Healthcare occupations and industries are expected to have the fastest employment growth and to add the most jobs between 2014 and 2024, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. With the increase in the proportion of the population in older age groups, more people in the labor force will be entering prime retirement age. As a result, the labor force participation rate is projected to decrease and labor force growth to slow.
Putin declare economic crisis over in Russia. Putin said Russia has passed the worst of its economic crisis after it was hit by the slump in oil prices that forced the government to lower forecasts and revise its strategy.
The “peak of the economic crisis has passed” amid signs of stabilization in business activity in the second quarter.. Russia set out its plans at the beginning of 2014 based on oil at $100 a barrel, though crude prices fell by half and everything had to be recalculated, while a price of $50 per barrel for 2016 is “very optimistic,” he said.
The government sees gross domestic product growing by 0.7 percent next year and it won’t rush to alter the budget. Putin gave his support to the central bank, saying interest rate cuts can’t be forced and must be based on economic reality. The threat facing Russia is inflation, while other countries are dealing with the challenge of deflation, he said.
What does gun violence in America cost in financial terms? An expert from Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation crunches the numbers.
Pain, grief and emotional loss follow mass shootings in America, and there are also other costs that add up to violence’s financial toll.
For example, when then-U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot in a 2011 incident that left six people dead and 13 injured (including Giffords), her medical costs alone were well over $500,000, Miller says. Each of the six deaths “was worth about $7 million. We have interviews where people have been asked how much they would pay to reduce their chance of being killed or injured in a violent incident. People actually pay that. When you look at housing prices, we pay more for housing in safe neighborhoods.”
We’re looking at the value of a human life, not the cost of a human life. We look at the wage loss, we look at the household work loss, we look at the value people place on their pain and suffering, loss, quality of life. Fatality is a lot cheaper, medically, than surviving. Makes a real difference if you have insurance.
The Boston Marathon is interesting because people who were uninsured who were injured in that bombing, who were from Massachusetts, could even after the fact buy health insurance, whereas people who are not from Massachusetts couldn’t.
The pain, suffering, loss, quality of life and lost wages is far larger if you die than if you live. Although some people will live as quadriplegics, some people will live with severe traumatic brain injury. There are people who, when you ask them, say that’s a fate worse than death.
Let me take the example of the cost of a bicycle helmet. I’ve looked at the savings from bicycle helmets. That’s resulted in laws being passed in some places. For a lot of legislatures, [it] builds a legislative case. When we say a child seat returns more in medical costs savings alone than the cost of the seat, that makes it easier to pass a law requiring kids to be in child seats going back to when we didn’t have those laws.
On the financial cost of the shootings in San Bernardino, Calif.
Probably about $125 million for San Bernardino. [The shooters left 14 people dead and 21 others wounded.] Perhaps more telling is the total cost of firearm injury is $235 billion a year. So $125 million is less than a day’s firearm injuries on average.
Oil has for decades been perceived as a necessary and highly addictive energy commodity, fueling the world economy. It is a crucial input good for most of the net-oil consumer countries, and it is an important source of revenue for the net-oil supplier countries. This means that any changes in the oil price will affect the entire world economy. Chloé Le Coq and Zorica Trkulja from Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics have written a policy brief that explains to what extent the oil-price fluctuations matter for the economy.
Oil market can be viewed as a global and liquid market, therefore the world market price for oil is the reference price for many market participants. This implies that many non-oil, but oil-related, markets are interlinked. A change in one of them is therefore likely to affect the others. The oil market’s dynamics have the tendency to change dramatically due to technological changes and political events, resulting in price fluctuations affecting the entire world economy.
It is important to note that there are two different aspects of oil-price changes. As seen in Figure 1, besides a sharp fall in the price level from May 2014 and onwards, the oil price tends to be highly volatile and unstable throughout the year. Price of Oil
Should the mandate of the US Fed be re-written?
Often we hear the Fed Chairperson say that their policy is being effected in order to fulfill their mandate to keep employment high in the US. Realistically, in a changing world in which most jobs are service jobs and require education, this mandate should perhaps be dropped.
President Obama and his Secretaries of Education well understand the need to educate for jobs. Political correctness sometimes masks the basic requirements for change. No one thinks the US Fed can help this process.
As we wait for the anticipated tiny rise in the interest rate, but at least a rise, the power of the Fed is patently clear. The real question we should be asking is: Has the Fed become too powerful in the US? Who is benefitting from Fed policies?
In the important new film “The Big Short” on character notes that Ben Benanke has just left the White House. The character remarks: “There’s going to be a bailout.”
