Bulls, Bears & Bucks #71 Payback time!

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FT: The US labour market doesn't work

A quarter of a century ago, the US workforce was a wonder. Laid off in one corner of the economy, Americans quickly landed jobs elsewhere. But over the past decade, a profound change has come about. If US leaders understood what was at stake, their fights on taxes and spending would assume a different character.

In 2000, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, US unemployment was the lowest in the G7 group of countries. Because jobs in America were easy to find, Americans felt confident in seeking them: the labour force participation rate was the G7’s highest. Combining these two effects, the share of US 15-64 year-olds in work, at 74 per cent, stood head and shoulders above competitors. Within the G7, only the UK, with 72 per cent, came close.

Fast forward to 2012. US unemployment has gone from lowest in the G7 to third highest. Because workers have become discouraged, the US labour force participation rate has slipped from the top spot to the middle of the pack. In consequence, the share of Americans in work has declined by fully 7 percentage points, a fall nearly three times more drastic than experienced in the UK. Meanwhile, in the other five G7 countries, the employment-to-population rate has actually risen.

This is not Ronald Reagan’s America – nor Bill Clinton’s, come to that. A once enviable labour market has consigned millions to material and psychological want. Nor is it simply the amount of joblessness that has exploded. Back in 2000, the US could boast that just 6 per cent of its unemployed workers had been out of a job for 12 months or more. But by 2011, that share had jumped to 31 per cent.

Why has the US lost its advantage? The answer is bigger than the financial crisis. The US employment rate began falling before then, sliding from 74 per cent in 2000 to 72 per cent in 2006; besides, the UK experienced a similar financial bust without an equivalent employment setback. Rather, the truth is that US labour market arrangements, which worked brilliantly for a generation, are no longer adequate.

The US labour market formula has traditionally consisted of a stick and a carrot. Americans were barred from receiving unemployment insurance for more than 26 weeks, which pushed them to accept jobs even if they involved moving home or taking a pay cut. Meanwhile the government dangled a juicy negative income tax in front of low-income workers, boosting pay for those who re-entered the work force.

Limited welfare and low taxes combined to minimise the US “participation tax rate”. Take an American worker with two children who moved in 2009 from short-term unemployment into a job paying half the average wage; he could expect to be better off to the tune of 62 per cent of his new earnings, according to the OECD. If that worker was exiting long-term unemployment, the reward for returning to work was even stronger. These sensible incentives stood in contrast to perverse incentives elsewhere. In Japan and Ireland, some unemployed people faced a participation tax rate of over 100 per cent. Taking a job would leave them worse off.

America’s low employment-tax wedge remains a huge strength. But it is no longer enough. Technological change has reduced opportunities for low-skilled men and a lousy school system has failed to equip them for this challenge. By 2005, fully a quarter of working-age US men without a high-school diploma were out of the workforce. When the crash wiped out low-skilled construction jobs, that share leapt to 35 per cent.

Faced with this cadre of hard-to-employ men, the US has had to recognise that the old time limit on unemployment insurance is harsh and unhelpful. Starting in 2009, the limit has been extended; some workers have collected for as long as 99 weeks. Meanwhile the number of Americans receiving disability payments has shot up from 5m to almost 9m since 2000. Such benefits have no time limits.

If the labour market stick has cracked, the carrot is decaying. The key challenge is low-skilled men, many of whom are not married. But America’s negative income tax is overwhelmingly targeted at parents. The US has spent a generation boosting incentives for high-skilled workers by cutting top marginal tax rates. But payroll taxes have been allowed to take a rising share of low earners’ incomes.

In an important recent paper, the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department surveys some ideas US politicians might heed. Payroll taxes should be reduced, especially for low-income workers. Enrolment on disability should be policed for abuses, and the disabled should be encouraged to re-enter the workforce where possible. Unemployment insurance could be financed by individual accounts, strengthening workers’ incentive to return to work promptly. Shorn of effective time limits, insurance benefits should be tied to participation in training programmes that push workers into jobs.

So far, none of these ideas has received serious attention from leaders. The politicians’ idea of a tax debate is a slanging match about top marginal rates, not an intelligent rethink of the payroll tax wedge. Their idea of a spending discussion is to bicker about whether discretionary outlays should be cut aggressively or downright savagely. The cramped terms of the debate help to explain why work training schemes in the US have actually shrunk recently and are a pale shadow of the standard model in the rest of the rich world. As for the vital challenge of retooling US education, neither candidate seems interested. The US labour miracle may be left to die quietly. It deserves better.

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As for the vital challenge of retooling US education, neither candidate seems interested. The US labour miracle may be left to die quietly. It deserves better.

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Op woensdag 22 augustus 2012 11:25 schreef Lyrebird het volgende:

Het onderwijs in de VS is een grote ramp en daar zal verandering in gebracht moeten worden. Het gemiddelde Amerikaanse curriculum voor lager en middelbaar onderwijs is om te huilen zo slecht en politiek correct, met veel te weinig aandacht voor fundamentele kennis zoals taal en rekenen. Het niveau in het hoger onderwijs ligt gemiddeld te laag, en te veel Amerikanen worden toegelaten. Knijp de toegang af, verlaag de kosten.

