Economy
Related: About this forumWeekend Economists Letters to Nowhere August 15-17, 2014
NPR had this exciting book review this week:
Hampton Sides: "In the Kingdom of Ice"
... Bestselling author Hampton Sides has a new book. It's all about an epic naval expedition in the late 19th century to reach the North Pole. Thirty-three men journey north of the Bering Strait in a wooden ship and become marooned on an ice cap almost a thousand miles north of Siberia.The title of the book is "The Kingdom of Ice." (sic) And author Hampton Sides joins me in the studio...You know, so few people really know about this story. What prompted you to delve?
SIDES
Well, yeah, I'd never heard of it before. And no one I knew had heard of it before. I went to Oslo, Norway to write a story for National Geographic about another explorer who had tried to sort of duplicate the voyage of the Jeannette in a different kind of vessel. This was Fridtjof Nansen. And at the museum there in Oslo, you see references to the Jeannette, the Jeannette and DeLong, this American voyage. And I'm an American, never heard of it before, filed that away, decided to dig a little deeper...Great characters, amazing primary documents, kind of now obscure but then very, very well-known bit of a sensation, kind of internationally known story, so I thought, you know, this is something. I'm going to follow this. And it's been about four years of travel and research and reading, and it's finally out.
You say the world at the time was kind of obsessed with Arctic fever.
Yeah. Yeah. I talk about that in the early part of the book. Just how little was known about what was up there and what a kind of nagging, gnawing obsession that it bothered people...
And the myths that were out there.
Yeah. Right. I mean, there's a lot of crazy ideas or what we would now think are crazy, some of them going back to the Greeks and the Vikings and the early Mercator maps that showed things like an Open Polar Sea and sea serpents and tropical islands up there, Hyperborea -- the Greeks had this place -- ultima Thule, these -- all these concepts kind of swam in our imagination.
But when we discovered how powerful the Gulf stream was and that it moved north from the tropics past Norway, that began to get some of the scientists thinking that what's really happening here is that these thermal currents are tunneling under the ice, creating kind of a gateway to this Open Polar Sea and that the planet has this sort of beautiful and symmetrical way of regulating its own heat.
So this expedition, the Jeannette expedition, was really designed to test this idea of a gateway to the Pole that's made by a thermal current, in this case, a Pacific Ocean current called the Kuroshio (sp?) that was believed to tunnel through the Bering Strait and north into the ice pack.
Well, Gordon Bennett was one of the just outlandish Gilded Age characters. And I really wanted to write about the Gilded Age, a time of really great facial hair, a time of unbelievable sums of money now being made by certain individuals. And he was one of them. He was the third richest man in Manhattan. He was the publisher and owner of the New York Herald, which was the largest newspaper in the world at that time. And he was a lover of spectacle and sports and adventure. He believed that you shouldn't just cover the news.
You should create spectacles that would generate more and more copy. He had sent Stanley to Africa to find Livingston or "find Livingston" -- in quotes -- because Livingston wasn't exactly lost. But he had enjoyed with his newspaper such enormous success with the Stanley Livingston dispatches that he decided it was time to do something even bigger. And so he wanted to bankroll an expedition to the North Pole, pay for it entirely himself in order, yes, to generate more copy for his paper, but in the name of science and also, you know, just because he was a great lover of spectacle and adventure. And he was a believer in some of the ideas of a scientist who believed deeply in this Open Polar Sea theory... the naval lieutenant, George Washington DeLong, who apparently planted the idea in Bennett's head is the hero of the story. He's the captain of the ship. He was a young ambitious naval officer, graduate of the naval academy. He had just missed the Civil War by a few months and was, I think, burning with a desire to kind of make up for lost time and do something especially big and ambitious. He had been to Greenland on an earlier expedition and had fallen in love with the Arctic, and something about the atmosphere and the just grandeur of this wilderness. And he became sort of addicted to this puzzle of what's up there, how does it work, what's at the attic of the planet?
So he knew he was going to go back, and he really began carefully plotting an expedition and reading everything he could get his hands on, kind of imbibing, you know, all the theories of what's up there and made this decision that the way to go was by way of Bering Strait 'cause all the attempts thus far had been through or around Greenland. So now it's like, let's go west, and let's go through the Bering Strait. There was a lot of interest in that part of the world, partly because no one had really been there and also because we had recently purchased Alaska from the Russians.
Hampton Sides is author of "Ghost Soldiers," "Blood and Thunder," and "Hellhound on His Trail." He is an editor-at-large at Outside magazine and a frequent contributor to National Geographic magazine.
An excerpt of his latest book: In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, is available at above link.
Audio link: http://thedianerehmshow.org/audio-player?nid=19678
http://www.amazon.com/In-Kingdom-Ice-Terrible-Jeannette/dp/0385535376%3FSubscriptionId%3D0EP44N4Z8Y93MBZ1ZC82%26tag%3Ddianerehm-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0385535376
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Demeter
(85,373 posts)REHM: And what's so interesting to me is that you have some correspondence of Emma DeLong, his wife. Would you read for us from some of that?
SIDES
... it is one of the great things that happened during the research of this book was I tracked down some relatives of George DeLong in Connecticut. And there was a woman named Catherine DeLong who told me that she had a trunk full of letters in the attic that she didn't know what to do with, would I please come and take them off her hands, she would loan them to me. And I was like, would I ever? You know, I flew to Connecticut, met her, really nice lady. And they proved to be the personal papers of Emma DeLong. And Emma wrote beautifully and was very close to this expedition. She had sailed with her husband around the Horn to San Francisco, knew the ship well. And when the Jeannette was lost, you know, two years gone, she started writing these letters to her husband, which she called her letters to nowhere. And... she did send them via arctic vessels. You know, like whaling -- whaling ships. Just maybe somehow, someway they'd reach him, she thought. So I'll read a little snippet of one of these letters. They're just -- they're so moving and they're so beautiful. People wrote so much better back then, you know... they took their time. So this is a passage that she wrote in the summer of 1881. He'd been gone two years at this point.
