US Politics Mega-thread - Page 986

On April 10 2014 15:54 Danglars wrote:
Clearly, the free market supporters would have to extract another mighty concession from the controlled markets crowd. Maybe "inequality" or "social" followed by any number of words. All in the interests of furthering the discussion of course.

(Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week to the lowest level in almost seven years, which could bolster views of an acceleration in job growth after a cold winter dampened hiring.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 32,000 to a seasonally adjusted 300,000 for the week ended April 5, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was the lowest level since May 2007, before the start of the 2007-09 recession.

"It's collaborating with the other signals we have been seeing, which is the jobs market is slowly improving. Some of the drop is normalizing from this winter's depressive effect," said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody's Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

U.S. stock index futures trimmed losses after the claims data. The dollar pared losses against the yen, while U.S. Treasury debt prices gave up some gains.

Economists had forecast first-time applications for jobless benefits falling to 320,000 for the week ended April 5.

Layoffs are trending lower and hiring is regaining some momentum after being held back by unusually cold weather, snow and ice storms in December and January.

Job growth averaged about 195,000 per month in February and March, with the unemployment rate holding at near a five-year low of 6.7 percent over that period.

The four-week moving average for new claims, considered a better measure of underlying labor market conditions as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell to 316,250 in the week ended April 5, down 4,750 from the previous week.

The claims report showed the number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of aid fell 62,000 to 2.78 million in the week ended March 29. That was the lowest level since January 2008.

(Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve's drive to wean Wall Street off risky funding sources is expected to bring more financial pain to the biggest U.S. banks in the coming months, analysts warned on Wednesday.

They said bank regulators' release this week of tough new limits on debt funding is just a preview of other rules that may have even more bite.

The eight largest U.S. banks must boost their capital levels by an estimated total of $68 billion to meet new limits on debt that regulators approved on Tuesday, a move designed to reduce banks' reliance on the type of risky financing that fueled the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

Goldman Sachs (GS.N) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N) could be most affected since regulators proposed a framework that is tougher on businesses like the selling of credit derivatives to protect against corporate defaults, according to Steven Chubak, a banking analyst at Nomura Securities.

Executives at some of the biggest Wall Street banks said in interviews that they began planning for the rules when they were proposed last year, and they expect to be in full compliance before the regulations take effect in 2018.

But analysts paid special attention to comments from Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo, who said on Tuesday the tough rules should spur regulators to set more funding limits.

Those proposed reforms include a surcharge for the biggest global banks and possibly additional capital rules for banks that rely on risky, short-term funding.

Fed officials also want banks to hold much more long-term debt to make it easier for regulators to unwind failing banks in a crisis.

"I call them the four horsemen of the apocalypse," said Greg Lyons, who leads the financial institutions group at the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, in reference to the leverage rules and the three other pending requirements.

Without insight into how tough these other rules will be, experts said it's hard to put a number on how much more capital banks will have to raise, or how banks may restructure their businesses to soften the blow.

"We've got all of these pieces but ... it's not clear we know where we're going overall, or what the world looks like when we get there," said Oliver Ireland, a partner with Morrison & Foerster in Washington.

On April 10 2014 23:45 RvB wrote:

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Well for all the lobbying the banks do it's not paying off at the moment :D.

On April 11 2014 04:27 GreenHorizons wrote:


One system being nonsense doesn't really have anything to do with the Soviet Union. I think it was you that had a good point about neoclassical economics. Economists talk about it like it was science, but it wouldn't even past muster in a middle school science class.

One of the first assumptions most economists make is dead wrong. Then they build most of their reasoning off of that easily disproved premise. Some of their models may closely resemble some real world situations but it's so far from science the comparison is laughable.

I've asked several economists and the liberals admit that it's a ridiculous notion. The conservative 'Smith' types still hold onto it like a newborn baby pretty much refusing to admit the prima facie fact that the assumption is wrong. They even undermine REAL scientific studies on human behavior in order to maintain their 'rational' myth.