US Consumer Bankruptcies Jump By Most In Three Years; Third-Party Collections At All Time High

Zero Hedge ^ | 8-14-13 | Tyler Durden

[RKBA Democrat]

Something funny happened on the road to the epic consumer balance sheet cleansing and subsequent releveraging (without which there can be no actual non-Fed sugar high fueled recovery): the second quarter. And specifically, as the Fed just disclosed in its quarterly Household Debt and Credit Report, the number of consumer bankruptcies during the second quarter, just jumped by 71K, to 380K from 309K in Q1, the biggest quarterly jump in precisely three years - on both an absolute and relative basis - and the most since the 158K jump recorded in Q2 2010. It appears that when the "releveraging" US consumer isn't busy buying stuff on credit, they are just as busy filing for bankruptcy. Healthy consumer-led recovery and all that.

(graph embedded in article)

But wait, there's more.

Because as this other data set also from the NY Fed shows, the proportion of US Consumer that have a third-party collection process commenced against them is pretty much at all time highs, where it has been for the past two quarters. Must be the recovery too.

(graph embedded in article)

[placerville]

When in doubt follow zerohedge. Business week(or is that weak) just gets their orders from the WH.

[familyop]

"Lazy people won’t work"

Yep. Before long, there may be around 200 million "lazy people" in the U.S.A., who "won't work"--maybe many more due to balance of payments deficits and insane spending at all levels to prevent domestic competition. The "productive" guzzlers of recirculating debt (nearly everyone with much of an income) in the default process are putting on an interesting show.

[DannyTN]

"There are county zoning laws against manufacturing, even tiny manufacturing by individual men in tiny shops, in the middle of nowhere with nearly no population. "

While that might have some impact on new small start-ups. It doesn't explain the vast marjority of off-shoring. Those businesses were already zoned. They didn't leave the country because of zoning.

[nascarnation]

When I was a young man, they built big buildings, filled them with machines, and made things to sell to the world.

When I was middle aged, they built big buildings, filled them with things made around the world, and sold them to Americans.

Now they don’t even build buildings....

[Mad Dawgg]

"No it's the imports. You can eliminate every government regulation and every government tax, and you still can't compete with Chinese labor that is at 1% the cost of our own."

And this proves you know so little about the situation.

The major LABOR related costs in the USA are not Salary. They are compliance costs, healthcare costs, safety regs costs and retirement costs. All of those are heavily encumbered with government rules and regs and so on. You literally have to hire people to satisfy all the paperwork and compliance BS. Not to mention someone to deal with the insurance and retirement stuff.

Then you have the constant crap of the EPA and OSHA and if Anything is remotely connected to Homeland Security then you gotta deal with those guys. So that is more people hired just to deal with that mess. Then of course you need someone to be on top of wheter you have illegals working for you and on and on.

Just to get a new plant started in the USA can take years with site studies and searches for endangered animals and so on.

In China their site study is: "You build plant here. Hurry Up! Other plant start building tomorrow over there"

[Hotlanta Mike]

Obama vs. the Other Presidents since Kennedy: Still an Economic Disaster

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/08/obama_vs_the_other_presidents_since_kennedy_still_an_economic_disaster.html

[ilovesarah2012]

Well, that makes sense. When I heard that, I didn’t think it sounded right. Thanks.

[griswold3]

Ah Ha!

[DannyTN]

The major LABOR related costs in the USA are not Salary. They are compliance costs, healthcare costs, safety regs costs and retirement costs.

No compliance doesn't outweigh salary. Quit making unsubstantiated claims. Show me one study that actually claims that and backs it up with numbers.

[DannyTN]

The major LABOR related costs in the USA are not Salary. They are compliance costs, healthcare costs, safety regs costs and retirement costs.

No compliance doesn't outweigh salary. Quit making unsubstantiated claims. Show me one study that actually claims that and backs it up with numbers.

[Balding_Eagle]

Sorry Dawgg, you’ve understated the problem by a factor of 5 or 10.

[familyop]

"Those businesses were already zoned. They didn't leave the country because of zoning."

But they might have an interest in such zoning ordinances in rural areas with no good reasons for such ordinances. No domestic competition. See? That's why I've told others to do such micro-manufacturing projects only as hobbies for now (to stay legal). We, as a nation, might need them before long.

[DannyTN]

"Sorry Dawgg, you’ve understated the problem by a factor of 5 or 10."

For Dawgg's assumption to be true, over 50% of labor costs in any given firm would have to be dedicated to compliance.

• Effectively that means that if lower level workers share compliance tasks proportionately with Management, then fully 50% of your staff is doing full-time compliance.
• That's ridiculous. The only firms I can think of where that might approach the truth is medical. And even then we have systems built that help manage the compliance burden.

  To support Balding Eagles claim that Dawgg understated the case by 5 to 10 times. You'd need (5x50%)/(5x50%+50%) = 5/6 or 83% of your workforce dedicated to compliance. 91% if he understated it 10 times.

[DannyTN]

"Sorry Dawgg, you’ve understated the problem by a factor of 5 or 10."

