Where's the Outrage?

By now everyone has heard about the latest jobs report. I’m going to repeat myself. It isn’t time to cheer. It is time to figure out how to get the millions of Americans who are trying to get work, back to work. We haven’t gotten there yet. There are still more than four job seekers for every job out there. We have to get this economy going. This is a start. It is a good start.

From EPI:

The labor market started off 2012 with a nice surprise. The January 2012 employment situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a labor market with all parts seemingly moving in a solid direction. Payroll employment growth of 243,000 was matched by a decrease in the unemployment rate from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent, strong household employment growth, and a growing share of the population with jobs (after removing the effect of BLS’ annual population reweighting). Furthermore, December’s jobs number was revised upward by 266,000 (which included not only the routine monthly revision of earlier data, but also the annual benchmark revision, updated birth/death model adjustments, and new seasonal adjustment factors).

It’s important, though, to keep all this in context. The U.S. labor market started 2012 with fewer jobs than it had 11 years ago in January 2001—a testament to both the enormity of the current labor market crisis as well as the very weak job growth of the 2000–07 business cycle. The jobs deficit is so large that even at January’s growth rate, it would still take until 2019 to get back to full employment. We need reports this strong and stronger for the next several years to get back to a healthy labor market.

Tags: Economy by ecthompson md
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Republicans, in a thoughtful and coordinated attack, have opened up another front in their war on labor unions. Remember that unions are a source of money and organization for liberal causes and the Democratic Party. As such, Republicans hate unions. They hate them above and beyond the union’s ability to negotiate wages and safe working conditions. The first battlefront was in Wisconsin. Consequences of the anti-union legislation continue to reverberate today as signatures for Scott Walker’s recall election were turned in just a couple weeks ago. Then the battlefront moved to Ohio. The Republicans passed anti-union legislation. The unions organized and won a referendum to kill the flawed legislation at the ballot. Now, attention turns to Arizona.

This attack on unions is particularly well-timed. The legislation is extremely anti-union. It goes further than Scott Walker ever thought he could. Fighting this legislation will require unions to divert their attention away from the national election and local elections. They will have to focus almost entirely on this assault on their very existence. Thus, this assault will probably deprive Democrats of much-needed money and organizational strength. I look at this as a last and desperate effort to crush progressive causes.

More from TPM:

Union members were searching for a way out of the wilderness on Wednesday in Arizona as the Republican-controlled Senate moved ahead quickly on several bills that could devastate organized labor in the state.

The measures caught many union leaders by surprise, being introduced on Monday night and passed in committee less than 48 hours later.

At issue is a sweeping series of restrictions that would, among other things, ban unions that represent workers in state, county or city governments from engaging in any type of negotiations that affect the terms of their employment. That includes teachers, prison workers and the state’s powerful police and firefighters unions. The move would take away much of the power those unions have and turn them into something more akin to trade groups.

Tags: Economy, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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Sure looks like President Obama and the stimulus package have done something.

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It is hard to overemphasize how important Greece and Europe are to our eventual economic recovery. Whether we like it or not our fortunes are tied to Europe. We do a ton of trade with Europe. If they fall in the tank, they’re not going to buy US exports and that will cause a significant slowing of our economy. No matter how much we’d like to think that we are strong and independent, we are tied to the world economy, especially to Europe.

From WSJ (may need a subscription):

Greece and its private sector creditors said Saturday they were on the verge of a deal to write off €100 billion ($132 billion) worth of the country’s debt, pending the outcome of separate talks on a new, multi-billion euro bailout for Athens.

In separate statements, Greece and the creditors both noted significant progress in the talks and said a final deal would be announced next week in tandem with the new loan program.

Effectively, the focus now shifts to a European summit in Brussels Monday where the continent’s leaders will sanctify — or not — the terms of the debt restructuring and the new loan. But complicating those discussions are concerns that Greece’s funding needs might be bigger than originally thought, while Europe appears divided over how to cover the gap.

Tags: Economy by ecthompson md
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Four banks (numbers four through seven for the year, if you are counting) were closed on Friday. This is a sad reminder that we have much more work to do to fix our economy.

