This ratio of employed to unemployed, ultimately, is the problem in America.

That’s not the most important problem.

The most important one is lack of increases in real compensation per worker. Right now, owing to commodities price increases, real wages are falling, compounded by more of the rising med ins costs being foisted off on workers.

With all due respect, no job is a bit more of a problem than the stagnant wages for those that have jobs.

But combined, the two issues show that the average worker, employed or not, is pretty much feck’d

There’s a ton of idle capacity in the economy

That is a signal that the best way forward is investment in a public works program. Did O even mention jobs in his speech yesterday?

Frequently have I heard Atrios say, in frustration and despair, that nobody gives a shit about the deficit. By ‘nobody’ he means Congress, the White House and the punditocracy. He might say, with equal justice, that nobody gives a shit about jobs.

Jobs are an issue for those of the left, for DFH and the Cheeetoh stained mob, and of course, practically everybody else. But we don’t count.

Excellent post, David!

As Dakine has told us many times the government figures on unemployment have been nothing more than fairy tales. As our prices for goods and food goes up, the actual amount of economic turnover is the DEFICIT!

Speaking of deficit, here is the real truth to that lie the repugs are pushing:

http://my.firedoglake.com/selise/2011/04/14/usg-deficits-the-economics-the-politics-the-banksters-and-you/#comment-183669

Nope! His people don’t understand and therefore have no need to worry over jobs for the little people.

Thanks for paying attention to this. It is why I keep saying that things are getting worse.

Fair enough.

I was thinking in longer run macro terms, not about individuals. Namely that you can’t grow an economy by putting more & more people to work. Emp-pop ratio in the U.S. before its more recent declines was well above other developed countries.

I haven’t looked at the international comparisons recently.

Though I can’t speak for eCAHN, I *think* that her argument is more from an academic prospective and views the economy as a whole. Falling wages pushes people to use credit, and when the credit is gone as it is now, so is demand. R Reich made that argument recently on KPFA.

I wish I had all of that money back that I invested in my education.

Namely that you can’t grow an economy by putting more & more people to work.

Can you explain why that is true? Seems like working people create demand for goods and services that they previously could not afford.

Yes, use of credit plays into it also. And as we discovered a couple of years ago, that’s an implosion waiting to happen.

*heh* I figger by the time I have money to pay back my college loans, inflation will have made my education a bargain.

BC you run out of workers.

Now I’m not a conspiracy theorist hehe, but there is a very simple solution to this problem if one is coming from the standpoint of the whackadoodle Christianist/Dominionist; force women out of the work force entirely. Then, like magic, there are plenty of jobs for the men! And the women can just stay home a-makin babies like the Bible says!

Nah, this couldn’t be their plan…

Ah…so it can’t grow continuously. However, it can prop up the economy temporarily, yes?

a more liberal immigration policy would add workers to the economy who would help balance the EPOP and pay into the social insurance programs.

I’m confused on this one. We have 27 million adults not working so the fix is to change immigration policy to add more workers?

The demand for goods and services is true, but that is a longer issue. When our economy is as it is now, the first and only items people will spend on is food, clothing, and shelter. I do understand that those will raise a market to some degree, but for the most part people do not go out on spending sprees until all the basics are there.

Plus, with the constant threat hanging over those currently employed that they may lose their jobs any minute, you will not find them out buying new homes or cars either.

Ouch!

Right.

The U.S. is so far below any labor constraints, it’s hard to see beyond that.

But the unemployment rate reached its practical low, around 4%, only a ‘small’ time ago in the Clinton admin.

Screw it, end all unemployment compensation, all medical aid to the poor, all food stamps, all housing aid, and draft every fricken one of those 27 million into the service.

Then declare war on every country in the world.

Budget crises solved. All those savings from all those commie/marxist/socialist/kenyan programs will have the deficit conquered on one year. Since we all know that all that new spending on all those new wars don’t count, just like all the current wars don’t count.

