Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Doom and Gloom - All About Jobs

More doom and gloom from Barron's:

A tally by the International Labor Organization shows the world will have to add 80 million jobs over 2012 and 2013 just to get back to where employment was in 2007. The reckoning is that the developed nations need to generate 27.2 million jobs in the next two years to return to normal. But the likelihood is that only 2.5 million will materialize, or a woefully shocking 25 million fewer than necessary.

As for the developing nations, even though they've been growing somewhat more aggressively than their more developed counterparts, their employment prospects aren't exactly coruscating, either. They'll have something in the neighborhood of 53 million slots to fill in the next couple of years, but the projection is for the addition of 38 million jobs, or 15 million shy of that mark.

Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist of U.S. Trust offers this commentary:

"millions of dissatisfied and idle workers are a combustible political-economic variable that will keep politicians and investors on edge for the foreseeable future. Nothing saps the confidence or the animal spirits of consumers, businesses and investors more than the ugly images of rioters in the streets."


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Friday, November 11, 2011

Quote: Hot Peppers



Heard today:

"As my grandpa used to say, that's the thing about a good hot pepper. You get to enjoy it three times."


Creative Commons License Markets. Business. Life. by LoneRngr (screen name) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License. Based on a work at marketsbusinesslife.blogspot.com.Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://marketsbusinesslife.blogspot.com/.

Austerity Measures



From Barron's:

Albert Edwards, head of Societe Generale's strategy team, passes along this observation from the bank's interest-rate group:
"As an example of how long it could take to work through a massive austerity program, it was only in 2010 that Germany made the last payment required by the Treaty of Versailles from 1919, which called for reparations of what would be the equivalent of €325bn in today's currency. Back then, the treaty was not particularly popular with the German population [not unlike the current reaction of Greek citizens to Greece's austerity program]. Following the treaty, the German parliamentary republic [the so-called Weimar Republic] fell into a massive crisis and disintegrated quickly. The rest is history. One of the lessons learned is that a nation can only be pushed so far and positive incentives need to be set to guarantee cooperation. After World War II, a different strategy was applied with the Marshall Plan."


Creative Commons License Markets. Business. Life. by LoneRngr (screen name) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License. Based on a work at marketsbusinesslife.blogspot.com.Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://marketsbusinesslife.blogspot.com/.