Germany now expects to grow less than 1%. The revised GDP estimate is now 0.7% growth…

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Investors have been running from stocks and even bonds as fast as their feet can take them, putting their cash instead in accounts that earn practically nothing but provide shelter from turbulent times.

Over the first 11 months of 2011, plain-vanilla savings and checking accounts attracted eight times the money as stock and bond mutual and exchange-traded funds, according to data from market research firm TrimTabs.

The pace accelerated to nearly 13 times from September to November, the most recent month for which data is available.

After contending with factors as ominous as the European debt crisis and as frustrating as Washington gridlock, investors have decided that the world looks best from the sidelines, despite historic efforts from the Federal Reserve to entice risk-taking.

“The real money these days is going straight under the mattress,” said TrimTabs CEO Charles Biderman. “The Fed is doing almost everything in its power to entice investors to speculate in overpriced asset markets. Yet investors – particularly on the retail side – are mostly refusing to take the bait.”

By JOHN MERLINE, INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 01/12/2012 04:29 PM ET

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Initial jobless claims unexpectedly jumped by 24,000 last week to 399,000 as more workers lost their jobs, the Labor Department said Thursday. At the same time, the economy continues to lose workers.

In the 30 months since the recession officially ended, nearly 1 million people have dropped out of the labor force — they aren’t working, and they aren’t looking — according to data from Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the past two months, the labor force shrank by 170,000.

This is virtually unprecedented in past economic recoveries, at least since the BLS has kept detailed records. In the past nine recoveries, the labor force had climbed an average 3.5 million by this point, according to an IBD analysis of the BLS data.

“Given weak job prospects, many would-be workers dropped out of (or never entered) the labor force,” noted Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute in her analysis of the BLS jobs report issued last Friday. “That reduces the measured unemployment rate but does not represent real improvement.”

According to the BLS, the “labor force participation rate” — the ratio of the number of people either working or looking for work compared with the entire working-age population — is now 64%, down from 65.7% when the recession ended in June 2009. That’s the lowest level since women began entering the workforce in far greater numbers several decades ago.

If you adjust for this drop, the unemployment rate would be close to 11%, instead of the official 8.5%.

Read the rest here.

John Crudele

The Rolling Stones said it best: “You can’t always get what you want.”

But it seems New York state never gets what it wants. That’s especially true when it comes to increasing tax revenue.

Case in point: cigarette taxes.

The state’s tax collectors were recently calling around to convenience-store owners, wondering what was up. The $130 million in extra tax that Albany was expecting from a change in the law about cigarette sales on Indian reservations wasn’t happening.

A memo sent to members of the New York Association of Convenience Stores from the group’s president, Jim Calvin — a copy of which I have on my desk — said, “I got a call from Gov. Cuomo’s budget office yesterday. In examining cigarette tax receipts so far this fiscal year (April 1 to March 31) it looks like they will fall considerably short of their projection in new revenues. . . .”

The state had hoped to get the extra dough by enforcing a new law that made it illegal for licensed cigarette wholesalers in the state to sell untaxed name-brand cigarettes like Newport and Marlboro to Indian reservations.

The reservation store would sell the cigarettes to non-Indian customers who were trying to avoid the hefty taxes imposed by the state. The state and legitimate sellers of cigarettes were both hurt.

The sale of nontaxed smokes by stores on Indian reservations became an issue two years ago when the state cigarette tax was raised significantly and many smokers took more of their business to reservations — or to Internet sellers — whose packs aren’t taxed. Some folks even bought lower-taxed cigs smuggled in from out of state.

Some wholesalers say sales are down between 20 percent and 30 percent among legitimate cigarette sellers.

State enforcement of the tax laws, meanwhile, has been lax, to say the least. New York, I’m told, has reduced the force working on illegal cigarettes by 80 percent since the tax hike went into effect.

But that’s another story.

So how much extra did the state collect in tax with the law change?

The state Department of Taxation did not return a call for comment.

But according to Calvin’s memo, “Cuomo’s budget office” was saying that cigarette tax revenues were flat this past October and November with the year before.

That seems to mean that Albany is $130 million short on its $130 million projection.

10th place and falling…

Estimates are to break last years record of 401 plant closings….

This article is praising the amount of people hired in 2011 vs 2010. It also talks about a few companies that will hire a few hundred to a few thousand people at best. No to be negative; it is a step in the right direction…..but is it enough ?

Full article

Peter Ferrara, Contributor

The record of President Obama’s first three years in office is in, and nothing that happens now can go back and change that.  What that record shows is that President Obama, with his throwback, old-fashioned, 1970s Keynesian economics, has put America through the worst recovery from a recession since the Great Depression.

The recession started in December, 2007.  Go to the website of the National Bureau of Economic Research (www.nber.org) to see the complete history of America’s recessions.  What that history reveals is that before this last recession, since the Great Depression recessions in America have lasted an average of 10 months, with the longest previously lasting 16 months.

