Economic Stories of Relevance in Today's World -- December 23, 2012

20 Signs That The U.S. Poverty Explosion Is Hitting Children And Young People The Hardest – The Economic Collapse Blog - By Michael, on December 19th, 2012 - The mainstream media continues to insist that the economy is "getting better", but the poverty numbers for children and young people just continue to explode.  For example, did you know that the poverty rate for families with a head of household under the age of 30 is a whopping 37 percent?  Children and young people sure didn't cause our recent economic downturn, but they sure are getting hit the hardest by it.  According to the U.S. Department of Education, for the first time ever more than a million U.S. public school students are homeless.  That seems like an impossible number, but it is actually true.  How in the world could the "wealthiest nation on earth" get to the point where more than a million children can't count on a warm bed to sleep in at night?  Sadly, a huge number of American children can't count on a warm dinner either.  About a fourth of them are enrolled in the food stamp program.  What do you do if you are a parent in that kind of situation?  How do you explain to your kids that you can't afford a nice home like everybody else has or that you can't afford to go to the grocery store and buy them some dinner?                       Young people are experiencing very rough times right now as well.  If you are under the age of 30, it is really, really difficult to get a job in America today.  The competition for the few decent jobs that seem to be available is absolutely crazy.  Unemployment among young people is at a level that we have not seen since World War II, and this is causing major problems.                    Even if you do have a college degree, there is no guarantee that you will be able to get any type of a job.  In fact, more than half of all college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed last year.  There are millions of very talented college graduates that are waiting tables, making sandwiches or stocking shelves down at the local branch of a global retail conglomerate.  Meanwhile, they are saddled with record breaking amounts of student loan debt.
This is easily the worst economic environment that we have seen for young people since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  The number of good jobs continues to decline.  Many young people are faced with the choice of taking a bad job or having no job at all.                             If you are under 30 in America today, you better hope that you come from a wealthy family or that you have some really good connections, because otherwise the future looks pretty bleak for you.                       The following are 20 signs that the U.S. poverty explosion is hitting children and young people the hardest...



75 Economic Numbers From 2012 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe - The Economic Collapse Blog - Michael - December 20th, 2012 - What a year 2012 has been!  The mainstream media continues to tell us what a "great job" the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are doing of managing the economy, but meanwhile things just continue to get even worse for the poor and the middle class.  It is imperative that we educate the American people about the true condition of our economy and about why all of this is happening.  If nothing is done, our debt problems will continue to get worse, millions of jobs will continue to leave the country, small businesses will continue to be suffocated, the middle class will continue to collapse, and poverty in the United States will continue to explode.  Just "tweaking" things slightly is not going to fix our economy.  We need a fundamental change in direction.  Right now we are living in a bubble of debt-fueled false prosperity that allows us to continue to consume far more wealth than we produce, but when that bubble bursts we are going to experience the most painful economic "adjustment" that America has ever gone through.  We need to be able to explain to our fellow Americans what is coming, why it is coming and what needs to be done.  Hopefully the crazy economic numbers that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.                       The end of the year is a time when people tend to gather with family and friends more than they do during the rest of the year.  Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help start some conversations about the coming economic collapse with your loved ones.  Sadly, most Americans still tend to doubt that we are heading into economic oblivion.  So if you have someone among your family and friends that believes that everything is going to be "just fine", just show them these numbers.  They are a good summary of the problems that the U.S. economy is currently facing.                         The following are 50 economic numbers from 2012 that are almost too crazy to believe...


