Recent comments

  • I checked three different book stores and the main library in San Francisco. I couldn't find monthly unemployment numbers for the Great Depression anywhere.
    If I could then I could scale these pretty well.

    Reply to: What Recovery? Myths, Lies, and Green Shoots   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • NDD wrote up a great reference post here on U3/U6 est. for the Great Depression.

    So, question now is does this actually scale correctly and also, what is the slope during the start of the Great Depression (i.e. rate of change) of unemployment stats and does that correlate to DeLong's slope (which looks like a rocket)?

    This is an exercise for the reader, need to take the table data and create a graph, calculate up the slope as well as examine a threshold level when unemployment begats unemployment begats macro economic collapse begats unemployment (I believe this is in the book of Economic Genesis: Ch. 5)

    Reply to: What Recovery? Myths, Lies, and Green Shoots   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • Next in line will be me attacking the defenders of the bailouts who are Keynesians and Monetarists. Both for how they were proven lacking in the past, and for how what is being tried today doesn't reflect them anyway.

    Reply to: What Recovery? Myths, Lies, and Green Shoots   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • More graphs here on the latest industrial production and capacity crash & burn.

    While I attempt to navigate more detailed papers on financial regulation (I am believing if I'm having a rough time delving into these details and it takes a 20 year career as an economics professor at Yale to even get a clue on what the hell just happened, we're in for bad juju on regulatory reform that addresses the real underlying causes!)...

    over and over again what strikes me is how the United States poo poos, ignores, sells out the United States manufacturing and small business sectors. Notice that? When it comes to real jobs which produce real things...
    pretty much all we see is Politicians, the Obama administration handing even more of our real economy over to China, India...pretty much any nation who flies over here and demands it.

    Reply to: What Recovery? Myths, Lies, and Green Shoots   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • Chart from Delong's post Comment for the Economist on Christina Romer (2009), "The Lessons of 1937":
    This was left in middle's unemployment analysis from yesterday over at DK. It's shockingly enlightening.

    unemployment rate real vs. projected may 2009

    My first point is that over the past six months the economy has been a severe disappointment. Output and employment have fallen much faster than people were projecting last December. Romer and Bernstein (2009) projected at the very start of this year that unemployment in the U.S. would reach a peak of 7.9% in the summer of 2009. But unemployment now in mid-June is about 9.7%, with 10% baked in the cake and the possibility existing that it might go much higher. The signs that the cliff-dive of employment has come to an end are very few

    Reply to: What Recovery? Myths, Lies, and Green Shoots   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • is something those Corporatists jumped on but it's not the cause of the Great Depression.

    unlawfulcombatant did an analysis in a little more detail, but basically the U.S. was mostly a domestic economy, trade had little impact and the results from Smoot-Hawley were not that severe. Also previous to Smoot-Hawley tariffs were fairly high already.

    Reply to: What Recovery? Myths, Lies, and Green Shoots   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • Ken Lewis' PR people are trying to portray him as a victim. It ain't gonna happen.

    B of A was bailout to the tune of $52,500,000,000.

    Did Paulson twist some arms sure but did Lewis get much needed cheap capital that he couldn't otherwise get from the market? Hell yes.

    Oh, yeah, I forgot about the $118 billion in loss guarantees on an investment pool.

    Reply to: Friday Movie Night - Breaking The Bank   15 years 5 months ago
  • That's what he tried to do. He tried to pull out of it and basically wasn't allowed to pull out of it by Paulson.

    I agree the entire thing was about saving the oligarchy but it seems Hank Paulson was puppet master.

    Reply to: Friday Movie Night - Breaking The Bank   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • He could have said you know Fed and Treasury we don't like how this Merrill Lynch deal is working so we are going to pull out of it knowing that JP Morgan Chase got a sweet deal from Fed for Bear Stearns. Fed and Treasury say name your price - Lewis says we want low-cost capital that we can't get in the market right now. Fed and Treasury know that they can't have another Lehman Bros. and they can't give the sweetheart deal they gave to JP Morgan Chase but they give BofA the additional capital.

    There are no clean hands TARP. It was a matter of bailing out the financial oligarchy. It is interesting how the united front may be crumbling. We will see if anyone goes quietly - Citi Group is still a zombie and AIG is still a mess.

    Reply to: Friday Movie Night - Breaking The Bank   15 years 5 months ago
  • it's mostly for ease that I link to Daily Kos. I'll link here next time.

    On the google news, DKos was on there during 2005, but was removed because it was though to be opinion, not news.

    As for getting Economic Populist included go to this link, and they can start the process of determining whether we should be included.

    Reply to: 13 States Now Have 10% Unemployment   15 years 5 months ago
  • From the Director's Blog:

    In the absence of significant changes in policy, rising costs for health care will cause federal spending to grow much faster than the economy, putting the federal budget on an unsustainable path.

    At least they acknowledge the status quo won't work. So that makes any republican proposal irrelevant.