• BankEast, Knoxville, Tennessee was closed today by the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with U.S. Bank National Association, Cincinnati, Ohio, to assume all of the deposits of BankEast.
• Patriot Bank Minnesota, Forest Lake, Minnesota was closed today by the Minnesota Department of Commerce, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with First Resource Bank, Savage, Minnesota, to assume all of the deposits of Patriot Bank Minnesota.
• First Guaranty Bank and Trust Company of Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Florida was closed today by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with CenterState Bank of Florida, National Association, Winter Haven, Florida to assume all of the deposits of First Guaranty Bank and Trust Company of Jacksonville.
• Tennessee Commerce Bank, Franklin, Tennessee was closed today by the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Republic Bank & Trust Company, Louisville, Kentucky to assume all of the deposits of Tennessee Commerce Bank

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Candidates practice questions all of the time for these “debates.” There is almost no question which these guys haven’t seen and answered. Getting a question about jobs should be a lay-up. Let’s see how Republican candidate,  Rick Santorum, dribbles this one off his foot and watch the ball roll out of bounds.

From TPM:

At the Huckabee forum a voter asks Santorum what as President he could do to help people like her, and goes on to outline her situation. Four years ago her husband lost his job. They’ve run through their IRA. They’ve run through most of their 401k. They moved from their large house in the north of the state to a smaller house in the south of the state where it’s cheaper.

Santorum starts his answer by noting that she and her husband “have moved to a beautiful part of the country.”

“My wife and I love vacationing here,” he continues, before going on to outline his desire to ramp up the American manufacturing industry.

UPDATE: Towards the end of the forum the questioner is asked whether she was satisfied with Santorum’s answer. She’s not. She notes her husband, and many others like him who’ve been affected by the recession, are in their sixties, and so “I’m not sure manufacturing is going to bring him back his job.”

Tags: Economy, Elections by ecthompson md
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One of the big dark clouds hanging over our economy is our very close ties to Europe. If the European economy tanks, we will be pulled down with it. This is a fact. S&P has downgraded France and just about everyone else in Europe except for Germany.

From WSJ:

France and eight other euro-zone countries suffered ratings downgrades on their sovereign debt Friday, sparking renewed global worries over Europe’s ability to bail itself out of financial crisis.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services stripped triple-A ratings from France and Austria and downgraded seven others, including Spain, Italy and Portugal. It retained the triple-A rating on Europe’s No. 1 economy, Germany.

The downgrade to France, the zone’s second-largest economy, will make it harder—and potentially more expensive—for the euro zone’s bailout fund to help troubled states, because the fund’s own triple-A rating depends on those of its constituents. The downgrades also speak to how deeply the concerns over countries on the euro zone’s periphery have penetrated its core.

Oh, and don’t forget Greece. Their debt talks have collapsed.

Tags: Business, Economy by ecthompson md
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I know that when you mention shared (anything) there are some in our society who go crazy. They immediately think of socialism and communism. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about American Capitalism from the ’60s and ’70s.

Why can’t we all share in the American Dream?

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Transcripts from the Fed meetings in 2006 have been released. Wow. These guys were completely clueless. One would have figured that the folks at the Fed would have been worried about our economy in 2006. This was just before the bottom fell out of the housing market. There was no talk about the housing market possibly pulling our whole economy into the toilet. There was talk about inflation being a problem. There was way too much talk about the greatness of Alan Greenspan who had announced that he was stepping down. I find all of this very illuminating. We tend to think of economists as having some insight into the mysteries of our economy and the market. I thought that with just a few months before the largest collapse of our economy since the Great Depression that someone in the room at one of these meetings would have been sounding the alarm. Nope.

Transcripts can be found here.

From NYT:

Some officials, including Susan Bies, a Fed governor, suggested that a housing downturn actually could bolster the economy by redirecting money to other kinds of investments.

And there was general acclaim for Alan Greenspan, who stepped down as chairman at the beginning of the year, for presiding over one of the longest economic expansions in the nation’s history. Mr. Geithner suggested that Mr. Greenspan’s greatness still was not fully appreciated, an opinion now held by a much smaller number of people.

Meanwhile, by the end of 2006, the economy already was shrinking by at least one important measure, total income. And by the end of the next year, the Fed had started its desperate struggle to prevent the collapse of the financial system and to avert the onset of what could have been the nation’s first full-fledged depression in about 70 years.

