Have you seen the economic recovery? I haven’t either. But it is bound to be around here somewhere, because the National Bureau of Economic Research spotted it in June 2009, four and one-half years ago.
Remember how outsourcing was shoved down the throats of the American people by claiming it would save money and was more efficient? Guess what, not only is costing more, the services now provided are dismal failures. A new report, Out of Control describes the abysmal state and consequences of outsourcing public services.
Happy New Year from the Economic Populist! Let's hope 2014 is better economically for most of us as 2013 was another real dog for most of America. Wall Street was on fire and the investor class made out like bandits while real robust job growth still has not materialized. 2013 is the year the middle class was completely ignored. Still broke, still jobless or working with low wages and eroding worker's rights, America's middle class was pummeled yet again.
Safeway closed a whopping 72 Dominick's grocery stores resulting in 6,000 jobs lost. They acquired Dominck's grocery chain, engaged a hedge fund, hyped up the stock price and then promptly shuttered the Illinois neighborhood grocery. The excuse is these Dominick's grocery stores serve low profit margin geographical locations. In other words, Safeway doesn't want to offer grocery access to poor people.
The never ending lack of privacy game has a new chapter, but this post isn't the end of the story. The NSA spygame is running through the courts. The latest ruling gives the NSA carte blanche by proclaiming the massive metadata collection is not in violation of the law.
Happy Holidays from The Economic Populist! Put up your feet and grab the egg nog for it's time to watch some Christmas parodies. Santa's list these days is clearly corrupted by the word processor. The nice receive lumps of coal while the naughty get new yachts. The ode to joy is hard to hear. May our holiday funnies round up bring you joy and cheer as sarcasm rings the bell of truth. Merry Christmas!
It's Official. CBS 60 Minutes has turned into a corporate propaganda show from the long-time original investigative reporting 60 Minutes used to be. Many point to the phony story on the NSA or Benghazi as the turning point for the long time news show but we think there are other stories just as outrageous.
Wall Street was all aghast that their quantitative easing was about to disappear. The FOMC decided to taper in January and now stocks soar. Why? Because the taper is minimal and the FOMC announced the federal funds rate will remain an effective zero for much longer than previously estimated.
The latest budget deal does not extend unemployment benefits for some of the long term unemployed. This means without some Congressional action, unemployment benefits will only be available for 26 weeks in 2014. The current average time to be officially unemployed is 37.2 weeks, far exceeding the time one can receive regular unemployment insurance benefits in most states.
The payroll jobs report for November from the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the US economy created 203,000 jobs in November. As it takes about 130,000 new jobs each month to keep up with population growth, if the payroll report is correct, then most of the new jobs would have been used up keeping the unemployment rate constant for the growth in the population of working age persons, and about 70,000 of the jobs would have slightly reduced the rate of unemployment.
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