Financial topics

[OLD1953]

The overlap is designed into government agencies, most of it should probably be removed, but that requires cooperation at the cabinet level. That's not likely to happen without a crisis.

Government isn't perfect, but its a reflection of society at the time, just as most corporations are. The attitudes of the people who make up society just are not something we can walk away from and say "this is a safe haven". Competence, like what I was saying above, is not something people want to do, it is usually forced on them by some crisis, either personal or that spans all of society. I am utterly certain my Father did not have any burning desire to become a foreman in a US Navy shipyard, but he did and he was very good at it. This is the development of competence forced on someone, not by their choice of "I'll work my way up to becoming a leader at a shipyard" but by WWII forcing millions of people to discover they could be competent at difficult things they had never considered doing before.

On the other subject of people who claim everything is the end of the world, I'll bet in less than 24 hours someone will be claiming this discovery will doom all life as we know it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17769529

[Trevor]

That would explain why the GI and Silent Generations are more competent than the generations that followed them. The depression and WWII forced them to either adapt to changing circumstances or die. When you consider your survival at risk, you're not going to worry much about stepping on someone's toes.

[aedens]

http://ferfal.blogspot.com/
Rotten to the core and collapse.
The problem is that eventually you run out of fools to trick and right now that’s whats happening with foreign investors.
I wouldn’t invest a half-eaten BigMac in Argentina, let alone any amount of money.
They are already threatening to nationalize banks and other companies if they don’t plane ball with the government.

[Higgenbotham]

Higgs, what I was hoping people would take away from that historical table was that there is a reason why we've got problems collecting taxes and inspecting beef and controlling the greed of the hedge funds and maintaining peace in the world.

My first thought upon reading your comment was that you were demonstrating that the "crusty old bureaucracy" does not reside mainly in government. I've noticed over time that some of the large corporations are even more bureaucratic than government. I've worked for 4 of the Fortune 500 directly and interfaced with some others.

As far as that table, two things come to mind. One is how much Federal government responsibility has been delegated to state and local governments, which has resulted in more overall government employees. Second is to what extent Federal government responsibilities which were previously done in house have been contracted or privatized. I read about Halliburton and Blackwater and understand that Halliburton supposedly has employees stationed overseas who do military work that may have been done by Federal employees in the past. It would be interesting to know those numbers for specific government responsibilities that have not been delegated or privatized and have retained their same basic responsibilities. I'm not up on all that.

[Higgenbotham]

VMT (Vehicle Miles Traveled) for February 2012. This is the largest year to date February increase in VMT since 2006.

"Travel on all roads and streets changed by +1.8% (3.9 billion vehicle miles) for February 2012 as compared with February 2011. Travel for the month is estimated to be 216.1 billion vehicle miles. Cumulative Travel for 2012 changed by +1.7% (7.4 billion vehicle miles). The Cumulative estimate for the year is 440.9 billion vehicle miles of travel."

As for more current data, a couple things I noticed in the past two days. One, as many probably know, weekly unemployment claims were 386,000 this week. What many may not know is last week's number was revised up to 388,000. My read of these numbers is they're not real good because we're working off a lower employment base than we were in 2008 when similar numbers were coming in and the economy was beginning to tip over. And ECRI's WLI release this morning shows their leading index fell a full 2 points last week.

[Trevor]

Every week, it seems like they have to revise the jobless claims upward. Every once in a while, it's adjusted downward, but that's the exception to the rule.

As for your earlier comment, yeah, corporate bureaucracy is just as bad as government. They're full of incompetent idiots that you can't get rid of. I've seen the same thing on college campuses, where tuition has skyrocketed. The more money they receive, the more administrators they hire, not to mention all the fat pay raises they receive. The 4-year school closest to me doubled their tuition fees in just 5 years, which is just astonishing.

[Higgenbotham]

Every week, it seems like they have to revise the jobless claims upward. Every once in a while, it's adjusted downward, but that's the exception to the rule.

True, and it's my guess that with claims numbers near 390,000 on this low of an employment base that the US economy is losing jobs as we speak. Whether next month's employment report reflects that or whether it will be revised at some future date to reflect that is probably the only question.

[Trevor]

The unemployment rate may technically be going down, but that's only because millions have just given up looking for anything. The average length of time looking for a job is close to 40 weeks and while unemployment is falling, that number just continues to climb. It's higher than at any point since the depression.

Last month's report had only 120,000 jobs created, where most were expecting 200,000-250,000. Generally speaking, about 150,000 jobs need to be created for unemployment and the labor force to hold steady.

[Higgenbotham]

That's definitely part of it with something like 7 million having dropped out of the labor force over the past 3 years. Of course, as time goes on those who have the luxury to drop out of the labor force will become fewer and fewer and if UE claims mount to an additional 100K per month as the trend of the past 2 weeks suggests the UE rate should go up.

There is an unadjusted data point the government reports on millions of people who work full time. That number has been generally moving higher for over 2 years, albeit slowly and well below the peak. However, if claims numbers are near 390,000 for any extended period, that number of people who work full time would be almost guaranteed to fall. And if the trend of revisions higher continues, we may well see this week's number revised to close to 400,000 which would be a very bad number off this low of an employment base. My guess would be that 380,000 claims today would do the same damage as 400,000 claims 4 years ago.

Nice graph showing 2008 data...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/1 ... at-386-000

[Trevor]

Well, considering this is only the beginning of the crisis, I shudder to think about how much worse it's going to get. These will probably be considered "good times" in comparison. We've got Spain following the path of Greece, with depression-era unemployment and surging bond yields. One or two countries can get bailed out, but if everyone starts collapsing... eventually, the house of cards crumbles.