That seems to be where we’re headed, just do it and get it over with.

Thanks David Dayen

you wrote the speech that OBAMA should have gave yesterday!

the WH political team makes Bush look like Albert Eistein

the only issue in the USA that matters is the Economy

Obama = the GOP = Hoover = reason both avoid the Economy Issue

Add enslavement of black and brown types and you’ve got the Blessed Confederate Empire!

It’s obviously unrealistic salary expectations causing this. People need to learn to work for nothing so that companies like GE and Exxon can continue paying no taxes and their CEOs flourish.

Or so “some people” have said….

BTW, it is part & parcel of what is now referred to as neolibrulism that rising real wages per worker are antiamerican.

Hey, we finally got a story in a local paper about the couple living in their van at the Walmart parking lot. They’ve been there since 2009.

Evidently Washington has no idea people are living out of their cars and raising their children in the back seat.

That is the Twooph!

Yes this is what lot’s of folks miss.

And the ONLY reason our economy works so much differently (well there are lots of underlying reasons, no unions, bad laws, etc.) but the GOAL of having the economy work this way is to have maximum profits for the owners. I know you knew that, but wanted to say it out loud again.

There is no reason that every able bodied person has to “work” in a paying job. The compensation of those that do work should be such that not all need to. This puts less stress on families AND the environment.

EDIT: And this leaves others free to work in other ways. Improving family, improving community, individual entrepener..??ship (damn I can never spell that word), etc. Everyone’s better off.

At least this is my opinion of how an ecnomy should work. I’m no economist, and as always, YMMV.

So…the best way to improve the overall economy in the short term is to create jobs. At the same time we’ve got to work toward raising wages by moving toward full employment, unions need to be strengthened and the social safety net must be improved so that workers spend.

I would say yes to that. Our Government has to spend on the private sector either by starting a jobs program like WVA or highways and bridges where people can have a guaranteed income for several years. The banks are not loaning for investments in this country.

There are a couple ways to deal with the financing issue.

what financing issue?

the fed gov is the currency issuer, not a currency user.

the REAL issues are resource limits and the productive capacity of the economy — not dollars!

GOAL of having the economy work this way is to have maximum profits for the owners.

Yep. And it can’t be said too often.

I tried to document that toward the end of the W admin, but it’s a thorny task. Profits are more cyclical than the overall economy, the economy was in the Big Recession. Also, as corps have become more leveraged, you’ve got to combine both corp profits & int payments for the total return on capital.

Plus I no longer have easy access to the data and charting capabilities I used to use.

Yes.

But don’t hold your breath.

The latest excuse is that unemployment is a “structural” problem, meaning not only are rising wages/worker antiamerican, but employment is no longer a consideration in macro policy.

…and big business owners hoard money in accounts rather than ejecting it into the people’s economy where jobs are created. Rich get richer. Old story.

but employment is no longer a consideration in macro policy

!!! Well that’s got to be the biggest problem of all, then.

Wasn’t it one of the first great thinkers of the free market that said something along the lines that businesses should do several things, and one of them was PAYING THE MAXIMUM WAGES POSSIBLE.

I wanna say Smith, but that’s probably not right.

Damned memeory.

On edit: was it maybe Henry Ford???? Gonna look it up but I so suck at searches I might not find it.

i don’t think i’m understanding your comment… how does putting an idle resource (the unemployed who want a job) to productive work not grow the economy?

Are you gonna eat that egg?

Don’t know who you’re thinking about, but I’m pretty weak on history of economic thought. Learn, pass, forget was how I got thru my qualifying exam in that subject.

I do remember that Henry Ford, for all his other faults, knew that he both had to pay his workers enough so that they could afford his cars, while also keeping the price of a car low enough to be affordable.

I still have a hard time getting my mind around how twisted the PTB’s economics has become. Even though I know what their goal is.

Report: 27 Million Adults in America Not Working

Shabby reporting.
The article didn’t say that. It said:

In 2000, the nation had roughly the same number of children and non-working adults. Since then, the population of non-working adults has grown 27 million while the nation added just 3 million children under 18.