For Dawgg's assumption to be true, over 50% of labor costs in any given firm would have to be dedicated to compliance.

• Effectively that means that if lower level workers share compliance tasks proportionately with Management, then fully 50% of your staff is doing full-time compliance.
• That's ridiculous. The only firms I can think of where that might approach the truth is medical. And even then we have systems built that help manage the compliance burden.

  To support Balding Eagles claim that Dawgg understated the case by 5 to 10 times. You'd need (5x50%)/(5x50%+50%) = 5/6 or 83% of your workforce dedicated to compliance. 91% if he understated it 10 times.

[dragnet2]

Bookmark

[Grams A]

One of the real budget busters is property and school taxes. There is a freeze on the rate for people my age so to get around this the assessors just keep increasing the assessed value of the property. Continue to formally protest the assessment in person but might as well be talking to a brick wall as to the people who make the final decision. Some things are just impossible to control.

[DannyTN]

I was Corporate Director of Finance for a firm that had 3000 employees.

Maybe we could have gotten by with only 25 in accounting if there wasn't any tax compliance.

• And of the 30 or so in HR maybe we could have gotten by with 15.
• You could count all 3 staff lawyers as compliance. Though I think they spent most of their time on lawsuits, that had nothing to do with governments.
• A small portion of management time was spent on compliance. There were 85 directors so lets add another 10 positions to the compliance log.
• All employees had to get some annual training in stuff like sexual harrassment and other HR compliance type stuff, so let's allocate 2.5 days out of 250 workdays for compliance training or 1% of the entire workforce. That' would equal 30 full time equivalents.
• We didn't produce any harmful chemicals or building new plants so EPA left us alone.
• If OSHA ever looked at us, the HR staff handled it, and I've already allocated half of them to compliance.

  So let's see thats 25-Accounting, 15-HR, 3-Lawyers, 10-for management time, 30 for staff training. That's a total of 83 out of 3000. 2.7%.

  Compliance is a pain in the ass. And nobody likes it. But the majority of labor costs???? Seriously????

  Quit making unsubstantiated claims.

[DannyTN]

I was Corporate Director of Finance for a firm that had 3000 employees.

Maybe we could have gotten by with only 25 in accounting if there wasn't any tax compliance.

• And of the 30 or so in HR maybe we could have gotten by with 15.
• You could count all 3 staff lawyers as compliance. Though I think they spent most of their time on lawsuits, that had nothing to do with governments.
• A small portion of management time was spent on compliance. There were 85 directors so lets add another 10 positions to the compliance log.
• All employees had to get some annual training in stuff like sexual harrassment and other HR compliance type stuff, so let's allocate 2.5 days out of 250 workdays for compliance training or 1% of the entire workforce. That' would equal 30 full time equivalents.
• We didn't produce any harmful chemicals or building new plants so EPA left us alone.
• If OSHA ever looked at us, the HR staff handled it, and I've already allocated half of them to compliance.

  So let's see thats 25-Accounting, 15-HR, 3-Lawyers, 10-for management time, 30 for staff training. That's a total of 83 out of 3000. 2.7%.

  Compliance is a pain in the ass. And nobody likes it. But the majority of labor costs???? Seriously????

  Quit making unsubstantiated claims.

[familyop]

Thousands of small, private shops are the answer, in my opinion. Dump the homo-feminist labor unions. They were always in bed with the government-linked, global manufacturers anyway.

And don’t believe the stupidities about robots, etc. Good machinists can do anything that CNC machines with or without robotics can do faster and longer without extra problems from shaft wear, materials anomalies (e.g., hard spots in some kinds of plate), etc. (wear that needs measurement and math compensation either way). CNC machines also need human operators capable of doing good work (both costs anyway, even with robotic parts mounting).

Human operators are always needed to do good setups for runs. Shoot, fast screw machines and other fast production machines without X-Y-Z axis computers have been around for ages (long before the time of anyone alive).

The reason for the work being done overseas is that of the currency imbalances, cheap freight fuel and communist slavery.

[Mad Dawgg]

"So let's see thats 25-Accounting, 15-HR, 3-Lawyers, 10-for management time, 30 for staff training. That's a total of 83 out of 3000. 2.7%."

Compliance is a pain in the ass. And nobody likes it. But the majority of labor costs???? Seriously????

Quit making unsubstantiated claims."

Se your problem is you don't even understand your own math.

All of the salaries of the compliance people are government make-do work they don't factor in to actually making or producing the product they are just lost dollars that are wasted on inefficiency because the government sez so.

Then there are the dollars that need to go to retirement and matching fica funds and Obamacare dollars and OSHA safety training seminars and on and on...

So your own stupid ass math again leaves out all of the ancillary costs associated with the labor force that has jack shit to do with the actual salary paid to the employee.

So my premise still stands the test and you are once again proved wrong because you don't have the first f***ing clue about that which you prattle on about.

I mean you seriously tried to bulls!t us in to believing that the USA is a NET EXPORTER OF OIL. How damn stupid do you have to be to believe that UNIONISTA BS?