When President Obama entered office in January, 2009, the recession was already in its 13^th month.  His responsibility was to manage a timely, robust recovery to get America back on track again.  Based on the historical record, that recovery was imminent, within a couple of months or so.  Despite widespread fear, nothing fundamental had changed to deprive America of the long term, world-leading prosperity it had enjoyed going back 300 years.

Supposedly a forward looking progressive, Obama proved to be America’s first backward looking regressive.  His first act was to increase federal borrowing, the national debt and the deficit by nearly a trillion dollars to finance a supposed “stimulus” package, based on the discredited Keynesian theory left for dead 30 years ago holding that increased government spending, deficits and debt are what promote economic growth and recovery. That theory arose in the 1930s as the answer to the Great Depression, which, of course, never worked.

That was the beginning of President Obama’s Rip Van Winkle act, pretending not to know anything that happened over the previous 30 years proving the dramatic, historic success of the new, more modern, supply side economics, which holds that incentives for increased production are what promote economic growth and recovery.  Indeed, that Rip Van Winklism pretended not to remember the 1970s either, when double digit inflation and double digit unemployment proved Keynesian economics grievously wrong.

As should have been long expected, Obama’s trillion dollar Keynesian stimulus did nothing to promote recovery and growth, and almost surely delayed it.  That is because borrowing a trillion dollars out of the economy to spend a trillion back into it does nothing to promote the economy on net. Indeed, it is probably a net drag on the economy, because the private sector spends the money more productively and efficiently than the public sector.

The National Bureau of Economic Research scored the recession as ending in June, 2009.  Yet, today, in the 49^th month since the recession started, there has still been no real recovery, like recoveries from previous recessions in America.

Unemployment actually rose after June, 2009, and did not fall back down below that level until 18 months later in December, 2010.  Instead of a recovery, America has suffered the longest period of unemployment near 9% or above since the Great Depression, under President Obama’s public policy malpractice.  Even today, 49 months after the recession started, the U6 unemployment rate counting the unemployed, underemployed and discouraged workers is still 15.2%.  And that doesn’t include all the workers who have fled the workforce under Obama’s economic oppression.  The unemployment rate with the full measure of discouraged workers is reported at www.shadowstats.com as about 23%, which is depression level unemployment.

Today, over 4 years since the recession started, there are still almost 25 million Americans unemployed or underemployed.  That includes 5.6 million who are long-term unemployed for 27 weeks, or more than 6 months.  Under President Obama, America has suffered the longest period with so many in such long-term unemployment since the Great Depression.

Read the rest here.

Rail traffic tanking

Tesco is the third largest retailer in the world

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Foreclosure filings and repossessions fell to their lowest level since 2007 last year.

Total filings, including default notices and bank repossessions were down 33% for the year to 2.7 million, according to RealtyTrac, the online marketer of foreclosed properties.

One in every 69 homes had at least one foreclosure filing during the year, while 804,000 homes were repossessed. That’s a significant improvement from the peaks reached in 2010 — when 1.05 million homes were repossessed — and the lowest levels seen since 2007.

More than 4 million homes have been lost to foreclosure over the past five years.

While the declines seem like good news for the housing market, where a flood of foreclosed homes has depressed home prices, much of it is due to processing delays caused by fall-out from the “robo-signing” scandal that broke in late 2010.

During the year, banks spent more time making sure paperwork was legal and proper, creating a backlog in the foreclosure pipeline. As a result, the average time it took to process a foreclosure climbed to 348 days during the fourth quarter, up from 305 days a year earlier.

“Foreclosures were in full delay mode in 2011, resulting in a dramatic drop in foreclosure activity for the year,” said Brandon Moore, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac.

A yo – yo economy yo

…but they were so good for the holidays….

All aspects of the economy seem to be looking up

Beijing (CNN) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met Chinese leaders on Wednesday with discussions expected to focus on cooperation between the world’s top two economies to bolster global growth as well as possible sanctions on Iranian oil exports.

Geithner held talks Wednesday with Vice President Xi Jinping — tipped to become China’s next president later this year— and Vice Premier Li Keqiang.

He was scheduled to meet Prime Minister Wen Jiabao later Wednesday.

Geithner met with his counterpart, Vice Premier Wang Qishan, on Tuesday night and pledged cooperation on global economic issues.

China and the United States “have a lot of issues to talk about in the areas of economy, finance, trade and investment,” Wang said at a news briefing on Tuesday.

While China has called on the United States to loosen export regulations, Washington has said that Chinese currency controls keep the yuan undervalued and give Chinese exporters an unfair advantage at a time when the global economy is suffering.

Manufacturing and fracking 

Cheers on that opinion

Full article

Good data point for housing’s stabilization…