USA Today also didn’t reveal its analysis computations, but it did say that its figures omit the self-employed.

Actually, according to the recent BLS Report there are 100 million non-institutional citizens age 16 and above not working. But this figure includes those who don’t want to work or can’t work, so unfortunately we don’t know the full extent of unemployment. Also the BLS report isn’t based on actual employment payroll figures.

Leo Hindery is a good source and ironically he comes close to the 27 million figure.

The number of real unemployed workers in all four categories – official BLS, part-time-of-necessity, marginally attached, and discouraged – decreased by 193,000 workers to 28.2 million,

See 14. Long run growth vs. interim growth.

??????

It was Henry Ford-

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.
Henry Ford

Another gem

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.
Henry Ford

The only name that came up when I put “companies should pay the highest wages possible” into teh google was Henry Ford, so I’m pretty sure it was him.

I was just reading the tail end of the late night thread and you had a comment about the “this is your brain on drugs” commercial.

Whenever I see that commercial and they ask at the end “Any questions?” I always think to myself “Yeah. Are you gonna eat that egg?”

Got that right.

The U.S. is sooo screwed, but it will take a long time to play out and meanwhile the rich get richer.

Wow, Henry Ford was marxist/stalinist/socialist/kenyan too!

Oh, LOL!!

So…the best way to improve the overall economy in the short term is to create jobs.

wouldn’t this also help in the long term as well? when people are unemployed for a long time their skills degrade and they are less likely to be learning new ones. and there are increased social costs.

especially for those young people who are just starting out and looking for their first job, if they can’t find one, or they can’t find a good one that will provide on-the-job training for the jobs to come… won’t that be a problem for the overall economy in the long run?

Pres. Obama may give great soaring progressive-sound speeches, but when push comes to shove, he always folds, collapses, surrenders or gives in to corporations and Republicans. Obama seems to have much trouble dealing with hostile white men (Republicans). He adopts the classic black male approach of being an “uncle tom,” and cowtowing, and try to please and mollify such men. The end result of this behavior is that Obama has been highly destructive of the interests of the American people. He is probably one of the worst possible people to represent the Democratic Party in the 21st century.

from naked capitalism: Our New York Times Op Ed on the Corporate Savings Glut

Rob Parenteau and I have an op-ed at the New York Times today. Rob’s last post here argued energetically that the now-established trend of the corporate sector to save, as opposed to invest in growth, in advanced economies, and even most emerging economies, was tantamount to capitalists abandoning their traditional role. It reminded me of an article I had written in 2005, “The Incredible Shrinking Corporation,” for the Conference Board’s magazine Across the Board, on how companies were trying to starve themselves into attractive- looking performance though the then-unprecedented act of saving in a time of economic expansion, which is tantamount to disinvestment. Rob’s post made further key points about the macroeconomic implications of corporate savings (given the norm of households savings as well) and made some policy recommendations.

OT Sorry to be OT but I just found out what all that GOP fuss about illegal immigrants, Acorn, and that crazy woman Bachmann advocating not sending in 2010 census forms was all about.

Camarota said that regardless of whether the changes are coming from influxes of illegal or legal immigrants, more districts are going to be created with swaths of people in them who can’t vote.

“Literally we’ll have districts like we have right now where half the adult population can’t vote,” he said. He said the impact they have on the drawing of congressional seats raises “profound and important questions

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, was not among them. The firebrand congressman told FoxNews.com the census underscores the need to examine the counting of illegal immigrants — something he thinks should not be done.

“We need to drill into it and drill into it deeply,” he said, arguing that the founders did not envision giving congressional representation to those in the United States illegally.

Camarota, though, said there’s little Washington can do to change how the census is conducted since the bureau is constitutionally mandated to complete a nationwide head count of all residents. He said lawmakers should be concentrating on border enforcement instead.

