Clinging to Cash

The Wall Street Journal: Top Story: Companies Cling to Cash

Rewind: November 2009: Stashing Cash

Stock Market Seems to Like 9.6%/17.1%+ U.S. Unemployment

Rewind: November 6, 2009: U.S. Unemployment Rate 10.2% (to 17.5%)

http://www.npr.org/search/index.php?searchinput=unemployment

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/unemployment/index.html

http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=unemployment&mod=DNH_S

Meanwhile, Germany (1990-2010)

Rewind: It Was 20 Year Ago Today...

Fast-Forward: January 2012: "Germany's unemployment rate fell to a record low in January, data showed...its lowest point since figures for a reunified Germany were first published more than two decades ago."

NYC Mayor Freezes Hiring

B: “Although the city’s unemployment rate has declined seven months in a row, and job growth in the city has outpaced growth nationally and statewide, we are not immune from the impacts of the recession,” Bloomberg said in his letter. Tax revenue for the current fiscal year remains more than $4 billion below the peak levels reached before the recession began, Bloomberg said.

“Since almost 60 percent of city spending goes towards labor costs, including pension and health care contributions, the city must immediately take steps to rein in spending,” he said. Positions immediately affecting public health and safety, and those that generate revenue, are unaffected by the freeze.

NYC "Official" July 2010 Unemployment Rate: 9.4%

NYT: New York City’s unemployment rate dipped to 9.4 percent in July...

The city’s unemployment rate, which was 9.5 percent in June, has now declined for seven straight months since peaking at 10.5 percent at the end of 2009. It was slightly lower than the national unemployment rate — 9.5 percent in July — as it was in April and May.

Rewind: August 2009: New York City’s unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent last month, surpassing the national unemployment rate...

Griddle 2010

TechCrunch: Today at a special ‘Ecomagination’ event in San Francisco, General Electric is announcing the launch of the $200 million GE ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid, an investment that’s meant to help spur advances in green grid technologies. The fund is launching in partnership with VC funds Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and RockPort Capital. Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson is also involved.

GE says that it is looking for proposals in three categories: Renewables, Grid, and Eco Homes & Eco Buildings. Applicants can submit ideas on ecomagination.com over a ten week period. Entrants will be eligable for both “a potential future commercial relationship” with GE and one of five $100,000 awards that are meant to highlight submissions demonstrating “outstanding entrepreneurship and innovation”.

http://challenge.ecomagination.com
http://www.emerald-ventures.com
http://www.foundationcapital.com
http://www.kpcb.com
http://www.rockportcap.com

Rewind: 2009: Griddle

Writer's Block

Spain

Wednesday, July 7: 99 Degrees

Tuesday, July 6: 101 Degrees

Monday, July 5: 98 Degrees

NYP Front Page
Down South
Abroad

Rewind: 2009, 2008

Broken

Von Drehle@Time: From Hartford to Honolulu, once sturdy state governments are approaching the brink of fiscal calamity, as the crash of 2008 and its persistent aftermath have led to the reckoning of 2010. Squeezed by the end of federal stimulus money on one hand and desperate local governments on the other, states are facing the third straight year of staggering budget deficits, and the necessary cuts will cost jobs, limit services and touch the lives of millions of Americans...

And don't count on the shaky economic recovery for relief. After plunging in 2009, tax receipts are stabilizing in many places — but the next big shoe is fixing to drop. Having poured billions of dollars into state coffers through the stimulus act of 2009, the federal government is poised to close the tap. President Obama made an unusual Saturday night request to Congress last week for $50 billion in emergency aid to the states to stave off layoffs of teachers, firefighters and police. But it's an election year, and there is scant appetite among vulnerable Democrats in Washington for more zeros at the end of the federal deficit. (Only the federal government is allowed to run deficits; states and cities must balance their budgets or face default.) Already, 11 states are projecting major budget gaps — greater than 10% of general-fund spending — well into 2013. Such persistent budget woes are unprecedented in the era of modern American government. You'd have to go back to the 1930s to find a parallel...

The great reckoning of 2010 took us years to create and will be years in the fixing. It's not as if the economic crisis isn't plenty painful already. In government, as in life, there are cuts that injure and cuts that heal. As they continue to slog through the wreckage of the Great Recession, state and local leaders have a challenge to be surgeons rather than hacks and make this era of crisis into a season of fresh starts.


