By Vivian Yee, New York Times, October 5/6, 2012

Outside Pittsburgh, they are proclaiming a strike, taking to Twitter and Facebook to spread the word. In a village near Milwaukee, hundreds staged a boycott. In a small farming and ranching community in western Kansas, they have produced a parody video. And in Parsippany, N.J., the protest is six days old and counting.

They are high school students, and their complaint is about lunch — healthier, smaller and more expensive than ever. [....]

Because the lunches must now include fruits and vegetables, those who clamor for more cheese-laden nachos may find string beans and a peach cup instead. Because of limits on fat and sodium, some of those who crave French fries get baked sweet-potato wedges. Because of calorie restrictions, meat and carbohydrate portions are smaller. Gone is 2-percent chocolate milk, replaced by skim.

“Before, there was no taste and no flavor,” said Malik Barrows, a senior at Automotive High School in Brooklyn, who likes fruit but said his classmates threw away their mandatory helpings on the cafeteria floor. “Now there’s no taste, no flavor and it’s healthy, which makes it taste even worse.”

Students organized lunch strikes in a suburb of Pittsburgh, where in late August the hashtag “brownbagginit” was trending on Twitter, and outside Milwaukee, where the Mukwonago High School principal, Shawn McNulty, said participation in the lunch program had fallen 70 percent. “There is a reduction in nacho chips, there is a reduction in garlic bread, but there’s actually an increase in fruits and vegetables,” Mr. McNulty said. [....]

... what we’re talking about here is nothing new, in terms of kind. Nathan Rothschild built a significant chunk of his fortune by using a system of couriers who told him the result of the Battle of Waterloo a full day before anybody else in London knew it. And my own employer, the Reuter news agency, was founded on sending financial information between Brussels and Aachen using carrier pigeons.

What’s new is that billions of pounds can be made by having access to information not a day in advance, or an hour, or even a second, but even just a millisecond or two. Stock exchanges aren’t physical places where human beings bargain with each other any more: they’re racks of computers in places like Mahwah, New Jersey, where the cables are carefully measured to be exactly the same length so that no one has an infinitesimal advantage thanks to the amount of time it takes information to travel an extra few millimeters down a wire.

By Cass Jones and Owen Bowcott, guardian.co.uk, 6 October 2012

The Islamist cleric Abu Hamza and four other terrorism suspects have arrived in the US after being extradited from Britain, US officials have confirmed.

The US attorney's office in New York said Hamza, Khaled al-Fawwaz and Adel Abdul Bary were in New York City and were expected to appear in court later on Saturday. The US attorney's office in Connecticut said Babar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan are scheduled to appear in US district court in New Haven, in connection with the alleged running of a pro-jihad website. [....]

Abu Hamza faces 11 charges in the US relating to hostage taking, conspiracy to establish a militant training camp and calling for holy war in Afghanistan.

His lawyers argued he was not fit to be deported on health grounds but UK judges rejected his appeal, paving the way for his immediate removal from the UK. The prime minister, David Cameron, has expressed his delight that Hamza had finally been deported from Britain [....]

Today’s job numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that 114,000 jobs were added in September and the unemployment rate dropped significantly to 7.8 percent. This is one of those months where the two main surveys are telling somewhat different stories.  The establishment survey (which provides the job count) shows the kind of steady but modest growth we’ve been seeing for the last two-and-a-half years – job growth that is just enough to keep up with growth in the potential workforce.  On the other hand, the household survey (which provides the unemployment rate) was extremely positive, with a substantial drop (three-tenths of a percentage point) in the unemployment rate.  Further good news: the drop in the unemployment rate was due to people getting jobs, not due to them leaving the labor force – the labor force participation rate increased one-tenth of a percentage point to 63.6 percent, and the share of working-age people with a job increased by four-tenths of a percentage point to 58.7 percent.

This is from a source I trust to tell it straight, the Economic Policy Institute.  They're for what I'm for--more and better-compensated jobs as the foundation for a strong economy built on a large and healthy middle class.  Piece written by Heidi Shierholz earlier today.  One of their publications, The State of Working America, is a widely cited and respected resource that features data on family incomes, wages, jobs, unemployment, wealth, and poverty that they mean to "allow for a clear, unbiased understanding of the economy's effect on the living standards of working Americans."  