The Fiscal Cliff Is A Diversion: The Derivatives Tsunami and the Dollar Bubble - - Paul Craig Roberts - December 17, 2012 - The “fiscal cliff” is another hoax designed to shift the attention of policymakers, the media, and the attentive public, if any, from huge problems to small ones.
The fiscal cliff is automatic spending cuts and tax increases in order to reduce the deficit by an insignificant amount over ten years if Congress takes no action itself to cut spending and to raise taxes. In other words, the “fiscal cliff” is going to happen either way.                     The problem from the standpoint of conventional economics with the fiscal cliff is that it amounts to a double-barrel dose of austerity delivered to a faltering and recessionary economy. Ever since John Maynard Keynes, most economists have understood that austerity is not the answer to recession or depression.
Regardless, the fiscal cliff is about small numbers compared to the Derivatives Tsunami or to bond market and dollar market bubbles.                             The fiscal cliff requires that the federal government cut spending by $1.3 trillion over ten years. The Guardian reports that means the federal deficit has to be reduced about $109 billion per year or 3 percent of the current budget.                   http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/27/fiscal-cliff-explained-spending-cuts-tax-hikes More simply, just divide $1.3 trillion by ten and it comes to $130 billion per year. This can be done by simply taking a three month vacation each year from Washington’s wars.                             The Derivatives Tsunami and the bond and dollar bubbles are of a different magnitude.                     Last June 5 in “Collapse At Hand” http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/06/05/collapse-at-hand/ I pointed out that according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s fourth quarter report for 2011, about 95% of the $230 trillion in US derivative exposure was held by four US financial institutions: JP Morgan Chase Bank, Bank of America, Citibank, and Goldman Sachs...


Guest Post: The Upside Of The Fiscal Cliff - Zero Hedge - Tyler Durden - December 21, 2012 - 1. We are finally starting a national discussion of spending-taxation trade-offs.               2. We are at last starting to (grudgingly) accept there is no free lunch, what I call the Free Lunch Fantasy of limitless borrowing at near-zero interest rates: taxes for upper-income wage-earners will revert to previous levels while those drawing Federal dollars must accept reductions in spending....             

Simply put, the retirement and healthcare systems were not designed to match the nation's demographics, nor was Medicare designed to limit costs, which continue to rise faster than inflation, despite various cost-saving measures...                     Combine these trends with stagnating wages and employment and you get a triple-whammy: soaring number of retirees, rising Medicare costs per retiree and a stagnating tax base...                

The Fed's purchases of Federal debt enabled the Free Lunch fantasy. Rather than let the market price Federal debt higher, which would have set limits on Federal borrowing, the Fed's purchases of Treasury bonds suppressed the recognition that there was a cost to essentially unlimited Federal borrowing.                 All these policies that enabled the Free Lunch Fantasy are reaching financial and/or political limits. The fiscal cliff is one expression of this recognition, and it is very positive that Americans are finally facing up to the personal costs of dealing with reality: higher taxes and lower Federal spending are no longer abstractions to be borne by others. We will pay more taxes and we will get fewer benefits/Federal contracts, and these reductions in income will negatively impact the economy.                        Facing reality is positive. That's the upside to the fiscal cliff.

 

Beef prices may hit record high in 2013 - CNN Money - Annalyn Kurtz - December 14, 2012 -
Your hamburger could cost more in 2013.                   Global beef prices are expected to rise to record highs in 2013, according to Rabobank, a Dutch financial firm with a focus on agriculture. Their analysts point to the "lethargic world economy," and a beef supply that has largely remained flat for six years straight.                       In the United States alone, beef production is expected to decline significantly in 2013, whether or not droughts in the Midwest continue.                Even if more rain restores pastures next year, beef production could be down as much as 9%, said David Nelson, a Rabobank analyst. "This is because ranchers would then hold back young females (heifers) for breeding to expand, instead of sending them to the market," he said.                   If the drought continues, ranchers are more likely to send their heifers to market sooner, but still, Nelson said he expects beef production to be down about 4%. Currently, Rabobank says the prime cattle feeding regions of the U.S. are under "severe to exceptional drought conditions."                     In October, the price for a pound of lean ground beef averaged $4.11,  up 30 cents from a year earlier. A USDA Choice sirloin steak cost about $6.75 a pound, up 43 cents from a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.                         Demand for beef is expected to fall in the United States next year as well. Americans are predicted to eat around 55 pounds of beef per person in 2013, down from about 58 pounds this year, according to USDA estimates.


Only 15 States Opt to Run Obamacare Exchanges - CNBC - David Morgan - December 13, 2012 - Only 15 states have told the federal government they plan to operate health insurance exchanges under President Barack Obama's reform law, leaving Washington with the daunting task of creating online marketplaces for two-thirds of the country.                          On the eve of a federal deadline for states to say whether they will run their own exchanges, a top health care policy official told lawmakers that the exchanges will start enrolling eligible families starting on Oct. 1...             
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which Obama signed into law more than 2 1/2 years ago, is expected to extend health coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Those who enroll in Obamacare starting in October would be covered by insurance from Jan. 1, 2014.                          About half of those newly insured individuals would purchase private coverage from online exchanges at federally subsidized rates. Ultimately, the number of people finding coverage through exchanges is expected to reach 26 million, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.                          The remainder would be covered by expanding the Medicaid program for the poor to cover all adults earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $15,000 for individuals and $30,600 for a family of four.