Ross via Bolton@Bloomberg/Twitter: Looming municipal debt crisis.

Mullen & Carter via NPR: During a recent Washington speech, Mullen highlighted one troubling number: Within two years, just the annual interest on the debt will be close to $600 billion.

"And that's, notionally, about the size of the Defense Department budget. It's not sustainable," he said.

But, if overspending now endangers U.S. security, is it in part because the country is spending too much on security? At $700 billion a year, defense is the biggest part of the federal budget. The United States is now spending as much on defense as the rest of the world combined.

[The U.S. consumes 25% of the world's energy with a share of global GDP at 22% and a share of the world population at 5%.]

If the deficit is to be reduced, the Pentagon is certain to take a hit, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates is warning the department to get ready.

"The secretary is saying we need to deliver the war-fighting capability required within the resources the country can afford to provide, and that's going to require us to change the way we do business here," says Ashton Carter, the Defense Department's undersecretary for acquisitions.

Fast-forward: January 2011:

Insurance

Beer, Eats, Times, Sale

Rewind

PBS: Back in 2006, economist Nouriel Roubini and scholar Nassim Taleb shared some words of warning about the state of the financial and housing markets.

On Tuesday night's NewsHour, we speak with both of them again...

Closed

AMNY: It’s a game of chicken set to end at midnight Monday with angry New Yorkers caught in the middle.

The state government could literally shut down at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday if a band of lawmakers refuse to pass the governor’s week-long emergency spending bill that calls for year-long cuts to human services and other programs. For New Yorkers, that could mean everything from a freeze in unemployment checks to a halt in the Mega Millions lottery...

Without a state budget agreement since April, Gov. David Paterson has been taking a piecemeal approach...

“I think frankly the pressure is forcing the legislature to do the responsible thing,” gubernatorial front-runner candidate, Democrat Andrew Cuomo, said at the Puerto Rican Parade Sunday...

The legislators “risk subjecting the public to unimaginable pain that’s unnecessary,” Paterson said yesterday...

The feds and other state governments have shut down during budget impasses, but not New York. The city has plans in place if the worst case scenario should happen, a mayoral spokesman said, though he did not detail what those were.

BBW: “We are not going to shut down government and risk the safety and livelihood of millions of New Yorkers,” said Austin Shafran, a spokesman for Senate Democrats, who are led by John Sampson of Brooklyn, in an e-mailed comment yesterday. “As we continue to make progress on a final budget, we expect to pass the emergency extender and meet taxpayers’ needs.”

Paterson told a gathering of reporters last night in Albany that legislators’ comments that the spending bill will pass were “encouraging,” though he declined to predict the outcome of today’s vote. “One never really knows what’s going to happen in the Senate,” he said.

NY1: State Senate Democrats are assuring New Yorkers that there will not be a government shutdown today, as Albany lawmakers are set to vote on Governor David Paterson's latest emergency budget extender bill.

Democrats have not said exactly how they will gather the 32 votes needed to pass it.

Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada had threatened to vote against the bill if the governor continued to include permanent spending cuts in the weekly bills, but Espada said yesterday that progress was made over the weekend and he now expects the bill to pass.

The bill to keep the state running also includes some $327 million in cuts to mental health and social services, to help bridge the state's $9.2 billion budget gap.

Bronx Senator Ruben Diaz Sr. has said he will vote against any more cuts.

Republican Schenectady Senator Hugh Farley said Paterson's bill is "horrible," but that he would vote for it to prevent a shutdown.

Meanwhile: AP via BBW: NY agencies hosting high-speed rail conference

Rewind: December 9, 2009: "New York is now at the breaking point. We are about to cross the financial rubicon into fiscal disaster."

