Average Job Seeker Gives Up After 5 Months

Unemployment at 9+% and over 15% if PT workers seeking FT jobs are included:

By Sara Murray, WSJ

Jobless Americans who dropped out of the work force typically searched for work for five months before ultimately giving up last year.

Bloomberg News

Job seekers look for work.

The amount of time the unemployed spent hunting for jobs rose sharply last year. Those out of work tended to search for about 20 weeks before quitting in 2010, compared to 8.5 weeks in 2007, according to a recent Labor Department report. The report studied how long unemployed workers took to either find a new job or quit looking.

Labor-force participation, the share of Americans who are working or looking for jobs, has fallen to its lowest percentage since the mid-1980s. That’s partly because people have grown discouraged about their ability to find jobs and have given up looking. With those workers on the sidelines, the unemployment rate has been lower than it otherwise would be.

The official unemployment rate hit 9.1% in May. Including all of those who had part-time jobs but wanted to work full-time as well as those who want to work but had given up searching, the rate was 15.8%.
 
Read full article here

The housing crash sequel in California-Forecosure sales made up to 45 percent of sales in Q1 2011 with an average discount of 33%. 431,000 jobless Californians have exahuasted unemployment insurance.

From doctorhousingbubble.com 6/7/2011:

     Subjects under hypnosis are susceptible to the powers of suggestion.  If that is the case, a large part of our nation has been in full slumber when it comes to housing propaganda.  If the nation is facing a double dip in regards to housing prices California will face a double housing crash. Let us be clear that many areas in California like Riverside, San Bernardino, and the Central Valley have seen home prices absolutely collapse.  Take for example Riverside County.  Riverside County is home to over 2,200,000 people and is part of the Inland Empire, an area devastated by the housing crash.  In June of 2006 Riverside County hit a median home price peak of $422,000.  Today the median price is $190,000 or what amounts to a 54 percent drop.  That is a crash.  Yet other areas have seen prices adjust lower on a more controlled basis for a couple of reasons including the shadow inventory being held back by banks and a touch of delusion brought on by financial self-hypnosis.  Yet market sentiment is fickle and is turning.  One of the many reasons the economics and financial field has failed miserably in predicting this crisis is that it was largely one of consumer behavior and manic psychology.   Incomes are certainly not supporting current prices and the Federal Reserve is dangerously overheating its own balance sheet trying to prop up inflated real estate values to keep the dream-state going.  California is in for a very long haul moving forward and this is hitting just in time for the typically hot summer selling season.


Read full article here .

I Was Right, the “Experts” Were Wrong, So Why Am I the Underemployed?

« It’s Not the Bad Economic News that Surprises Me

By: dakine01

Yesterday in this post, I predicted today’s Jobs Report from the BLS would show a far smaller increase in jobs for May than was being predicted by the ‘economists’ interviewed by the various media organizations. The ‘experts’ were predicting 170k private sector jobs with 150k increase overall. My prediction was for 42.5K jobs overall. Guess who was closer to being correct? (via Reuters):

The U.S. economy may be in for a prolonged period of soft growth as employers hired the fewest number of workers in eight months in May and the unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent. Nonfarm payrolls increased 54,000 last month, the Labor Department said, fewer than the most pessimistic forecast in the Reuters survey and just over a third of what economists had expected.
…snip…
The private sector, which has shouldered the burden of job creation added just 83,000 jobs, the least since last June, while government payrolls dropped 29,000.
Adding to the gloomy labor market picture, about 39,000 fewer jobs were created in March and April than previously estimated.
…snip…
Payrolls had been expected to rise 150,000, with private employment gaining 175,000.

This is not the first time I have been more accurate than the “experts”. How is it possible for someone like me to be more accurate in predicting the numbers than the so-called expert economists? Well, I’ll take a WAG and say it might be because I’m not trying to force reality into a pre-conceived computer model designed to reinforce an ideological position based as much on wishful thinking as anything else. Plus, I am actually living the life of the long term un and underemployed.

Read More:
http://my.firedoglake.com/dakine01/2011/06/03/i-was-right-the-experts-were-wrong-so-why-am-i-the-underemployed/http://my.firedoglake.com/dakine01/2011/06/03/i-was-right-the-experts-were-wrong-so-why-am-i-the-underemployed/

God Doesn’t Like Poor People

God doesn’t like poor people.