It’s sequential.

First you put people to work, then, when the unemployment rate gets to around 4%, real wages start to rise. At that point rising real wages are more important quantitatively (that honest economists have been able to document) than skill levels. Though both are important.

The argument about skill levels & the need to get higher ed is another red herring the wingnuts use to demonize the unemployed for their own problems.

So while there’s some truth in what you say, saying it also buys into the “hidden” agenda of the wrong side.

But didn’t we have great economic growth pre-1970 when it was custom for only one family member to work, making enough to support the whole family?

I haven’t checked the GDP charts lately, but memory insists that GDP growth during those years were as good as or better than the GDP growth since every adult male and female have been, through necessity, forced to work.

PS: NO, I’m NOT advocating we go back to having the man work and the woman stay home. I’m advocating that in a sustainable economy, wages should be such that not everyone is forced to work to survive. Less pressure on families and the environment.

Sorry, I forgot the link.

Yeppers. And Rs winning state & local elections, so they can determine the new districts. That’s one of the many tragedies of electing O in 2008. It made it virtually certain that the backlash would elect Rs to gerrymander new districts after 2010 census.

The point we were discussing isn’t that putting people to work isn’t a tool for growth, but that government adding jobs as the *only* method for growth is obviously unsustainable because there are a finite number of workers. As far as I can see, we all think putting people to work is a no-brainer for the greater good of everyone.

Your memory is mostly accurate.

The golden age of U.S. economy was 1960s, when something like 4 years in a row unemployment was at or below 4%, which allowed real wages/worker to grow robustly.

Don’t remember the figures exactly, but after some Rosie the Riveters went back home after WWII, female employment rates started to rise again, and rose pretty continuously for the entire post-WWII period, until relatively recently.

The inflation of the 1970s stemmed from supply shocks and dismal monetary policy, but in the usual fashion of rewriting history to their own benefit, neolibruls put all the blame on rising real wages/worker.

This is a great statistic. It matches experiences of 27 millions non-working adults. Telling 27 million people that we’ve turned the corner is bullshit. Telling them that things are picking up is bullshit. There is no future to win, until people get back to work. I wish policy makers would focus like a laser beam on the present.

Yep. *Someone* has to do the unpaid labor of housework, cooking, childcare, etc. that must be done without pay in order for capitalism to work, IIRC.

The argument about skill levels & the need to get higher ed is another red herring the wingnuts use to demonize the unemployed for their own problems.

if the jobs aren’t there, it’s not the unemployed’s fault. it’s the fault of the gov which is not providing the jobs that the private sector can’t or won’t.

there are real cost to unemployment — both for the individual and for the economy. i don’t think that is a red herring because it has nothing to do with the neoliberal fallacy that training the unemployed will somehow create the jobs that aren’t there. but if you have a better way for me to write it, i’ll be happy to make the change….

See, IMO, “unemployment” could remain somewhere between, I dunno, maybe 5-8% (maybe a tick higher) but as long as the wages for those working were real wages and we had real social programs, we could sustain that much longer. But the rich in such a scenario, would see their piece of the pie fall dramatically.

I know I’m no economist, so I know this is probably pie in the sky stuff, but somehow, someway, I do know that most other countries do pretty well with stronge social programs and not having as high a percentage of their people forced to work.

YMMV

This article is worth a read. Shock Doctrine 101 equals lower wages.

http://bit.ly/dPFtnR

we also had vibrant public sector investment — that was the foundation of much of the private sector growth.

now, neither the public nor the private sectors are making the investments needed for future growth.

i wasn’t trying to say growth wasn’t multifactorial, only that wasting so much human capital is stupid as well as immoral.

Jobs are an issue for those of the left

As Madame Helmsley would say, ‘Jobs are for little people.’

I have told this story given to me by an acquaintance of Christie Romer and I will retail it again. At some point early in the administration, the high rate of unemployment came up for cabinet discussion. Someone (Rahm?)declared ‘that’s a political problem.’ Christie replied, ‘no, it’s a substantive problem!’

