Politics: Economics: Death in the Occupy camp, Vancouver with rW backgrounder

CBC News via Sun News
— refWrite editorial forematter and CBC textual patter posted by EconoMix

Occupy Vancouver death 

dooms protest camp

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada —  The Occupation rampant in the USA and Canada, and around the world, scored its first death, apparently by an overdose heroin injection, apparently by suicide (but I woudn't rule out homicide).  The Occupation Movement is an ideological grab-bag that in its first manifestations claimed it was aimed at the large banks that received the first USA Stimulus monies so that the foreclosures on mortgaged houses by semi-govt corporations like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 

(institutions that had been unleashed on woud-be home-owners ready to sign up for what they coud not sustain payments-for, then the speculative hi-loan packagers at the over-sized banks and brokerage firms.  The stock market was very negatively affected, with investors large and small, loosing large portions of their assets.  But, compared to that, the worst devastation occured in the failure of corporations — again, small businesses, partnerships and single owners — now whacked by an economically-unsound monster healthcare law produced by a House and Senate stacked by Democrats to destroy the existing healthcare arrangements in the country (replacing them with the health-omnibus law now called Obamacare).  

The new legislation was so over-reaching and so over-taxing that it killed the dream of absorbing 30 million uninsured people into a national healthcare scheme, which to succeed at all woud require a strict prioritization that woud rule-out every new monster law and expenditure in other areas — a super-expensive law contrived and sponsored by the Pelosi Democrat-led House of Representatives (which must originate finanicial legislation) and the Reid Democrat-led Senate (which constitutionally was expected to confirm or defeat the House proposals by not confirming, on financial matters).

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EconomicsUSA: Unemployment: 4.4 million Americans — no jobs for a year

Wall Street Journal video (July 22,2k11)
Job Search stretches past a year for Millions, by Sara Murray and Phil Izzo

PoliticsGlobal: UN Human Rights Council: Ratifies the 'Protect, Respect and Remedy' framework for 'Business and Human Rights'

 Today the United Nations Human Rights Council endorsed the "Guiding Principles for the Implementation of the UN Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework", 

drafted by UN Special Representative on business & human rights John Ruggie.  

The press release regarding the action by the Council is available here:

http://www.business-humanrights.org/Links/Repository/1006797

The text of the Principles is available here.

We will add the full text of the resolution alongside the item linked to above, as soon as we receive it – we will also include the resolution in our Weekly Update, says the burgeoning Business&Human Rights bureaucracy brand-new this last year or so.

EconomicsUSA: Calendar: National Small Business Week

-- Vertical Response video posted by EconoMix

EconomicsEurope: Greece and Portugal: Defawlt on bail-out repayments elicits call for expulsion from EU

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Financial Times email newsletter (May12,2k11)

Greece and Portugal should both go gracefully

Even as the ink is drying on Portugal’s European Union and International Monetary Fund bail-out agreement, evidence is mounting that last year’s bail-outs of Greece and Ireland have failed. Far from improving their access to the financial markets, Greece and Ireland face record borrowing costs. Notwithstanding the slightly less draconian terms of Portugal’s agreement, it will surely suffer a similar fate. The EU will try to get away with “soft” restructurings, involving a combination of longer maturities and lower interest rates. But this will not work and by 2013 there will be no viable alternative to “hard” restructurings (default), comprising debt write-downs of 50 per cent or more. Unfortunately, in the case of Greece and Portugal at least, even this will not guarantee continued membership of the euro. http://link.ft.com/r/8P1R88/XTU6HO/70OUJ/HD77WD/EWZXLG/CM/h?a1=2011&a2=5&a3=12

FT email newsletter (May17,2k11):

Merkel rejects Greek debt restructuring

The German chancellor spells out her strong opposition to restructuring debt in any eurozone state, as finance ministers press Greece to accelerate its sell-off programmehttp://link.ft.com/r/CTBPCC/IYX1T1/6O6PS/3OTO6X/40BWM9/XL/h?a1=2011&a2=5&a3=16</blockquote>

The situation is dire for the economic recovery of both Greece and Portugal.  And the man most responsible for the International Monetary Fund's role in ensuring both countries, both countries having now defawlted, has resigned after scandal.  A new head of IMF has been designated, she being also from France and having been active in the bail-outs of the two countries which have failed to meet their obligations.

This is a dire situation for the global economy.  The USA trend toward a similar status, by defawlting on its national-debt interest payments, looks even bleaker against this portentous background.

-- EconoMix

EconomicsUSA: Food: Prices mount, the sky's the limit

Christian Science Monitor (Mar16,2k11)

refWrite anticpates a continuous rise in food prices, but with intermissions.  Is the present rise due to the winter? -- remember how the USA Labor Dept explained away the winter unemployment as being due to workers who coudn't get into work.  But were they all laid off and on the dole?  Or was there simply a  drop in wages paid out for workers who were not laid off, the explanation being due to an accounting error that entered figures for lessened money to workers in wage entered by mistake in the unemplyment figures?  -- EconoMix?

Food costs soaring in US after harsh winter. Will higher prices last?

Higher wholesale food prices contributed to a jump in the producer price index in February, the US reported Wednesday. Consumers are likely to see food prices rise at least 4 percent in 2011.

