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Where 140 characters (@michaeljung) are not enough
and a blog post (michaeljung.wordpress.com) would be a waste.

http://www.michaeljung.co.uk

Failure of pension/retirement systems and social security system. #policy-mistake (via) For the first time on record, senior citizens outnumber teens in the labor force as the Great Recession accentuates trends that make it harder for young people to find jobs and more likely for older workers to delay retirement. This historic crossover is revealed in data compiled by Bloomberg News showing that 6.6 million people over age 65 worked or looked for work in the first six months of the year, versus 5.9 million 16- to 19-year-olds. That analysis is based on federal records that started in 1948 when there were 4.4 million teens in the labor force compared with 2.9 million people over age 65. Experts say that over the past decade older workers have tended to hang on to their paychecks longer, owing to sagging stock portfolios and falling home prices. This shift toward an aging workforce has been disastrous for 16- to 19-year-olds, who face unemployment rates of 25 percent nationwide and 34 percent in California, similar to the Great Depression. “It’s killing kids,” said Andrew Sum, director of the center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. “We’re tossing our future into the trash bin.”

Failure of pension/retirement systems and social security system. #policy-mistake (via)

For the first time on record, senior citizens outnumber teens in the labor force as the Great Recession accentuates trends that make it harder for young people to find jobs and more likely for older workers to delay retirement. This historic crossover is revealed in data compiled by Bloomberg News showing that 6.6 million people over age 65 worked or looked for work in the first six months of the year, versus 5.9 million 16- to 19-year-olds. That analysis is based on federal records that started in 1948 when there were 4.4 million teens in the labor force compared with 2.9 million people over age 65. Experts say that over the past decade older workers have tended to hang on to their paychecks longer, owing to sagging stock portfolios and falling home prices. This shift toward an aging workforce has been disastrous for 16- to 19-year-olds, who face unemployment rates of 25 percent nationwide and 34 percent in California, similar to the Great Depression. “It’s killing kids,” said Andrew Sum, director of the center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. “We’re tossing our future into the trash bin.”

Young and already defeated or discouraged. Unemployed (age 18-29). Burned for years to come. (via NYT)

Young and already defeated or discouraged. Unemployed (age 18-29). Burned for years to come. (via NYT)

Poem about the state of the America. (Marketplace Minute for 7/2 (via))

TEXT OF POEM

We were gonna pay for financial reform
with a tax on the banks, who created the storm.
Instead, the money will come from — I swear —
the bailout fund. ‘Cause that seems fair.

The recovery is tiring.
Nobody’s hiring.
Something wrong with Toyota’s wiring.

Let’s see … 
World Cup … the Americans lose.
I’m trying to find some positive news.

Oh, the oil spill’s fixed! … Nah, I’m just teasin’ —
It’s spewing like hell and it’s hurricane season.

Uh, Supreme Court squashes the handgun ban?
I guess that’s good, for a firearm fan.

You know what, these headlines are leaving me flat
It’s a three-day weekend, let’s focus on that.

Have fun with your sparklers and Francis Scott Key,
and I’ll see you at marketplace.org.

Republicans said the government can’t afford further increases in the budget deficit, expected to reach $1.4 trillion this fiscal year, and said that Democrats have lost sight of the economic risks posed by the nation’s rapidly mounting total debt. In the give and take, the contours of the 2010 midterm election debate have become clear. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky. ) chided Democrats for refusing to fully pay for the legislation with offsetting savings or revenue increases. “The principle Democrats are defending is that they will not pass a bill unless it adds to the deficit,” Sen. McConnell said. Can’t do what they are supposed to do. What’s good for the country and its people. Maybe the 63% (see poll) have jobs.

Republicans said the government can’t afford further increases in the budget deficit, expected to reach $1.4 trillion this fiscal year, and said that Democrats have lost sight of the economic risks posed by the nation’s rapidly mounting total debt. In the give and take, the contours of the 2010 midterm election debate have become clear. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky. ) chided Democrats for refusing to fully pay for the legislation with offsetting savings or revenue increases. “The principle Democrats are defending is that they will not pass a bill unless it adds to the deficit,” Sen. McConnell said.