"My darling husband, I do not think I really knew before how dearly and deeply I love you, and I cannot understand how it is I'm willing to make such unladylike declarations now for you know my characteristic reserve. But I know you are longing for love and affection as much as I am.
It is evening now. I am writing in the library. Little Silvie (who's their daughter) is in bed, fast asleep having said her prayers for her father's health and safety. There is a blazing fire in the grate. The two dogs are stretched out on the fur rug in front of it. How would you like to spend the evening with me? Or is pleasanter where you are? I suppose I mustn't tease you, not until we meet and I can judge how much teasing you can stand. Emma."
So she has these letters that she sends out. And as the story progresses and...
REHM
But I want to know where that letter went and then how it came back to be in the possession of Catherine DeLong.
SIDES
That's an amazing story, too, because she wrote this letter in triplicate. And so, she kept one copy for herself, and then other copies went in these whaling vessels....
And so, this one letter was sent via Greenland and Perry, he -- one of his early expeditions to the North Pole. But about 25 years later Admiral Perry was in Greenland and he ran across this hut in the middle of nowhere, way up the coast of Greenland. And in that hut, there was a letter that Emma DeLong had written to George DeLong, this letter. And it still had the red wax on it, showing that it had never been opened before.
He took this letter. And when he got back to New York, he personally delivered it to Emma DeLong. And I have that letter, and it's going to end up in the Naval Academy Archives. But it's very moving and, you know, kind of the delayed effect of this. You write something and you don't know where it's heading. And 20 years later, it shows up on your doorstep.
COMPLETE PODCAST AT:
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2014-08-14/hampton-sides-kingdom-ice
THERE'S SO MUCH MORE TO THIS STORY, MUST LISTEN OR READ ENTIRE TRANSCRIPT!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)but check back later...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)I'd send one to Edward Snowden.
The ones to people that I know (more or less) where they are would not be advisable to send...not even as a letter to the editor....
Demeter
(85,373 posts)THE SURGICAL REMOVAL OF CASH FROM THE PROFIT LINE IS TOO PAINFUL...
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-jobs-open-employers-slow-122919455.html
There are now more jobs available — but unfilled — in the United States than there were before the Great Recession began at the end of 2007. And employers are firing fewer workers than they did when times were good. But they are also hiring fewer people...In a report this week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that employers reported in June that they had 4.5 million available jobs that they were unable to fill. That is the highest number since 2007, and more than twice as high as the figure in October 2009, when the economy was officially beginning to recover but there were no signs of that in the labor market.
That figure was contained in the monthly Jolts report — Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Until recently, the survey tended to get relatively little attention. In part, that is because the survey began in 2000, so there is relatively little history, and in part it is because the figures are released more than a month after the jobs numbers for the same month come out, making them seem like old news. But since Janet L. Yellen, the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, began to cite them in her assessment of the economy, they have received more attention in the hope that they may provide a hint of when the Fed will begin to raise interest rates.
“The economy seems to be moving faster toward Yellen’s goal of eliminating slack in the labor market,” said Ed Yardeni, the chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research, after the Jolts numbers were released.
The accompanying charts compare three-month moving averages of seasonally adjusted figures to the averages for all of 2007. The moving averages are used because the Jolts figures, which are based on monthly surveys of employers, can be volatile. On that basis, in June the three-month average of unfilled job openings was 4.57 million, with June’s figure at 4.67 million. It was the first time since the recession began that the three-month figure exceeded the 2007 average of 4.48 million.
The volume of firings soared during the recession, but now is lower than it was before the downturn. The number of people quitting has recovered, but it is still well below the earlier level.
SOUNDS LIKE FAIRY DUST TO ME...UNTIL I SEE SOME PROOF IN MICHIGAN, I DON'T BELIEVE IN FAIRIES.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Argentina has now taken the US to The Hague for blocking the country’s 2005 settlement with the bulk of its creditors. The issue underscores the need for an international mechanism for nations to go bankrupt. Better yet would be a sustainable global monetary scheme that avoids the need for sovereign bankruptcy.
Argentina was the richest country in Latin America before decades of neoliberal and IMF-imposed economic policies drowned it in debt. A severe crisis in 2001 plunged it into the largest sovereign debt default in history. In 2005, it renegotiated its debt with most of its creditors at a 70% “haircut.” But the opportunist “vulture funds,” which had bought Argentine debt at distressed prices, held out for 100 cents on the dollar. Paul Singer’s Elliott Management has spent over a decade aggressively trying to force Argentina to pay down nearly $1.3 billion in sovereign debt. Elliott would get about $300 million for bonds that Argentina claims HE picked up for $48 million. Where most creditors have accepted payment at a 70% loss, Elliott Management would thus get a 600% return.
In June 2014, the US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a New York court’s order blocking payment to the other creditors until the vulture funds had been paid. That action propelled Argentina into default for the second time in this century – and the eighth time since 1827. On August 7, 2014, Argentina asked the International Court of Justice in the Hague to take action against the United States over the dispute.
Who is at fault? The global financial press blames Argentina’s own fiscal mismanagement, but Argentina maintains that it is willing and able to pay its other creditors. The fault lies rather with the vulture funds and the US court system, which insist on an extortionate payout even if it means jeopardizing the international resolution mechanism for insolvent countries. If creditors know that a few holdout vultures can trigger a default, they are unlikely to settle with other insolvent nations in the future. Blame has also been laid at the feet of the IMF and the international banking system for failing to come up with a fair resolution mechanism for countries that go bankrupt. And at a more fundamental level, blame lies with a global debt-based monetary scheme that forces bankruptcy on some nations as a mathematical necessity. As in a game of musical chairs, some players must default.
Most money today comes into circulation in the form of bank credit or debt. Debt at interest always grows faster than the money supply, since more is always owed back than was created in the original loan. There is never enough money to go around without adding to the debt burden. As economist Michael Hudson points out, the debt overhang grows exponentially until it becomes impossible to repay. The country is then forced to default. Besides impossibility of performance, there is another defense Argentina could raise in international court – that of “odious debt.” Also known as illegitimate debt, this legal theory holds that national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation should not be enforceable.
...................................