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The job numbers were pretty good. They were a lot better than I expected. Even with the jump in temporary hiring, the underlying numbers continued to show improvement. I do not, however, think it’s time to break open the champagne, not time to do the happy dance. The economy still has a lot of problems. There are still millions of Americans who have stopped looking for jobs. There are millions of Americans who are underemployed.

Here’s what I know – when Barack Obama took office our economy was losing over 500,000 jobs per month. The economy had fallen off a cliff. We needed someone like Superman to rescue the economy before it crashed into the rocks below. Now we are adding jobs every month. This is good. I wonder whether we can figure out a way to get Republicans to stop hindering job growth.

From EPI:

This morning’s release of the December 2011 employment situation report, which marked four years since the official start of the recession in December 2007, capped off 2011 on a positive note.  Both the establishment survey and the household survey showed improvement – the labor market added 200,000 jobs, hours and wages were up, unemployment ticked down, underemployment dropped, and the duration of unemployment spells declined.  This is a step in the right direction.

The length of the average workweek increased in December to 34.4 hours, restoring hours to where they were last spring.  Average hours have thus far made up just three-fourths of what they lost in the first 18 months of the downturn (average hours were 34.6 in December 2007 and 33.7 at the low point in June 2009).

Average hourly wages increased by 4 cents in December and have risen at a 1.9% annualized rate over the last three months.  This remains far below the pre-recession growth rate (3.4 percent from December 2006 to December 2007), as persistent high unemployment has exerted strong downward pressure on wage growth. With hours and hourly wages up, average weekly wages grew more strongly at $3.70, and they have risen at a 3.1% annualized rate over the last three months.

Unemployment in December was 8.7 percent for those age 25 or older with only a high school education, and 4.1 percent for those age 25 or older with a college degree or more. While workers with higher levels of education have lower unemployment rates, all education categories have seen their unemployment rates roughly double over the downturn, a trend running counter to the notion that there is high unemployment because employers are unable to fill their demand for workers with higher education credentials.

Considering additional breakdowns by age, race/ethnicity, and gender, we find that all major groups of workers have experienced substantial increases in unemployment over the Great Recession and its aftermath. However, young workers and racial and ethnic minorities have been and continue to be hit particularly hard.

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Don’t tell me the problem is with Obama or the American worker. The problem is this country it that a greater and greater share of the wealth is going to the top. It is that simple.

Tags: Economy by ecthompson md
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When the GOP took the House, they promised to focus on jobs and the American economy. Over the last year, they’ve taken a hard line on multiple issues. None of these issues were going to help the job market or the average American worker. Back in April the GOP was going to shut down the government by slashing hundreds of billions of dollars for domestic programs. That didn’t work so well. Then, in August, we had the debt ceiling debate where, once again, the GOP was prepared to shut down the government if they didn’t get what they wanted. There is no compromise. It was their way or shut down the government. Next, the issue became disaster relief. Eric Cantor and the rest of the GOP hardliners insisted on having offsets in order to release disaster funds. Of course, they only wanted to cut domestic programs and wouldn’t agree to (or even talk about) cutting military programs or about raising money by taxing the wealthy. That also did not work out for the GOP. Then, just last month, the super committee was supposed to come up with super tax cuts and Republicans on the committee stood resolutely by their opposition to raise any revenue. Basically, the committee did nothing. Finally, the GOP decided that they were going to stand up against renewing the payroll tax cut. This is a tax cut which has helped average Americans. This is $1000 directly into the pocket of everyday working Americans and for some inexplicable reason the GOP opposed it.

I shudder to think what the Republican-led House is planning for 2012.

Tags: Economy, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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One of the great lines that the GOP has been feeding us over the last three years is that we have too much debt. According to the GOP, we need to do everything that we can, including killing Social Security and Medicare, to decrease our debt. If we, as the GOP claims, really had too much debt, then no one would want to buy our debt, right? Had we too much, investors would be increasing their risk if they were to buy our debt and should, therefore, want to stay away from US debt. Right? Then why are investors buying up US debt at record numbers? Maybe, just maybe, the GOP is 100% on this.

From Bloomberg:

The U.S. government received record demand for its bonds in 2011, pushing longer-maturity Treasuries to their best performance since 1995 in a sign that President Barack Obama may have little difficulty financing a fourth consecutive year of $1 trillion budget deficits.

