The Cyprus Parliament rejected a bail out plan that would have seized almost 10% of private savings deposits and used the money to bail out Cyprus banks. The vote was almost unaminous.
The United States has so many “wars” on its hands that no one can keep them all straight. The War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the War in Afghanistan, the Drone War, the War on Women, the War in Iraq. To this must be added a quiet war, begun in 2008 as a response to the financial crisis, and so low key that it doesn’t deserve capital letters – the war on savers.
Size matters when it comes to bank bail outs and European politics. In the most brazen bail out deal yet, the citizens of Cyprus just had their savings seized to give the money to the banks. I kid you not. Here is the Eurogroup statement:
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy! Tonight's documentary is Money & Speed: Inside the Black Box. It is a nanosecond by nanosecond account of the May 6th, 2010 flash crash, the most famous of sudden jolts to the markets due to automated computerized trading.
The February Consumer Price Index jumped 0.7% from January. CPI measures inflation, or price increases. The culprit is gas prices again, which skyrocketed 9.1% for the month and is 75% of the monthly increase. This is the biggest monthly jump in CPI since June 2009. Take food and energy items out of the index and CPI actually rose 0.2% from January.
The DOL reported people filing for initial unemployment insurance benefits in the week ending on March 9th, 2013 was 332,000, a 10,000 drop from the previous week of 342,000. This is the lowest weekly initial unemployment claims since January 2008, the start of the recession. Two months ago initial claims also dropped this low but it was a statistical fluke, the next week claims went up to 371,000. Is this time finally different?
February 2013 Retail Sales increased, by 1.1%. Gasoline sales shot up 5.0% from January on higher prices. If one removes gasoline sales from retail sales, overall the increase from January would have been 0.6%. Auto sales increased 1.1% and minus all autos & parts but including gas sales, retail sales increased 1.0% from last month. This report should alleviate Wall Street's worries people are so tapped out they have stopped spending. It didn't happen, yet.
The BLS January JOLTS report, or Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey shows there are 3.3 official unemployed per job opening. Actual hires increased 1.2% to 4.247 million after last month's plunge. Real hiring has only increased 17% from June 2009. Job openings also recovered slightly, up by 2.2% to 3.693 million, yet are still below pre-recession levels of 4.7 million. Job openings have increased 69.5% from July 2009. Some in the press are claiming hiring is on a rebound. Frankly hiring is not. Every month it is the same thing, not enough hiring and this has been going on now for over five years.
Many in the press are claiming the increase in wages from the February employment report implies the economy is back on track, all is well and things are all looking up. We beg to differ. The average hourly wage did increase by 4¢ to $23.82 for all those employed by the private sector and has increased 2.1% from a year ago. The below graph shows what many are cheering over.
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