Better than redesigning the sovereign bankruptcy mechanism might be to redesign the global monetary scheme in a way that avoids the continual need for a bankruptcy mechanism. A government does not need to borrow its money supply from private banks that create it as credit on their books. A sovereign government can issue its own currency, debt-free. But that interesting topic must wait for a follow-up article. Stay tuned.
Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. In The Public Bank Solution, her latest book, she explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her websites are Web of Debt, Public Bank Solution, and Public Banking Institute.
MattSh
(3,714 posts)With the EU openly declaring through their deeds their hostile intentions toward Russia, Russia is sourcing needed goods from friendlier countries, Argentina being one.
NOTE NOTE NOTE! Most of you will not be able to understand this, since it's in Russian, but if you go to YouTube, and click the "Captions" button (lower right of the viewing area, between "Watch Later" and "Settings," you can get English captions!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Well, that is AMAZING news.
And I don't refer just to the first obvious lesson: the Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend
The Argentinians have adopted all the sustainable agriculture techniques that US agribusiness poo-poos: no plowing to retain moisture and prevent erosion (you think California will ever do such a thing? Monsanto probably tied their hands forbidding it legally). Only the experimental farming community is trying these out, with varying degrees of adaptation.
We are in the midst of a Dust Bowl, but nobody can be bothered to learn from past experience, let alone present innovation.
Michigan, my native land, is going to be the breadbasket of the nation once again. And the sustainable, organic farmers are not going to go away.
More and more, I'm having a hard time justifying staying here, except I love a good fight, when I'm on the side of Inevitable....hence, the condo board.
And I would like to be here when the 1% Elitists come crashing down to Reality. With arrangements like this between Russia and Argentina (much better than how the Chinese and Arabs are buying up Africa and dispossessing the local farmers), I see two places of refuge besides Iceland, where sanity is currency.
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Nowhere Man by The Beatles:
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere by Neil Young:
Demeter
(85,373 posts)PARTS OF IT, DEFINITELY. YOU CAN PUT THE COMMERCIAL TRAFFIC IN A RESTRICTED SECTION, SO THAT THE INNOCENT OR FAULTLESS ARE NOT EXPOSED TO GAMBLING, DRUGS, PORN AND CRIME...
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/25563-should-the-internet-be-like-the-public-library
As Americans, we love to think we're number one, but the truth is that when it comes to internet speed we're pretty mediocre. In fact, one recent study put the U.S. at number 31 in the world in overall download speed, lagging behind much smaller and less developed countries like Estonia, Hungary, and Slovakia. Internet speeds in the U.S. average out around 20.77 megabits per second, which is less than half of the average internet speed in Hong Kong, which has the world's fastest internet. For a country like ours, the country that invented the internet and is home to some of the world's most powerful tech companies, this is just embarrassing.
But now residents of the small town of Rockport, Maine will get to experience the kind of super high-speed internet that the rest of the world has access to on a daily basis. That's because on Monday, Rockport officially launched its very own municipally-owned fiber-optic internet network. The culmination of a partnership between the town and state governments, a local telecom company called GWI, and a nearby college, Rockport's network is the first of its kind in the Pine Tree State. It's also a great deal for customers. As the Portland Press Herald reports, "At about $69 a month for 100 megabits per second of upload and download speed, Rockport's service outpaces Time Warner Cable, whose fastest advertised service is 50 megabits per second for downloads and 5 megabits per second for uploads." As of now, Rockport's fiber-optic network is only available to around 70 businesses and households. However, its supporters, like Maine Senator Angus King, expect it to grow rapidly over the next few years and believe it will be a positive example in a state that ranks literally next to last in overall internet access.
In today's economy, internet access shouldn't be considered a luxury, it should be a right, which is exactly why other cities like Chattanooga, Tennessee and Lafayette, Louisiana have done the same thing as Rockport, Maine and set up their own city-run fiber-optic networks. Comcast and Verizon don't want you to know this, but the major reason internet access and internet speed is so bad here in the U.S. compared to the rest of the developed world is that the private companies that dominate our telecom industry have so little competition that they simply don't care about making things better for their customers. Investing in ultra-fast fiber-optic internet like the kind now available in Rockport is really, really expensive, and the way big internet giant giants see it, it's far easier (and more profitable) to just keep prices high and speeds low. The fact that our four biggest internet service providers are virtual monopolies virtually guarantees this will stay this way, too, because without any meaningful competition they have zero incentive to change their ways. That's why what's going on in places like Rockport and Chattanooga is so important. Not only does municipal internet give everyday people access to lightning fast internet at a reasonable cost, it also cuts away at the power of the big telecom monopolies.
There's a bigger picture here, though, and that's the fact that internet has become an essential part of our information commons, like public libraries and public schools. And just like water or electricity, because most people only have one or two ways to get the internet at a reasonable speed, it's a natural monopoly that should be in the hands of "We the People," not just the private for-profit corporations.
Every American town should do what Rockport, Maine and Chattanooga, Tennessee have done and build a publically-owned fiber-optic network. If they can't afford to do that, the state or federal government should step in and help them finish the job, just like we did with electric power in the 1930s with the REA and with telephone service to rural areas in the 1940s and 1950s. The internet is as important to our development today as electricity and phone service were to Americans living in the early 20th century. The stakes are simply too high to let giant virtual monopolies steal our information commons - that was created by our government in the first place - just so they can make a few bucks.
Let's hope that Rockport, Maine's new fiber-optic network will be the spark that sets off a municipal internet revolution.
This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)From Snow White and the Three Stooges
Snow White and the Three Stooges
Release date(s)
May 26, 1961
Running time 107' 21"
Country United States
Language English
Budget $3,500,000
Snow White and the Three Stooges is the second feature film to star the Three Stooges after their 1959 resurgence in popularity. By this time, the trio consisted of Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Joe DeRita (dubbed "Curly Joe"
. Released by 20th Century Fox, this was the trio's take on the classic fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The film was retitled Snow White and the Three Clowns in Great Britain.
Olympic gold medalist figure skater Carol Heiss starred as Snow White, who must flee her home after her stepmother wishes her to be dead. Seeking refuge in the cottage of the seven dwarfs, she accidentally meets the Stooges, who are house sitting for them while they are away....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_and_the_Three_Stooges
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I don't know what this is, but it's tolerable.