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Maria Mateus shopped for groceries at a supermarket in Santa Clara, Calif., on March 8. Analysts expect a hike in meat and dairy prices, in particular, due to the effect of bad weather on feed corn.

Tony Avelar / The Christian Science Monitor

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by Ron Scherer, Staff writer / March 16, 2011

New York -- After several years of almost no inflation, many Americans may be surprised to find some of their favorite foods, from burgers to pizza to a glass of orange juice, rising in price this year.
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  Graphic: Grocery bill set to rise 
  
  (Research: Geoff Johnson, Photo: Alfredo Sosa/Staff, Graphic: Rich Clabaugh/Staff)

Related Stories

• Will high food prices have a long-term effect?
• Bernanke: Don't blame Federal Reserve for record-high food prices
• Let them eat microchips!

The producer price index, which measures changes in wholesale prices, rose 1.6 percent last month, mainly because of a jump in food prices, the Department of Labor Statistics reported on Wednesday. The food segment, up 3.9 percent, saw the biggest monthly increase since November 1974, with soaring vegetable prices responsible for about 70 percent of that jump. On Thursday, the government will report the consumer price index.

In the year ahead, expect to see the largest food price increases in the protein group: chicken, beef, and pork, as well as dairy items. One key reason: The price of corn, used as feed by ranchers and farmers, has doubled in the past year. But vegetarians won't get off easy: Produce and orange juice are rising sharply, as well.

RELATED: Food safety law: Six ways it will make food safer

Higher food prices have wide economic ramifications and are being watched closely by the Federal Reserve. From a business standpoint, food producers – from agricultural giants to the corner pizza parlor – must raise prices or watch their profit margins evaporate. Many middle-class households are financially stretched to the limit, so any extra expense for such basics as milk or bread makes their life even tougher. Organizations that help the poor with food, moreover, find they can't help as many people because their dollar doesn't go as far.

EconomicsAustralia Canada USA: Price rises: Oil, cocoa, now barley

Montreal Gazette (Mar7,2k11)

Barley shortages could have 

beer drinkers crying in their suds

BY BRADLEY BOUZANE, POSTMEDIA NEWS AND REUTERS MARCH 7, 2011 7:02 PM

• STORY
• PHOTOS ( 1 )

Flooding lowered the quality of the latest barley crops in Canada and Australia, leaving some unsuitable to turn into malt, the germinated barley product used in beer.

Photograph by: Daniel Munoz/Reuters, Daniel Munoz/Reuters

Some commodities 

experiencing price rises

(click individual commodities below)

Barley    Cocoa 

Coffee - Vietnam, Kenya, Uganda,

               Brazil - Columbia 

Oil - Shale Gas - Canada  Tar sands oil 

         Eurozone 

         OPEC - US Strategic

EconomicsUSA: Job Training: Teacher training 'sliver' expenditures by Feds

Fox News (mar 7,2k11)

PRESIDENT

Teacher Training Provides 

an Education on Govt Waste

By Doug McKelway

Published March 07, 2011

| FoxNews.c  Print

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AP

In this Feb. 15 file photo, Secretary of Education    A r n e     Duncan speaks at the Education Summit in Denver.

By federal standards, comparatively little money is spent on training teachers, but the excessive duplication and overlapping programs in this sliver of the budget stands out in a new report on government waste as a testament to bureaucratic inefficiencies.

In fiscal year 2009, the federal government spent $4 billion on professional development for teachers. But a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says the money was divided among 82 different programs spread through 10 different government agencies.

Within the Department of Education itself, eight different offices administer 60 programs for teacher retraining. The GAO report suggested that evaluating the success of each is nearly impossible, because of a myriad of different criteria and manpower required to examine them would be prohibitively expensive.

Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a frequent critic of intransigent bureaucracies, said these duplicative and fragmented programs are proof that the money devoted to such programs would be better funneled to individual states, and even school boards.

"There are hundreds of millions of Americans that grew up without a Department of Education. And certainly, an argument can be made that they're better educated than people that have been around since 1977, when that department was created," Schatz told Fox News.The Department of Education is working to reduce the redundancy of these programs. In the agency's annual reauthorization proposal to Congress, the Obama administration has proposed combining 38 programs for training current teachers into 11. Critics admit that's a start, but that Congress must take the lead in reigning in such profligate overlap and confusion.

A central problem in seeking efficiencies in these programs for educators is that the effectiveness of teacher retraining programs is almost impossible to measure. Each of the scores of programs has different criteria for success. To measure it, would require yet a new layer of bureaucracy.

As the GAO report says, "It is more costly to administer many separate authorized federal programs, because each program has it’s own policies, applications, award competitions , reporting requirements and in some cases, federal evaluations."

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Carole Hankin, school superintendent, takes home $500,000 in pay and perks

HuffPo (Mar7,2k11)  "Carole Hankin -- who oversees 6,687 kids in 10 schools -- is the highest-paid in the state with $506,322 in total compensation. She collects a $386,868 salary, $67,454 in fringe benefits and $52,000 in retirement funds and expenses including use of a "late model car," plus gas."

refWrite says:  Compare all this current education news with the general theory of unemployment, training, bureaucratic ed programs, taxes, and govt expenditures that refWrite has been outlining in daily blog-entries lately. -- EconoMix