Can’t do what they are supposed to do. What’s good for the country and its people. Maybe the 63% (see poll) have jobs.

Bloomberg & Murdoch Pair Up On Immigration Reform. Visas and Green-cards for Entrepreneurs who want to build their company in America, thus creating jobs.

“USA want DOERS”

German Millionaires Volunteer to Pay 'Rich Tax' #fb

azspot:

A group of 51 German millionaires and billionaires founded a Club of the Wealthy and wrote to Chancellor Angela Merkel proposing to give up 10 percent of their income in the form of a “Rich Tax” for 10 years to consolidate the budget.

With an estimated 800,000 millionaires (in dollars) — about 1 percent of the total population — Germany is eye-to-eye with the USA and has long overtaken the UK as Europe’s number one “millionaire-land”, both in terms of absolute numbers and as a percentage of the population.

But traditionally, the Germans don’t dare to feel good about their riches. A German would — by and large — never display his wealth too publicly. Being rich, one might think, is not necessarily viewed as a sign of success, but more as a flaw, something to be hidden rather than displayed.

The same with Bill Gates Senior (father of Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft). He is an advocate for a higher tax on the rich.

PS: Joachim Gauck (running for the President of Germany position after Horst Koehler resigned) spoke recently about the solidarity of both societal levels to each other - top and bottom.

peterfeld:

This is your US Senate nominee on drugs: Alvin Greene meets Keith Olbermann.

Urlesque:

Just some simple, old fashioned down-home campaigning. All across the state. Hard work. The guy can barely put words together and is running on no discernible platform. Are we living in some kind of post-apocalyptic banana republic?

Now you know that all the movies about political conspiracy theories are movies.

This is the b-roll man! America finds a new new low. They should have asked the CIA/FBI to help cast the puppet, career politicians are not good at anything.

Hoping that GM engineers are better at math than their CEO Ed Whitacre. #fraud

General Motors CEO Ed Whitacre has bragged in TV commercials and newspaper columns that GM has paid back its bailout “in full and ahead of schedule.”

As with the Pontiac Aztek, an ugly exterior masks an ever darker problem: Whitacre is being fanciful to the point of deceit. GM received $50 billion in TARP funds (never mind that TARP was only supposed to cover financial institutions). About $7 billion of that came in the form of a straight-up, low-interest loan. And about $13 billion came in the form of an escrow account.

So how has GM, which lost $38 billion in 2007 even as it sold 9.4 million cars, paid back its debt? It took money from the escrow account to pay back the $6.7 billion loan.

Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents gave you $20 to buy them a Christmas present? You bought them something worth $3 and pocketed the rest? That’s what GM has just done.

Oh, and do you remember when you hit your parents up for college? GM has applied for a $10 billion, low-interest loan from the government to modernize its plants so its cars will meet new federal mileage standards.

If you think all this constitutes paying back their debt in full and ahead of schedule, you might want to check out the new line of GM cars. And hope that the company’s safety engineers are better at math than their CEO.

I have read about it before. And posted stuff about it too. But this is the best and simplest explanation of this type of fraud.

Thank god somebody said it out loud.

IT’S not quite a Lehman moment, but financial markets are more anxious today than at any time since the global recovery took hold almost a year ago. The MSCI index of global stocks has fallen by over 15% since mid-April. Treasury yields have tumbled as investors have fled to the relative safety of American government bonds. The three-month inter-bank borrowing rate is at a ten-month high. Gone is the exuberance that greeted the return to growth (see article). Investors are on edge.

What lies behind these jitters? New nervousness about geopolitical risk, with tensions rising in the Korean peninsula, has not helped. But that comes on top of two wider worries.