Do we have your attention? Good. No, I am not channeling Sean Hannity. However, his statements mirror what some in this country believe. It started off as wealthy Americans feeling like "we deserved only the best. It is our God given right". And has now filtered down into every neighborhood in our country.

In times of trouble, financial, marital or medical turmoil, we reach out to others via our digital social
networks for advice, encouragement, or just solace and understanding. And then…you see it, “I am so blessed to have a husband who makes enough money for me to have a good life, stay home with my kids and have a beautiful house. I couldn’t be any happier! I thank God for everything we have"! Yes, this is the same person who writes how blessed they are, to have their house end up being the only one standing on their block, after a natural disaster. As if God, somehow chose them, out of thousands of others to keep their lives and livelihood. After all, God doesn't have anything else to do.  It seems to infect everyone’s home page at one point or another. It is like a virus, we just can’t get rid of.

You know what I am talking about. The posts that make you cringe. The status updates, that make you want to delete these people from your friends list. If only life could be that easy. Just press “de-friend” and they are gone.

The problem with this statement isn’t that the person who posted their gratitude isn’t worthy of the good things in life. It’s that it implies the rest of us aren’t blessed, worthy or maybe not praying, to the right God or higher being to have or deserve the same good things in life. We are told, “just be thankful for what you have!”. I should be thankful for being allowed to breathe and work 3 jobs to make my ends meet? Don’t get me wrong, in comparison to the majority of the world, we are better off.

A friend of mine is living in India. He is helping people in the slums get healthcare, education and just basic necessities in life. The level of poverty he sees is not something we can even begin to comprehend in this country. He just wrote how a wealthy Indian girl said to him “I know God is good, because MY life is Blessed!”. He asked her to use that line on any of the women who can’t feed their kids in the slums or get medical care for their dying. Is God good to them? Don’t they deserve more than what has been given in their lives? Of course, she refused to speak to these people. When things are going great, we thank God, when it isn’t we chalk it up to life and we turn our backs on people. Human nature can be a beautiful thing and an evil thing, all at once.

Something seems wrong here, very wrong.

As times have gotten harder in this country. As the economic divide has gotten greater. I find we fall into two groups of people.

1. The people who stay or become even more faithful through the bad times. These are the people who even when they lose their jobs, homes, savings, etc. will say, they are somehow blessed it isn’t worse. These are the people that will continue to pray and have “faith” and then when something finally turns around for them, they will thank God. These are the people who will say all those years of praying for something, even if it took a lifetime of praying, has finally paid off when they get their wish. God has listened. This same group of people will thank God for the great things in life: a trip to Italy, a six figure income, etc. As if God has nothing else to do except give these people useless toys, trips and money. These are the people that will then look at neighbor and say “what were you thinking taking that camping trip in June? No wonder you lost your house! You shouldn’t spend money, you don’t really have!”…as if poor people don’t deserve some relief from some of the unfortunate circumstances in life. Apparently if you are poor, you don’t deserve anything and just need to keep working and stop being so human. Basically, just shut up.

2. The second group of people, aka “the of rest of us”, have grown more cynical and started to lose faith, with every pay cut, lost job and or turn of bad luck. We are seen as the angry liberals. Sure, we had a moment in 2008, when we thought, this is IT! Our big moment, the moment a revolution is happening. We had hope, we had strength and we had a president who could help us do it all. Well, I have news for you people, it’s over. That ship has sailed and we were left standing at the docks. We are the group who wonder, why me? Why us? Why now? What did I do? What did I not do? How could I have prevented the worst economic disaster to hit us, since the Great Depression? Should I listen to that anchor (and I use the term loosely) that I saw on Fox News who said, it is my fault, I blew it, own up to it, you don’t get a free ride? You get my point. We are feeling screwed. The American dream is not real, not for us.

This has led to the great divide. The divide between the “real Americans” and the rest of us. It started with the lies that we have been fed since birth. If we just pray enough, follow all the rules and be good; we can succeed, we will succeed! The lie that if we just get any job and work hard, we can make all of our dreams come true.

A recent poll asked Americans, if they thought they could be rich in the near future or anytime soon. 54% of young people polled said yes. A majority overestimated their income status when asked where they ranked on an income scale. What is wrong with this picture? It shows, that we continue to believe the lies and to tell them to ourselves and others. The divide between the rich and the poor is getting wider, each day. The middle class is disappearing and somehow most people are o.k. with it. They think somehow, with enough faith and hard work, it will all be o.k.