The Treasury Department attracted $3.04 for each dollar of the $2.135 trillion in notes and bonds sold, the most since the government began releasing the data in 1992 during the George H. W. Bush administration. The U.S. drew an all-time high bid-to- cover ratio of 9.07 for $30 billion of four-week bills it auctioned on Dec. 20 even though they pay zero percent interest.

While Standard & Poor’s stripped the U.S. of its AAA credit rating on Aug. 5, Treasuries due in 10 years or more returned 25.6 percent this year. The spreading sovereign debt crisis in Europe and slower global growth are driving investors to the safety of U.S. assets, helping to contain borrowing costs and making it cheaper as a percentage of gross domestic product to finance deficits than when the nation last had budget surpluses.

“If the last two weeks are any indication of how next year will start, there’s near-insatiable demand,” Ira Jersey, an interest-rate strategist at Credit Suisse Group AG in New York, one of 21 primary dealers that are required to bid at the auctions, said in a Dec. 21 telephone interview. “We have a significantly shrinking supply of risk-free assets in the world and U.S. Treasuries are one of the few left.”

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I haven’t posted that much on the payroll tax cut. Why, you ask? ‘Cuz it was a no brainer. Everybody knew it was a no brainer. Everyone also knew that members of the GOP were going to try to extact as much as they could for this tax cut. The political calculus was clear to everyone for months. My only question was why did the Dems get so little? They, the Dems, should have pushed for a 12-month extension (not 2 month) of this tax cut.

From WaPo:

Facing withering criticism from across the political spectrum and abandoned by Senate allies, House Republicans bowed to political reality Thursday and agreed to a two-month extension of a payroll tax cut for 160 million Americans.

The agreement represented a remarkable capitulation on the part of House Republicans, who had two days earlier rejected such a deal with Democrats as the kind of half-measure that their new majority was elected to thwart.

And it amounts to a Christmas gift for President Obama, who attempted to paint his Republican opponents as willing to raise taxes for millions of Americans. Such an image could have cost the party politically just as it is gearing up to try to take back the White House and the Senate in 2012.

Tags: Congress, Economy, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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I read these 10 questions over on CalculatedRisk. I think he hits the nail right on the head.

1. House Prices: How much further will house prices fall on the national repeat sales indexes (Case-Shiller, CoreLogic)?

2. Residential Investment: Residential investment (RI) made a modest positive contribution to GDP growth in 2011, the first positive contribution since 2005. RI is mostly investment in new single family structures, multifamily structures, home improvement and commissions on existing home sales. Historically RI has been the best leading indicator for the economy, but the growth in RI will probably be modest again in 2012. How much will RI increase in 2012?

3. Distressed house sales: Foreclosure activity is still very high, although activity slowed in 2011 because of “foreclosure gate” issues. The number of REOs (Real Estate Owned by lenders) also declined in 2011. Will foreclosure activity pick up in 2012?

4. Economic growth: It appeared GDP growth would increase a little in 2011, but then the economy was hit by a series of shocks including extreme weather (significant snow storms, flooding, hurricane Irene), the oil price increase related to the “Arab Spring”, the tsunami in Japan, and the debt ceiling debate in D.C. during late July and early August. Even with all these shocks, 2011 real GDP growth was still positive, but below trend.

Heading into 2012 there are significant downside risks from the European financial crisis and from U.S. fiscal tightening. Will the U.S. economy grow in 2012? Or will there be another recession?

5. Employment: The U.S. economy added about 132 thousands payroll jobs per month in 2011 through November (156 thousand private sector). Although this was an improvement from 2010, this was still weak payroll growth for a recovery. How many payroll jobs will be added in 2012?

6. Unemployment Rate: The unemployment rate is still elevated at 8.6% in November. Last year, my prediction was for the unemployment rate to still be above 9% in December 2011. I thought the participation rate would increase a little in 2011 – however the participation rate continued to decline – and that pushed down the unemployment rate.

I still think we will see some bounce back in the participation rate – and that will put upward pressure on the unemployment rate. What will the unemployment rate be in December 2012?

7. State and Local Governments: It is starting to look like there will be less drag in 2012 than in 2011. How much of a drag will state and local budget problems have on economic growth and employment?

8. Europe and the Euro: What will happen in Europe in 2012? How much of a drag will the problems in Europe have on U.S. growth?

