growth!!!!

Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada -- the states that were most hurt in the real estate collapse over the past five years -- are now leading the U.S. labor market expansion.

Copper Imports

Imports of copper by China last month were the second- highest on record, the data showed, after the weeklong holiday slowed customs clearance in January. 

Net crude oil imports increased to a record to meet rising demand as farmers prepare for the planting season and the government adds to emergency stockpiles. The average price of February’s crude imports was $112.39 a barrel, up from $92.28 in the same month last year, according to Bloomberg calculations.

Wen, in his state-of-the-nation work report to lawmakers at the National People’s Congress this week, said the government will “carry out timely and appropriate anticipatory adjustments and fine-tuning” of fiscal and monetary policies.

‘Powerful Recovery’

“The powerful recovery in earnings thus far has allowed market averages to rise without pushing the P/E higher,” David Joy, the Boston-based chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial Inc., said in a Feb. 21 e-mail. His firm oversees $600 billion. “Many investors are either not convinced that this price rally and earnings recovery are for real, or they simply do not care, having been burned too badly in the downturn.”
U.S. gross domestic product expanded an average 2.4 percent a quarter in the 2 1/2 years since the recession ended in 2009, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The world’s largest economy hasn’t had a smaller post-recession recovery rate since at least the 1940s, the data show. In the 2003 bull market, GDP rose 2.7 percent on average, before the S&P 500 surged 102 percent. For the 1982 rally, the rate was 5.7 percent. Equities more than tripled in that cycle.

functionally obsolete = USA? Can't create jobs; can't manage its debt; can't provide 1st world benefits to its citizens.

President Barack Obama pushed his jobs proposal Thursday against the backdrop of an outdated bridge that links the home states of his two chief congressional Republican rivals — a symbolic and cheeky maneuver designed to apply pressure on the GOP and convey resolve in the face of a sputtering economy.


Obama pitched his new initiative combining $447 billion in tax cuts, jobless aid and public works projects at the Brent Spence Bridge south of Cincinnati, an aging span that connects House Speaker John Boehner's state of Ohio with Kentucky, home of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

The politics of the speech were clear, even as Obama name-checked both leaders in his remarks.

"Now, the bridge behind us just happens to connect the state that’s home to the Speaker of the House with the home state of the Republican leader in the Senate. Now, that's just a coincidence. Purely accidental that that happened," Obama said as the audience chuckled.

"But part of the reason I came here is because Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell — those are two of the most powerful Republicans in government. They can either kill this jobs bill, or they can help pass this jobs bill."

US$ 447 bn to create employment; a no brainer.....

Some 9.1% of Americans are currently out of work (nearly 43% of them have now been out of work for more than six months), an issue that is expected to dominate the election campaign. For this reason last September 8th President Obama unveiled the American Jobs Act, his latest stimulus plan, this time majorly intended to create jobs but also to spur the economy. Nearly all of the plan is made up of ideas that have been supported by both Democrats and Republicans. Now the plan (which at the moment it is just a President’s proposal) needs to be passed by the Congress (expected to be done yesterday).

The purpose of the American Jobs Act is according the White House: “to put more people back to work and put more money in the pockets of working Americans – without adding a dime to the deficit.” The proposal includes more than $248 billion in tax incentives for small businesses and employers, according to administration estimates. The rest of the money would be devoted to infrastructure spending, state aid, unemployment insurance, and neighborhood rehabilitation. Overall, the bill would deliver roughly $450 billion in job creation measures, a majority of which would come in the form of tax breaks. Because the bill is mostly focused on 2012, it is similar in scale to the 2009 recovery act.


President Barack Obama’s jobs package could lift economic growth by one to three percentage points in 2012, add well over one million jobs and lower the unemployment rate by at least half a percentage point, judging by early estimates.


The American Jobs Act has five key components:


1. Tax Cuts to Help America’s Small Businesses Hire and Grow: new tax cuts to businesses that provide immediate incentives for firms to hire and invest. These tax cuts would be available to all businesses, regardless of size, but are designed to target their impact towards the smallest businesses.


Measures:
- A payroll tax cut to businesses, with a focus on small employers.

- A complete payroll tax holiday for new jobs or wage increases.

- Extend 100 percent business expensing through 2012 ($5 billion).


- Help entrepreneurs and small businesses access capital and grow.


