Archive for the ‘Commerce Department’ Category
October 7th, 2011 | 
Author: September Unemployment Unchanged At 9.1 Percent; 103000 Jobs …
Nonfarm payroll employment edged up by 103000 in September, and the unemployment rate held at 9.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The increase in employment partially reflected the return to …
Publish Date: 10/07/2011 14:52
http://asternglance.com/2011/10/07/september-unemployment-unchanged-at-9-1-percent-103000-jobs-added/
Economy Added 103000 Jobs In September, Unemployment Rate …
Economy Added 103000 Jobs In September, Unemployment Rate Unchanged.
Publish Date: 10/07/2011 11:02
http://www.mediabistro.com/mediajobsdaily/economy-added-103000-jobs-in-september-unemployment-rate-unchanged_b8661
What Could Be Worse Than 9.1 Percent? – Try 16.5 Percent!
The number of part-time workers who want full-time hours rose sharply over the month, to 9.3 million, from 8.8 million in August, and if you add those workers to people that have quit looking because they don’t see hope of getting hired, then the share of unemployed and underemployed among the U.S. workforce rose to 16.5% in September, up from 16.2% in the prior month and 15.8% in May.
"The upturn in this category is discouraging, it’s very discouraging. It shows the broader measure of underutilization of America’s productive capabilities, and reminds us that the labor market hasn’t recovered as much as we thought".
said Harry Holzer, who is a labor economist at the Urban Institute and Georgetown University.
The White House Spin – We Expected Worse
Analysts say about 125,000 net new jobs are needed every month to keep pace with the population growth and maintain the current jobless rate, but the spin is:
"Many forecasters were expecting about 60,000 net new jobs last month, but 103,000 were added!
The Reality
While construction employment rebounded and retailers hired more workers last month, manufacturing payrolls shrank again and government continued its sharp cutbacks.
The ranks of the unemployed in the U.S. remained at about 14 million, but the share of those who have been without jobs for six months or more, the so-called long-term unemployed, rose to 6.2 million from 6 million in August.
The third quarter’s average monthly tally at 96,000 jobs which is roughly the same as in the second quarter, but during the first three months of this year, job growth averaged 166,000 a month.
In September, local education jobs fell by another 24,400, accounting for most of the 34,000 positions lost in government overall.
The Postal Service slashed 5,300 jobs last month.
According to the National Women’s Law Center, women gained only 4,000 of the 103,000 total jobs added in September.
The count of September jobs, over all, was partially inflated by the return to work of about 45,000 striking Verizon workers, just as their temporary absence from payrolls lowered the August job numbers.
How Many Jobs Need To Be Added?
Heidi Shierholz, who is a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington calculated that the economy would need to generate 280,000 jobs every month for five straight years to return to the 5% jobless rate that was in force before the recession hit in late 2007.
Was There Good News?
The professional and business services led the industries in job growth by adding 48,000 to their payrolls last month, and the temporary-help field, often considered a harbinger of broader hiring by companies, rose by about 20,000 last month for the second straight month after weakening earlier in the year.
Healthcare employment increased by 44,000 in September, and the long-declining construction sector added an unexpectedly large 26,000 jobs over the month, almost entirely due to nonresidential building activity.
Posted in 
Solyndra employees: Company suffered from mismanagement, heavy spending – Washington Post
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Solyndra employees: Company suffered from mismanagement, heavy spending
Washington Post The Washington Post reported earlier this month that e-mails showed that White House officials pushed federal reviewers for a decision on the Solyndra loan as they sought to schedule a press announcement with the company and Vice President Biden. … |
Obama's Solyndra Scandal Reeks of the Chicago Way | Just Piper
Those of us from Chicago know exactly what the Solyndra scandal smells like. And It doesn't smell fresh and green. Kudos to John Kass,. Chicago Tribune is a.
Publish Date: 09/18/2011 20:45
http://justpiper.com/2011/09/obamas-solyndra-scandal-reeks-of-the-chicago-way/
The ongoing probes into the collapse of Solyndra could spell a lot of trouble for Team Obama in 2012
Until now, and in spite of all the ongoing failures that can be attributed, at least in large part to the Obama administration, Obama until just a few weeks ago remained personally liked by a large swathe of the population.
