Recovery: Record 23 Million American Households Receive Food Stamps

(Pictured: Depression era food line)

Just when you thought America was coming out of recession…

The number of American households on food stamps reached a new record high in March, according to new data released by the Agriculture Department.
The March numbers the USDA released Friday reveal 23,116,441 households enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, each receiving an average monthly benefit of $274.30.
The number of individuals on SNAP did not break any records but remained high, with 47,727,052 people enrolled in SNAP, receiving an average monthly benefit of $132.86.
The number of individuals on SNAP hit a record high in December, with 47,792,056 people enrolled.
SNAP has been in the news in recent years and months as the program’s rolls have ballooned and the cost has quadrupled since 2001 and doubled since President Obama took office.

Nearly a quarter of the households in this country depend on the government to put food on the table.
One hundred million of our fellow countrymen  are enrolled in at least one welfare program aimed at helping them make ends meet.
Recovery?
This is a depression and it won’t be getting better any time soon.

Regulation is what keeps bankers out of prison – Godfrey Bloom

Central bankers and retail bankers hide behind regulation. They are not dominated or guided by regulation! It’s what keeps these people out of prison when they cheat the general public, and ytou are part of the conspiracy.

Economics vs. "Need"

One of the most common arguments for allowing more immigration is that there is a “need” for foreign workers to do “jobs that Americans won’t do,” especially in agriculture.
One of my most vivid memories of the late Armen Alchian, an internationally renowned economist at UCLA, involved a lunch at which one of the younger members of the economics department got up to go get some more coffee. Being a considerate sort, the young man asked, “Does anyone else need more coffee?”
“Need?” Alchian said loudly, in a cutting tone that clearly conveyed his dismay and disgust at hearing an economist using such a word.
A recent editorial on immigration in the Wall Street Journal brought back the memory of Alchian’s response, when I read the editorial’s statement about “the needs of an industry in which labor shortages can run as high as 20 percent” — namely agriculture.
Although “need” is a word often used in politics and in the media, from an economic standpoint there is no such thing as an objective and quantifiable “need.”

You might think that we all obviously need food to live. But however urgent it may be to have some food, nevertheless beyond some point food becomes not only unnecessary but even counterproductive and dangerous. Widespread obesity among Americans shows that many have already gone too far with food.
This is not just a matter of semantics, but of economics. In the real world, employers compete for workers, just as they compete for customers for their output. And workers go where there is more demand for them, as expressed by what employers offer to pay.
Farmers may wish for more farm workers, just as any of us may wish for anything we would like to have. But that is wholly different from thinking that some third party should define what we desire as a “need,” much less expect government policy to meet that “need.”
In a market economy, when farmers are seeking more farm workers, the most obvious way to get them is to raise the wage rate until they attract enough people away from alternative occupations — or from unemployment.
With the higher labor costs that this would entail, the number of workers that farmers “need” would undoubtedly be less than what it would have been if there were more workers available at lower wage rates, such as immigrants from Mexico.
It is no doubt more convenient and profitable to the farmers to import workers at lower pay than to pay American workers more. But bringing in more immigrants is not without costs to other Americans, including both financial costs in a welfare state and social costs, of which increased crime rates are just one.
Some advocates of increased immigration have raised the specter of higher food prices without foreign farm workers. But the price that farmers receive for their produce is usually a fraction of what the consumers pay at the supermarket. And what the farmers pay the farm workers is a fraction of what the farmer gets for the produce.
In other words, even if labor costs doubled, the rise in prices at the supermarket might be barely noticeable.
What are called “jobs that Americans will not do” are in fact jobs at which not enough Americans will work at the current wage rate that some employers are offering. This is not an uncommon situation. That is why labor “shortages” lead to higher wage rates. A “shortage” is no more quantifiable than a “need,” when you ignore prices, which are crucial in a market economy. To discuss “need” and “shortage” while ignoring prices — in this case, wages — is especially remarkable in a usually market-savvy publication like the Wall Street Journal.
Often shortages have been predicted in various occupations — and yet never materialized. Why? Because the pay in those occupations rose, causing more people to go into those occupations and causing employers to reduce how many people they “need” at the higher pay rates.
Virtually every kind of “work that Americans will not do” is in fact work that Americans have done for generations. In many cases, most of the people doing that work today are Americans. And there are certainly many unemployed Americans available today, without bringing in more foreign workers to meet farmers’ “needs.”
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM
This article originally appeared on: The New American

