QUOTE OF THE DAY
NPR: School District Owes $1 Billion On $100 Million Loan
Perhaps the best example of the CAB issue is suburban San Diego's Poway Unified School District, which borrowed a little more than $100 million. But "debt service will be almost $1 billion," Lockyer says. "So, over nine times amount of the borrowing. There are worse ones, but that's pretty bad."
Daily Caller: Food stamp use reaches another high in September: 47.7 million participants
Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, reached another high in September, according to new data released by the United Stated Department of Agriculture.
The most recent data on SNAP participation were released Friday, and showed that 47,710,324 people were enrolled in the program in September, an increase of 607,559 from the 47,102,765 enrolled in August.
CNBC: Macs Made in USA Could Jump-Start American Manufacturing
When Apple CEO Tim Cook told NBC's Brian Williams the company plans to make one of its Mac lines in the United States next year, he offered an early glimpse of what the return of American manufacturing will look like. It bears little resemblance to a 20th-century factory floor.
"[It] likely means a few hundred new jobs," said Peter Misek, managing director of technology research at Jefferies & Co. "It's a big start and show[s] the wage and productivity gap with Asia is closing."
While it might be a big start, even hundreds of jobs won't move the needle on unemployment. What's promising is the idea that Apple's multimillion-dollar investment will spark demand for a more close-to-home supply chain that could have a ripple effect.
New York Times: Big Money Bets on a Housing Rebound
As the foreclosure crisis grinds on, knowledgeable, cash-rich investors are doing something that still gives many ordinary Americans pause: they are leaping headlong into the housing market. And not just into tricky mortgage investments, collateralized this or securitized that, but actual houses.
A flurry of private-equity giants and hedge funds have spent billions of dollars to buy thousands of foreclosed single-family homes. They are purchasing them on the cheap through bank auctions, multiple listing services, short sales and bulk purchases from local investors in need of cash, with plans to fix up the properties, rent them out and watch their values soar as the industry rebounds. They have raised as much as $8 billion to invest, according to Jade Rahmani, an analyst at Keefe Bruyette & Woods.
Washington Post: Is the economy creating a lost generation?
This is not a good time to be starting out in life. Jobs are scarce, and those that exist often pay unexpectedly low wages. Beginning a family — always stressful and uncertain — is increasingly a stretch. The weak economy begets weak family formation. We instinctively know this; several new studies now deepen our understanding.
When the labor market operates smoothly, it creates an economic escalator. Just out of high school or college, young workers typically switch jobs frequently until they find something that fits their talent and temperament. Job changes often mean higher pay; people move to advance themselves. The more they succeed, the more confident they feel in marrying and having children.
The most startling evidence of the broken escalator is the collapse in marriages and births. Marriage has been declining for years. Now, in a new study, the Pew Research Center finds that in 2011 the U.S. birth rate (births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44) fell to its lowest level since at least 1920, the earliest year of reliable statistics. From 2007 to 2011, the U.S. birth rate dropped almost 9 percent. The total fertility rate — the estimated number of children born to adult women in their lifetime — has fallen four straight years to 1.9 (the replacement rate is 2.1).
Tech Crunch: The Slow Death Of Physical Credit Cards And Cash Continues
The process of getting someone a gift card is kind of ridiculous. You go to a store, you take out your credit card, pay for it and then hand it to a friend. That’s the gist of it, and it’s a slow process.
Today, payment service Square has introduced a new way to send gift cards. With the Square Wallet (or is it lowercase W now?) app you can now go through all of the businesses that use Square to process payments, pick the right one for your friend or family member, and then purchase them a gift card in the amount of your choosing. Right now, this just works for folks in the United States.
