Occupy Wall Street Movement: Half of Americans Know About it, Plurality Support it

Half of all Americans have heard of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and of the people who have heard of it, a plurality support its message, according to a poll released this week. According to the ORC International Caravan poll of 1,005 Americans, of the people who had heard of the Occupy Wall Street movement, 42 percent agreed with the overall message of the movement, 27 percent disagreed and 30 percent had no opinion. When the message of the movement was briefly described, 27 percent of all Americans -- including those who hadn't heard of the movement -- said they agreed with that message, 19 percent disagreed and 54 percent had no opinion.

It remains to be seen how public support levels will change as more people learn about it. It's possible that people who heard of the movement early on are more likely to agree with its aims, which could account for the plurality of support.

But for now, it's clear that the protesters' message is resonating with a large number of Americans.

Senate rejects Obama's jobs bill

As a follow of the job bill news in the past weeks, senate finally rejected the jobs bill of president Obama, which means more than six million Americans could lose their unemployment benefits next year. The result of voting was 50-49. Even though it was in favor of the bill, but the measure failed to receive the 60 votes needed to advance the $447 billion plan.

This result, which is not totally unexpected, still comes as a grave disappointment to the millions of unemployed Americans, who have been waiting for Congress to do something over their job creation plans. More than 6 million Americans are set to lose federal unemployment benefits in 2012, with 1.8 million running out in January alone, according to new figures from the National Employment Law Project.

We paid a lot attention on this job bill news because it connects to our textbook contents. Now I think the reality somehow proved what we learned, if ignoring the political issue in it.

Households pay a price for China's growth

This article is about how China's artificially low interest rates, government-control over the economy, and favoritism is hurting the everyday citizen. The average person is saving much more than they are consuming (consumer spending is only 35% of GDP in China, while in the USA it is 70%, mostly due to speculation that their economy will become unstable sometime in the future). Just looking at the numbers, it seems baffeling why the USA is in a recession, even with 70% of GDP being consumer spending. However, with a little understanding in economic theory, and what comprises GDP etc., one can figure out why...

Interestingly, China's central banks rely on the large amount of consumer saving to fund their own projects. This dissonance between the countries goals and the desires of the people who fund it is a good topic for debate. While it's obvious that these unnaturally low interest rates won't continue forever and something will change, it will be interesting to see/predict when that change will come.

As some of us may know, China is famous for making knock-off "imitations" of about every known name-brand on the market. And while it's not surprising that these knock-offs are available in China, the price difference between the knock-off and real thing is high enough (costing sometimes 7-12 times more) that most Chinese citizens rarely if ever buy from name-brand stores.

Jobs Come Back from China

This article observes a trend in manufacturing: some jobs that have been outsourced to China are coming back to the U.S. One of the people interviewed is building a furniture plant in North Carolina, which used to be a center for furniture production but has diminished recently as those jobs have gone to Chinese factories. The most important force at work here is rising inflation in China. Wages and prices are both rising, and because the Chinese government has allowed the yuan to appreciate 30% against the dollar since 2005. This means that for some market sectors, it is almost the same price to produce in the U.S., and without having to deal with some of the quality control issues that have plagued Chinese factories. The continuation of this trend would bring huge amounts of manufacturing back to the U.S. However, the article reminds us that this is happening very slowly, so there is no way of really knowing exactly how this will turn out.

Unemployed risk a permanent pay cut

This article further explains one of the greater side effects of an economic down turn. This article speaks about the long term effects of job losses and unemployment. The concept is fairly straight forward as the idea that time outside of being actively employed tends to cause a drop in lifetime earning. In the case of a an economic downturn seems to be two fold often requiring retraining or in some cases the shifting your field of work.

Growth and technology

At a time when high-frequency computerized trading is under scrutiny due to its implications on ordinary traders, introduction of technology seems to be doing wonders for poverty-struck Africa. This article talks about how mobile phones have become useful financial instruments which compensate for the lack of roads that hinder trade and commerce in Africa. While studying growth, it would be very interesting to explore how technology boosts the capacity of capital and labor alike, which in turn pushes up the GDP. The World Bank's claim that an increase of ten mobile phones for every 100 people in a developing nation can boost GDP by 0.8 percent only reiterates the important of technology in development.

Ladies and Gentlemen: You are Now $2.9 Trillion Poorer!

Here is a depressing article that reflects on the third quarter and how it will effect the next 3 months. As, it ways in the title, Americans are $2.9 trillion poorer than we were on June 30. Economists are fearing the "wealth effect" because of how consumers feel about their economic status effects their future plans. They are predicting that over the next few months, spending will be negatively influenced this fact. This may also restrict the holiday purchasing levels in December.

How Much is Too Much

This article discusses the rise in high frequency trading and how regulators are bringing new rules and restrictions. They are doing so because they believe high frequency trading makes the market more volatile. This article got me thinking about how much risk/volatility in the market is acceptable. This is very evident in investment tools like high frequency trading, it's chief benefit being that it makes the market more efficient. However as the author points out it also makes the markets more volatile. In addition one screwy line of code in the trading computer in a large firm and you could have a potential catastrophe. Where you strike the balance seems to me to depend on the timescale you consider the problem on. In the short term it will be beneficial, after all it does generate a lot of money for investment banks. However in the long term the risk of catastrophe and the destabilizing volatility argues for heavy regulation.

Top Republican sees possible compromise on corporate taxes

This article focuses on Paul Ryan, leading Congressional Republican, and his current hopes and opinions for tax and economic reform in the coming months. He rejects Obama's job reform bill, especially with the added tax increases on millionaires, and believes that Obama's tactics in campaigning for this bill are too focused on reelection and not enough on actually improving unemployment. He proposes that they should try focusing on corporate tax reform, as this is a subject that both Obama and the Congressional Republicans could agree on. It seemed like this would consist of cutting corporate taxes, which would encourage job creation. Although the philosophy could be sound, I'm wary of the idea of cutting taxes at all. With a debt crisis and unemployment, I don't think Ryan gives good enough reason why using this job creation approach, which cuts taxes, would be better than Obama's, which raises taxes.