One is about the underlying health of the world economy. Fears are growing that the global recovery will falter as Europe’s debt crisis spreads, China’s property bubble bursts and America’s stimulus-fuelled rebound peters out. The other concerns government policy. From America’s overhaul of financial regulation to Germany’s restrictions on short-selling, politicians are changing the rules in unpredictable ways (see article). And the scale of sovereign debts has left governments with less room to counter any new downturn; indeed, many of them are being forced into austerity.

The danger is that these fears reinforce each other in a pernicious reversal of the dynamics of 2008-09. Then, co-ordinated government action on a grand scale stopped the global financial crisis from turning into a depression. Now, thanks to incompetence and impotence, governments may become the problem that will drag the world economy down.

(via @theeconomist)

*Now I am all shy and blushing*


Who should investors listen to; the markets or the Fed? One says we are in for a double dip recession, the other just raised GDP forecasts.

The head of our central bank Benjamin S. Bernanke has a perfect track record for predicting economic outcomes. Unfortunately, his track record is only perfect due to its 100% inaccuracy. The Fed Chairman once assured investors that the subprime housing crisis was contained and would not bring down real estate prices or affect the overall economy.

Then, after being proven completely wrong by the near collapse of the entire global economy, Mr. Bernanke moved to an emergency Federal Funds target rate of 0-25 bps and has held it there for 17 months. And even though the economy has posted three straight quarters of growth, has shown no inkling to provide American savers with a decent return on their money deposited in banks.

Now we find the Federal Reserve once again proving it has an unlimited aptitude for ineptness by actuallyraising their G.D.P. forecast from a growth range of 2.8%-3.5% to 3.2-3.7%. That’s correct; Federal Reserve officials raised their U.S. growth estimates for 2010 and lowered forecasts for unemployment and inflation, according to minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on April 27-28. They left their 2011 forecast unchanged at 3.4 percent to 4.5 percent. Fed officials’ forecast for the average unemployment rate in the last quarter of 2010 fell to 9.1 percent to 9.5 percent versus 9.5 percent to 9.7 percent estimate made in January.

However, contrary to the Fed’s predicted trend of improvement in employment numbers and economic data, on Thursday we saw first time claims for unemployment jump by 21,000 to 471,000 in the week ended May 15th. The four-week moving average also climbed to 453,500 last week from 450,500. Additionally, the Index of Leading Economic Indicators during the month of April saw a .1 percent decrease. That dip in the Conference Board’s outlook for the next three to six months followed a revised 1.3 percent gain in March and was the first decline for the index in a year.

Meanwhile, sovereign debt contagion threatens to dismantle the Euro currency as Eurozone borrowing costs may become intractable if interest rates continue to rise. China is busy trying to pop their property bubble at the same time the Shanghai Composite Index is down 21% in 2010. Not to be outdone, Australia has collapsed their resource sector by imposing a 40% tax on the earnings of mining companies.

The threat of a metastasizing government debt default crisis similar to the credit crisis of 2008 has sent crude oil prices tumbling from over $85 a barrel to $68 in a matter of weeks. Dr. Copper has plummeted from $3.60 a pound in April to $2.93 as of this writing. But none of that matters to the Fed or gives them pause to reflect on their ebullient outlook.

It doesn’t take superhuman predictive powers to have the ability to look at markets. What is it that Mr. Bernanke and company look at other than the rear view mirror when making prognostications about growth, unemployment and inflation?  We have given the most incredibly powers to the Federal Reserve; namely, to dictate a target rate for the cost of money. But we have allowed to be appointed at the Fed a group of individuals who not only cannot accurately assess a given series of data but also have chosen to completely ignore markets.

The CRB Index is trading at its lowest level since October of 2009 and is telling investors that the global economy is in the process of slowing. But the Fed is stacked with academics that have never had to earn a living by predicting economic and market directions. Their failure to listen to the message of markets is the key reason they have such a miserable record of making accurate projections. For the betterment of the nation, the next appointment to serve at the Fed should be someone from the trading pit and not from Princeton.

(via)