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Op donderdag 23 augustus 2012 13:55 schreef Perrin het volgende:
Pew report: The Lost Decade of the Middle Class

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

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Op donderdag 23 augustus 2012 13:55 schreef Perrin het volgende:
Pew report: The Lost Decade of the Middle Class

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Extra geld in stroppenpot Rabobank
De Rabobank heeft in het afgelopen half jaar 1,1 miljard euro toegevoegd aan de stroppenpot. Nog nooit heeft de grootste bank van Nederland zo veel geld opzij moeten zetten om de gevolgen van de crisis op te vangen. Het bedrag is bijna 500 miljoen hoger dan wat de bank in 2011 als verlies moest nemen.

Het geld is nodig om tegenvallers in het vastgoed (huizen en kantoren), faillissementen en wanbetaling bij bedrijven en hypotheken op te vangen.

Op de woningmarkt merkt de bank dat de crisis hard toeslaat. De afgelopen periode is het aantal verkochte woningen gehalveerd. De prijzen zullen de komende maanden ook verder dalen, verwacht de bank. Topman Piet Moerland houdt rekening met een waardevermindering van nog minstens 5 procent.

'Creatieve oplossing'
Moerland reageerde ook op recente verkiezingsplannen van de PvdA om ABN-Amro in staatshanden te houden. "Ik ben tegen een permanente staatsbank", zo liet hij weten. Het plan van VNO/NCW-voorzitter Wientjes om pensioenfondsen te vragen in de Nederlandse economie te investeren, kan wel genade vinden in zijn ogen. Hij noemt het een oranje oplossing. "Banken hebben het moeilijk. Creatieve oplossingen om te helpen zijn wat mij betreft welkom."

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In Vietnam, Growing Fears of an Economic Meltdown

In Vietnam’s major cities, a once-booming property market has come crashing down. Hundreds of abandoned construction sites are the most obvious signs of a sickly economy.

A senior Vietnamese Communist Party official, speaking in the ornate drawing room of a French colonial building, compared the country’s economic problems to the market crash 15 years ago that flattened many economies in Asia.

“I can say this is the same as the crisis in Thailand in 1997,” said Hua Ngoc Thuan, the vice chairman of the People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, the city’s top executive body. “Property investors pushed the prices so high. They bought for speculation — not for use.”

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A nation of temps

Almost one-third of American workers now do some kind of freelance work—and they lack almost every kind of economic security that permanent full-time workers have traditionally had.

Though exact figures are impossible to find, many experts and labor organizers estimate that about 30 percent of U.S. workers are “contingent.” That means they don’t have a permanent job. They work as freelancers, temporary workers, on contract, or on call, or their employers define them (often illegally) as “independent contractors.”

Their ranks include writers and warehouse workers, janitors and business consultants, truck drivers and graphic designers—and their number is rising. Richard Greenwald, a sociologist of work and professor at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, estimates that their share of the U.S. workforce has increased by close to half in the last ten years. In July, Staffing Industry Analysts reported that the average share of contingent workers at companies it surveyed had gone up by one-third since 2009, to 16 percent. Last year, a different survey found that contingent workers averaged 22 percent of the workers at 200 large companies.

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Revolt of the Rich

Since the first ziggurats rose in ancient Babylonia, the so-called forces of order, stability, and tradition have feared a revolt from below. Beginning with Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre after the French Revolution, a whole genre of political writings—some classical liberal, some conservative, some reactionary—has propounded this theme. The title of Ortega y Gasset’s most famous work, The Revolt of the Masses, tells us something about the mental atmosphere of this literature.

But in globalized postmodern America, what if this whole vision about where order, stability, and a tolerable framework for governance come from, and who threatens those values, is inverted? What if Christopher Lasch came closer to the truth in The Revolt of the Elites, wherein he wrote, “In our time, the chief threat seems to come from those at the top of the social hierarchy, not the masses”? Lasch held that the elites—by which he meant not just the super-wealthy but also their managerial coat holders and professional apologists—were undermining the country’s promise as a constitutional republic with their prehensile greed, their asocial cultural values, and their absence of civic responsibility.

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The Fed Audit

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The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. "As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."

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Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts

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$16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland.

From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest.

Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious – the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.

To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is “only” $14.5 trillion.

The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is “only” $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

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Op maandag 3 september 2012 17:53 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Op maandag 3 september 2012 17:53 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts

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Fed Moves Toward Open-Ended Bond Purchases to Satisfy Bernanke

There has been more talk among members of the FOMC of an open-ended program,” Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Plc, said in an interview at Jackson Hole. Such a program would be more effective because it “would emphasize the unlimited nature of the Fed’s balance sheet and that they’re willing to do as much as necessary.”

The minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s July 31- Aug. 1 meeting showed that many policy makers said a new bond- buying program should “be sufficiently flexible to allow adjustments, as needed, in response to economic developments or to changes in the committee’s assessment of the efficacy and costs of the program.”

Williams said the purchases could consist of both Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. He said the appropriate program may need to wind up being “at least as large as QE2 or arguably even larger again.”

The Fed bought a total of $2.3 trillion of securities from 2008 through June 2011. The first round of so-called quantitative easing consisted of mortgage-backed securities, federal agency debt and Treasuries, while the second round was limited to $600 billion of Treasuries.

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Op dinsdag 4 september 2012 16:47 schreef piepeloi55 het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

Wereldwijde krimp in de industrie. VS: 49,6

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Can we save American capitalism?

A dozen Labor Days — and three presidential elections — ago, the world was in the thrall of American-style capitalism. Not only had it vanquished communism, but it was widening its lead over Japan Inc. and European-style socialism.

Today, that economic hegemony seems a distant memory. We have watched the bursting of two giant financial bubbles, wiping out the paper wealth many of us thought we had in our homes and retirement accounts. We have suffered through two long recessions and a lost decade of income growth for the average family. We continue to rack up large trade and budget deficits. Virtually all of the country’s economic growth and productivity gains have been captured by the top 10 percent of households, while moving up the economic ladder has become more difficult. And other countries are beginning to turn to China, Germany, Sweden and even Israel for lessons in how to organize their capitalist economies.

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Op maandag 3 september 2012 17:53 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[ The Fed Audit ]

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BitInstant CEO Says World Operates "On an Inferior Monetary System"
"BitInstant's CEO Charlie Shrem and Erik Voorhees were invited to speak about virtual currency at the NACHA (the North American Payments Association) Annual Global Payments Forum held in Rio de Janeiro. At the conference the duo stated that the world operates 'on an inferior monetary system'.

One of the more interesting parts of the whole forum was how Bitcoin as a currency and transaction system "works within current legal frameworks." A presentation by Senior Legal Counsel to the Federal Reserve titled: 'The Implications of Dodd-Frank Section 1073' sheds light on requirements that need to be fulfilled by "Remittance Payment Company" (RPC) guidelines. This law requires such companies to disclose a lot of information about money transactions. This is where Bitcoin as a currency and system collide head-on with the law."

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Oud DSB-bestuurder start nieuwe bank
René Frijters, mede-oprichter van beleggersbank Alex en voormalig bestuurder van DSB Bank, start een nieuwe bank.

René Frijters maakte bekend dat zijn nieuwe bank volgende week de deuren opent. De nieuwe bank zal particuliere klanten een compleet pakket diensten bieden, inclusief betaalrekeningen en pinpassen. Frijters start de bank met hulp van verzekeraar Aegon.

‘Samen met toekomstige klanten hebben we ons de afgelopen anderhalf jaar afgevraagd hoe de bank van morgen er uit moet zien.’

De nieuwe Aegon-bank, die voorlopig nog "De Bank van Morgen" als werktitel heeft, gaat aantrekkelijke spaarproducten aanbieden.

Peter Verhaar, mede-oprichter van Alex Beleggersbank, ziet het avontuur van Aegon wel zitten. De onvrede van veel mensen over hun huidige bank, die vaak als onpersoonlijk worden ervaren en hun klanten het gevoel geven slechts een nummertje te zijn, zal veel mensen over de streep trekken.

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Op dinsdag 18 september 2012 07:58 schreef TheoddDutchGuy het volgende:
Beetje offtopic maar toch ook weer ontopic.

Wacht maar tot de zilver prijs explodeert.
Het word enorm onderschat, terwijl de prijs van zilver is gebaseerd op papieren zilver (slv's), er word letterlijk per minuut meer verhandeld dan er beschikbaar is. (1.64 quadrillion per jaar.. dat bestaat niet eens qua bovengronds zilver..verrevan zelfs)

Het is een beetje een omgekeerde zeepbel.
Inplaats van dat de prijs hoog ligt (zilver hoort kostbaarder te zijn dan goud als je inflatie meerekent, evenwel dat goud eigenlijk 55 tot 64000 per ounce moet kosten) word de prijs kunstmatig steeds de grond in gestampt.

Maar als dat niet meer lukt (is onhoudbaar en word te duur) is het voorbij met de dollar.
Die hele markt flikkert in elkaar dan.

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Op dinsdag 18 september 2012 09:03 schreef GoedeVraag het volgende:

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Dat gebeurt met alle grondstoffen, en ook met goud, is al jaren zo, en iedereen die een beetje serieus in de markt zit weet er van.

Dat zilver kostbaarder zou horen te zijn op basis van prijzen uit het verleden en inflatie is natuurlijk waanzin; zaken veranderen, en daarmee ook prijsverhoudingen. Je kunt dus niet zomaar prijzen uit het verleden doortrekken naar nu.