On the one hand, no one stepped up to plate to address the economic crisis in 2008 except the Fed. In anticipation of future crises, small and large, does it not behoove legislators to think about and act on a new leadership role when these inevitable events occur?
A decision came down supporting NY State’s case against the fantasy sports business. As with many aspects of the new economy and technology active in areas where the ordinary citizen has an opportunity to invest for profit or loss, we wonder where lines are drawn.
Under New York Penal Law 225.00, “gambling” is defined as the staking or risking of something of value on the outcome of either (1) “a contest of chance,” or (2) “a future contingent event not under [that person’s] control or influence,” each with the agreement or understanding that the person will receive something of value in the event of a certain outcome. (At least eight other states employ the same test: Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Oregon and Washington.)
This definition sets forth two separate categories of gambling: (1) wagering on a “contest of chance,” and (2) wagering on the outcome of a “future contingent event” over which the bettor has no “control or influence.” The latter of these two categories is not dependent on a “skill vs. chance” assessment, but, rather, looks to whether an alleged bettor can “control” or “influence” the outcome of the “future contingent event.”
The statute, however, does not define these words. But the plain meaning of the words “control” and “influence” would seem to connote being able to have an “impact” or an “effect” on the event itself, which brings us back to the ultimate question: What is the “future contingent event” in a DFS contest? Is it the real-world sporting event or events on which scoring is based? Or is it the DFS contest itself?
Two women are instrumental in handling the EU economy. The European Union passed the first in a series of critical reforms, establishing a new centralized supervisory authority over the monetary union’s largest banks. In October 2014, European Central Bank will have access to financial data for banks across the continent. This authority will be used to identify bank weaknesses before they threaten the EU, as they did during the European sovereign debt crisis.
It’s the first of three pillars that European leaders say would guarantee a similar crisis doesn’t occur in the future. The other two – the creation of a joint deposit guarantee account and the authority to wind down banks with a unified financial backstop – will be considered in the coming year. The passage of the first pillar is another sign of economic progress for a continent where the news has been bleak for years. The EU and the world have two people in particular to thank for that progress: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde.
The central banks’ manipulation of interest rates is a prominent tool, reported daily in the press. Now the world’s attention is on the actions of the US Fed, an anticipated announcement to raise rates a smidgeon on December 16th.
Bradford DeLong writes about the economic doctrines propounded since the beginning of the global financial crisis put forward by John Taylor, an economist at Stanford. Taylor claims the post-crisis economic policies being carried out in the United States, Europe, and Japan are putting a ceiling on long-term interest rates that is “much like the effect of a price ceiling in a rental market where landlords reduce the supply of rental housing.” The result of low interest rates, quantitative easing, and forward guidance, Taylor argues, is a “decline in credit availability [that] reduces aggregate demand, which tends to increase unemployment, a classic unintended consequence.”
Taylor’s analogy fails to make sense at the most fundamental level. The reason that rent control is disliked is that it forbids transactions that would benefit both the renter and the landlord. When a government agency imposes a rent ceiling, it prohibits landlords from charging more than a set amount. This distorts the market, leaving empty apartments that landlords would be willing to rent at higher prices and preventing renters from offering what they are truly willing to pay.
However, when a central bank reduces long-term interest rates via current and expected future open-market operations, it does not prevent potential lenders from offering to lend at higher interest rates; nor does it stop borrowers from taking up such an offer. These transactions don’t take place for a simple reason: borrowers choose freely not to enter into them.
So how does Taylor arrive at his analogy? My intuition is that his reasoning has become entangled with his beliefs about the free market. Taylor and others who share his view probably begin with a sense that current interest rates are too low. Given their belief that the free market cannot fail (it can only be failed), they naturally assume that some government action must be behind the unnaturally low rates. The goal then becomes to figure out what the government has done to make interest rates so wrong. And, because any argument that treats government action as appropriate can only be a red herring, the analogy to rent control emerges as one of the possible solutions.
Given real economic conditions, European and American monetary policy is not too loose; if anything, it is too restrictive. The “natural” interest – what would be ground out by the Walrasian system of general equilibrium equations – is actually lower than what current monetary policy is producing. Yes, the inertial expectations of the economy have combined with monetary policy to distort interest and inflation rates, but not in the direction that Taylor is proposing. On the contrary, compared to what is needed (given the current state of the economy) or to what a free-market, flexible-price economy in proper equilibrium would deliver, interest rates are too high and inflation is too low.