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Nowhere To Run by Martha and the Vandellas:
xchrom
(108,903 posts)New York’s real estate world is filled with tales of ordinary people who bought property decades ago and saw values skyrocket to the millions. Seth Weissman is seeking investors to get in early on the next hot neighborhoods.
The veteran of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and hedge fund Perry Capital LLC started CityShares, which enables participants to reap rewards from increasing apartment demand in gentrifying areas. Investors who pledge at least $100,000 to one of the program’s neighborhood-focused funds become partial owners of a group of buildings and share in the rental income. The first pool is more than halfway toward its target of $5 million, which will be used to buy properties in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Harlem in upper Manhattan is next, with a goal of as much as $20 million. Additional funds are planned for Bushwick, Crown Heights and Sunset Park, all in Brooklyn. Renters are pushing into those more-distant areas after getting squeezed out of the borough’s waterfront communities, where leasing costs rival Manhattan’s. CityShares is the first program of its kind and offers a way to invest in burgeoning markets that are poised to grow as New York’s workforce expands, Weissman said.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Asian currencies had their biggest weekly gain in more than four months as an uneven recovery in the U.S. increased bets the Federal Reserve will delay raising interest rates, boosting demand for riskier assets.
Global investors pumped $1.3 billion into six Asian emerging stock markets tracked by Bloomberg this week. U.S. retail sales were little changed in July, the worst performance in six months, while jobless claims came in at 311,000 last week, higher than the 295,000 median forecast in a Bloomberg survey. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin said Aug. 14 that his nation will do all it can to end the Ukraine conflict.
The Bloomberg-JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index (ADXY), which tracks the region’s 10 most-active currencies excluding the yen, rose 0.4 percent this week, the most since the five days ended March 28. Malaysia’s ringgit gained 1.7 percent to 3.1537 per dollar, South Korea’s won advanced 1.5 percent to 1,020.93 as of Aug. 14 and the Philippine peso strengthened 1.1 percent to 43.665, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Financial markets in Korea and India were shut yesterday.
“We had a confluence of supportive factors,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, a Credit Agricole CIB strategist in Hong Kong. The U.S. data reduced “fears of capital outflows from Asia back to the U.S. market. Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have eased, which is supportive for all emerging markets.”
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Ireland’s sovereign credit rating was raised to A- by Fitch Ratings as the country’s economy starts to grow.
The rating was increased from BBB+ with a stable outlook, Fitch said in a statement today.
Ireland is recovering from the collapse of its real estate market after a decade-long housing boom, a crash that forced the country to take an international bailout. The country exited the rescue program in 2013 and its economy will grow by 3.5 percent this year, according to Dublin-based Davy, Ireland’s largest securities firm.
“Market financing conditions have steadily improved over the past two years,” Fitch said in the statement. Economic growth will become more balanced “as domestic demand turns positive driven by private consumption and investment,” it said.
The yield on Ireland’s benchmark 10-year government bonds fell below 2 percent for the first time on record today, reaching a low of 1.97 percent. The spread, or difference, with equivalent German bonds fell to 97 basis points.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)The U.S. labor market is looking a little surreal these days.
Take the number of workers filing claims for unemployment benefits. As a share of the population, it’s the lowest since at least 1967 -- the year Grace Slick and her Jefferson Airplane bandmates dropped drug references in the San Francisco-spawned album Surrealistic Pillow, and 37 years before Janet Yellen became president of the region’s Federal Reserve bank. Yet the ranks of the long-term unemployed remain larger than at any time before the 2007-2009 recession.
That leads to two starkly different views of the U.S. economy. In one, job growth is increasing along with inflation, leaving Yellen, now at the helm of the U.S. central bank, behind the curve with recession-era monetary policy still in place. The other view portrays a fragile recovery that owes its modest gains to the Fed’s near-zero interest rates. The job-market contrasts are dividing economy-watchers on when the Fed should start raising rates, which it hasn’t done since 2006.
“The difference of opinion is whether we’re in a state that’s about as good as it’s going to get or whether we’re in a very poor state, but with good policies and a bit of luck we’ll be able to do a lot better,” said Edmund Phelps, a professor at Columbia University in New York and winner of the 2006 Nobel prize in economics. “Whether you can or not, of course, depends on circumstances and changes in the structure of the economy.”
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Payouts that reached almost $2 billion in the first quarter are attracting traders to the transmission-rights markets run by regional U.S. power-grid operators.
The rights are wagers on where power lines may overload, choking the flow and forcing higher-cost electricity to be substituted. They generated $1.12 billion in profits for traders within PJM Interconnection LLC’s market in the mid-Atlantic and Midwest, more than triple 2013’s total, according to the operator. Payments were $462 million in New York, $109.6 million in California and $103.2 million in Texas, reports from the grids show.
The markets are dominated by financial institutions, which hold more than two-thirds of the rights in PJM. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)’s J. Aron & Co. commodities unit registered on Aug. 12 to buy contracts in California and already trades in PJM. Others include Barclays Bank Plc and Morgan Stanley Capital Group Inc. Merchants Freepoint Commodities LLC, Vitol Inc. and Castleton Commodities International LLC, backed by hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, own rights in California where they didn’t have holdings two years ago, the grid operator’s reports show.
“It’s really a big boys’ game,” Karl Simmons, chief executive officer of data analytics company GridSpeak Corp. in Oakland, California, said by telephone yesterday. “You can lose your shirt and then some. But I think it’s a great market in terms of being able to turn a few dollars into a lot in a short period of time.”
Demeter
(85,373 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)Argentine bonds posted their biggest weekly loss in 19 months on concern private efforts to resolve a dispute with hedge-fund creditors led by Elliott Management Corp. have come to a halt.
Elliott’s NML Capital Ltd., which has a U.S. court order preventing Argentina from making debt payments until it pays the hedge funds $1.5 billion on bonds left over from a 2001 default, said today that talks with private parties have failed to produce an acceptable solution. International banks including Citigroup Inc. (C) that had discussed finding a buyer for at least a portion of the defaulted securities couldn’t agree on a price, a person briefed on the meetings said.