Jeffrey Hirsch to Moneynews: Economy Poised for 'Deceleration'

The U.S. economy is poised for a period of deceleration, according to Jeffrey Hirsch, the editor-in-chief of Stock & Commodity Trader’s Almanacs.

"I don't think there's a lot of acceleration of growth," Hirsch told Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview.

"I'm suspecting that things will sort of calm down and we'll be looking for the next sort of catalyst to really ramp up the economy other than Fed Kool-Aid-ing quantitative easing."

Watch our exclusive video. Story continues below.




The Federal Reserve purchases $45 billion of Treasurys and $40 billion worth of mortgage securities every month to put downward pressure on borrowing costs, according to Bloomberg News.

Editor's Note: Save, shop and invest like an insider! Our experts lead the way each month in The Franklin Prosperity Report. Click here to learn more.

The policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee said May 1 that it will continue buying bonds “until the outlook for the labor market has improved substantially.”

The chief market strategist of the Magnet A-E Fund doesn’t see a continuation of stock indexes reaching record highs on an almost daily basis.

"We're poised for a correction, some sort of a fall," Hirsch said. "Perhaps a bit of sideways action through the seasonally weak period, May through October. We may have seen at least an interim high point here in May."

Hirsch was asked about the impact on markets of the prospect of Fed tapering of its quantitative easing program.

"It will be a negative effect," he said. "It will reel the market in. I don't expect any major tapering or telegraphing of it until at least Q4 of 2013, and perhaps not until [Fed Chairman Ben S.] Bernanke leaves office in January 2014," he said.

"There's an outside chance that Mr. Bernanke will take another term. He's been there a long time. [I am] pretty sure he has a more lucrative future in the private sector. I suspect Jan. 31 will be his last day in office and leading up to that and around that time, when a new chairman comes in and creates the Fed in their image, that will be when things will change and when the market will start to falter."

Also discussed was the outlook for precious metals.

"Gold and silver have been in a sort of negative seasonal pattern," he said. "We're sort of looking at that negative season ending. We're looking to sort of trim our shorts in gold to get into the longs over the next month or so."

Editor's Note: Save, shop and invest like an insider! Our experts lead the way each month in The Franklin Prosperity Report. Click here to learn more.
© 2013 Moneynews. All rights reserved.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.moneynews.com/Economy/Jeffrey-Hirsch-Economy-Growth-Fed/2013/06/11/id/509319?s=al&promo_code=13CC0-1#ixzz2W4weajId
Urgent: Should Obamacare Be Repealed? Vote Here Now!

AIG Financial Products Probed By Ben Lawsky For Alleged Risk Failures

AIG Financial Products, the derivatives unit that nearly toppled the insurance company in 2008, is under fresh scrutiny after regulators alleged it may have failed to properly measure and manage risk, misled supervisors and investors, and lacked appropriate checks to limit outsized risk-taking.
The concerns, recently raised with AIG by the New York Department of Financial Services, the state’s top financial regulator, have led the department to escalate its inquiry into the company, according to people familiar with the matter.
It may take years for AIG to fully address the state's concerns, these people said the regulator noted. That delay in rectifying the company’s risk management practices may expose holders of AIG securities to possible harm.
AIG recently repaid the government for its $182 billion rescue of what was once the world’s largest insurer, delivering a profit. Bad bets in the company’s Financial Products unit on a type of derivative known as credit default swaps nearly sank the insurer. In recent years, the financial group has slimmed down, focusing less on business lines and generally reporting profitable quarters.
Last week, U.S. regulators preliminarily designated AIG as “systemic”, one of a handful of non-banks whose potential failure could threaten the nation’s financial system.
But the probe by the New York DFS, led by Benjamin Lawsky, could delay the company’s plans to fully put its toxic past behind it. Lawsky last year threatened to revoke the state banking license -- the equivalent of a corporate death sentence -- of Standard Chartered, a large U.K. bank, over alleged money-laundering violations.
Lawsky, who some bank attorneys privately said is the New York regulator they most fear, has set his sights on AIG, an insurer whose giant derivatives portfolio could once again damage the company and its stakeholders if not properly managed. As a result, AIG may be subject to heightened supervision, a prospect that may curb investing and limit earnings if DFS decides to rein in certain business lines or activities.

