Posted on 07/04/2009 7:22:31 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
One dog has yet to bark in this long winding crisis. Beyond riots in Athens and a Baltic bust-up, we have not seen evidence of bitter political protest as the slump eats away at the legitimacy of governing elites in North America, Europe, and Japan. It may just be a matter of time.
One of my odd experiences covering the US in the early 1990s was visiting militia groups that sprang up in Texas, Idaho, and Ohio in the aftermath of recession. These were mostly blue-collar workers, – early victims of global "labour arbitrage" – angry enough with Washington to spend weekends in fatigues with M16 rifles. Most backed protest candidate Ross Perot, who won 19pc of the presidential vote in 1992 with talk of shutting trade with Mexico.
The inchoate protest dissipated once recovery fed through to jobs, although one fringe group blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995. Unfortunately, there will be no such jobs this time. Capacity use has fallen to record-low levels (68pc in the US, 71 in the eurozone). A deep purge of labour is yet to come.
The shocker last week was not just that the US lost 467,000 jobs in May, but also that time worked fell 6.9pc from a year earlier, dropping to 33 hours a week. "At no time in the 1990 or 2001 recessions did we ever come close to seeing such a detonating jobs figure," said David Rosenberg from Glukin Sheff. "We have lost a record nine million full-time jobs this cycle."
Earnings have fallen at a 1.6pc annual rate over the last three months. Wage deflation is setting in – like Japan. Interestingly, The International Labour Organisation is worried enough to push for a global pact, fearing countries may set off a ruinous spiral by chipping
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
So is Zero and Democrats time in Power.
It is time for some drastic but peaceful & lawful actions against ZERO, mainstream media.
How about digging out every bit detail of MSM’s family mmembers as a starter?
Some 342,000 homes were foreclosed in April, pushing a small army of children into a network of charity shelters. This compares to 273,000 homes lost in the entire year of 1932. Sheriffs in Michigan and Illinois are quietly refusing to toss families on to the streets, like the non-compliance of Catholic police in the Slump.
The REAL reason we haven’t taken the hit the way they did is because of CREDIT. Lots and lots of people are still riding on their credit. Wait til THAT Tsunami hits.
We Yanks are impoverished cowboys, Guv’nuh Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, and we’re all secretly plotting to depose your empire. ;-) ...little irony and sarcasm there, as the incidents that the author spoke of were so isolated and nearly irrelevant to the big picture. ...only another craze.
Interesting statistic that the work week has dropped down to 33 hours per week. I wonder how significant that is? I know that in some businesses, like supermarkets, they deliberately keep most workers under the full 40 hours, so they do not qualify as “full-time workers” and don’t get health insurance and other fringe benefits.
The militia movement had absolutely nothing to do with the blue collar job loss. It was totally a reaction to the Klinton assault on our 2nd Amendment and the atrocities committed at Ruby Ridge and Waco.
And as far as the "group" that did the Oklahoma City bombing, NONE of them were ever blue collar workers either.
Timothy McVeigh had worked as a security guard.
And Terry Nichols was a college dropout who had his real estate license.
Oh yeah, oh so fortunate! Those wankers are the ones prolonging the damned recession.
The Telegraph leans to the center-right and was one of the British papers lectured by Obeyme 1 month ago to “get with the program”...meaning follow the US MSM doctrine of kissing Obama’s ass and not questioning him.
It just happens that one Ambrose-P is the designated lefty loon writer.
As the freeper who invented the term the “frippery slope”, the English guy has it right. We have had too many useless jobs for the last 20-30 years and the problem is that when things start to go, the unnecessary jobs go first. I don’t see a way to get them back outside of monetizing the 100+ trillion dollars the U S is in debt. (No there is not an extra zero there)
A consumer based economy has to have consumers and right now the consumers are going to be cutting back to basics. In a big way. Wait until this holiday season. Over half of retail sales then, and this year I predict will be a bust like we have never seen.
The French guy said it: French president Nicolas Sarkozy, with a good nose for popular moods, says: “We must overhaul everything. We cannot have a system of rentiers and social dumping under globalisation. Either we have justice or we will have violence. It is a chimera to think that this crisis is just a footnote and that we can carry on as before.”
parsy, who invented the term “frippery slope”, and hey did I already say that
The work week stat is HIGHLY significant. That is the one apples:apples comparison I think that you can make between now and the Depression - hours worked per week.
The BLS did not count unemployment during the 30’s. The “25% unemployment during the Depression” was a figure created well after the Depression by one BLS economist in the 60’s by the name of Stanley Lebergott. Lebergott made several significant methodology choices, which while sound in the context of his work, are at variance with how we determine unemployment today:
1. Children as young as 14 were considered part of the laborforce. Today, children no younger than 16 are.
2. Men in prison or the military were considered “employable” in Lebergott’s methodology.
3. People who were employed by one of FDR’s make-work programs were not counted by Lebergott, because these jobs were often not permanent. Today, once you quit drawing an unemployment check, even if you’re a rocket scientist who took a job flipping burgers, you’re “employed.”
Given these wide divergences from today’s BLS methods, I think examining the hours worked per week is about the best way of making an apples:apples comparison between then and now.
The 'time worked' (fell by 6.9%) data indicates that the 'green shoots' recovery is BS.
During a recovery employers will work the existing employees on overtime for a period of time (make sure the recovery is real) before hiring additional employees. This will drive the 'time worked' numbers higher not lower as is happening presently. The lower 'time worked' numbers indicates a further reduction in activity.
Except for the extremly wealthy, the government owns everything and everybody in America.
I have been giving the matter similar thought. If the MSM likes to pick on the families of disliked politicians then these reporters have made themselves public and part of the story. Their private lives, past education and jobs, politics and associates are fair game!
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