Yo, Quinn, acanuck, You know how you're always telling us how great Canada is? Well dude you ever hear of flush toilets?

Anyone relying on their nose to guide them to a toilet at Quebec’s La Providence golf course won’t find one — that’s because its outhouse is odorless.

Beneath a tidy wooden latrine on the grounds is an army of earthworms that churn decaying organic materials into compost.

The GOP nominee does damage control on Fox News after Obama fails to confront him on it during their debate.

By Walt Cronkite, National Journal, October 4, 2012

Mitt Romney, trying to distance himself from perhaps his most damaging campaign moment, said Thursday that his infamous “47 percent” remarks were “completely wrong.”

“Clearly in a campaign with hundreds if not thousands of speeches and question-and-answer sessions, now and then you are going to say something that doesn't come out right. In this case I said something that's just completely wrong,” Romney told Sean Hannity on Fox News. “And I absolutely believe, however, that my life has shown that I care about 100 percent. And that has been demonstrated throughout my life.  And this whole campaign is about the 100 percent. When I become president it will be about helping the 100 percent.” [....]

The New York Times reported that Romney had hoped to try to repair the damage during the debate, when more than 67 million people were watching. But Obama did not bring it up, in part to deny Romney that opportunity, an aide told the newspaper.

Also see:

The Return of Massachusetts Mitt
by Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine, October 3, 2012

Tonight’s debate saw the return of the Mitt Romney who ran for office in Massachusetts in 1994 and 2002. He was obsessive about portraying himself as a moderate, using every possible opening or ambiguity — and, when necessary, making them up — to shove his way to the center [....]

Jeff Madrick, New York Review of Books blog, yesterday

..........

But the starkest evidence that something is seriously amiss in the American economy is the dramatic deterioration of the middle class. Median household income—the midpoint income of all American households—was reported by the Census Bureau (whose data is a year or so behind) to be down in 2011 compared to 2010, despite an economic recovery that began in mid-2009. More disturbing, that figure is now down to around $50,000, which is 7 percent or so below what it was in 2000 and its lowest level since 1996, adjusted for inflation. Incomes are falling still more sharply for black households.

The Census Bureau also reports on poverty levels, and these too are reason for serious concern. At 15.1 percent—some 46 million people—the proportion of Americans in poverty is now at its highest level since 1993. Moreover, according to a recent Rutgers University report, more than half of those who have received a college degree since 2006 cannot find full-time jobs.

The reason that the economic recovery is coinciding with middle class decline is increasingly clear. America is creating jobs, but they are bad jobs: retailing, food preparation, and table waiting, for example—in other words, jobs that don’t pay much. Economists like David Autor of MIT and Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute have been talking for years about the hollowing out of middle-level jobs in offices and manufacturing.

Annette Bernhardt of the National Employment Law Project did the hard empirical work recently and found that most of the job losses from 2008 to early 2010 were in the middle-income category, jobs that pay from roughly $14 to $21 an hour. What is disturbing is that in the job turnaround since then, only one in five such jobs came back. Instead, very low-end jobs, paying $7.70 to $13.80 an hour, accounted for most new employment. This is a stark continuation of the hollowing out.

The mystery, then, is not what is going on in the economy but what to do about it. And neither candidate has a satisfactory plan. Romney is offering a repeat of the George W. Bush approach, which involves mostly large tax cuts for upper income “job creators.” Even before the devastation of 2008, job growth was slower under Bush than under any other postwar president.

In his recent stump speeches, Obama has begun to talk about “economic patriotism” and the need to create more opportunities for the middle class. But he has not sharpened his job proposals much since issuing his 2013 budget last winter, which called for some tax breaks for hiring and a reversal of the Bush tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000, as well as spending programs based on the American Jobs Act of 2011. One of his more recent actions has been to levy tariffs on Chinese solar panels and wind turbines, and he recently lodged a complaint about Chinese violations of trade rules for auto tires with the World Trade Organization. But this seems to be more a political response to Romney’s criticism of China’s currency manipulation than a plan to restore job growth in America.

