Free Republic

FOR the first time since the Depression, the American economy has added virtually no jobs in the private sector over a 10-year period. The total number of jobs has grown a bit, but that is only because of government hiring. The accompanying charts show the job performance from July 1999, when the economy was booming and companies were complaining about how hard it was to find workers, through July of this year, when the economy was mired in the deepest and longest recession since World War II. For the decade, there was a net gain of 121,000 private sector jobs,...

The Securities and Exchange Commission is out today with a letter to companies that own a lot of financial instruments whose current market value must be reported to shareholders. For more than a few companies, disclosing market values is neither easy nor convenient. The issue is the application of SFAS 157, which governs the way companies compute fair value of assets, assuming they have to do so anyway. (Banks and brokers have to do that a lot, but I won't go into the details of when they can avoid it.) The rule took effect on Jan. 1, although some companies...