The administration sees everything through a political lens. No doubt this is true of all administrations. But unemployment is actual people losing their jobs, their marriage, their mental health, their kid’s future. It’s a political problem only because it is a huge substantive problem. It is just mind-boggling to realize they can’t get their heads around this simple point.
Suffering does not make people better, not that kind; it makes them worse. Pretty soon they will be looking for scape-goats, and there’s plenty of candidates.

I agree with you on substance. All I’m saying is that the neolibruals use those words against us.

So rather than finding a better way of saying it, I would stick to the simpler message of how having unemployed workers hurts them and hurts growth. Even that is an almost impossible case to make in light of all the propaganda on the other side.

I caught a short eMeg message on cnbc yesterday. As usual I had to flip it off before I barfed. It was the plan for growing the economy of some wingnut group she belongs too.

First, the growth goal was 4%, far lower than past early economic recovery stages. So that already tells you a lot.

Second, to his or her benefit, the anchor kept pressing eMeg what the specifics of the plan was. Finally it all came out: lower taxes on biz and retraining.

That is a perfect example of how the other side uses the “unemployed” lack the skills necessary for the jobs that are really really really there.

I’m talking about the U.S. economy.

Yes, western Europe sustains much better economies with higher unemployment than they U.S. owing to their social welfare & other programs.

The U.S. is so far away from that, I stopped talking about it a long time ago.

Back in my quaint days, I used to say, frequently, economics is not an experimental subject.

The US ratio is higher than in Canada or Europe because people retire earlier in more civilized countries. Hours worked is also longer in the US, because workers don’t get much in the way of vacations and are afraid to take the ones they are allowed. If you are thinking of the Solow model, it’s true that after a shift in participation, the steady state growth rate will converge to whatever the rate of population growth and technical change add up to, but this is relevant only at full employment. As to real wage deterioration–thinking here only of prices–this is due to competition for scarce resources from the growing economies like China and India. It is a relative price effect, which in principle should cause people to adjust their consumption habits–smaller cars, less dining out on junk food, etc. It’s not a catastrophe, though no doubt painful to families right on the margin who don’t get food stamps. Selise is right. It’s lack of jobs and underutilized productive capacity that is the social problem. And it could be at least partly resolved by an aggressive public works program. Even filling pot holes would help, though it must be conceded that it will result in lower demand for new alignments.

i like wray’s example of the dogs and the bones. wish i could think of a phrase to convey the gist of it:

Another example that is less frequently used concerns unemployment.

The view shared by most of my undergraduate students is that unemployment is caused by laziness or lack of training. The argument they often use is that “I can get a job, therefore all the unemployed could get jobs if only they tried harder, or got better education and training”.

The way I go about demonstrating that fallacy is a dogs and bones example. Say we have 10 dogs and we bury 9 bones in the backyard. We send the dogs out to find bones. At least one dog will come back without a bone.

We decide that the problem is lack of training. We put that dog through rigorous training in the latest bone finding techniques. We bury 9 bones and send the 10 dogs out again. The trained dog ends up with a bone, but some other dog comes back without a bone (empty-mouthed, so to speak).

The problem, of course, is that there are not enough bones and jobs to go around. It is certainly true that a well-trained and highly motivated jobseeker can usually find a job. But that is no evidence that aggregate unemployment is caused by laziness or lack of training.

We could also go into the common belief that minimum wages cause unemployment. It is at least partly true that for an individual firm, higher wages reduce the number of workers hired. But we cannot extrapolate that to the economy as a whole. Higher wages mean higher income and thus higher consumption spending, which induces firms to employ more labor. So the truth is that economic theory does not tell us that raising minimum wages will lead to more unemployment, indeed, theory tells us it can go the other way—raising the minimum wage could increase employment.