9. Inflation: Will the inflation rate rise or fall in 2012?

10. Monetary Policy: Will the Fed introduce QE3? Will the Fed change their communication strategy and include the likely future path of the Fed Funds rate?

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I will continue to post bank failures as I hear of them.

Western Nation Bank, Phoenix Az and Premier Community Bank of the Emerald Coast, Crestview, Fl. These are failures #91 and #92 for this year.

Tags: Economy by ecthompson md
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(I wrote this for the Urban News this morning. Usually, I let the article come out in the Urban News before I post it here. So I looked for something else to write. I was/am truly drowning in Newt Gingrich’s tax proposal, which is really, really bad for America. So, I could post something on tax policy or …)

First of all, let me say Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah. If you observe Kwanzaa, have a joyous Kwanzaa season. For me, I love Christmas. Christmas is what Christianity is all about. It’s about the miracle of Christ. It is about the love and trust that Joseph had for Mary and the love that they both had for God. This is the season for love and altruism.

Our society is clearly based on our Judeo-Christian heritage, and the heart of Christianity is Jesus’s message of love and altruism. Our social safety net, based on that message, is all about helping those who are less fortunate than we are. Thus Medicare and Social Security are the biggest reflection of our love for our fellow man.

It should be no surprise to us that there are many in our society who hate these programs. They hated the programs from the moment they were conceived. They got physically sick when these programs passed Congress, and they’ve been fighting to end these programs ever since they were implemented.

Social Security was designed to help older Americans. It has been proven in numerous studies that Social Security has been extremely successful at preventing millions of older Americans from being completely impoverished. Yet there are conservatives who are working diligently to kill this program. Many years ago, Ron Paul argued that Social Security was a Ponzi scheme and that it needed to be phased out over time. President Bush, in 2005, wanted to privatize the program. Under his plan, we would pay into Social Security as we do now, but instead of the money going into a government account, it would go to Wall Street. Then we would have to choose among a dizzying array of financial products in order to make our money grow, while Wall Street would take its cut of every transaction we made.

Conservatives tried to sell us on the pipedream that we would be tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars better off by investing our hard-earned money, through Social Security, in Wall Street. The crash of Wall Street in 2007 taught us two things: first, investing in Wall Street would have made the rich much richer, and, second, that our hard-earned money would have somehow gotten sucked up in risky investment tools like mortgage-backed securities, derivatives, and synthetic collateralized debt obligations. There would have been a giant sucking sound as our retirement savings were vacuumed up by Wall Street bankers.

The proposed privatization of Social Security was roundly denounced by the American people, but don’t think for an instant that the idea of getting rid of Social Security has gone away. Many Republican presidential candidates, including Rick Perry and the perennial Ron Paul, still want to end Social Security. In his book Fed Up! Perry rehashed the theme that Social Security is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme and that the system needs to be “changed.” That assertion reminds me of nothing so much as the VietNam-era general who testified that “…we had to destroy the village in order to save it.” When conservatives state that Social Security needs to be “changed” or made “secure for future generations,” for the most part they’re telling us they would like to (George W.) Bush the program.

Medicare is another altruistic program that is popular and successful, offering millions of Americans quality health care every year. Yet conservatives continually try to find ways to underfund, hamper, and kill this program. As with any program that’s been running for 45 years, it might be sensible to adjust details and tweak aspects of the program in order to make it more efficient, but this is not what any of the Republicans are talking about. They want to kill it, dead.

Ronald Reagan ranted against Medicare as a spokesman for failed presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in the 1960s, and the Republicans’ hatred for the program has not abated in the decades since. Former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, trying to find his mojo this month in response to Newt Gingrich’s recent surge in the polls, has embraced Paul Ryan’s disastrous budget plan to end Medicare. That plan would replace Medicare with a “voucher system,” whereby you would get a check from the government to help pay for a private insurance plan. As with Social Security privatization, the private insurers would take their oversized cut out of your medical care dollars, and out of your wallet, while the “government of the people” sat idly by and subsidized the insurers.

I think it’s disturbing when you have a major candidate of the Republican Party embracing the radical idea of ending Medicare.