After recording losses of $101.8 billion and $8.4 billion in 2008 and 2009, respectively, AIG has since posted $34.1 billion in combined profit over the last three years. During this year’s first quarter, the company recorded $2.2 billion in net income.
AIG declined to comment. A representative for Lawsky declined to comment.
In its latest quarterly filing with securities regulators, the company said its Financial Products "portfolio continues to be wound down and is managed consistent with our risk management objectives. Although the portfolio may experience periodic fair value volatility, it consists predominantly of transactions that we believe are of low complexity, low risk or currently not economically appropriate to unwind based on a cost versus benefit analysis.”
AIG, already partly supervised by the Federal Reserve, is due to come under increased oversight by the Fed once federal regulators finalize the company’s systemic tag. Designation as a “systemically important financial institution,” or SIFI, carries with it stricter rules governing activities, capital, liquidity, dividends and executive pay schemes.
But until that process is complete and the Fed finalizes the rules that govern the systemic label, Lawsky’s oversight of the company may represent the government’s last line of defense against the kind of risk-taking that nearly rendered AIG insolvent during the financial crisis in 2008.
Already, Lawsky’s office has raised questions over how the insurer manages the risk of possible losses from its securities holdings. DFS also has challenged company models that attempt to estimate possible trading losses.
Regulators around the globe have been questioning banks’ use of “value at risk” models, known as VaR, since they proved inept during the financial crisis.
In a May 3 presentation to investors, the company said that the aggregate VaR on a portion of its derivatives holdings from the financial products division was “effectively zero.”
The regulatory concern from Lawsky’s office comes as AIG works to shed risk in its Financial Products division.
At its peak in 2008, the unit had $2.7 trillion in exposure to counterparties through derivatives and other obligations. As of March 31, that had been whittled down to $122 billion, according to the company.
The number of treading positions had fallen to 1,600, a reduction of 95 percent from the 35,200 positions the unit had in 2008.
“Over time, significant progress has been made to stabilize the company by reducing its risk profile and implementing an orderly restructuring plan,” the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which oversaw a portion of the government bailout, says on its website. “Many of the risk areas that brought AIG to the brink of failure have been addressed, or are in process of being addressed, including the orderly wind-down of AIG Financial Products.”
The company declared in 2011 that it had completed its active wind-down of the Financial Products unit’s legacy positions.

Downgraded: Greece Ousted from Index of ‘Developed’ Countries

Source: WSJ
The latest setback for Greece: MSCI Inc. MSCI -0.92% booted the euro-zone member from its index of developed countries.
The decision, announced late Tuesday, is the first time the index provider demoted a country from its “developed” to its “emerging-market” category since the launch of its flagship emerging-markets index in 1987.
It affirms what investors have believed for years. Multiple bailouts by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, a sharp contraction in gross domestic product and a still-large debt burden mean Greece now has more in common with Hungary than France.
MSCI, which estimates that almost $7 trillion of investments track its indexes, said Greece failed to qualify as a developed market based on several criteria, including the ease with which money managers can trade shares on the country’s stock market. About $1.4 trillion tracks the MSCI Emerging Markets Index.
While there is some debate as to how certain countries should be labeled, MSCI emphasizes size and accessibility of stock markets. Developed markets tend to have large stock markets and rules that encourage foreign investment, while the opposite is often true for emerging markets.