Again, the reason we can reach the wrong conclusion in all of these cases when we aggregate up from the micro level to the macro is because we ignore the impacts that behavior of individuals or firms has on other individuals or firms. That can be OK for the case of the individual firm or household, but is almost certainly incorrect for firms and households taken as a whole.

Yeah, I think I see what you’re saying.

I just look at other countries and wonder why they’re able to do the things they do with less of a percentage of their populations in the work force than we do.

I do know that if we had a real, functioning, government that did what it was supposed to, we’d have government policies in place to ensure than anyone that wanted a job would have one.

And had we had a real stimilus along those lines 2 years ago things would be vastly different today. And if we DID do that kind of government jobs, investment, we could also ensure our ecnomic growth for years to come by upgrading our infrastructure.

I agree with all of that. I just am unsure of why we, here in the US, must have a higher percentage of people in the work force than other countries do. I know why the people feel the need to, they feel the need to to survive. But if we had better social programs and better wages for those that did work, maybe we could mimic other countries’ percentage of the work force working????

I dunno, like I said, I’m no economist, in fact am an idiot when it comes to economics (my LEAST favorite classes in college, HATED those three semesters, YUCK).

Joe Stiglitz? He and Akerlof used to argue that high wages (efficiency wages) are good for firms because they enable them to recruit better workers and get better work out of them. The reason being that good workers know they are good and will self-select; the other reason being that losing a well-paying job really sucks, so those that have them will work hard to keep them.

The administration sees everything through a political lens. No doubt this is true of all administrations. But unemployment is actual people losing their jobs, their marriage, their mental health, their kid’s future. It’s a political problem only because it is a huge substantive problem. It is just mind-boggling to realize they can’t get their heads around this simple point.

wow. wow. wow.

i should know this in my head, but it is so mind boggling that i keep getting shocked by their priorities.

Suffering does not make people better, not that kind; it makes them worse. Pretty soon they will be looking for scape-goats, and there’s plenty of candidates.

amen.

and am already seeing the scapegoating, even among progressives. :(

I understand.

But the wingnuts would counter that Wray is wrong, and there are really countless numbers of bones buried and the dogs all have defective noses or are lazy.

We all know that is BS, but you can’t win for losing when addressing such twisted thinking and reality creation on the other side.

It’s like engaging with trolls on FDL who keep repeating the talking points no matter how much contrary evidence you provide nor how many times you ask them for evidence.

not so sure about this (have to ask the experts, which is so NOT me)… but if the FIRE sector, and rentiers in general, are sucking up more of the economic surplus (aka parasitism) we’re going to have to work harder just to keep even.

i’ve seen some data for usa, but not cross-country comparisons…. that would be interesting if anyone knows where i could find that kind of study.

We all know that is BS, but you can’t win for losing when addressing such twisted thinking and reality creation on the other side.

that’s ok. i don’t know of another way… and besides, i think it takes a very long time for minds to change (at least that is my experience) so it’s not something i expect to have immediate results.

after all, i’ve been on the other side (a long time ago)… so perhaps i have some compassion for those who are still stuck there.

Our side is losing by leaps & bounds.

And yes, as FIRE (and all the other dysfunction inds) take over the economy, everyone else has to work harder.

And real peeps who work in the dysfunctional inds will get treated worse & worse as more & more of their revenues go to the top.

Now, again, as back then, the cost of energy undercuts any economic growth. As energy cost increase jobs will again vaporize. A dangerous political game is being played here at the nation’s expense. Scorch the earth just enough to inflict economic pain for political gain while deflecting and projecting the blame. Just hope the wind does not change direction and burn all the crops. Then property, if the banks have not taken that yet, under suspect circumstances.

thanks for sharing the link!

I still dont understand how they get these figures…. Myself, I have been unemp for about 2 1/2 years. My benefits (which a are TAXED btw) ran out long ago. So Im not in the system. I know many many people out of work. And even more who have had RECENT layoffs at thier places of employment . Lol one fried was going to set me up at her company “after the first of the year” when they would be hiring again. Well Feb came and they let 20 people go instead.