Why Is Obama Still Personally Liked?
I personally believed Obama to be a charlatan back in October 2008 when I wrote a piece entitled, Obama And The Missing Paper Trail, but right now we’re talking about how people in general still feel about him, and not me personally, so let’s move on.
Obama has so far earned those high personal-quality ratings by avoiding any meaningful scandal, and his Cabinet and White House staff have similarly offered no reason to suspect any misdeeds.
It has in fact been one of the quietest White Houses on the scandal front in recent memory but that may be about to change.
It might have changed because of the implosion of a politically-connected green-tech firm in Northern California, called Solyndra, and the apparent disappearing act of more than $500 million in taxpayer funds.
And "Yes" Obama Was Very Much Personally Involved
In his 2009 stimulus plan, Obama both sought and received billions of dollars to subsidize a promised explosion in "green jobs" and the White House needed to demonstrate that the U.S. could quickly make use of alternative energy sources to replace the hydrocarbon-based energy that presently meets the needs of the massive U.S. economy, and Obama and his administration chose Solyndra as its poster child.
The White House fast-tracked approval for taxpayer-backed loan guarantees and the company received $535 million from the Treasury’s Federal Financing Bank to build a new manufacturing facility.
Obama later appeared at Solyndra touting his green-jobs initiative and Solyndra insisted, until at least late as this summer that their financial status was strong.
The Collapse
Suddenly and without warning Solyndra collapsed, and over one thousand employees showed up for work on August 31, only to discover that the company had shut its doors.
The company’s stock price had been falling almost continually over the previous two years because of questions about about Solyndra’s real competitiveness and financial strength.
The Money Trail And George Kaiser
When Solyndra initially applied for taxpayer subsidies, auditors at the Department of Energy were already questioning Solyndra’s viability, so why did the Obama administration fast-track Solyndra’s application?
One fairly obvious reason might be, that one of the chief investors in Solyndra was George Kaiser who was one of Obama’s campaign bundlers in 2008, and he raised between $50,000 and $1000,000 for Obama’s campaign.
The Very Low Interest Rates
Solyndra executives visited the White House more than twenty times between March 2009 and April 2011 and the company was give an interest rate from the feds at one-fourth the going rate for green-jobs projects.
And Who Got Repaid First?
The collapse of Solyndra also led to a somewhat strange arrangement for repayments to creditors.
Despite having put up $535 million in taxpayer loan guarantees, the Obama administration didn’t insist on putting taxpayers in the most senior position for creditors if Solyndra failed, but instead, Kaiser will get repaid first on a $75 million investment, before taxpayers see a dime.
Sounds Fishy?
Last week, in response to an investigation by the DOE’s Inspector General, the FBI raided Solyndra, seizing its business records, and federal agents also raided the homes of Solyndra executives and seized additional computers files.
What’s more, Congress, which had already opened an investigation into Solyndra’s loans, will undoubtedly press for access to this material for its own probe.
This Will Damage Obama Personally
ABC (a strong Obama supporter) just reported that DOE officials sat in on Solyndra’s board meetings for months before the collapse, and that despite having this unprecedented access, the Obama administration did nothing to alert Congress that Solyndra might fail, and in fact, failed to respond when Solyndra executives misrepresented the status of the company to members of Congress.
There have been several minor controversies and suggestions of impropriety in the Obama administration, such as Operation Fast and Furious in the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) office in Phoenix and the Department of Justice, but Solyndra is the first controversy that has the potential to directly stain Barack Obama himself.
The Dems lost a NY precinct today that had been in Dem hands for close to a century and yesterday it was announced that poverty is at it highest rate since the ’50s.
Update Septemeber15, 2011
* The Treasury Inspector General’s Office said Wednesday night that it too, is now investigating the loan, because it was processed by Federal Financing Bank, a government lending institution that falls under the Treasury’s control.
* “A half a billion dollars that was not supported in January under the Bush administration was then conditionally recommended in March". Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas
Rick Perry and Mitt Romney must be licking their chops right now!
