“In February, the civilian labor force participation rate (64.8 percent) and the employment-population ratio (58.5 percent) were little changed. (See table A-1.)”
From –
Last Modified Date: March 05, 2010
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
My Note –
Those numbers mean that the real unemployment level in the United States is 35.2% and that doesn’t include the illegal immigrants, students in college who need to have jobs, people who are retired and having to come out of retirement because they lost money in the stock market based pension plans, and people in jail, people in institutions, people who are employed part-time that need to be employed full time to live, etc.)
- Cricketdiane
So, where are economists and financial experts getting their information that leads them to believe we are on a growth curve and recovery now?
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In the information found about the Federal Reserve’s use of the Beige Book of Economic Numbers – this seems telling -
“The Fed directors and their staffs will use their very long proverbial arms to obtain an economic pulse that can’t be found in any other indicator’s report. They will interview business leaders, bank presidents, members of other Fed boards and hundreds of other informal networks before writing the reports that will be compiled in the Beige Book.”
(from)
http://www.investopedia.com/university/releases/beigebook.asp
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My Note -
Does that mean these are the written opinions and elicited opinions of people who have every reason to indicate anything but the truth? Could that be possible? It seems pretty evident that is a possibility. I would like to see the Beige Book of Economic Numbers and Federal Reserve papers from 2007 and 2008 because obviously they didn’t know what was presenting itself at that time which now everyone knows are the facts . . .
- cricketdiane
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The other thing I’ve noticed is that the process by which businesses reacted to the “downturn” were measures intended and created for a 6-month downturn, maybe workable during a 9-month long recession on the outside. The corporations literally had been taught to raise bonuses, raise profit-forecasts whether there was indication of it or not, raise dividend payouts, raise salaries to corporate executives and to layoff employees as a way to arbitrarily increase profit numbers on the balance sheet when revenues were not actually coming in the door. That only works for a short period of time and doesn’t accurately reflect the liabilities of the corporation which may be undermining the available assets to go forward. When a downturn lasts longer than 6-months, there becomes no way to hide these facts that sales are not occurring, revenues are not coming in, payments on liabilities are going out in striking measures against resources, and that there are no employee skill sets to conduct the business because they were laid off. After a time, those intellectual losses, skill sets lost, and employee loyalty that was lost comes back to haunt the business and the lacking manpower facilities to get the job done in order to make real profits and revenues. It is just a matter of time.
Apparently, the business schools and previous business experiences, expertise, workshops, continuing education, reading, researching, talking, interacting with other business leaders and organizations, and attending large international business leadership conferences did not prepare business executives with a more practical understanding of what to do in the event of a protracted downturn of any kind. They obviously didn’t know what to do beyond this short term process solutions that they used of making the business temporarily look profitable when they were not. Now what? Have new solutions been generated or are they continuing to do what Professor Mitroff suggested in the book he co-authored, “Dirty Rotten Strategies” that he was discussing on CSPAN which is to manage the mess rather than to create solutions? Would anyone be willing to try new solutions or solution combinations that have not been taught to them by a respected business school or used in the three short recessions they have experienced within their lifetimes? Would they be able to construct new solutions that could work or are they just treading water hoping the economic disaster will all be gone tomorrow morning when they wake up?
I think it would be worthwhile to look up something else while I think about it . . .
There was something else I heard on the news yesterday that I thought was very interesting about the student protests about the raises in tuition and education budget cuts – there was a mention by a woman about the fact that California’s crude oil being pumped out of the ground without any return taxes from those oil companies operating in the state. Is that possible? Do these oil companies not pay taxes into the California economy? And how much are they paying for the leases and royalties on the natural resources of California (and the United States) for what they are pumping out of the ground? There was a story earlier last year about the oil companies and the Department of Interior making deals on royalties and leases for drilling which had in previous years, not been done in cash – but rather by “in kind” trades. How was that changed with the Obama administration’s demand that it be changed? Was it changed? How are the drilling, mining and crude oil drilling, in particular – being done in California to return a fair market value for those resources and economic opportunities? How much is being paid for the oil companies by the state and by the Federal government? Is it possible that the money to restore education and universal tuition-free university education for all the adults in California exist in simple changes to how the oil companies do get taxed rather than not at all in that state while taking the national resources that belong to us all? That would be interesting to know, I’ll look it up while thinking about the macroeconomic statistics I found, (listed on the post before this one and at the top of this post.)
- cricketdiane
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(I’ll have to look up the CNN transcript from yesterday with the students talking about the oil companies paying taxes in the state of California as a solution to the education budget cuts and tuition hikes at California Universities and California state colleges.)
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