Another month has passed, so I thought I would share some unemployment graphs that look at things a bit differently. Employment-to-Population Ratio: Men (25-54 Years) Clearly there is a long term structural trend of men participating in the workforce less and less (for women it has been the reverse).  I don’t think the culture has [...]

One of the arguments for big banks is that their size allows them to scale and be more efficient.  Unfortunately, it looks like what they become more efficient at is extracting money from their customers. Here is the most disturbing quote for me. But rather than allow the evidence in favor of smaller banks to [...]

A study cam out analyzing the funding status of each state’s pension funds.  It is not pretty.  And these are funding levels using assumptions like 8% or 8.5% portfolio returns.  If the returns are lower, the funding shortfall will be worse. NPR has a nice graphic of the data you can play with here. And the [...]

Since the latest unemployment number of 9.7% came out today, I thought I would send some of CalculatedRisk‘s wonderful graphs to help put it in context. In terms of percentage of lost jobs compared to previous recessions we have the following updated graph. Besides the clear trend of more and more drawn out job recoveries, this [...]

Hhere is a graph that shows the percentage of mortgages that have negative ranked by state.  The number in the bubble states are truly staggering. And this next graph gives an idea of what percentage are deeply underwater (i.e., > 25% under water) in the bubble states. With unemployment likely to stay elevated for a [...]

4th quarter GDP came in at 5.7%.  To see why people are not excited about this number check out the following graph. If you look closely, you will see that imports and exports mostly balance each other and resdential and nonresidential investment are still lacking.  This leaves inventory changes and consumption as the main drivers [...]

An interesting paper (pdf) on the relationship between a country’s debt load and future gdp growth.  Here is the abstract. We study economic growth and inflation at different levels of government and external debt. Our analysis is based on new data on forty-four countries spanning about two hundred years. The dataset incorporates over 3,700 annual observations [...]

Elizabeth Warren suggests that the American middle class is in decline.  Over the last 40 years the only real income gain for families has come through women entering the workforce (i.e., two income families).  As you would expect childcare costs have mushroomed during that time.  But also home and medical costs have grown much faster [...]

Consumer Reports researched the online cash for gold services. They discovered (not a big surprise) that the online services offered some of the lowest rates. You are much better off going to local jewelery stores or pawn shops.  Here is their advice: Call several jewelry stores, coin stores, and pawn shops to ask what they [...]

From California’s Office of the Attorney General we get the following tips to avoid being scammed. DON’T pay up-front fees. Foreclosure consultants are prohibited by law from collecting money before services are performed. DON’T ignore letters from your lender or loan servicer. Responding to those letters is your best bet for saving your house. DON’T [...]