While the idea was that the purchasers would be compensated by Argentina early next year, the talks also stalled because the government wouldn’t provide sufficient guarantees for an eventual buyback of the bonds, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private. Economy Minister Axel Kicillof says the government can’t immediately reimburse holders of defaulted bonds that won a court order for full repayment because doing so could give rise to $120 billion in additional claims. Such a risk would diminish next year, after certain bond-contract clauses expire.
The failure marks a further setback for Argentine bondholders who can’t get paid because of the dispute. In the weeks since the country missed a July 30 deadline to make a $539 million interest payment, and Standard & Poor’s declared the country in default for the second time in 13 years, investor optimism for a quick fix had been pinned on the private talks.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)In what has so far proven to be a largely painless bond default by Argentina last month, the nation’s importers stand out as one of the few clear losers.
While prices on the bonds are holding near 80 cents on the dollar, saving creditors from the losses that typically follow a default, and the peso and local interest rates remain stable, Argentina is showing some concern that the situation may deteriorate by taking steps to preserve hard currency. The tax agency has slowed the pace of import approvals, adding to a $4 billion backlog that is equivalent to 67 percent of all of June’s imports, according to Jose Alfredo Nogueira, director of ABC Mercado de Cambios, a Buenos Aires-based currency dealer.
The move comes just as many importers had been gearing up for the opposite -- easier approval of their dollar requests triggered by a government settlement with holdout creditors from its previous default, in 2001, that would have prevented a new default and reinserted the country into international capital markets. That deal didn’t happen, prompting a U.S. judge to block Argentina from making an interest payment by the July 30 deadline and cementing the default.
“It came right at the moment when Argentine companies were expecting the central bank would be freer to give them their dollars and now that hope is gone,” Luis Secco, director of Perspectiv@s Economicas, said in an Aug. 13 interview. “For the industry that had bought that promise, this is now a major worry.”
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Wholesale prices in the U.S. rose at a slower pace in July as fuel costs dropped by the most in eight months.
The 0.1 percent increase in the producer price index matched the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg and followed a 0.4 percent gain the prior month, a Labor Department report showed today. The so-called core measure, which strips out volatile food and fuel, increased 0.2 percent.
Global growth has struggled to gain momentum as the U.S. recovery plods on, Europe grapples with geopolitical tensions and China contends with a property slump and investment-spending slowdown. Limited price pressures give the Federal Reserve room to maintain an accommodative position as they scale back their monthly bond purchases, which are on pace to end in October.
“Inflation is turning out to be less of a concern than we previously expected,” said Russell Price, a senior economist at Ameriprise Financial Inc. in Detroit, who correctly forecast the increase in wholesale prices. “Businesses are seeing a little bit of a relief as certain commodity prices come down and we’ve still yet to see upward pressure in broader services and wages.”
xchrom
(108,903 posts)American consumer confidence unexpectedly declined in August to a nine-month low, repressed by gloomy wage perceptions.
The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary sentiment index dropped to 79.2, the lowest since November, from 81.8 in July, according to data issued today. It was lower than any economist surveyed by Bloomberg projected and represented the biggest negative surprise in a decade.
The retreat in confidence was paced by mounting concern about the economic outlook as households said earnings would probably not climb as fast as prices. That bolsters Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s argument that there remain pockets of labor-market weakness that require the central bank to maintain monetary stimulus into 2015.
“The median household doesn’t think it will be able to beat inflation over the next year,” said Dana Saporta, director of U.S. economic research at Credit Suisse in New York, who projected sentiment would drop. “Chair Yellen specifically cited pessimism over household income as one of the headwinds that’s impacting the U.S. economy right now, and these figures would seem to underscore her point.”
Demeter
(85,373 posts)another winter's fuel bills. And then, there's eating. But we all have to pay the insurance companies for Obamacare, which we cannot afford to use...
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Factories in July were the busiest in five months as cars rolled off U.S. assembly lines at the fastest rate in 14 years and a stronger economy encouraged American companies to invest in equipment.
The 1 percent gain at manufacturers followed a 0.3 percent increase in the prior month that was bigger than initially estimated, the Federal Reserve said today in Washington. Total industrial production, which also includes mines and utilities, advanced 0.4 percent for a second month. Another report showed a record cross-border investment outflow from the U.S. in June as foreign investors reduced their holdings of government debt.
Production lines shifted into higher gear as Americans replaced aging autos and bought furniture and appliances. Output of business equipment such as transportation goods and machinery advanced the most in five months, highlighting a broad-based manufacturing gain that will keep driving economic growth.
“The manufacturing sector at this point appears to be firing on all cylinders and, if anything, that’s an indication that momentum in the U.S. economy is picking up,” said Millan Mulraine, deputy head of U.S. research and strategy at TD Securities USA LLC in New York, who correctly projected the industrial output gain. “We’ve seen it in machinery and computers, and also in motor vehicle production.”
xchrom
(108,903 posts)WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Insurer American International Group <aig.n> is ramping up its lobbying team in Washington, almost six years after it halted such efforts following its rescue by the U.S. government during the financial crisis.
Many large companies deploy a handful of staff to provide access to Capitol Hill and the White House, but AIG has employed no officially registered lobbyists since 2009. Some of its government relations positions in Washington, which companies typically use to influence policymaking by regulators and other government officials, have been left vacant.
Yet in May of this year, Lauren Scott started working as AIG's director for international regulatory and government affairs in Washington, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was previously a director of international and insurance regulation at the American Council of Life Insurers, a trade group.
That follows the arrival in February of Mary Frances Monroe - a former Federal Reserve supervisor who worked for a Washington consultancy firm - as AIG's head of international regulatory in February, also according to LinkedIn.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-exclusive-aig-boosting-washington-lobbying-effort-as-hiatus-prompted-by-crisis-ends-2014-15#ixzz3AYYBxmDQ
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)The Letter performed by Joe Cocker:
Demeter
(85,373 posts)It's such a romantic story...I'm tempted to hold out, get a copy and read the book to find out the ending...