■Changing the Way the Government Does Business with Small Firms.

■Reducing Regulatory Burdens on Small Business Capital Formation.

■Helping Small Businesses Compete for Infrastructure Projects.

■Passing Patent Reform.

2. Putting Workers Back on the Job While Rebuilding and Modernizing America: the purpose is to put Americans back to work in key areas that are central to America‘s future competitiveness. Repairing and modernizing classrooms across the country and making sure that teachers who have been laid off because of budget cuts can be brought back to work. It will take on the fact that the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) awarded the United States a ‘D’ for the overall condition of its infrastructure. Both to modernize the nation‘s roads, railways, airports and schools and to put hundreds of thousands of workers back on the job.


Measures:
- A Helping Hand for Veterans.


- Preventing Teacher Layoffs and Keeping Police Officers and Firefighters on the Job ($35 billion).

- Modernizing At Least 35,000 Public Schools – From Science Labs and Internet-Ready Classrooms to Renovated Facilities ($30 billion).
■Safer, Healthier, and Technologically-Advanced Schools of the Future.

■A Focus on Schools in Need.

■Modernizing Community Colleges to Train a 21st Century Workforce.

- Immediate Investments in Infrastructure ($50 billion).
■Investments in Making US’ Highway Systems Safer and More Efficient.

■Repairing Transit Systems and Improving Rail Systems.

■Improving Airports.

■Opportunities in the Transportation Sector.

■Funding for Innovative Transportation.

■Expediting High Impact Infrastructure Projects.

- National Infrastructure Bank ($10 billion)
■Independent, Non-Partisan Operations Led by Infrastructure and Financial Experts.

■Broad eligibility for Infrastructure and Unbiased Project Selection.

■Addressing Market Gaps for Infrastructure Financing.

- Project Rebuild: Putting People Back to Work Rehabilitating Homes, Businesses and Communities ($15 billion).
■Focus on Distressed Commercial Properties and Redevelopment to Stabilize Communities.

■Include For-Profit Entities to Gain Expertise, Leverage Federal Dollars and Speed Program Implementation.

■Increase Support for “Land Banking”.

■Create Jobs Maintaining Properties and Avoiding Community Blight.

- Expanding Nationwide Wireless Internet Services For the Public and the First Responders, in a Fiscally Responsible Way.


3. Pathways Back to Work for Americans Looking for Jobs: extension of unemployment insurance to prevent 6 million Americans looking for work from losing their benefits, while at the same time reforming the system to help support programs that build real skills, connect to real jobs, and help the long-term unemployed.


Measures:
- Reform Unemployment Insurance System to Provide Greater Flexibility, While Ensuring 6 Million People Do Not Lose Benefits ($49 billion).


■Rigorous Reemployment Assistance.

■Work Sharing: UI reform to prevent layoffs.

■State Flexibility for Bold Reforms to Put the Long-Term Unemployed Back To Work.

- Tax credits for businesses that hire the long-term unemployed ($8 billion).
■An Effective, Targeted Measure.

■Rising to the Challenge of Persistent Unemployment.

- Investing in Low-Income Youth and Adults ($5 billion).
■Support for Summer and Year-Round Jobs for Youth.

■Subsidized Employment Opportunities for Low-Income Individuals Who Are Unemployed.

■Support for Local Efforts to Implement Promising Work-Based Strategies and to Provide Training Opportunities.

- Ending Discrimination Against the Unemployed.



4. More Money in the Pockets of Every American Worker and Family: put more money in the pockets of working and middle-class Americans by providing tax relief to 160 million workers – extending the payroll tax cut passed last December. Congress approved a cut in the tax for workers last year, from 6.2% to 4.2%. But that measure was due to expire in December. Mr Obama wants to continue that cut next year, lower the tax even further to 3.1% for workers, and extend a similar cut to companies, at a cost of $240bn.
Measures:
- Cutting Payroll Taxes in Half for 160 Million Workers Next Year ($179 billion)


■A Targeted Tax Cut for American Workers.

■A Boost to Economic Growth and Job Creation.

■A Tax Cut That Has Received Bipartisan Support in the Past.

■Social Security Trust Fund Would Not Be Impacted by Payroll Tax Cut.

- Helping More Americans Refinance Mortgages at Today’s Historically Low Interest Rates.