    Reply to: 13 States Now Have 10% Unemployment   15 years 5 months ago
  • 1. did they land "Stimulus contracts?
    2. are they moving that technology/jobs to India?
    3. are they using H-1B and L-1 workers from India to do those jobs in the U.S.?

    Same question for IBM.

    Looks like we have some investigative citizen journalism to do. If you want to go digging, we'd be thrilled if you wrote it up to be sure.

    Of course we have so many shit sandwiches going on at the same time, major "regulatory reform", health care, the job situation, it's hard to really dig into every single one, so we could use more in depth posts to be sure.

    Middle is doing a great job with these unemployment stats (so is everyone else frankly)..

    Reply to: 13 States Now Have 10% Unemployment   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • Robert, you mentioned this before about a disconnect between EI and reality. This guy seems to agree.

    General Electric Co. Vice Chairman John Rice said he isn’t seeing an increase in orders even as U.S. economic statistics suggest the world’s largest economy may soon shift to a recovery.

    “I am not particularly of the green shoots group yet,” Rice said today to the Atlanta Press Club, referring to a phrase used by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke that described signs of a nascent recovery. “I have not seen it in our order patterns yet. At the macro level, there may be statistics suggesting the economy is starting to turn. I am not seeing it yet.”

    Link

    Reply to: 13 States Now Have 10% Unemployment   15 years 5 months ago
  • and I imagine if we dig around in Canadian domestic policy, we will find a host of "buy Canada" and other subsidies, etc.

    That is just such bullshit and shows that we are the country most run by multinational corporate lobbyists, lobbyists in general, hence we can't get any stupid sane policy...

    these damn lobbyists and bought and paid for politicians continually muck it up.

    How about health care? You see these people really analyzing the system for cost reductions and going from there in design, with the caveat of providing the best health care available? Hell no, it's turned into political Calvin ball.

    Like everything else. They do not even sit down and read the bills, analyze for the consequences. I have a TBD to also check out the CBO forecast and projection hit/miss ratio.

    Reply to: 13 States Now Have 10% Unemployment   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • Beijing orders 'Buy China'.

    Why the hell not - we, the American people, ultimately have to pay for this stimulus not Canadians? F*ck free trade.

    Reply to: 13 States Now Have 10% Unemployment   15 years 5 months ago
  • Bear in mind the consensus was unemployment would continue to get worst way into 2010, but it wasn't supposed to hit this high until then.

    So as midtowng put so eloquently, I do believe we're being served up a huge shit sandwich.

    Now maybe someone is going to demand every Stimulus dollar be spent on hiring an American instead of funding offshore outsourcing and big MNCs (which it is!).

    Reply to: 13 States Now Have 10% Unemployment   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • I'm a consultant and today I responded to a host of "gigs" on craigslist, which normally I consider "beneath me" looking to just get some extra cash because it's so bad.

    Not a single one responded. Unreal, I mean these are trivial tasks and I was offering trivial fees too.

    middle, can you do EP a favor and when you list your series, point to your blog and posts over at EP.

    Did you know DK is now showing up in the Google news aggregator?

    I'm wondering how the hell to get EP in there since often the posts are original, well researched material.

    Reply to: 13 States Now Have 10% Unemployment   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • Reply to: 13 States Now Have 10% Unemployment   15 years 5 months ago
  • Anyone notice they are calling this middle class wipe out "the new economy" and the "new America" and other such phrases trying to minimize this disaster?

    and they never magically tell the personal story of the really truly f#@ked?

    I have another question, should we put up tip jars for everyone who is out of a job and freaking out about paying the rent?

    Today's unemployment numbers, when it's projected to get worst and that's from assumptions of about a 8% at this point...unemployment rate...

    yet we have tons of states above 10% right now...

    Maybe we should turn EP into a begging cup.

    Reply to: How to make a scrumptious shit sandwich from economic reports   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:
  • I don't follow all of the details but as I understand it, the illegal alien lobby has demanded no state, local police be allowed to do anything regarding immigration law, i.e. the Federal administration won't let states enforce immigration law at all.

    So, they have to turn people over to ICE, can't just do it themselves.

    Obviously this curtails having any sort of enforcement at all on immigration law because then the federal government, i.e. the Bush/Obama administration can starve out the staff of ICE, etc. and I believe it goes under DHS.

    It's just nuts, I mean CA's problems do not appear to be caused by illegal immigration but is does add to the costs, adds to the budget problems and of course really represses wages overall.

    Why I put it up in an Instapopulist. To me, this stuff, due to the "PC"/illegal alien lobby is so out of reality in terms of what the labor market can handle to the over all costs etc. I thought it almost amusing that a state who is about to default...."considers", get that, literally dares to stick their toe in....these waters in order to reduce the budget. In other words, a state can't do anything, even with clearly dealing with drug cartels, gangs, i.e. Felons, when it comes to this issue.

    Reply to: California Gets Real - Considers deporting thousands of illegal immigrant criminals instead of footing the bill   15 years 5 months ago
    EPer:

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