Here is a scatter graph comparing the seriously delinquency rate for mortgage loans vs. unemployment rate for all states. The seriously delinquent rate include 90+ days delinquent loans, and loans in the foreclosure process for Q3 2009 (Source: MBA).While initial unemployment claims were technically “flat” last week, the number was still over 500,000 — a level the unemployment indicator has remained at for 53 straight weeks. Despite any improvements we’ve seen in the economy, it appears as though employers just aren’t hiring…outside the mortgage industry that is.
With [...]
1. Scott Sumner's most absurd belief: India as #1 in gdp by 2109.
2. Click "play" and watch unemployment grow.
3. Who is Hollywood's most overpaid star, relative to box office returns? Will Farrell is #1 it seems.
4. Markets in everything: NYC McDonald's with sleek Danish furniture.
5. [...]
A half million seeking unemployment benefits each week
IT SEEMS a little silly to report on weekly jobless claims figures for a week in which there was no change in the number, but I've been following this statistic for so long now that I feel obliged to update you. [...]
Initial Jobless Claims totaled 505k, in line with estimates and flat with a revised 505k last week. Continuing Claims, which covers the first 26 weeks of benefits, fell by 39k but were slightly above forecasts. Emergency Unemployment Compensation which takes us past 26 weeks rose by 101k which makes clear [...]
Please click on this link, courtesy of Mark Perry: "Unemployment, The Movie." Once you click play and watch the map [...]
-One of our dedicated readers Chris passed this article along — he thought our other readers would find it interesting-
When a bill that included the extensions of both the homebuyer tax credit and unemployment benefits was circulating through Washington, most of chatter surrounding the legislation had to do with the [...]
The central bank is failing at its primary task
BEN BERNANKE gave a talk yesterday to the Economic Club of New York. He discussed the American labour market:Since December 2007, the U.S. economy has lost, on net, about 8 million private-sector jobs, and the unemployment rate has risen from [...]
Officials blind to the scope of the unemployment problem
IN THE last week, the internet has filled with examinations of the problem of a jobless recovery and what can be done to address it. In particular, there has been an ongoing debate over how effective monetary policy has been [...]
It's about deals to be struck, not sabres rattled
PAUL KRUGMAN'S column today makes a point I brought up not long ago—that there's a real danger to the global trade system of having high American unemployment figures juxtaposed against headlines on China's trade surplus for months on end. That [...]
Nouriel Roubini says the federal government has to be much more aggressive on the unemployment front:
There's really just one hope for our leaders to turn things around: a bold prescription that increases the fiscal stimulus with another round of labor-intensive, shovel-ready infrastructure projects, helps fiscally strapped state and local' [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:
Paul Krugman is impressed that in Germany “unemployment is only slightly higher than it was before the crisis” (”Free to Lose,” Nov. 13). Indeed, Krugman is so bedazzled by the results of Germany’s extensive labor-market interventions that he [...]
November 13, 2009
By John Mauldin
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No one goes into Wal-Mart and asks to pay extra sales tax. Thus sales taxes are reasonable [...]
Commenting on this post, Daniel Kuehn suggests that when Paul Krugman advocates European-style labor-market restrictions and subsidies, he (Krugman) does so not as a means of increasing employment today – in the midst of a recession – but, rather, as a means of keeping employment from falling as [...]
Floyd Norris channels Dickens to discuss the Worst of Times (employment wise):
“The overall unemployment rate, which reached 10.2% on a seasonally adjusted basis last month, remains below the post-World War II peak of 10.8 percent, reached in late 1982. But the proportion of workers who have [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:
To combat unemployment, Paul Krugman supports “labor rules that discourage firing” (”Free to Lose,” Nov. 13). If a student in my Principles of Economics course ever wrote such a thing on an exam, he or she would earn [...]
Michael Fletcher and Neil Irwin are an embarrassment to the Washington Post.
Think of that.
Let's turn the mike over to Tim Fernholz:
TAPPED Archive | The American Prospect: President Obama has announced his intention to hold a Jobs Summit at the White House, reacting to the high unemployment rate and [...]
Some reading for a Friday afternoon:
• Is Gold a six thousand year-old bubble? (FT)
• Market Ignorance is Bliss (The Street.com)
• The Real Danger of ‘One Big Regulator’ (WSJ) What if those in control don’t believe in oversight?
• The ‘Real’ Unemployment Rate (Market Talk)
In the short term, we don't have a deficit problem: as long as unemployment remains highly elevated--certainly as long as the unemployment rate stays above 7%--and as long as interest rates on U.S. Treasuries stay low a bigger federal deficit is a feature not a bug: our' [...]