My new thing tho is putting money into education. In my area no matter where you go school after school has these awful “sheds” that serve as class rooms. I mean they look like prison camps. Real eyesores in nice neighborhoods aside from kids learning in what is just on step above the school house in Little House on the Prairie. Seems to me if we spent a billion on expanding the schools it would not only improve education but the construction would add more money to the economy. I dont even have kids and I am appaled by the state of our schools. Surely something like this wouldnt be so hot button as say that evil high speed socialist rail.

Even filling pot holes would help, though it must be conceded that it will result in lower demand for new alignments.

Filling pot holes also has the benefit of saving lives. In addition to causing property damage, potholes are becoming one of the leading causes of car and motorcycle accidents (can be very deadly for motorcycle riders).

Don’t worry, the invisible hand of the market will solve everything. In Him we trust.

Just finishing up my first 9 weeks of A+ and I see jobs I qualify for but without any personal transportation my options very limited. I may be able to take the A+ exam around the first of next month.

That all said, I have run out of money, what little money I’ve had since my tax return (about $300). I have spent a majority of it getting to school. Now sure I could walk 5-6 miles to school and save money but is that really too much to ask?

So I used to bus and the bus price has gone up .25. That doesn’t sound like much but it adds up. Just using the bus ate up most of my money. The only Government program I qualify for (just barely) is EBT.

Because of all this, I’ll be forced to use the local Blood bank as a source of income so I can have some OPTIONS. Without money YOU HAVE NO OPTIONS.

I would likely get more help if I lived in a cardboard box…

This is only a blip though, there jobs I now qualify for on Craigslist, Dice.com and Monster.com

Even India and China which are rapidly being “financialized” are asking “Where are the jobs?” (data point here regarding India and here regarding China).

This is what happened in the US and is happening in India and China:

“Hedge Fund Gamblers Earn the Same In One Hour As a Middle-Class Household Makes In Over 47 Years” (Apr. 11, 2011)

This is a snap shot of the tapering side of the faded US as the banksters have picked up and taken their operations to other countries including India and China because our elected officials and regulators did not constrain and manage them:

Big banks are shifting staff to India and China. “When I started in Asia fifteen years ago, my friends teased me mercilessly for giving up a proper career for this emerging-markets lark,” says Euan Rellie, the New York–based 43-year-old British co-founder of BDA, a boutique bank serving China and Asia. “Asia used to be all young adventurers and spivvy entrepreneurs, but that’s changed. Now everyone tells me, ‘You’re lucky to be exposed to India and China.’?”

The shift out of what people used to think of as Wall Street—the big investment banks—into hedge funds and emerging markets could be viewed as simply its latest evolution: Wall Street now means something else, but it still has a future. “The alternative investment world is prospering. There is huge demand for all kinds of derivatives and options and ?exchange-traded funds in every flavor,” says one money manager.

The problem for New York is that a lot of that future lies in other cities. The name on the door may still be Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, but the bonuses will be paid to residents of Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, and Mumbai. New York used to worry about London taking over its crown, but that isn’t the big threat now. Deutsche Börse’s bid to acquire the New York Stock Exchange is only an attempt to counterbalance a far bigger shift to the East.

This is not a leading edge picture but a pre-maturity picture of the bubbles in India and China:

“Goldman Sachs Advancing in India Means Turning Half-Cent Fees Into Profit” (Apr. 12, 2011)

“Money managers in China brew own hedge fund industry” (Apr. 14, 2011)

I’ll end with Ellen Brown’s posts (which I recommend one reads as much of her work as possible):

“Why The Japanese Government Can Afford To Rebuild: It Owns The Largest Depository Bank In The World” (Mar. 31, 2011)

“China’s Creative Accounting: Using Debt As A Tool For Economic Development” (Oct. 31, 2010)

The block quote in the prior comment is an excerpt from “The Wall Street Mind: Anxious…” (NYMag.Com, Apr. 10, 2011)