voxbaby has a complete explanation of this chart in trying to decipher numbers and the meaning of unemployment. (Hat tip to reader andrew)

Cool it everybody. If you look at the historical data you will see that it is a very normal cyclical development for the participation rate to drop in the early stages of a recession. There is nothing funny oR out of line with the data.

The February index of aggregate hours worked was 107.3 as compared to a 4th quarter average of 107.7. That implies that first quarter hours worked are falling at about a 1.5% annual rate. As a first approximation that implies that first quarter real GDP growth will be about the same. Of course this depends on […]

Citigroup has announced changes in business structure, holding mortgages, and rules concerning mortgage origination.

Naked Capitalism has some thoughts and links regarding the negative non-borrowed reserves entering negative numbers. It is too long for me to post easily. Perhaps someone could summarize?

Having installed a cloud widget on the left sidebar, contributors and guest posters should label their contributions from now on so the widget can keep the references updated. Past posts can be labeled at your convenience, such as social security, WTO, global warming, taxes, economists etc.

We keep hearing from the conservatives-libertarian that we need lower taxes on capital gains and dividends to encourage capital spending or investments. But when I look at the record of the impact of lower taxes on capital on investment I am hard pressed to see the benefits such lower taxes are suppose to deliver. The […]

NEW YORK, Feb. 7 /PRNewswire/ — The Securities Law Firm of Klayman & Toskes, P.A. (“K&T”)(http://www.nasd-law.com) announced today that it continues to investigate sales of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) from Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) and UBS (NYSE: UBS) to institutional investors. These firms sold billions of dollars in CDOs to investors around the world. Some […]

Bloomberg Magazine, in “Unsafe Havens”. (Hat tip to Naked Capitalism.) reports that money market funds run by Bank of America Corp., Credit Suisse Group, Fidelity Investments and Morgan Stanley owned over $6 billion of CDOs with subprime debt in June. The reason this is a serious issue is that money market funds have a $1 […]

The NYT carries this article. (Hat tip to dmarek) IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits […]