All Blog Posts from Econwatch

This post by Jill Schlesinger originally appeared on CBS' MoneyWatch.com.

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The BLS November Employment Report is out and the news is better than expected. 11,000 jobs lost (versus estimates of 100,000) and rate dipped to 10% from 10.2% in October. Recovery, here we come, right? Sort of.

For months, the news on jobs has been as follows: less bad=good. That's OK if you're an economist, but obviously not particularly helpful if you are one of the six people looking to land that one job offering. As MoneyWatch blogger Mark Thoma notes, this has been a brutal decade for private sector jobs.

As I think about the scourge of unemployment in the country, I keep coming back to Patience and Fortitude, the lions that guard the steps to the Main Branch of the New York Public Library.

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This post by Jill Schlesinger originally appeared on CBS' MoneyWatch.com.

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With a little over one out of 10 Americans out of work (and another 7.5 people part-time or under-employed); six times as many people looking for jobs as there are job openings; the average time to find a job coming in at over six months (the highest level since the Great Depression), the public is frustrated. In response, the Obama Administration is hosting a Jobs Summit today. For those in the know, a summit is one step up from a task force, though neither usually accomplishes more than a photo op.

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Some states are looking to prevent public employees from "double dipping" – collecting pension benefits while still holding a government job, according to a USA Today report Thursday.

In some areas, government employees are allowed to "retire" in order to begin collecting retirement benefits only to quickly return to work, and their normal paychecks. But for many states battered by the economy, that loophole must be closed.

While there are no exact figures on the number of "double dippers," some states have identified thousands, according to the report.

So far, Utah, New Mexico, South Dakota, Florida and Arkansas are looking to curb the practice through legislation – either through outright banning it or instituting a minimum length of time that employees must stay retired before returning to work.

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Goldman Sachs executives may be arming themselves out of fear of a public uprising.

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This post by Jill Schlesinger originally appeared on CBS' MoneyWatch.com.

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This was the day I was supposed to interview GM CEO Fritz Henderson for a big CBS Radio year-end special about the economy. Timing really is everything.


Yesterday after the close of trading, GM made a surprise announcement: after eight months at the helm of the beleaguered automaker, Fritz Henderson was stepping down. Today we know that Mr. Henderson did not exactly resign - he was axed. The party line is that the 25-year veteran of the company was too closely tied to old GM and wasn't moving quickly enough to satisfy the antsy Board.

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This post by Jill Schlesinger originally appeared on CBS' MoneyWatch.com.

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Why aren't banks playing the mortgage modification game? We've been told that lenders prefer to modify and/or restructure loans, rather than enter into the costly and time consuming foreclosure process. At least that was the thought when the government rolled out the Home Affordable Modification Plan ("HAMP").

Despite paying up to $1,500 for each modification, plus $1,000 a year for up to 3 years for each borrower who remains current, the program is stuck. 650,000 homeowners have been given trial modifications, but only a fraction of those have become permanent. What's HAMPering progress on the program?

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This post by Jill Schlesinger originally appeared on CBS' MoneyWatch.com.

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I heard about Dubai's debt problems before dashing out for Thanksgiving and discounted the news. It seemed likely that Abu Dhabi, which sits atop a $700 billion sovereign wealth fund, would swoop in and come to the rescue. Not so fast - we would have to wait for the Tiger Woods car crash to move the Dubai story below the fold.

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This post by Jill Schlesinger originally appeared on CBS' MoneyWatch.com.

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In preparation for the eat-a-thon that is Thanksgiving, I do like to give thanks for the big stuff - health, loving mate, wonderful family, great country with wonderful troops who give so much to all of us and an amazing city that despite the high taxes, is still worth it.

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This post by Jill Schlesinger originally appeared on CBS' MoneyWatch.com.

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In today's "Reality Check" (Click here to view the video) MoneyWatch Editor-in-Chief Eric Schurenberg and I discussed the economic smack-down of the moment: inflation vs. deflation.

Although most economists understand that a recession, especially one highlighted by significant deleveraging, is deflationary, the worry is that the massive government spending spree (trillions of dollars since Lehman's collapse) will lead to higher inflation down the line.

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Nearly a quarter of U.S. mortgage holders owe more on their loans than their houses are worth, according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal.

Data from First American CoreLogic, a Santa Ana, Calif.-based real-estate information company, shows that in the third quarter of 2009 almost 10.7 million households had negative equity in their homes.

Despite good news on the house resales front — it was reported Monday that home sales surged for the second month in a row in October, climbing to the highest level in 2½ years, due in part to a first-time buyers' tax credit — the Journal's Ruth Simon and James R. Hagerty write that this swelling of "underwater mortgages" threatens the prospects of a sustained housing recovery.

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