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Road To Nowhere by Talking Heads:
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)Letter keeps coming back
Demeter
(85,373 posts)except it wasn't rejection...
MattSh
(3,714 posts)Ukrainian politics has had the stench of corruption since the free-for-all to loot the country following the declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. However today, some five months after the gangster-led Washington-orchestrated coup d’etat that put the present regime illegally in power in Kiev, that stench is becoming unbearable. Now it involves the case of Ukraine’s deposits of shale gas.
According to a survey done for the US Department of Energy two years ago, Ukraine could have 42 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of shale gas resources technically recoverable from 197 tcf of total shale gas in place. Annually, to put that into perspective, Ukraine is transit (or was until a few weeks ago) to 3 Tcf of Russian natural gas destined for Germany, Austria and other countries. Ukraine itself consumes some 1.8 Tcf annually of natural gas. So some shrewd Ukrainian businessmen along with the ever-politically engaged Royal Dutch Shell—the Dutch-UK energy giant, decided they would drill that shale and frack it like they are doing in Texas today. Here is where it gets really interesting.
Burisma Holdings
The Ukrainian company that has grabbed (literally) the lease rights to the lion’s share of Ukraine’s shale area is called Burisma Holdings. Burisma Holdings is Ukraine’s largest natural gas producer so that in itself is not that surprising. But wait. It gets smellier. Burisma Holdings is the company that raised eyebrows a few months ago when they announced they had hired the son of the US Vice President to handle their legal division and all international relations of the company. Hunter Biden was also given a seat on Burisma’s board of directors. [1]
What’s wrong with that, you ask? Is the father responsible for his adult son? Or could it be something uglier still. Was “Baby” Biden explicitly chosen as Billy Carter was chosen by the Libyan government, because he was the son of a powerful man in Washington and would be the link between Burisma Holdings and the Obama Administration? Here we can make an educated guess that the answer is yes.
Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden came under fire back in 2005 when Joe Biden was an influential Senator before becoming Vice President. MBNA, then the world’s largest private credit card issuer hired Baby Biden as the company’s Vice President. At the same time Senator Biden was then receiving his largest campaign contributions from MBNA and, conveniently for MBNA, was lobbying other Senators to pass bankruptcy reform legislation supported by MBNA. US media referred critically to Senator Biden at the time as the “Senator from MBNA.” [2]
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2014/08/05/bfp-exclusive-stench-of-corruption-a-ukraine-oligarch-shale-gas-civil-war-baby-biden/
Demeter
(85,373 posts)because the internet wasn't as ubiquitous as it is now...nor was the nation's eye on the banksters (that would take a great Crash of 2008).
But to blatantly go foraging amongst the civil war in Kiev, that is too scandalous to hide.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)
MattSh
(3,714 posts)A new article by Joshua Tartakovsky, "Israel and Ukraine: Ridding the Nation of the Undesirables," which draws parallels between Palestine and Donbass, on the one hand, and Israel and the Nazi regime in Kiev, on the other hand, made me neglect my duty to look at posts packed with clichés and to reflect on some of those bigger issues, which get lost in the haste of news and issues of the moment.
The category of the undesirables evokes another historical and political category--that of superfluous people. This category not only accompanies like a shadow the history and musings of modern political economy, but it was also part of theorizing about "totalitarianism" after World War II.
Producing much of superfluous money in the hands of the few (reportedly the value of derivatives is now about $2,000 trillion from $500 trillion in 2008), our late capitalism under its neo-liberal and neo-conservative form has also produced a critical mass of the so-called superfluous people, as seen from its one-eyed, narrowly focused greed.
This is not only means that one needs to be pay careful attention the mention of "superfluous people," one of the give-way terms dropped here and there by Hannah Ardent in her big and also admittedly strange book "The Origins of Totalitarianism."
The financialization of capitalism thus leads not only to financial bubbles. It also leads to the final forms of capitalism--as if back to its beastly form. After all, if Hobbes' Leviathan, the modern state, is anything, it is a beast. And so is Machiavelli's Prince.
And when the capital beast of the system feels that there are both simply too many people and too many people who might cause a trouble, it starts seeing all around itself or at least in a number of places too many of "superfluous people." The "natural balance" of the "market" needs to be restored. It needs to be "reset." Literally, that means "setting back." Or, as fascism also insisted, back from too much democracy and from too much of the Enlightenment.
... and ...
This then boils down to a simple beastly calculus: the beast fearing for itself wants to save itself; and to save itself, it feels compelled to bring a sacrificial victim. The "superfluous" people. Today, these "superfluous" people are identified with the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Russians in Ukraine ...
It is neither an exaggeration nor just a metaphor to say that superfluous money in the hands of the few ultimately feeds on human blood. They are after all "derivatives." Derivatives from human labor, blood, suffering, and death.
Complete story at - http://vladimirsuchan.blogspot.be/2014/08/facing-capitalisms-big-reset-and.html
Demeter
(85,373 posts)It is greed alone, not any understanding of how the world works, that drives these people who bleat about Useless Eaters and Superfluous Population.
What good is owning everything, if you have no one to lord over? No one to envy you?
And beyond that merely narcissistic feel-good, who is going to see that your little robotic world stays on track in top working order?
The 1% at the top of the Pyramid of Wealth don't think about what happens when they cut away or kill off their base of operations: the worker bees, who gather the nectar and make the honey that the drones steal to hoard.
A pyramid can stand for millenia with a flat top. But without its base, the top of the pyramid will be buried in the sands of time, along with the fossils and other Darwinian failures and losers.
THIS?
OR THIS?
