and its auxiliary white racial resentment, remain the most revealing and useful frameworks for making sense of the foolishness we are witnessing.

Racism is much more than white sheets and burning crosses.

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Via BartBlog.

At Asia Times, Chris Hellman considers U. S. Defense spending and concludes the US needs a 12-step program. Here’s a snippet:

All of this brings another simple, but seldom-asked question to mind: are we safer?

Regardless of what figures you choose to use, one thing is certain: we’re talking about trillions and trillions of dollars. And given the debate raging in Washington this summer about how to rein in trillion-dollar deficits and a spiraling debt, it’s surprising that no one thinks to ask just how much safety bang for its buck the US is getting from those trillions.

Of course, it’s not an easy question to answer, but there are some troubling facts out there that should give one pause. Let’s start with government accounting, which, like military music, is something of an oxymoron. Despite decades of complaints from Capitol Hill and various congressional attempts to force changes via legislation, the Department of Defense still cannot pass an audit. Believe it or not, it never has.

Back over 400k:

Jobless claims climbed by 9,000 to 408,000 in the week ended Aug. 13, the highest in a month, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News projected a rise in claims to 400,000, according to the median forecast. The number of people on unemployment benefit rolls rose, while those receiving extended payments fell.

Look for those no longer receiving extended benefits in your friendly local tent city.

Laying off more police officers will no doubt fix this.

Via Jay Bookman.

Through state media, China is taking advantage of the US financial situation to suggest that US military spending is too high. A snippet from the Asia Times report:

The message was point-blank – China should not be expected to finance the US military and Beijing has the right to exert greater leverage over the Pentagon’s humungous budgetary allocations (currently at $649 billion per annum). The new assertiveness on the part of China over US military spending is more radical that any spending-cuts proposal from the deficit-phobic Republican Party, as the former takes a stab at the core of American hard power and might in the world.

I tend to agree that US military spending is out of control, though I am certain my path to that conclusion is much different from China’s. As I heard today, nine days worth of military spending in Afghanistan would fill the budget hole at the US Post Office.*

I suspect China is primarily concerned with protecting their investments in US T-Bills.

Aside:

The Republican Party is not “deficit-phobic.” It is deficit prone, as a casual acquaintance with its track record shows. Its current “deficit-phobia” is a tactic, more three-card monte.

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*Next week, the show link will move from “Current Show” to the Show Archives. It’s kind of a screwy way to do it, but that’s how their website works.