Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in August (-216,000), and the unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Although job losses continued in many of the major industry sectors in August, the declines have moderated in recent months.
According to the BLS, this is the highest rate since 1983.
There seems to be momentum on the hill to push for a small transaction tax on stocks. The proposal puts a 0.1% transaction fee on every order by total cost.
Consider this a sales tax, although instead of regressive, this puppy is progressive as well as more biased towards institutional large investors. (Hey flat taxers, by philosophy you should love this one!)
Because it is based on transactions, each time a security is bought and sold, those fees will add up on those who make large trades the most frequently. In other words, such a tax would target large hedge funds and institutions making profits off of slight fluctuations, such as those engaged in high frequency trading and derivatives.
WASHINGTON—Despite ongoing economic woes and a jobless rate that has been approaching 10 percent, U.S. unemployment projections drastically improved Monday after the consumption of five beers.
"It's going up," leading economist David Singleton said confidently, indicating the predicted growth in jobs with an upward wave of a Bud Light bottle. "All the way up. By the end of the month. No problem."
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
Tonight, a 1994 Frontline video on the diamond industry and it's control on the value and supply, which has supposedly changed since 2000, and also a CNBC documentary on Fraudster, Ponzi Scheme runner, Allen Stanford.
Surfing the Internets I found a most interesting post by Chris Gunn, SBA continues to fabricate contracting data. Oh really? It seems the Small Business administration likes to re-categorize large multinational corporations as Mom & Pop operations in order to award them large amounts of government dough!
This year the SBA awarded $93.3 billion to Small Business in 2008. It appears the SBA also missed it's target in small business contract awards by a good 1.5% (ignoring the awarding of contracts to those not qualified).
The numbers are significantly inflated with some of the largest corporations in the world. In some cases the numbers even appear to be the result of fabrication by high-level government officials at the SBA and other government agencies.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
Tonight's video is a lecture by Economist and Law Professor William K. Black, an expert on the 1980's S&L crisis. He minces no words, as one can see by the lecture title, on the current financial crisis.
We've noted many times on The Economic Populist how the continual focus of the United States citizenry as simply a bunch of consumers is just plain wrong. We hear cries 70% of the economy is based on consumerism, how this creates demand and so on....
But here's the real situation. The consumer is plain tapped out.
If we leave aside the war-impacted years of 1942 to 1946, the largest annual deficit the United States has incurred since 1920 was 6 percent of gross domestic product. This fiscal year, though, the deficit will rise to about 13 percent of G.D.P., more than twice the non-wartime record. In dollars, that equates to a staggering $1.8 trillion. Fiscally, we are in uncharted territory.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
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