Crewleader
(17,005 posts)In one of the most remarkable solidarity in memory, “Market Basket” employees, managers, and customers continue to rally and boycott on behalf of the former CEO, Arthur T. Demoulas, who was ousted by the board for not squeezing more money out of his employees, managers, and customers. Employees and managers have been told they’re about to lose their jobs, but they continue to rally. Two customer rallies are planned for today, one at Stadium Plaza on Main Street in Tewksbury at 6 p.m. and the other on Elm Street in Manchester, New Hampshire, at 5:30 p.m. Arthur T. is in negotiations to purchase the firm, but other bidders – who think they can squeeze out more profits – have offered more. This is really a contest between shareholder capitalism and stakeholder capitalism. Message to employees, managers, and customers: Hang in there!
https://www.facebook.com/RBReich
Demeter
(85,373 posts)when I lived in Mass. and NH, shopped there every week. The best chocolate fudge cake in the world! They bought the bakery that made it (Alden Merrell's), and I got a piece when I went back for the 4th of July. Still rich, moist, dark....if it hadn't been so hot at the time, I would have bought a whole cake to bring home...sigh.
Maybe I can get my sister to mail me one, in the winter.
Crewleader
(17,005 posts)I'm from there, I lived in a small town called Mattapoisett off Cape Cod.
Those fudge cakes sound great, yes you should get your sister to mail you one...nice for the holidays.
btw Always Great Weekend Threads Demeter. 
Demeter
(85,373 posts)just outside Lowell, just across the river from NH, then Nashua (the car insurance was cheaper there).
I've heard of Mattpoisett. My sister's husband has a cottage on the Cape, not that I've ever been there...hint, hint.
If she sends me a cake, it will be mine, Precious!
Crewleader
(17,005 posts)
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)Take A Letter, Maria by R.B. Greaves:
MattSh
(3,714 posts)When things seem to be really going off the rails, which seems to be quite often these days, I return to this song... NSFW
TOOL
Aenima Lyrics
Some say the end is near.
Some say we'll see Armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I sure could use a vacation from this
Bullshit three ring circus sideshow of
Freaks
Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA
The only way to fix it is to flush it all away.
Any fucking time. Any fucking day.
Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona bay.
Fret for your figure and
Fret for your latte and
Fret for your lawsuit and
Fret for your hairpiece and
Fret for your Prozac and
Fret for your pilot and
Fret for your contract and
Fret for your car.
It's a
Bullshit three ring circus sideshow of
Freaks
Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA
The only way to fix it is to flush it all away.
Any fucking Time. Any fucking day.
Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona bay.
Some say a comet will fall from the sky.
Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves.
Followed by fault lines that cannot sit still.
Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits.
And some say the end is near.
Some say we'll see Armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will 'cause
I sure could use a vacation from this
STUPID shit, silly shit, stupid shit...
One great big festering neon distraction,
I've a suggestion to keep you all occupied.
Learn to swim. [x3]
Mom's gonna fix it all soon.
Mom's comin' 'round to put it back the way it ought to
be.
Learn to swim. [x9]
Fuck L. Ron Hubbard and
Fuck all his clones.
Fuck all these gun-toting
Hip gangster wannabes.
Learn to swim. [x9]
Fuck retro anything.
Fuck your tattoos.
Fuck all you junkies and
Fuck your short memory.
Learn to swim. [x8]
Fuck smiley glad-hands,
With hidden agendas.
Fuck these dysfunctional,
Insecure actresses.
Learn to swim. [x8]
'Cause I'm praying for rain;
I'm praying for tidal waves
I wanna see the ground give way.
I wanna watch it all go down.
Mom, please, flush it all away.
I wanna see it go right in and down.
I wanna watch it go right in.
Watch you flush it all away.
Time to bring it down again.
Don't just call me pessimist.
Try and read between the lines.
I can't imagine why you wouldn't
Welcome any change, my friend.
I wanna see it come down.
Bring it down.
Suck it down.
Flush it down.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)To which I've only lately become acquainted....I'm a late-bloomer.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)30 Years Ago Warren Buffett Gave Away The Secret To Good Investing And Correctly Predicted No One Would Listen
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/30-years-ago-warren-buffett-160500867.html
In May 1984, Warren Buffett laid out everything you need to know about his investing philosophy.
In a speech at Columbia Business School, later adapted into an essay, Buffett introduced what he called, "The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville."
Buffett writes:
"The common intellectual theme of the investors from Graham-and-Doddsville is this: they search for discrepancies between the value of a business and the price of small pieces of that business in that market."
And that's pretty much it. Buffett doesn't think about buying a stock; he thinks about buying a business...
xchrom
(108,903 posts)(Reuters) - Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez took to Facebook on Saturday to rail against her country's holdout creditors, calling them greedy and bent on thwarting a solution in order to keep Argentina mired in debt.
Fernandez' post on the social network was her government's latest acrimonious attack on the bondholders she calls "vultures" following the collapse of debt talks this week that sent Argentine bond prices tumbling.
"The main thing with vulture funds is that they don't want a solution," Fernandez wrote on her Facebook page.
"Not just out of greed and avarice but also because of a political and geopolitical decision of wanting to indebt Argentina again, and to destroy, in any way possible, the restructuring of sovereign debt."
xchrom
(108,903 posts)(Reuters) - Flashes of illumination rather than fireworks are expected at this week's annual meeting of top central bankers and economists in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Few predict anything so momentous as the speech by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke two years ago that paved the way for an unprecedented $85 billion per month stimulus plan.
But policymakers will discuss at length their thinking around the labour markets of major economies at the Aug. 21-23 meeting, perhaps dropping clues about the path for monetary policy in the months ahead.
The spotlight will be on Janet Yellen, who will speak on Friday in her first appearance at Jackson Hole as Fed chair.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)(Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N) said on Friday that U.S. regulators had approved the $2.3 billion (£1.38 billion) sale of its low-end server business to Lenovo Group Ltd (0992.HK), as the company continues its shift to more profitable software and services like cloud computing and data analytics.
IBM has already divested $16 billion in annual revenue over the past decade from low-margin businesses like personal computers and printers.
The approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States came despite CIFUS members' concern, first reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, that IBM servers used in the Pentagon's networks could be accessed remotely by Chinese spies and compromised.
Lenovo has been through the secretive CFIUS process three times before and has won approval each time, according to a source familiar with the process.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Part-time work—working less than 35 hours in a week—rose fairly steeply in the recession, but has remained roughly flat for the last five years. Currently, part-time employment makes up 19 percent of total employment, compared to 17 percent before the recession began. What’s going on? To understand, it’s important to distinguish between two kinds of part-timers.