Most of us followed the rules laid down before us. We went to school, found a nice corporate job, bought homes and made babies. It all seemed so easy in college. Our lives lay ahead of us, glistening with hope and promise. What happened? Keep reading our blog and you will see what happened and what is happening to people just like you. God doesn’t like poor people. Maybe that's why Lloyd Blankfein CEO of Goldman Sachs said he "was doing God's work". We think not.


A.M
LGMC

Debunking the myth of Prop. 13 (By Steve Lopez, LA Times)

Debunking the myth of Prop. 13

A USC professor says young people who think the revered measure is a good thing really don't know much about it. 'Renters don't benefit and the majority of new home buyers don't benefit,' he points out.

While the number of seniors grew, the number of children between the ages of 5 and 9 fell by a staggering 21% between 2000 and 2010. And at the same time, immigration has leveled off and begun to decline.

As a result, home prices will stagnate for years to come, Myers said, and for-sale signs will petrify.

"There are too many sellers and not enough buyers coming up," said Myers. "And it's going to get worse."

So we can't afford high dropout rates, and we can't afford devastating cuts in higher education. And if that means that we have to rethink how we pay for those institutions, which were devastated in part by Proposition 13, now is the hour.

"We need all hands on board," said Myers.

As for Prop. 13, Myers said its popularity was roughly the same in 2008 as it was in 1978, when homeowners feared being thrown out of their houses by rapidly rising taxes. But that's because of the myth of Prop. 13. In fact, Myers said, young people who think the proposition is a good thing really don't know much about it.

They don't realize, for instance, that Prop. 13 works for a homeowner only if the value of the house keeps going up. It's protection in that case, thanks to a strict limit on how much property taxes can increase. But anyone who bought after 2002 isn't getting any benefit at this point, because prices have crashed since then.

"Prop. 13 is toast," said Myers, because it relies on ever-rising home prices to maintain its political support, and he doesn't see home prices rising significantly in California for many, many years. That's due in part to a housing glut caused by a shortage of new buyers.

"Renters don't benefit and the majority of new home buyers don't benefit, but they don't know that because of the myth of Proposition 13," said Myers.

For those whose property taxes are among the lowest in the nation because of Prop. 13, Myers said, it's not the government they're getting the best of.

It's their grandchildren, who may be driven to another state, where they can more easily afford a house because they don't have to make up for their grandparents' super-low property taxes.

Or it's their neighbor.

The neighbor who bought later and pays higher property taxes essentially subsidizes the longtime owner. That's why we've got examples, throughout the state, of people paying several times as much in annual property taxes as the folks next door, even if the houses are worth the same on the market.

Myers isn't naive, but he'd like to believe that if more people understood all this, as well as the fact that commercial property owners have benefited from Prop. 13 even more than homeowners have, there might be more public pressure on legislators to rewrite the state's tax structure in more equitable ways. And if that miracle ever happens, California could become less reliant on sales and income taxes that rise and fall each year based on economic trends.

As I've said before, Prop. 13 brought needed relief in 1978, but it went too far. It shouldn't be wiped out now, but it can be tinkered with, so long as there are protections for long-term owners so people don't get thrown out of their houses.

The logical person to lead the way is Gov. Jerry Brown, who sat in the same chair in 1978 as he does now, and shouldn't have bothered to run again if he wasn't serious about fixing a broken state.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

 

 

Read full article here.

Two months ago, I violated a cardinal sin with an unholy, unforgivable suggestion. I quoted an economist who said it was time to redo Proposition 13.

What Can I Do?

There is a wide variety of things people can do to change the path our country is on and help to steer it back toward a more equitable and ethical future.

Make noise. As we have seen in the past the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The republican party understands this and they whip their members and followers to too a public frenzy about what ever issue they want implemented, and they get their payoff. The democrats make weak statements from time to time in soft accommodating tones and get zip, nothing, not even a thank you from the republicans when they finally cave to great republican noise machine. So if you want a change in way things are going then speak up. The next time some dimwit starts to regurgitate some plutocratic talking points like "lower taxes for the rich creates jobs" don't meekly sit there and listen, get in their face and give them the facts. Lower taxes have never created jobs, demand for goods creates jobs. In the conservative's halcyon days of the 1950s to 1970s the tax rate on the wealthy ranged from 90% to 75%. The effective tax rate for the wealthy now stands at about 15% and many pay even less. In recent times Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy and created jobs, Bush lowered taxes on the wealthy and lost jobs. As taxes for the wealthy goes down so does economic activity it's a fact. Set them straight, and Get Vocal in Public.

