QUOTE OF THE DAY
Crains: Time for unions to organize – themselves
For Illinois’ long-powerful labor movement, this truly is the winter of its discontent.
Unions kicked off the season by impotently watching as dozens of their Springfield allies abandoned ship and voted for a tough pension reform law that now needs only the final approval of the Illinois Supreme Court. More recently, they’ve spent nearly $4 million on what (unless all the polls are wrong) was a failed bid to prevent the virulently anti-labor Bruce Rauner from becoming the GOP nominee for governor. And when lawmakers return to Springfield after the March 18 elections, item one on the agenda is more pension cuts, this time for city and Chicago Public Schools workers.
“It’s really awful what’s happened,” concedes one top labor honcho, speaking privately. “I just don’t know right now if this movement has the capacity to build the next movement.”
WSJ: Where Can a Teacher Afford to Buy a Home?
A combination of rising home prices and higher interest rates has slowed the real estate market and priced some buyers out. How has this affected middle-class buyers? Redfin, the national real estate brokerage, phrases the question this way: Where can a teacher buy a home?
The answer is a lot of places – just stay away from the coasts.
San Jose, in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, is the worst place for a teacher to buy a home, according to Redfin. There, only 1% of homes are affordable, which in this case means a median-earning teacher wouldn’t have to spend more than 28% of their pre-tax income on their monthly mortgage, taxes and insurance payment.
Bloomberg: Is This the Best the Economy Can Do?
The belief that U.S. economic output is less than it could be — an idea that’s driven post-recession policy at the Federal Reserve — is increasingly challenged by the data, as I described in my last post. That suggests a drop in the country’s productive capacity, which leads to an even more vexing question: What’s behind that drop? And how should the Fed respond?
It’s not hard to see why economists’ instinct is to view our current low growth as an anomaly. The U.S. economy has long been a predictable growth machine. For decades, you could count on it growing about 3 percent a year after accounting for inflation.
And then the recession happened. The U.S. has grown an average of just 1.6 percent a year over the last decade. Whether the U.S. can recapture the growth it has lost depends on what slowed growth in the first place.
Daily Herald: Unemployment rates drop in 43 states in January
Unemployment rates fell in 43 U.S. states in January as more Americans began looking for work and most quickly found jobs.
The Labor Department says the unemployment rate rose in just one state — Iowa — where the rate increased to 4.3 percent from 4.2 percent. That’s far below the national rate of 6.6 percent that month.
Twenty-three states reported more hiring in January, while 27 said that the number of jobs fell. Harsh winter weather weighed on hiring nationwide, with employers adding just 129,000 jobs that month, below the average monthly gain of about 180,000 in the previous two years.
Reuters: Obama manufacturing hubs face uphill struggle to create jobs
Along the banks of the Mahoning River in the struggling Ohio steel town of Youngstown sits a once-abandoned furniture warehouse that has been converted into a sleek new laboratory.
Inside is a Silicon Valley-style workspace complete with open meeting areas and colorful stools. Several 3-D printers hum in the background, while engineers type computer codes that tell the machines how to create objects by layering materials.
The lab, called America Makes, is the first in a series of so-called “manufacturing innovation hubs” that President Barack Obama has launched with the promise that they could revitalize America’s industrial sector and spur jobs growth in downtrodden communities like Youngstown. Seven more hubs are planned by the end of the year, including projects in Chicago, Detroit and Raleigh, North Carolina, that will follow the Youngstown model of bringing together businesses, non-profits and universities to pursue technological breakthroughs.
CBS: Many Americans intend to stay without health insurance
A third of Americans without health insurance intend to stay that way, according to a new report. Although the most common reason for doing without coverage is the expense, 70 percent of those planning to stay uninsured did not know about the subsidies afforded under Obamacare that reduce the cost.
The report by Bankrate.com shows that, despite the government’s effort to promote the new health law, also called the Affordable Care Act, many Americans seem unfamiliar with key details of the program.
“This is a staggeringly high percentage,” said Bankrate.com insurance analyst Doug Whiteman. “The government has spent over half a billion dollars promoting the Affordable Care Act, and more than two-thirds of uninsured Americans still don’t know about the subsidies.”
Real Time Economics: Has Food Stamp Enrollment Finally Peaked?
After years of increases that defied the roaring stock market of 2013 and the slowly falling unemployment rate, the number of Americans receiving food stamps appears to be easing. Somewhat. Very, very slowly.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, reported that 46.8 million Americans received SNAP benefits in December. That is a lot of people, but it’s also the lowest number of Americans to receive benefits since June 2012. The December 2013 figure was down 1 million people from December 2012.
The USDA also reported that 22.8 million households received SNAP benefits in December, which is the lowest number since August 2012. And the $5.8 billion in SNAP benefits that was paid out in December was the lowest number since November 2010.
SNAP data can bounce around, and it’s unclear whether the number of people receiving benefits will continue to fall. The December figures don’t take into account changes that were made in February when Congress passed a farm bill that included new limits on who can receive food stamps. Also, as more and more Americans return to work and earn more money, the number of people receiving these benefits is expected to fall, though many thought total enrollment would fall more quickly than it has.
Still, the number of people receiving benefits is almost double what it was 10 years ago.Average participation in the program in 2004 was 23.8 million people.
Crain’s Chicago: Chicago unveils new small-biz push
The Emanuel administration today announced a new program intended to increase the number of contracts that neighborhood businesses win from Chicago’s largest employers.
The initiative is being launched by World Business Chicago,the public-private partnership that more typically focuses on recruiting out-of-town companies to the city.
The program, Chicago Anchors for a Strong Economy, hopes to match up the contracting needs for major institutions, such as the University of Chicago and Rush University Medical Center, with neighborhood businesses.
Eight institutions have agreed to participate in the program, including utility Commonwealth Edison Co. and two governmental bodies, the city of Chicago and Cook County.
At a news conference, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the goal is to enroll 20 major institutions in the program.
Muniland: Puerto Rico’s local Chapter 9
Yesterday, Senators Nadal Power and Rosa Rodríguez filed a proposed act by which PR’s public corporations could reorganize its debts or even liquidate themselves. Essentially a local Bankruptcy Chapter 9. Both should be congratulated for having the moral fortitude to admit this must be considered. The preamble correctly indicates that state law may regulate those areas where Federal Bankruptcy law is silent or those entities excluded from the Bankruptcy Code, such as insurance companies or Puerto Rico’s municipalities and public corporations, expressly excluded via 11 U.S.C. § 101 (52). Moreover, the liquidation procedure of the P.R. Civil Code, Articles 1811-29, 31 L.P.R.A. §§ 5171-5214 is totally obsolete since it dates back to the 19th Century. In addition, the Preamble to this Act states that it is obsolete, making this a special law that preempts the more general law of the Civil Code.
The piece is a good start but lacks many of the necessary statutes that makes the Federal Bankruptcy Code a unique tool. Moreover, it should include the island’s municipalities, most of which are insolvent. In addition, it would make some sense for the law to require that some of the Commonwealth Courts be set for this type of procedure which will elicit massive litigation once it is started. Also, its judges should be especially trained in bankruptcy and dispute resolution since at this time the Puerto Rico bench is devoid of such knowledge. Now I will go to the specific areas that need to be added to the law. For your reference, I include English and Spanish versions but the statute states that the English version will prevail in case of doubt.
The law lacks a definitions section. The Bankruptcy Code has a long definitions section with more than fifty entries, see 11 U.S.C. § 101. For example, the proposed law does not define what is a public corporation, something which may cause further litigation and delay. The law should clearly define what entities are covered by the law.
CARTOON OF THE DAY