Voluntary part-time workers are people who work part time by their own preference, because they want or need a part-time schedule given other interests or obligations. Involuntary part-time workers are people who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule, because their employer doesn’t give them enough hours or because they can only find a part-time job.
The figure shows trends in full-time, voluntary part-time, and involuntary part-time work in the recession and recovery (specifically, it shows the growth rate in each type of job since December 2007, the official start of the Great Recession). Both full-time and voluntary part-time work—which both represent jobs people want— fell dramatically through early 2010 and have made slow but steady improvement since then. Involuntary part-time work—which by definition is something people don’t want—follows the opposite trend. The trend in involuntary part-time work is more dramatic than the trends in full-time and voluntary part-time work, but they all follow the broad contours of the recession and recovery, i.e. they all deteriorated in the recession and its immediate aftermath and have made slow but steady improvement since then. Full-time and voluntary part-time employment are now generally rising, while involuntary part-time work is now generally falling. The net effect of these two opposing trends in part-time employment is that total part-time employment, after rising in the recession, has been roughly flat in the recovery.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)The June Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that five years after the official start of the recovery in June 2009, the labor market remains lukewarm.
In a testament to how flat the numbers were, the BLS news release about the data used the phrase “little changed” 20 times. The good news is that what little change there was was in the right direction, with job openings up by 94,000, hires up by 92,000, and quits up by 47,000. The JOLTS data show a labor market that is improving at a modest, steady pace, but not accelerating.
Figure A shows the hires rate, the quits rate, and the layoffs rate. The first thing to note is that layoffs, which shot up during the recession, recovered quickly once the recession officially ended. Layoffs have been at prerecession levels for more than three years. This makes sense; the economy is in a recovery and businesses are no longer shedding workers at an elevated rate. But for a full recovery in the labor market to occur, two key things need to happen: Layoffs need to come down, and hiring needs to pick up. Hiring is the side of that equation that, while generally improving, has not yet come close to a full recovery. The hires rate ticked up a tenth of a percent in June to reverse the small drop it experienced in May, but it remains well below its prerecession level.
Another piece of the puzzle is voluntary quits. A larger number of people voluntarily quitting their job indicates a labor market in which hiring is prevalent and workers are able to leave jobs that aren’t right for them and find new ones. Voluntary quits, while slowly improving, are also nowhere near a full recovery. There are 15 percent fewer voluntary quits each month than there were before the recession began, and the quits rate has seen no improvement since last October. Low voluntary quits indicate that there are a large number of workers who are locked into jobs that they would leave if they could.
No job openings for more than half of job seekers
The total number of job openings in June was 4.7 million, up from 4.6 million in May. In June, there were 9.5 million job seekers (unemployment data are from the Current Population Survey), meaning that there were 2.0 times as many job seekers as job openings. Put another way: Job seekers so outnumbered job openings that half of job seekers were not going to find a job in June no matter what they did. In a labor market with strong job opportunities, there would be roughly as many job openings as job seekers.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)While immigration is among the most important issues the country faces, misperceptions persist about fundamental aspects of this crucial topic—such as the size and composition of the immigrant population, how immigration affects the economy and the workforce, the budgetary impact of unauthorized immigration, why increasing numbers of unaccompanied migrant children are arriving at the United States’ Southwest border, and the various facets of U.S. labor migration policy. This FAQ provides essential background on these topics.
The immigrant population
1. How many immigrants reside in the United States?
More than 40 million immigrants resided in the United States as of 2012,1 accounting for about 13 percent of the total U.S. population. Of these roughly 40 million immigrants, slightly less than half (46 percent) are naturalized U.S. citizens.2
2. How many unauthorized immigrants are in the United States?
There were an estimated 11.7 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States as of 2012.3 Unauthorized immigrants account for about 3.7 percent of the total U.S. population and about 5.2 percent of the labor force. Note that unauthorized immigrants are a larger share of the labor force than of the total population because the vast majority of unauthorized immigrants are working-age adults.4
3. Are most immigrants Hispanic/Latino?
Contrary to popular perception, less than half (46 percent) of all immigrants in the United States are Hispanic or Latino. Roughly one-fifth of all immigrants are non-Hispanic white (19.2 percent), about 8 percent are black, and just over a quarter (26.3 percent) are Asian or of some other race/ethnicity.5
When it comes to unauthorized immigrants, the overwhelming majority are indeed Latino—primarily from Mexico and Central America. There are, however, also populations of unauthorized immigrants from Asia, South America, Europe and Canada, and the Caribbean (as shown in Figure A).
4. How much do immigrants contribute to the economy?
One way to quantify immigrants’ contribution to the U.S. economy is to look at the wages and salaries they earn, as well as the income of immigrant-owned businesses, as a share of all wages, salaries, and business income in the United States. (See Table 1.) For the United States as a whole, immigrants’ share of total output was about 14.7 percent over 2009–2011. Note that this is actually larger than immigrants’ 13 percent share of the population.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Spanish public debt has passed a record €1 trillion, the Bank of Spain said on Thursday, ballooning to €1.007 trillion in June, up from €996 billion in May.
The landmark figure, representing 98.4% of last year’s GDP, comes after more than two-and-a-half years of austerity measures, tax hikes and wage freezes by the conservative Popular Party government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. When he took office in late 2011, the debt was €737.4 billion, or 70.4% of GDP.
The government had several months ago come to terms with the fact that debt will reach 100% of GDP, a figure that Spain had not seen in a century. Spain has traditionally enjoyed relatively low debt ratios: in 2007, on the eve of the crisis, it was just 36% of GDP, but the collapse of a decade-long property boom hit the country’s overextended banks hard – prompting a €41-billion EU bailout for the banking sector in summer 2012 – and pushed the economy into a double-dip recession.
The country enjoys relatively low inflation, but this will do little to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio, which is measured on the basis of nominal GDP, and the debt weighs more heavily the less prices rise. Furthermore, Spanish growth, at just 0.6% in the second quarter, may be among the biggest in the euro single currency area, but is still fragile. Unemployment remains stubbornly high at almost 25 percent.