Don't give your money to people who want to steal it. No one should be supporting the wall street "banksters" and their desire to rob the American people blind. If you have money in any of the "too big to fail banks" move it! There are plenty of community banks that will provide all the financial services you need. Check out the Move Your Money Project ( moveyourmoneyproject.org ) they can help you find an honest local bank.

Join others of like mind. There are true grass roots organizations who are looking for ways to preserve the middle class and hold accountable those who have looted the American economy, US Uncut ( usuncut.org ) comes to mind. But beware of wolves in sheep's clothing. The monied elite have founded many astroturf organizations that pretend to advance the goals of the middle class but are really just there to push for cuts in programs that aid the vast majority of Americans, so that they can free up money to lower taxes for the rich. The tea party comes to mind. Why is it they scream about taxes but are completely silent about wall street bailouts, unlimited corporate political spending and the revolving-door between Congress and K street lobbyist? It is because they unwittingly and wittingly take orders from front groups like Americans for Prosperity, etc. These organizations were started and supported by the likes of the Koch brothers and other uber rich fanatics. Remember "it's all about the money Lobowski".

The next time your congress critter or senator calls for a donation, inform them that you only donate to those that represent your interests not those of corporations. And if they change their actions ( not just their rhetoric ) you may be inclined to reconsider a donation. Remember money talks and BS walks.

We all have a natural desire to work together with others while at the same time advance our own particular self interest. These two desires may at some time be in conflict or in concert. We do know intuitively that when people have money to spend the economy grows and we all get richer. But when just a few have money to spend the economy slows and we all get poorer.

There is something you can do, so just do it.

Billion Dollar Fund Managers Agree: The Government Never Fixed the Underlying Economic Problems, So We'll Have Another Crash

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

While the snake oil salespeople at the retail investing level and the bobble heads on the kool aid selling financial channels have been saying for years that we're in a "recovery" (albeit a slow one), billion dollar fund managers say that nothing has changed and we'll have another crash.
As Bloomerg reports:

Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management’s emerging markets group, said another financial crisis is inevitable because the causes of the previous one haven’t been resolved.
“There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis,” Mobius said ...“Are the derivatives regulated? No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes.”
The total value of derivatives in the world exceeds total global gross domestic product by a factor of 10, said Mobius, who oversees more than $50 billion. With that volume of bets in different directions, volatility and equity market crises will occur, he said.
The global financial crisis three years ago was caused in part by the proliferation of derivative products tied to U.S. home loans that ceased performing, triggering hundreds of billions of dollars in writedowns and leading to the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008.

Jeffrey Gundlach notes that we've still got a quadrillion dollar derivative overhang which dwarfs the size the of real global economy, the government hasn't done anything to fix the basic problems in our economy, and so we'll have another crash:

Pimco co-CEO Bill Gross has repeatedly said that the U.S. is running a Ponzi scheme and says:

Ultimately creditors and investors are at the behest of a central bank and policymakers that will rob them of their money.

Pimco co-CEO Mohamed El-Erian predicts that "financial repression" in the form of a negative real rate of return for savers is coming to America.
The New York Times reports:

Even some senior Wall Street executives acknowledge the lack of change surprises them, given how poorly the industry performed last fall and the degree of government support necessary to keep it from collapsing.
“There was a general feeling that an enormous amount of additional regulation should be put in place to prevent what happened that weekend from happening again,” said Byron Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone Advisory Services and the former chief investment strategist for Morgan Stanley and Pequot Capital. “So far, we haven’t seen a lot of action.”
Robert J. Shiller, the Yale University economics professor who predicted the dot-com crash and the housing bust, said the window for change may be closing. “People will accept change at a time of crisis, but we haven’t managed to do much, and maybe complacency is coming back,” Professor Shiller said. “We seem to be losing momentum.”
Kenneth C. Griffin, founder and chief executive of the Citadel Investment Group, a Chicago-based hedge fund that manages $13 billion, said that regulators and lawmakers needed to impose rules so failing banks could be shut, rather than allowed to operate indefinitely with taxpayer support.

“We’ve taken a lot of steps for the worse, and not for the better, in terms of the structural underpinnings of our capital markets,” Mr. Griffin said. “We have to change the rules and correct the fundamental flaws in the financial system.”

While the big boys try to sell the "dumb money" on a recovery under a "greater fool" theory, the smart money knows the score

Mo re articles;
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/05/billion-dollar-fund-managers-agree.html