FDR stated that, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” And a “Do Nothing Congress?”(LBJ)

The American Jobs Act, if enacted, would be a very different kind of stimulus than the slow-burn one implemented back in 2009. Early forecasts suggest it could deliver the kind of swift, sharp shock the U.S. economy needs.

Economists at consultancy Macroeconomic Advisers estimate the combination of tax incentives and infrastructure spending would create at least 1.3 million jobs in 2012, boosting that year's economic growth by 1.3 percentage points. For 2013, they forecast the creation of an added 800,000 jobs, bringing the total to 2.1 million. All else equal, that's enough to shave more than a percentage point off the U.S. unemployment rate, which now stands at 9.1 percent.

The economists note that their estimate could actually be on the low side, because it doesn't account for the potential effect of the payroll-tax credit included in the package. It's hard to know how many businesses are in a position to take advantage of the credit, but experience suggests it will lead to increased hiring.

President Obama has put in the hands of Congress a plan that probably represents the country's best shot at fending off recession and reinvigorating the recovery. Whatever legislators decide, they will own the result.

A New "and Imporved" Deal for America

On the Eve of the President's Speech on Jobs for America let's consider the costs of the previous Administration (that was George.W.) ... $1.2 Trillion on Wars, $2.5 Trillion on Banks and Oil rising from $25 a barrel to $90 Barrel (or per gallon running from $1.8 to $3.8)!!!

With enactment of the sixth FY2011 Continuing Resolution through March 18, 2011, (H.J.Res.48/P.L. 112-6) Congress has approved a total of $1.283 trillion for military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans’ health care for the three operations initiated since the 9/11 attacks: Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Afghanistan and other counter terror operations; Operation Noble Eagle (ONE), providing enhanced security at military bases; and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). This estimate assumes that the current CR level continues through the rest of the year and that agencies allocate reductions proportionately.

Subprime bailout $2.5 trillion. Don’t consider reputation damage to the USA and of course the S&P downgrade increasing America’s borrowing cost.

Now let’s consider what is rumoured to be President Obama’s big spending plan on creating jobs for Americans…..$300 billion. Hardly a reckless proposal…and guess what it creates jobs in America v fighting wars overseas that never needed to be fought… what a concept! It’s almost like he’s acting like someone who was elected to serve the public interest.

From the end of World War II through the mid 1970s, the real wages of American workers nearly doubled, moving up in tandem with the growth in productivity. The United States benefited from an implicit social contract: By working hard and contributing to productivity, profits, and economic growth, workers and their families could expect improved living standards, greater job security, and a secure and dignified retirement. This social contract broke down after 1980, as employees lost their bargaining power. Since then, productivity has grown more than 70 percent while real compensation of nonmanagerial workers has remained flat. Wages for the lowest-paid workers have collapsed even more than for average workers.

The postwar social contract was grounded in New Deal legislation that established a minimum wage, other wage and hour regulations, and labor laws that allowed workers to build the bargaining power needed to enforce wage-determination norms and principles in negotiating with large corporations. The undermining of this system of regulations, and of union bargaining power, accounts for significant portions of the wage lag.

Despite the convention of a poverty “line,” the working poor and the near-poor have much in common. After periodically raising the minimum wage from 1938 through the 1960s as prices rose, Congress and several presidents have allowed the real value of the minimum wage to fall about 25 percent since the late 1960s.

The system of collective bargaining that grew out of the New Deal’s National Labor Relations Act and the influence of the War Labor Board during World War II likewise get insufficient credit for their role in creating and sustaining the link between productivity and wages. The War Labor Board used wage comparisons to instill the principle of “equal pay for equal work” within industries and occupations. It encouraged negotiations for health insurance, pensions, and other benefits that eventually became sine qua non for a “good job.” By the mid-1970s, union members were about 20 percent more likely to be covered by these benefits than nonunion workers.

In the late 1940s, the United Auto Workers and General Motors negotiated contracts that explicitly linked wage increases to productivity growth (the “annual improvement factor”) and to increases in the cost of living. These private-sector wage norms reinforced the underlying social contract. From the mid-1940s through the 1970s, unions led the process of improving wages by producing union wage premiums ranging from 10 percent to 25 percent, with the biggest effects for less-skilled jobs and less-educated workers. Union-negotiated wages and benefits spilled over to affect nonunion workers and managers across the economy.

