Bloggers Meet with U.S. Treasury Officials

On Monday, November 2, 2009, a group of eight bloggers met with  Treasury officials in Washington, DC.  The following link will take you to a report by  Steve Waldman (“Interfluidity”),  one of the bloggers who attended this session.  Go to  http://www.interfluidity.com/posts/1257407150.shtml .  At the end, there are links to reports from other bloggers.

Government Expenditures and Revenues

Once again, the Calafia Beach Pundit (Scortt Grannis) provides insight backed up with charts which show some distrurbing trends viz-a-viz revenues and expenditures of the United States Government. His post on this matter can be found at http://bit.ly/39qz0o .  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Money Creation

On October 9, 2009, The Calafia Beach Pundit (Scott Grannis) posted this chart and an explanation at his blog (http://scottgrannis.blogspot.com/). It illustrates the dramatic expansion of the monetary base in the USA during the year since the near collapse of the financial system. The Monetary Base (currency plus bank reserves), is now at an all-time high.

Grannis points out that all this money creation has yet to create inflation because most of it went into newly-created bank reserves that remain on the Federal Reserve balance sheet. Despite the increase in the money supply, there is little new lending. The big question is whether the Federal Reserve will be able to shrink the money supply as we move into recovery. If not, it seems like are in for some dramatic inflation.

A Global View of the Housing Bubble

It turns out that the housing price bubble of recent years was more pronounced in several nations other than the USA as illustrated by a chart that appeared in the McKinsey Quarterly Chart Focus Newsletter of October 2009 — http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/newsletters/chartfocus/2009_10.htm

The Astounding World of the Future

This spoof mocks a 20th century newsreel about what turned out to be largely accurate predictions of what life in the USA would be like in the year 2000.

This is the General Motors film about The Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City which was an attempt to simulate what life would be like in the USA by 1950.

Part II of the Genearal Motors fils about The Futurama exhibit.

And here is a look at the future from around 1956 from a film about Monsanto Corporation’s “House of the Future” in the (old) Tomorrowland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

There is a Part II to the “House of the Future”.

This one is a clip from the 1967 film 1999 A.D. which shows a family of the future shopping, paying bills and using electronic mail from home.

Unemployment Claims Down as Percent of the Workforce

 

The Calafia Beach Pundit (Scott Grannis) posted this chart at Seeking Alpha on October 2, 2009 (http://seekingalpha.com/article/164517-workforce-disruption-weekly-claims-update?source=email). It shows weekly unemployment claims as a percentage of the workforce.  At the end of the third quater of 2009, the figure was at its lowest level for the year.  

If you compare the severity of the recession that began in December 2007 to others based on this metric, the unemployment claims situation is better now than in the recessions of  mid 1970s and early 1980s.   Scott Grannis believes that as of October 2009, the United States of America is about three months into a recovery with a workforce disruption metric that has fallen to 0.42%. He says that ” .  .  .  It took almost one year of recovery for that same metric to drop to this level following the ‘81-’82 recession, and almost 18 months of recovery following the ‘74-’75 recession.”

Cornell University Program in Real Estate Annual Report for 2008/09

The 2009 annual report of the Cornell University Program in Real Estate is published and will be posted to the official website shortly.  You may view a PDF of the report by clicking on the following link:  2009-09-23 – PRE Annual Report for 2009 – (SFS) .

Counting Unemployment

The unemployment rate reported by most of the media is U3 . Left out of most reporting is U6–the calculation by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the United States Department of Labor that includes involuntarily underemployed people.

The U6  figure includes persons who want a full-time job, but can only find part-time work. Also left out of the U3 figures are discouraged jobless people who have not looked for work during the past four weeks (see definitions of “alternative mesures of labor underutilization in the table below).  

As of August 2009, the U6 figure for the United States of America was 16.8%. Of course, unemployment rates vary dramatically by metropolitan area. Unfortunately, the BLS does not publish the U6 rate for individual metroplitan areas.  It is likely that the U6 rate for areas hardest hit by the Great Recession, such as Detroit, exceeds 25%.

Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization[i]
Measure:	Definition:
U1	Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force
U2	Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force
U3	Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force. (The official unemployment rate). This is the Unemployment Rate that gets “officially” reported.
U4	Total unemployed, plus discouraged** workers.
U5	Total unemployed, plus discouraged** workers, plus all other marginally attached workers* as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers
U6	Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers**, plus total employed part time for economic reasons***. This is the “broadest” measure of unemployment that gets officially tracked. U6 has been in existence since 1994, but a very similar series was also in existence dating back to 1970, and the two are sometimes used interchangeably.
Notes:
	*Marginally attached workers are those who are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past.
	**Discouraged workers, a subset of marginally attached workers, have given a job-market-related reason for not currently looking for a job.
	***Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule (“Involuntary part-time workers” )

 The following table comes from the website maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm .

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[i] http://community.livejournal.com/the_recession/149369.html

Rick Estrin and The Nightcats at The Haunt in Ithaca, NY

In Ithaca, NY, there is a club called The Haunt, that hosts great blues performers from time to time. On Sunday, September 27, 2009, Rick Estrin and The Nightcats are slated to perform at 7 PM. If they are half as good as they were at a performance in Reno, NV (see below), they should be fantastic.

Crash Test – 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air Vs. 2009 Chevrolet Malibu

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety paired a big hullking 1959 Chevy Bel Air versus a 2009 Chevy Malibu. The crash test is a dramatic demonstration of how far vehicle safety has come in fifty years.