Friday, Dec 27th
Last update09:27:41 AM GMT
Economic Glance
A breakdown in communications at the highest level between the US and the UK led to the shock collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers in September last year, a Guardian/Observer investigation has revealed.
Companies eliminated more jobs than forecast in August, a private survey indicated today, signaling that employers have yet to gain confidence about a recovery from the deepest recession since the 1930s.
The 298,000 drop followed a revised 360,000 decline the prior month that was smaller than previously estimated, according to figures from ADP Employer Services.
We construe this as an admission that the U.S. gold reserve has been put into private hands to some extent or has been compromised in some way by possession by private interests, such as financial houses that trade in gold. Really, why should any Federal Reserve record involving the national gold reserves be confidential, except perhaps records involving the most ordinary security of the reserve's vaulting? Plainly the Fed has knowledge of something that has been done with the gold reserve that the U.S. government does not want the American people and the financial markets to know.
Millions of older people face shrinking Social Security checks next year, the first time in a generation that payments would not rise.
The trustees who oversee Social Security are projecting there won't be a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for the next two years. That hasn't happened since automatic increases were adopted in 1975.
California led the nation in job losses in July, while a third of the nation showed decreases in unemployment for the month. California lost 35,800 jobs, the U.S. Labor Department said Friday, to boost its unemployment rate to 11.9 percent, a mark unequalled since modern labor record-keeping began.
The new numbers bring California's total job losses to 760,200 over the last year. If there is good news, it is that the rate of job losses slowed for a second straight month. July's job losses were barely half those in May.
A large portion of the revenue is likely to come from the most financially stretched consumers, according to the paper.
It said the research showed that many banks have increased charges on overdrafts and credit cards in order to boost profits.
The numbers of poor and uninsured Americans are likely rising - with more than 38.8 million believed to be in poverty. Rebecca Blank, the Commerce Department's undersecretary of economic affairs, spoke to The Associated Press in advance of next month's closely watched release of 2008 census data.
Noting the figures are not yet final, Blank said the numbers will likely show a "statistically significant" increase in the poverty rate, to at least 12.7 percent. That would represent a jump of more than 1.5 million poor people last year.
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