There is indeed something wrong with today’s interest rates. Why such low rates are appropriate for the economy and for how long they will continue to be appropriate are deep and unsettled questions; they call attention to the “dark corners” of economics, where research has so far shed too little light. What Taylor and his ilk fail to understand is that the reason interest rates are wrong has little to do with the policies put in place by central bankers and everything to do with the situation that policymakers confront.
Are environmentalists overlooking the impact of for-profit businesses on the greening of the world.
When PwC decided to refurbish its unloved central London office, it thought it would be doing well to achieve a BREEAM “excellent” rating. Then it realised it could do rather better than that …
Which office building has the highest BREEAM rating ever? Could it be the Co-op’s glamorous new headquarters in Manchester? Or that beacon of sustainability in London’s Docklands, the Siemens
Crystal? Or could it be Embankment Place, a nineties air rights scheme over London Charing Cross station that is so leaky it couldn’t be sufficiently pressurised to get a test reading?
Incredibly, the last building on this list has pipped the others with a chart-topping post-completion BREEAM score of 96.31%. This isn’t the first time occupier PwC has been at the top of the BREEAM charts. The professional services firm achieved the first BREEAM “outstanding” rating with its More London office near London Bridge in 2011. But making a brand new building super-efficient is relatively easy compared with a refurbishment, particularly this one, as Embankment Place is a post-modern warren of oddly shaped rooms and isolated eyries and is in one of the most congested parts of London, making the refurbishment particularly challenging.
According to PwC’s real estate director Paul Harrington, staff had mixed feelings about the office. “It’s a fantastic location but everyone hated the building,” he explains, adding that the entrance was particularly depressing. “It was heavy, monolithic and dark with a fountain that stank of chlorine.” Two atriums in the building were ringed by cellular offices, leaving the main floorplates devoid of any natural light. Vertical circulation was difficult and hidden away stairwells meant the only practical way to travel between floors was in the overused lifts.
The lease was due to expire in 2015 so PwC was faced with the choice of moving or refurbishing the building to make it more acceptable to staff. It plumped for the latter which included making the building much more energy and water efficient. Harrington says sustainability was a priority for PwC but an accountancy firm inevitably wants a return on its investment. “There is no point throwing money at something unless there is a good return,” he says, adding that measures to improve building performance must have a payback of less than four years.
The building entrance is below Charing Cross station, with the main building over the station
Initially a BREEAM “excellent” rating was targeted. “We had a clear aspiration at More London to get a BREEAM ‘outstanding’,” says Harrington. “Here we thought ‘excellent’ was the best we could get but as we developed our thinking we thought we could take this further.”
The BREEAM analysis has been done by services engineer ChapmanBDSP. “We looked at what the key credits were to get a BREEAM ‘outstanding’ and saw we didn’t have to go much further to achieve this,” says Darren Coppins, ChapmanBDSP’s head of sustainability. He adds PwC wanted an EPC A rating even though a BREEAM “outstanding” can be achieved with an EPC rating of B. This meant the primary focus was on energy. Coppins says a range of options was explored including covering the whole roof of the building with PV panels and wind turbines and using a fuel cell to provide heat and power. The Greenest Office in London- PwC
The Rocky Road to Globalization: Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank didn’t do exactly what the world thought he would. The euro rose against the dollar, and currencies around the world also adjusted. When George Soros made his money betting on currency fluctuations, he was one of the few people who followed these ins and outs. Now everyone knows and reacts.
The European Central Bank unveiled a package of measures to tackle too-low inflation, from a cut in the floor for interest rates to an expansion of its bond-buying program by at least 360 billion euros ($390 billion). Investors were unimpressed.
The Frankfurt-based ECB will extend quantitative easing by six months until at least March 2017 at the current rate of 60 billion euros a month, and broaden the assets purchased to include local and regional debt, ECB President Mario Draghi said on Thursday. The Governing Council earlier reduced its deposit rate by 10 basis points to minus 0.3 percent.
The fresh stimulus coincides with a shift in global monetary policy, with the ECB adding stimulus as the U.S. Federal Reserve prepares to start its process of normalization. Even so, financial markets reacted with skepticism, sending the euro up as much as 2.6 percent and equities and government bonds down in a sign that Draghi’s measures fell short of expectations.
“The expectations were too high, and this was the minimum he could do,” said Marco Valli, chief euro-area economist at UniCredit SpA in Milan. “I think this was a mix of Draghi being held back by the conservatives, but also him wanting to keep some powder dry in case more is needed.”