Obama has every reason not to emphasize bad news about the economy now, in the final weeks of a reelection campaign, so in truth we do not fully know what is in store for us if he wins. With deficit monomania hanging over DC like the blackest of clouds, he realizes that strong public spending, even including on measures like transportation infrastructure, which would help create middle-income jobs, will be derided not merely by the right but by the center.

Despite deficit concerns, robust action in the jobs market will be urgently needed to counter the growing problem of bad jobs over the next presidential term. Only by encouraging much faster growth through new stimulus and public investment will the government have a strong prospect of reversing the middle-class income crisis. The next steps should also include more direct intervention, such as higher minimum wages; aggressive wage subsidies; outright job creation through public programs in fields like construction and teaching; constraints on financial incentives to suppress wages by CEOs and Wall Street privatizers; and a significantly lower dollar, by keeping interest rates low, to improve exports and limit imports.

We are unlikely to see any of this even mentioned with the election only weeks away, and it is unclear how much political clout the president will have after November if he is reelected. It will depend not only on whether he wins but whether more Democrats are elected to Congress with him. Nevertheless, it should at least be clear to voters that President Obama’s proposals as they now stand will still add far more jobs in 2013 and 2014 than would Mitt Romney’s. Moreover, while falling short of what is needed, Obama’s general approach could be enhanced if the political environment changes.

By Dwight Garner, New York Times/Books, October 1/2, 2012

Who is the most famous hunter in America? If you’re over 30, the first names that come to mind are probably Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent or Dick Cheney. If you’re under 30, the answer is easier. The most famous hunter in America is Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire founder of Facebook.

In May 2011 Mr. Zuckerberg made a pledge to consume, for one year, only meat he had hunted or slaughtered himself. He got a hunting license and shot a bison. “My personal challenge,” he explained, is “being thankful for the food I have to eat.”

If four new books are any indication, Mr. Zuckerberg is the decidedly nonmacho, non-pickup-driving embodiment of a new breed of American hunter These young memoirists have loaded their rifles and shotguns for complicated reasons, including culinary one-upmanship. Nothing wows jaded dinner guests like a braised shank of calf moose that you’ve recently “harvested” and “dressed” — hunting euphemisms for killed, skinned and disemboweled — before bringing it to the table. What feels counterintuitive and new here though is this: These writers have largely taken to hunting, they say, for ethical reasons. [....]

By Nick McClellan, Slate, October 2, 2012

Map of the Week, A partnership of Slate and the New America Foundation:

a map of campaign expenditures by state up to August 30, 2012.

A recent New York Fed study, “Key Mechanics of the U.S. Tri-Party Repo Market,” provides a primer on the issues and key mechanics that have contributed to the market’s fragility and proved an obstacle to industry reform efforts.

In the report, the authors explain how the collateral allocation and “unwind” processes pose systemic weakness and are hindering reform efforts.  These problems stem in part from the intervention by dealers to allocate collateral and their reliance on intraday financing to unwind, or settle, expiring repos.

The collateral allocation process currently requires a considerable amount of time, and is further complicated by the need for coordination between several parties.  As a result, the time required to allocate collateral makes it difficult to settle new and expiring repos simultaneously and reduce dealers’ reliance on credit from their clearing banks.

The time gap between the daily unwind and rewind of repos drives much of the demand by dealers for intraday credit from their clearing banks, contributing to the fragility of the market. The gap leads to a twice-daily transfer of exposure from a dealer’s investors to its clearing bank, and vice versa. This “handoff” can create a perverse dynamic if the dealer comes under stress, as both the cash investor and the clearing bank may want to be the first to reduce exposure to the dealer.

The report concludes that improving the collateral allocation process and eliminating the time gap between the unwind and rewind of repos could help reduce weaknesses in the market and the amount of risk in the financial system.

The study was authored by Adam Copeland, a senior economist at the New York Fed; Antoine Martin, an assistant vice president at the New York Fed; Susan McLaughlin, a senior vice president at the New York Fed; and Stanford University Finance Professor Darrell Duffie.  It can be read in full in the latest Economic Policy Review.

Key Mechanics of the U.S. Tri-Party Repo Market » 

Contact:
Kevin Sajdak
212-720-6143
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