Unions have declined for several mutually reinforcing reasons: deregulation, industrial change, globalization, and increased employer resistance (often abetted by lax government enforcement of the right to organize). As the union percent of the workforce declined, first slowly in the 1970s and then precipitously after 1980, so, too, did their ability to enforce the social contract and to bargain for the wages and benefits that rose with productivity. The union wage premium has diminished, and unions have had to fight defensive battles to slow the decline in health care and pension coverage, and to shift the costs and risks of these benefit plans from employers to workers.

The weakening of unions leaves more power in the hands of corporations to determine wages. Three aspects of corporate strategies and policies have particularly affected lower-wage workers.

First, corporations that previously paid relatively high wages for all employees because of either the presence or the threat of unions began to narrow their focus to their “core competencies,” outsourcing noncore work that could be purchased at lower wages. This started with outsourcing janitorial and clerical work and then advanced to production, information technology, and other professional services. By outsourcing or offshoring some of this work, companies not only lowered their wage bill; they also further reduced the bargaining power of the workers who feared their jobs might be the next to go.

Second, internal equity norms broke down. Instead of maintaining consistent differentials between top-level executives and other managers and employees, compensation experts began differentiating between top executives, other high talented employees, and everyone else in the firm. Wages of top executives soared to as high as 400-to-1, a differential that would have been unthinkable when unions were stronger.

Third, intensified price competition was experienced in deregulated industries like airlines and trucking, manufacturing industries exposed to global competition, and even domestic industries where large firms such as Wal-Mart dominate. All these factors exerted significant downward pressure on wages. The opening of a Wal-Mart store reduces the wages of retail workers in the area by about 3 percent. A few years ago, food retailers in southern California took a four month strike to cut their fringe-benefit costs in anticipation of a new Wal-Mart in their region. Since 2000, major airlines have responded to the entry of newer, lower-cost competition by cutting $15 billion out of workers’ paychecks, not counting the additional financial losses to be endured by employees whose pensions were terminated and turned over to the government.

From the end of the recession in 1991, it took five years of declining unemployment before wages of lower-level employees began to grow. This ended with the recession that followed the dot-com bust. It has taken four years into the latest recovery before lower- and average-wage workers have started to see modest improvements in real wages. Given the Federal Reserve’s focus on inflation targeting and the unpredictability of world events, it’s likely that economic downturns will be as much a part of the future as they have been a part of the past.

Steady progress requires engaging government, business, and labor efforts to build a new social contract tailored to today’s economy and workforce. The greater instability of today’s job market requires more social protections, not fewer. As in the 1930s, government can take the first step by restoring a floor on minimum wages and family incomes.

A resurgence in unions is also essential, and not just in the model of the 1930s. Unions will need to draw on new sources of power—as some are doing by building coalitions with other community groups advocating for worker’s rights and living wages; negotiating for training, development funds, and job ladders (as is happening in some parts of the health-care and hospitality industries); and building networks that provide benefits, job referrals, and wage information to workers and contractors not attached to a single firm (as is being done by a new media workers’ union in New York).

Unions need to continue to lead the way in building productive labor-management partnerships that create value and then share the gains, as they have done over the years with progressive employers in health care, communications, manufacturing, utilities, and other industries. As was the case in the ‘30s, labor law needs to be fixed and updated so that it will once again protect workers’ right to organize, and so that it can open the way for these innovative strategies to spread across the economy.

Finally, building a new and sustainable social contract requires American firms to adopt strategies capable of generating good profits while also sustaining good jobs at fair wages and meeting labor and employment-law standards. This will require a government strategy and a set of policy initiatives as bold and creative as the New Deal, using both carrots and sticks. Tax incentives for research and development and human-capital investments, government contracts, and all other public supports should be made contingent on firms complying with labor laws. At the heart of a new social contract that fights poverty and raises wages is a national strategy to reconnect rising productivity, rising wages, and norms of fairness inside the corporation.

For US Corporations: Part of USA hegemony in the world is that we are the market of choice. We will not be that if purchasing power drops and our cities crumble.

For Employees: Twitter…organize..wake up from the bag of corn chips and fight.

For Government: Last I looked people voted you in not PACs, Super-PAC or Steroid PACs… how about a government of and for the people?