I also find terribly distressing that any major candidate would embrace repealing child labor laws. One of the major reasons that we enjoyed economic prosperity throughout the 1950s and 1960s was that we had an educated workforce. As we look to the future, we need a workforce that is even better educated than our parents. In this competitive, global environment, only solid education will allow us to be more innovative.

But relaxing or repealing child labor laws pulls children out of the classroom and puts them into the workforce. This cuts into their education, but it also increases the availability of cheap labor, effectively depressing wages even further. Not one aspect of this proposal is good for the American worker, the American economy, or the American future. Newt Gingrich, however, is fully in favor of repealing “the stupid child labor laws” that protect our children and our citizens’ ability to reach for the American dream.

As we embrace the holiday season, I encourage all of us to think of the values that make this season so special. We, as a people, believe in altruism, love for our fellow man, and helping those who are less fortunate than we are. I may be wrong, but I believe that children need to stay in school in order to give us a brighter future. I believe that Medicare and Social Security are not frivolous programs, but are the bedrock of our social safety net. These programs — along with such other safety net programs as the SCHIP insurance program for poor children, the WIC program to improve child nutrition, and Food Stamps which helps families put food on their tables — reflect our values as a nation. They need to be strengthened and improved, not weakened and dismantled.

Our Judeo-Christian values, our 235-year heritage as “we, the people,” and our very future as a great nation are at stake.

I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Tags: Economy by ecthompson md
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My good friend, Theron, pointed this out some time ago. I don’t recall what data he was citing, but it appears to have been 100% correct. I have only recently begun to understand that every day Americans who thought that they were one house flip away from riches were a big factor in the bubble.

From CalculatedRisk Blog:

Several readers have asked me to comment on this new paper from Fed economists Haughwout, Lee, Tracy, and van der Klaauw: “Flip This House”: Investor Speculation and the Housing Bubble (ht Josh)

[W]e present new findings from our recent New York Fed study that uses unique data to suggest that real estate “investors”—borrowers who use financial leverage in the form of mortgage credit to purchase multiple residential properties—played a previously unrecognized, but very important, role. These investors likely helped push prices up during 2004-06; but when prices turned down in early 2006, they defaulted in large numbers and thereby contributed importantly to the intensity of the housing cycle’s downward leg.

It was pretty obvious that investor buying was pushing up prices in 2004 and 2005. I wrote a post in April 2005 (over six years ago!) on that subject: Housing: Speculation is the Key (Note: in that 2005 post I treated speculation as storage and showed how speculation pushes up prices during the bubble – and pushes down prices after the bubble bursts).

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Just a couple weeks ago, we got the new auto sales reports for November.

From the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. car makers reported a surprisingly strong month of sales on Thursday, with trucks boosting General Motors and Chrysler enjoying its best November since 2007.

Ford Motor Co. F -0.54% , Toyota Motor Corp. TM -0.40% and Nissan Motors NSANY -1.31% also fared well, while Honda Motor Co. HMC +0.09% took another hit.

Overall, the industry reported a SAAR (seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales) of 13.6 million units, according to Autodata, up from 12.28 million in November 2010. Total deliveries rose 13.9% from a year earlier.

GM GM -0.63% , still the biggest of the group in the U.S., said it sold 180,402 cars and trucks, paced by a 34% increase in sales of the Chevy Silverado and a 22% rise in sales of the GMC Sierra.

Back in November of 2008, former Governor Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” He argued that “in a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.” It seems that Mitt Romney, a money guru, could quite possibly have been completely wrong.

Tags: Economy by ecthompson md
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Better. Much better than I expected. We need much more, but this is better. Note that the jobs numbers for September and October were revised up.

From MarketWatch:

The U.S. gained 120,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate fell to 8.6% from 9.0%, the Labor Department said Friday. The government also revised jobs data for October and September to show that 72,000 additional jobs were created. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast a 125,000 increase in employment in November and no change in the jobless rate. About half of the drop in the unemployment rate stemmed from a decline in the number of workers in the labor force. Hiring in October was revised up to 100,000 from 80,000 and the job gains in September were revised up to 210,00 from 158,000. In November, companies in the private sector hired 140,000 workers, with retailers adding 50,000. Government cut 20,000 jobs, the Labor Department said. Average hourly earnings fell 0.1% last month to $23.18 and the workweek was unchanged at 34.3 hours. The broader U6 unemployment rate dropped to 15.6% from 16.2% in October.

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