"The Economy and the Presidency" by Martin Feldstein Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space CAMBRIDGE – America’s presidential election is now just six months away. If history is a reliable guide, the outcome will depend significantly on the economy’s performance between now and November 6, and on Americans’ perception of their economic future under the two candidates. At the moment, America’s economy is limping along with slow growth and high unemployment. The labor market has been similarly disappointing. Indeed, the official unemployment rate understates the weakness of the labor market. Solid increases in payroll employment at the start of the year contributed to a general sense of confidence. Even those who are working are seeing their incomes shrink. Despite their declining incomes, households raised their spending in early 2012 at a rapid pace by cutting their saving rate to just 3.7%. Moreover, the housing market remains in bad shape. The weakness of America’s economy is not limited to the household sector.
Education: Money is made of Nothing (Republished from I.P.C.O. Education) 200bc. Rome was having trouble with the money changers. 2 early Roman Emperors were assassinated because of their attempts to diminish the power of the money changers by reforming Usury laws and limiting land ownership to 500 acres. 48bc. Julius Caesar took back the power to coin money from the money changers and minted coins for the benefit of all, building great public works projects and making money plentiful which won him the love of the common man. With the of death of Caesar came the demise of plentiful money in Rome. 1100ad. King Henry 1st finally resolved to take the power away from the gold smiths and introduced the ‘Tally Stick System’ (accepted for the payment of taxes1100ad -1826ad.) 1500's King Henry 8th King Henry 8th finally relaxed the laws of Usury. 1553 Queen Mary 1st Queen Mary 1st took the throne and tightened the Usury Laws again, the money changers renewed the hording of gold and silver coins forcing the economy to plummet.
The Poor Are Getting Poorer. Is It Time to Raise the Minimum Wage? - Jordan Weissmann - Business One of the harshest realities of America's slow economic recovery -- and there are many -- is the fact in spite of modest job growth, pay for workers is falling. Year over year, average inflation adjusted wages have dropped by 0.6 percent for all private sector employees. They're down a full 1 percent for non-supervisors -- your retail salespeople, your shop floor factory workers, your cashiers. Some believe this is a sign of the recovery's weakness, and today the National Employment Law Project used it as a rallying point to call for a higher minimum wage. I read the situation we're in a bit differently, but not much more optimistically. In short, the labor market got warped. But here's the alarming part. Falling wages are taking us back to where we were before the recession.
Your iPhone Was Built, In Part, By 13 Year-Olds Working 16 Hours A Day For 70 Cents An Hour Chairman Bernanke Should Listen to Professor Bernanke Bernanke was and is a fine economist. More than that, before joining the Fed, he wrote extensively, in academic studies of both the Great Depression and modern Japan, about the exact problems he would confront at the end of 2008. He argued forcefully for an aggressive response, castigating the Bank of Japan, the Fed’s counterpart, for its passivity. Presumably, the Fed under his leadership would be different. Instead, while the Fed went to great lengths to rescue the financial system, it has done far less to rescue workers. The Bernanke Conundrum — the divergence between what Professor Bernanke advocated and what Chairman Bernanke has actually done — can be reconciled in a few possible ways. What the Fed Can Do The Federal Reserve has a dual mandate: price stability and maximum employment. Right now, the Fed believes that it’s facing a weak economy and subdued inflation, a situation in which it would ordinarily cut interest rates. That doesn’t mean the Fed was out of options.
'Mass suicide' protest at Apple manufacturer Foxconn factory Foxconn, which manufactures gadgets for the likes of Apple, Sony, Nintendo and HP, among many others, has had a grim history of suicides at its factories. A suicide cluster in 2010 saw 18 workers throw themselves from the tops of the company's buildings, with 14 deaths. "We were put to work without any training, and paid piecemeal," said one of the protesting workers, who asked not to be named. "The assembly line ran very fast and after just one morning we all had blisters and the skin on our hand was black. The factory was also really choked with dust and no one could bear it," he said. Several reports from inside Foxconn factories have suggested that while the company is more advanced than many of its competitors, it is run in a "military" fashion that many workers cannot cope with. "Because we could not cope, we went on strike," said the worker. He added that 45 Foxconn employees had chosen to resign and the remainder had returned to work.