NC's high-tech job market continues to plunge - WRAL Techwire - Mike Smith - December 14, 2012 - Employers across North Carolina are playing Scrooge when it comes to hiring information technology workers these days.            High-tech job openings across North Carolina fell again in November, continuing what has turned into a downright plunge in advertised positions since March, says the latest IT Job Trends report from the North Carolina Technology Association.                  Just as SkillProof warned back in July, high-tech job openings peaked early this year - long before any talk about a "fiscal cliff" or any other political garbage coming out of Washington.                   The downward trend in openings stretched to five consecutive months, based on the latest report that was issued Friday.            Openings fell to 3,550, a 3.8 percent drop from October.                  But that one-month drop isn't the only indicator of just how bad the job market is getting.                    A year ago, employers were looking for 3,890 employees.                  In 2010, the number was 4,010.


Historic 121-year-old country store in Lake Norman area closing - TONY BURBECK / NBC Charlotte - WCNC 36 - December 17, 2012 - The historic Terrell Country store in the Lake Norman area is closing at the end of the year.            Owner Joe Rose says he can't afford to keep it open in a bad economy with customers who don't spend like they used to out of concern they could lose their jobs in 2013.                  The store at the intersection of Highway 150 and Sherrills Ford Road in Catawba County was built in 1891 and has pretty much always been a country store or antique store over the years, Rose said.    He has owned the store for about three years.               Inside you can find a little bit of everything, from meat to candy, toys to trinkets, nostalgia to nautical.                    Carroll Lineberger came to the store as a kid and remains a regular customer.                     "We'd get a Coke, crackers and cheese.  We had a ball. This was like home to us," he said.                 The store caters to locals, plus Lake Norman boaters and summer home renters.                     When times were good, folks would come in and hang out a while. Rose says the average register ring up when he first owned it was about $50 to $60 per customer.  Since then, he says the average has slipped to under $5 per customer.                    "In November it dropped to the point where we couldn't pay the rent and light bill," he said.  "A lot of our regular customers who are with major corporations tell us they really don't know if they will have a job tomorrow."                         Overall, Rose says people aren't spending money.                         His going out of business sale appears to be the exception.  Even pictures on the wall and the snowman out front are fair game.                        "It's sad this kind of thing isn't able to make it any more," Rose said.                          "We're going to miss it," said Lineberger.                        It's a piece of local history shutting down, and Rose wishes the story ended there.                      He says the reality is his store will join a list of about nine other businesses in the same area  that have gone under in the last six months.                        Rose plans to take a few weeks off after the store closed and figure out what's next.                          An antique store is scheduled to open in its place in February.


Thousands could lose jobs as sweepstakes parlors close - WRAL TV (Raleigh) - Mark Binker - December 17, 2012 - Around 6,000 workers could lose their jobs as the result of a state Supreme Court ruling upholding North Carolina's ban on video sweepstakes, according to one estimate. Julius C. (JC) Poindexter, a former professor of economics and finance at N.C. State, wrote a paper in 2011 that estimated that between 4,800 to 6,000 jobs could be directly tied to the sweepstakes industry in North Carolina. That paper, Poindexter said, was financed by those who manufacture software for the industry. Poindexter's paper points out that the economic impact of the cafes goes beyond the workers themselves. It includes the services, such as electricity and phone lines, and rent that the cafes use. From the white paper...


Gerald Celente on Jeff Rense Show - December 13, 2012 - Gerald speaks about Trends for the upcoming year and future. Gerald talks about his win in the recent court decision over Google and wraps up the Trends for 2012.                       The Trends Journal® is the World's #1 source for the most important trends that are shaping the future. The Trends Journal® shows you how these trends will affect your life, how to profit from them, and what to do to avoid pitfalls. Regardless of business or profession, the Trends Journal® provides insights, strategies and opportunities to help you navigate these treacherous, unprecedented times.