Repave

Claims

Challenges and Opportunities

BookCourt

BookCourt events

Today's New York Times front page (above the fold):
NYT: BP Used Riskier Method to Seal Well Before Blast
NYT: California Puts Vote Overhaul on the Ballot
NYT: Trampled in a Land Rush, Chinese Resist
NYT: In E. Coli Fight, Some Strains Are Largely Ignored

Fears

Rewind: May 21, 2010: Confidence
Rewind: May 5, 2010: Debt

Craft Beer

Fox NY: American Craft Beer Week runs from May 17-23... The industry's light-hearted "declaration of independence" extols craft brewing as "living liquid history" and a "libation of substance and soul."... More than 1,500 breweries are responsible for the beer brands made in the United States with more than 90 percent of these fitting the small and independent craft brewer definition. While independent brewers represent about 6 percent of beer sales, they provide about 100,000 jobs within the industry.

http://www.americancraftbeerweek.org/apps/events/events.html

Confidence

Rewind: May 5, 2010: Debt

Bergen, Between Smith and Boerum

TheInvisibleDog.org

Fast-forward: May 24, 2010: Brooklyn Maize Field (corner of Bergen and Smith): Installing the Stones on Bergen Street; Related: http://www.brooklynmaize.org/boreum.html

Between Sackett and Degraw

Debt

-> ft.com/greece
-> guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/05/uk-budget-deficit-worse-than-greece
-> economist.com/world/europe

Fast-forward: May 21, 2010: Confidence

Fast-forward: June 2011: The Brink 2

Food

BP: Inspired by the upcoming “Bklyn Made” event at Borough Hall on May 14, which will spotlight more than a dozen of the borough’s food and beverage brands, we decided to check in with some of our oldest, thriving businesses and those with only a few years under their belts...

BCC: Brooklyn Goes Global is kicking off World Trade Week 2010 at our inaugural BKLYN MADE event showcasing some of the borough's finest food and beverage manufacturers. The public is welcome to join our invited guests, including distributors, wholesalers and buyers, as they meet the artisans and entrepreneurs of Brooklyn's food manufacturing industry while sampling their locally made specialties. Get the inside scoop on how these Brooklyn companies got their start and how these fine foods are produced...

Morning Bell

Lewis via BBW: If you happen to be sitting on the Goldman Sachs bond-trading floor, life must feel horribly unfair. You did nothing worse than live by the ethical assumptions of your market—any money-making event short of obviously illegal is admirable—and now your own grandfather thinks you're some kind of monster... You're probably wondering: What next? What will the angry rabble—all those ordinary people who can never really understand your business—now demand that you explain to them, so they can disapprove of you all over again?

Here, for a start, is what the world beyond Wall Street is entitled to:

Full knowledge of the inner workings of your proprietary trading desk. In particular, the moment-to-moment dealings of your correlations traders from late 2004, when they first exploited AIG's idiotic willingness to sell cheap insurance on pools of subprime mortgage loans, until the end of 2007, when they would have taken most of their profits from the total collapse of the subprime bond markets...

Morgenson and Story via NYT: One of the mysteries of the financial crisis is how mortgage investments that turned out to be so bad earned credit ratings that made them look so good.

One answer is that Wall Street was given access to the formulas behind those magic ratings — and hired away some of the very people who had devised them.

In essence, banks started with the answers and worked backward, reverse-engineering top-flight ratings for investments that were, in some cases, riskier than ratings suggested, according to former agency employees...

Morgenson via NYT: Unfortunately, the leading proposals would do little to cure the epidemic unleashed on American taxpayers by the lords of finance and their bailout partners. The central problem is that neither the Senate nor House bills would chop down big banks to a more manageable and less threatening size. The bills also don’t eliminate the prospect of future bailouts of interconnected and powerful companies.

Too big to fail is alive and well, alas. Indeed, several aspects of the legislative proposals sanction and codify the special status conferred on institutions that are seen as systemically important. Instead of reducing the number of behemoth firms assigned this special status, the bills would encourage smaller companies to grow large and dangerous so that they, too, could have a seat at the bailout buffet...

Warren via WNYC (May 11, 2010): The rules are still the same at every point along the line... This is the central question for America... Can you stop the collateral consequences?... So no more Jamie Dimons and Lloyd Blankfeins having survived near death...

Roubini via WNYC (May 12, 2010): In 2006...we knew that we were at the tipping point... Everyone was living in a bubble. And once you live in a bubble, you lose all sense of reality.

Gone

Rewind to Wednesday, March 31, 2010: Into the Great Wide Open