The Corruption Law that Scares the Bejesus Out of Corporate America - Jordan Weissmann - Business Walmart's Mexican bribery scandal is shining the spotlight on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an obscure law that's become a bane for some of the world's largest corporations. Reuters Up until this past weekend, there was a very good chance that the average New York Times business page reader had never heard of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The law, generally referred to as the FCPA, was passed in 1977 and bans individuals and companies from bribing foreign government officials to win business or influence their decision making. Just ask Walmart. There was a time when American businesses didn't fret much about foreign bribery, much less what federal prosecutors might do about it. The path from Nixon's dirty tricks to the problem of foreign corruption was a bit roundabout, to say the least. This wasn't the first time U.S. companies had been caught doling out cash to foreign governments. Even after the convention was adopted, the FCPA still remained largely beneath the radar.
Full-Blown Civil War Erupts On Wall Street - Financial Elite Start Turning On Each Other Reality Finally Hits The Financial Elite As They Start Turning On Each Other 6th September 2011 By David DeGraw - ampedstatus.org Finally, after trillions in fraudulent activity, trillions in bailouts, trillions in printed money, billions in political bribing and billions in bonuses, the criminal cartel members on Wall Street are beginning to get what they deserve. Time to put your Big Bank shorts on! Well, well… here’s your Shock & Awe: First up, this shockingly huge $196 billion lawsuit just filed against 17 major banks on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. FHA Files a $196 Billion Lawsuit Against 17 Banks The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), as conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), today filed lawsuits against 17 financial institutions, certain of their officers and various unaffiliated lead underwriters. Complaints have been filed against the following lead defendants, in alphabetical order: 1. And the suits just keep coming… 1. 2. 3. Trouble a-comin’…
All the President's Central Bankers Regardless of who wins the 2012 U.S. presidential election, President Barack Obama will end his first term having decisively shaped U.S. monetary policy for at least the next two decades. Thanks to a stroke of lucky timing -- the Federal Reserve Board happened to have an unusually high number of vacancies during the president's first term -- Obama will have either appointed or reappointed every single one of the seven members of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, including its chairman, Ben Bernanke, by the end of 2012. With the governors each set to serve a 14-year term, they will ensure Obama's long-term impact on the U.S. economy. Bernanke was originally appointed board chair by President George W. Two of the other governors, Elizabeth Duke and Sarah Bloom Raskin will serve until 2012 and 2016, respectively. Half of all Foreign Affairs content is now published online only. To continue reading, please log in. Don't have an account? Register Register for free to continue reading.
For the Love of Money Photo IN my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was addicted. Eight years earlier, I’d walked onto the trading floor at Credit Suisse First Boston to begin my summer internship. I’d learned about the importance of being rich from my dad. Dad believed money would solve all his problems. IT was a miracle I’d made it to Wall Street at all. Three weeks into my internship she wisely dumped me. She helped me see that I was using alcohol and drugs to blunt the powerlessness I felt as a kid and suggested I give them up. After graduation, I got a job at Bank of America, by the grace of a managing director willing to take a chance on a kid who had called him every day for three weeks. I felt so important. Still, I was nagged by envy. But I was lying to myself.
"That Old Tax Magic" by Simon Johnson Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space WASHINGTON, DC – Tax time in the United States – the dreaded mid-April deadline for filing annual income-tax forms – has come and gone. The system, Americans have been reminded, has become painfully complex, with many a loophole through which one might try to squeeze. The fear of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service lurks in homes across the country. At such a sensitive time, it is no surprise to hear politicians pitching the idea of “tax reform” – suggesting that they can simplify the system, close loopholes, and use the proceeds to reduce tax rates. In the policy jargon increasingly heard in today’s political discourse, tax reform will be “revenue neutral” – meaning that it will not worsen the budget deficit or drive up the national debt. The problem with this vision of tax reform is that it is magical – an attractive illusion with no basis in reality. Obama is only slightly better.
Punching Above their Weight - By James Manyika, Jaana Remes, and Javier Orellana There's a cliché that young Americans head to the bright lights of the big cities to find their fame and fortune. It's still true, except that those cities aren't necessarily just the big ones anymore. And let's be thankful for that, because it's the U.S. mid-tier cities that are surprisingly generating the growth that will spur the global economy over the next decade. Collectively, large cities -- which we define as metropolitan areas with a population of 150,000 plus -- in the United States are the center of gravity of the economy, generating almost 85 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and nearly 20 percent of global GDP today. It is America's large cities, and particularly the broad swath of middleweights, that will be the key to the U.S. recovery and a key contributor to global growth in the next 15 years. What is behind the clout of middleweights in the United States? Cities need to have a keen ear for what businesses are looking for. But the landscape is moving.