“Greece is not qualifying in terms of the size of the market,” Remy Briand, managing director and global head of MSCI index research, said in a conference call.
When it officially joins the MSCI Emerging Markets Index in November, Greece will have a 0.3% weighting, Mr. Briand said.
Greece’s stock market staged a rally last year and at the start of this year, but shares have sold off in recent weeks as investors have moved away from riskier assets globally. The FTSE Greece index has slipped almost 5% in the past month, according to FactSet.
The government continues to struggle with debt payments. It also is under pressure to raise money through asset sales, which are off to a weak start. On Monday, Greece didn’t receive any bids in the auction of its natural-gas monopoly, darkening the country’s financial outlook.
Greece has been an emerging market before. MSCI had Greece categorized as an emerging market until May 2001, when it was reclassified as a developed market shortly after adopting the euro.
Other countries saw promotions on Tuesday. Qatar and United Arab Emirates were moved to emerging-market status from the frontier category.
Tuesday’s moves by MSCI are “a reminder of the continued shift of economic power from the West to the East,” Thomas Costerg, an economist at Standard Chartered Bank, wrote in an email.
South Korea and Taiwan, however, will maintain their status as emerging markets, MSCI said. The firm has kept South Korea under review for a potential upgrade to developed-market status since June 2008, while Taiwan has been under review since June 2009.
MSCI classified Morocco as a frontier market, a step down from emerging market. MSCI said it may begin consultations with investors over whether Egypt should be excluded from its emerging-markets index because of foreign-exchange shortages in the country.

Cavemen of Manchester: Migrants from Eastern Europe live in squalor underground

Caverns above River Mersey being used by homeless migrants

Were once used as an air raid shelter by townspeople in Second World War

Highlights growing desperation of Eastern Europeans to live in Britain

Charity says some rough sleepers have fallen in river or suffered arson

Its network of caverns helped to shelter terrified townspeople from wave after wave of Luftwaffe bombing raids.
Seven decades on, the ancient system of caves is providing a  makeshift home to desperate migrants from Eastern Europe.
Attracted to Britain for a better life, they are living in squalor 20ft up a thickly wooded cliff above the River Mersey in Stockport.
Scroll down for video 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2340116/Cavemen-Manchester-Migrants-Eastern-Europe-live-squalor-underground.html

Squalid: An Estonian huddles up in a cave near Stockport that is strewn with rubbish and filth. For him it is home

Safe: Despite the filthy conditions in the cave, it is much more secure and comfortable than the street

Their plight underlines the growing lengths to which Eastern Europeans will go in order to stay in the country, which critics say will worsen when curbs on migration are lifted for Romanians and Bulgarians next year.

 

One of the cave-dwellers was an Estonian man who identified himself only as ‘KP’.
He would only say, ‘It is not good’ in broken English as he rooted through rubbish barely a stone’s throw from the M60 motorway.
Estonians, along with Poles and Czechs, gained access to British benefits two years ago but they cannot claim them without a permanent address.

Homeless people are forced to live in the caves near Stockport

Debris: The sleeping area of a homeless man in the caves, surrounded by piles of rubbish

Entrance: The cave network is just a few minutes' walk away from the Stockport town centre

Wilderness: The caves are precariously located 20ft above the River Mersey and are fairly inaccessible

According to homelessness  charity Wellspring, Stockport’s  sandstone caverns now hold up to four occupants at any one time.

Project manager Jonathan Billings said the number of people needing support has more than doubled to 140 in three years – with many from Eastern Europe.
He said some rough sleepers had fallen into the river or been  targeted by arsonists.

‘Nobody wants to see people  living in a cave,’ he said. The caves were reputedly dug by hand in the 17th century.

Parts were used as air raid shelters for up to 6,500 people during the Second World War and were recently reopened as a tourist attraction.

A resident said: ‘We used to play in them as kids, but they’re lethal. It’s shocking to think people are living in them in 2013.’
Last week the Mail reported how 50 Romanian migrants were living in makeshift shelters on a rubbish dump in Hendon, north London.

Camping out: Another area of the caves which has been used as a shelter by a homeless person

Hidden: The homeless seek out the caves because of the privacy they can provide

Entrance: A homeless man's belongings are visible from an opening above the cave system