The Great Debate UK
from Reuters Investigates:
An economic giant’s Achilles heel
A year ago, Nick Carey went on a road trip around America for a project called "Route to Recovery" that took him to places hit hardest by the recession. Nick went to Saginaw, Michigan, this time for a follow-up special report on the manufacturing sector and structural unemployment: "Is America the sick man of the globe?"
One of the characters he met was Olen Ham, a retired GM worker and UAW member who is among the last of those who took part in the historic "Sitdown Strike" in 1936 that he says helped create America's middle class. You can hear from Olen in this video:
Manufacturing has borne the brunt of the lay-offs in recent years, as this graphic shows:
Here's another graph that shows how unemployment and manufacturing are closely linked.
from The Great Debate:
The death of the “punchbowl” metaphor
(James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
Don't expect the year-long rally in risky assets to be undermined any time soon by the Federal Reserve becoming concerned about inflation.
The old metaphor -- that the Fed's job is to take away the punchbowl just when the party starts getting good -- just doesn't apply in the current circumstances. That's not to say inflation isn't a threat in the medium term -- it is virtually a promise.
