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Japan Will Take the World’s Breath Away, Part II
by MN Gordon
Economic Prism
The National Bureau of Economic Research marks June 2009 as the end of the Great Recession. That means the United States economy has been in recovery for nearly three years. Semantically this is accurate…all the stimulus and monetary easing has successfully pushed GDP into positive over this time. But just what type of recovery is this?
According to the latest CNBC All-American Survey, 36 percent of the American public believes the economy will improve over the next year. Apparently, this is a 9 percent increase over the survey results from November 2011. Yet, despite the marked improvement, what this means is, 64 percent of (Read More....)
Japan Will Take the World’s Breath Away
by MN Gordon
Economic Prism
Last Sunday, in Long Beach, California, the impossible happened…it rained for the second consecutive weekend. Just ask anyone who lives here. That never happens.
We’re not complaining. Without the wet weather we would have never discovered the hole in the bottom of our shoe. Nevertheless, we bring this up to make the point that the seemingly impossible happens all the time.
Last August, for instance, something absolutely ridiculous occurred…during the summer twilight the world was preparing for mass inflation and mass deflation in tandem. This manifested for everyone to see when, in broad daylight, $1,820 per ounce gold and 1.98 percent 10 Year Treasury yields came into existence simultaneously. If we hadn’t witnessed this extreme and illogical price disparity with our own two eyes we’d say it was impossible. Yet it happened all the same.
By all accounts, what the world learned (Read More....)
When a debtor simply doesn't have the means to pay all that they owe, lenders typically agree to accept part of the amount owed. While governments have long used a similar approach to managing monetary economics, states have historically lacked the freedom to use logic in their efforts to collect overdue child support. In fact, many states spend much more money hunting down, prosecuting and even incarcerating parents who owe back support than they could hope to collect from them. Now, a study shows that a pilot program in Wisconsin that offered parents for some of their outstanding debt were more likely to make payments on their current and past-due child support.
Non-custodial parents owe over $100 billion in back support to families and states. According to Brett Burkhart, one of the researchers who studied the pilot program for the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Research on Poverty Families, most of that money would be considered uncollectible by a private lender. The bulk of it is owed by (Read More....)
Although many areas have experienced financial difficulties over the past few years, the entire world has turned its eyes upon Greece’s current economic struggle. Massive debt has crippled the Mediterranean nation, which is experiencing a devastating recession.
After two long years of financial hardship made worse by austerity measures imposed from above by the Greek government, Greek citizens have expressed their discontent by staging at least 1,580 protests this year alone and voting in an economist, Lucas Papademos, to lead the country.
Papademos, who ran on a platform that included a promise to exorcise Greece’s economic demons through a program of tax increases and spending cuts, makes no bones about the difficult road ahead. "The exit from the crisis won't be easy," said Papademos during a parliamentary address. "The budget has difficult and ambitious goals."
Greece has recently pinned its hopes on a $170 billion bailout from the European Union (EU). Negotiations have been brutal, however, with many observers wondering how the struggling nation will (Read More....)
 A recent study by the University of Colorado Denver shows that job-seekers who look for new jobs using the Internet spend 25 percent less time on average between jobs than those who restrict themselves to more traditional job-search methods. However, the researchers noted that searching for jobs online does not garner higher-paying positions for searchers.
Researchers gathered information by asking job-seekers to complete surveys that asked questions about the methods they were using to look for work. These findings are at odds with the results of a 2004 study that found that individuals who used the Internet as part of their job search were actually unemployed longer than those who looked for work the old-fashioned way. This may be due to changes in the Internet and the way it is used, rather than to flaws in either study, however.
"In 2004 the researchers came up with two scenarios for their findings: The Internet was not an effective tool or that people who looked on-line for jobs were not as qualified," according to Hani Mansour, Ph.D., (Read More....)
 ABC television recently screened a discussion on the Big Ideas show about the future of Asia. This screening is called "Q & Asia," and a panel of experts on the subjects involved were there to drive the discussion, which was moderated by Virginia Haussegger of ABC. The panel included Professor Andrew MacIntyre, Dr Kathy Morton, Professor Stephen Howes, and Professor Veronica Taylor.
The development of Asia is the definition of economics gone right. They have become a major economic player. What this means for the rest of the world was the first topic to be discussed. The balance of power between Asian countries, particularly China, and countries in the West, particularly the United States, has been the most prominent feature in world wide attention. However, the people of many countries in Asia have experienced a transformation as quality of life shifted away from poverty. Many of the problems currently in focus are short term issues, but there are some long term issues such as the future shrinking of China's population and existing instability in some regions. Also, despite (Read More....)
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