Media clips
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Technically, a correction is a change of 10 percent or more, so the Dow would need to lose around 650 more points and the S&P 500 would need to drop by another 100.
“The S&p 500 has averaged a correction, that is a drop of 10 percent of more, every 18 months and currently we haven’t had one since 2011, so we’re about 28 months overdue,” says Alec Young, Global Equity Strategist at S&P Capital IQ.
Plus, many key economic indicators like manufacturing and unemployment indicate stocks should be a little lower says Bill Stone, Chief Investment Strategist at PNC Wealth Management. “We will get a 10 percent pullback sometime. Whether this is it or not is hard to say, but you ought to a be ready for it.”
Still, we’re probably not talking about a crash, because companies’ profits are pretty much in line with current stock values.
“The best measures of long run stock market fundamentals, the price to earnings ratio, is not in bubble territory,” says economist Heidi Shierholz, with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington DC.
Marketplace February 6, 2014 -
The blue line on the chart above is derived from this assumption. It shows the sustainable level of employment expressed as a share of working-age adults. The red line shows the share of adults who actually had jobs. The implication is that, in effect, there were too many jobs before the recession – that the labor market was overheating – and, as a result, that some of the recent losses should be seen as a return to health.
But as Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute noted Monday, the Fed in recent decades has actually tolerated higher unemployment for long periods because it was focused primarily on controlling inflation. The methodology of the new study, in effect, is basically using the Fed’s long history of allowing unnecessary unemployment as a justification for continuing the same policy.
New York Times February 6, 2014 -
Still, the structure of the Obamacare subsidies makes it less likely that workers would make that choice at all, according to Elise Gould, the director of health policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
An extra $100 in income doesn’t directly translate into $100 less in subsidies, meaning that for many low-income workers, there would probably be more of an incentive to make more money than to get the government breaks.
“It’s hard to imagine that people don’t want to move up the wage scale and do better in that way,” Gould said. “It’s not unreasonable, but if you’re the only wage earner in your house, then you’re going to be making very different decisions than if you are a second wage earner.”
Huffington Post February 6, 2014 -
Hilary Wething and Daniel Costa are featured on the “Young and the Guest List” in Washington Life magazine.
See page 45.Washington Life Magazine February 6, 2014 -
For some time now, there has been a debate about why the labor-force participation rate has fallen so far. Some analysts point to demographics: the aging of baby boomers. Others blame low levels of demand and hiring, which have prompted some of the unemployed to give up on looking for work. The C.B.O. study splits things down the middle. Of the roughly three-percentage-point fall in the participation rate since 2007, the study attributes 1.5 percentage points to “long term trends (particularly the aging of the population)” and the other 1.5 percentage points to “weak employment prospects” and other “unusual aspects of the slow recovery.”
One can quibble with these figures. At least one other study, by the Economic Policy Institute, found that weak demand accounted for two-thirds of the fall in the participation rate. But, even if we accept the C.B.O.’s conclusions, they imply that about three million Americans who should be working have vanished from the labor force.
The New Yorker February 6, 2014 -
Elaine Weiss of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington speaks at a Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence event at the legislative office complex in Nashville, Tenn., on Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. The event was the first of a series scheduled from supporters and opponents of creating a school voucher program and expanding charter schools in the state.
AP January 30, 2014 -
Today, newly-formed education advocacy group TREE (Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence) hosted a presentation by Elaine Weiss of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education.
Weiss discussed recent Tennessee education policy in the context of the drivers of educational inequality. She pointed to research suggesting that poverty is a significant contributor to student outcomes and noted other research that suggests as much as 2/3 of student outcomes are predicted by factors outside of school.
Later in the day, SCORE (Statewide Collaborative on Reforming Education) released its annual State of Education in Tennessee Report.
Tennessee Education Report January 30, 2014 -
With education the burning issue driving policy on the local, state and federal level, the presentation across the street inside Legislative Plaza was a horse of a different color.
Tennesseans Reclaiming Education Excellence, TREE, held its first-ever press conference in a packed small legislative committee room Monday, examining how the state’s approach to addressing achievement gaps drive policies that are hurting public schools.
“The state of education for Tennessee is it has a lot of potential to do the right things and is not doing them,” said Elaine Weiss, a TREE presenter and national coordinator for Washington, D.C.-based Broader, Bolder Approach to Education. Nearby, Democratic Rep. Mike Stewart bumped his fists together like a boxer, congratulating her for taking on the state.
Nashville Scene January 30, 2014 -
On Tuesday, we wrote about some good-sounding news: unemployment rates in 29 states are at post-recession lows. We alluded to some caveats, however, including the historically huge share of people out of work for prolonged periods —six months or more. On Wednesday, the Economic Policy Institute’s David Cooper provided the state-level data.
Before the Great Recession hit, the national share of the jobless who were long-term unemployed peaked at 26 percent, in June 1983, as you can see in the graph below:
Last year, long-term unemployment was above that level in 41 states and D.C., according to EPI, a think tank whose research focuses on low- and middle-income workers. Long-term unemployment is lowest in the Dakotas, where less than a fifth of the jobless have been out of work for long stretches. It’s highest in D.C., New Jersey and Florida, where more than 45 percent of the jobless are long-term unemployed.
Head on over to EPI’s site for an interactive version of the map above, or scroll down to view state-by-state data. Below that is a series of survey responses from people who are long-term unemployed.
The Washington Post January 30, 2014 -
This morning, President Obama visited a Costco in suburban Maryland to reemphasize the theme of income inequality he sounded in the State of the Union speech last night. Our calculator shows why Obama chose the home of the giant pickle jar and behemoth TP package: Even at the relatively low wages paid by big-box retailers, slightly better pay can mean the difference between inescapable poverty and a modest living.
Mother Jones January 30, 2014