Clinton Camp Says One-Fifth of Delegates Secured for Nomination

As Hillary Clinton's campaign seeks to project dominance in a field that could soon include Vice President Joe Biden, her top advisers are touting a decisive edge on a little-discussed metric: superdelegate commitments. 

At the Democratic National Committee meeting in Minneapolis, where Clinton spoke on Friday, senior Clinton campaign officials are claiming that she has already secured one-fifth of the pledges needed to win the Democratic presidential nomination. They come from current and former elected officials, committee officeholders, and other party dignitaries.

The campaign says that Clinton currently has about 130 superdelegates publicly backing her, but a person familiar with recent conversations in Minneapolis said that officials are telling supporters and the undecided in the last few days that private commitments increase that number to more than 440—about 20 percent of the number of delegates she would need to secure the nomination.

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After her speech, Clinton told reporters that her campaign's attention to delegate totals is about ensuring that her support from voters translates into the nomination. “This is really about how you put the numbers together to secure the nomination. As some of you might recall, in 2008 I got a lot of votes but I didn’t get enough delegates. And so I think it’s understandable that my focus is going to be on delegates as well as votes this time,” she said.

Clinton campaign aides at the DNC meeting are privately briefing uncommitted superdelegates there on their mounting totals as a way to coax them to get them aboard the Clinton train now. Campaign manager Robby Mook, chief administrative officer Charlie Baker, political director Amanda Renteria, and state campaigns and political engagement director Marlon Marshall are among the top Clinton aides in attendance.

Final numbers are still in flux, but current estimates peg the total number of delegates to next summer’s presidential nominating convention at about 4,491, meaning that a candidate would need 2,246 to win. The Clinton camp’s claim to more than 440 delegates means she’s already wrapped up the support of more than 60 percent of the approximately 713 superdelegates who, under party rules, are among those who cast votes for the nomination, along with delegates selected by rank-and-file voters in primaries and caucuses beginning next February. Delegate totals won’t be finalized until the DNC determines the number of bonus delegates awarded to states, a party official said.

To be sure, Clinton had a superdelegate edge early against Barack Obama in 2008, and superdelegates are free to change their allegiance at any time between now and next summer's convention. But Clinton is ahead of the pace she had eight years ago in securing these commitments, and her support from the core of the establishment represented by these superdelegates is arguably the most tangible evidence of the difficulty Biden would have overtaking her with a late-starting campaign.

While Clinton said earlier this week that Biden “should have the space and the opportunity to decide what he wants to do,” her campaign is at the same time flexing its muscles to stress the strength of her candidacy. The campaign this week unveiled its first endorsement from a sitting member of the Obama Cabinet, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who just happens to be a former governor of Iowa and who spent Wednesday touring the state with Clinton.

The Clinton campaign also released memos on Thursday touting the strength of its field operations in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. The memos include specific tallies of thousands of volunteer commitments, dozens of paid organizers, and offices opened, including 11 in Iowa.

Barring some major scandal or controversy, and given Hillary and Bill Clinton's long-standing ties to Democratic Party elites, overcoming her superdelegate edge would be quite a challenge for Biden or the major candidates already competing against her for the nomination, including Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The 300-or-so gap between Clinton's public and private superdelegate commitments derives mostly from state party officials who have yet to reveal their backing of the frontrunner, but have privately pledged to cast their convention votes for the former first lady, according to the person familiar with the campaign's tally.

In their Minneapolis discussions intended to persuade additional uncommitted superdelegates to commit to Clinton, her team is taking care not to mention Biden, but the message is clear: Much of the party establishment is supporting Clinton and the math is in her favor. In 2008, Clinton’s team made a version of this argument before being overtaken by Barack Obama. After Obama took the lead in overall delegates, his campaign began to make a comparable argument about the mathematical inevitability of his ultimate victory.

The attention to delegate counts, Clinton said Friday, was the “result of the lessons that I learned the last time –how important it is to be as well-organized and focused from the very beginning on delegates and those who are superdelegates."

Via: Bloomberg

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A Brutal Week in Markets, But What Comes Next?

Investors around the world will be looking to next week with some anxiety as they lick their wounds. A brutal week of losses was accentuated by an unpleasant close for the U.S. stock markets that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge more than 500 points (3 percent) for the day and taking it into correction territory, or down more than 10 percent from its last high. The losses for the week were accompanied by even larger ones elsewhere, including emerging-market currencies and oil. 

In assessing what lies ahead, investors would be well advised to consider six major factors that have brought markets to this uncomfortable point. 

​1. Unlike some previous episodes -- including the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2013 "taper tantrum," as well as those associated with euro-zone concerns -- the catalyst for this market retreat came from outside the developed world. It largely reflected concerns about slowing growth in emerging economies (China in particular, but also Brazil, Russia and Turkey), compounding the entrenched economic sluggishness in Europe and Japan. 

​2. Global growth concerns were intensified by the struggles policy makers in emerging markets are having in stabilizing their domestic finances and limiting further damage to their economies. Again, China is under the spotlight given questions about whether government interventions have stabilized its domestic stock market.

​3. The impact of lower global growth was particularly painful for other markets that already were under pressure from developments on the supply side. As such, the plunge in oil prices highlighted the extent to which the market's new de facto swing producer -- the U.S. -- doesn't play the same role that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries did at the height of its power. 

​4. Exports from emerging economies, particularly raw materials producers, are most at risk from the combination of slowing growth and lower worldwide commodity prices. Accordingly, the market carnage was greatest in emerging-market currencies, pushing losses to levels beyond what was experienced during the global financial crisis in 2008. And these markets are technically the most prone to overshoot, with significant and adverse spillover effects on other markets. 

​5. Because some portfolios are designed to unwind during turmoil and heightened volatility, financial markets slipped into the destabilizing grip of contagion -- with the risk of overshooting. The VIX, commonly referred to as the fear index, soared. Richly valued stocks, particularly in the tech industry, were battered. This inevitably undermines the buy-on-dips mentality, leading investors with dry investing powder to wait on the sidelines for now. 

​6. There is less confidence that central banks -- repeatedly the markets’ best friends -- can act as immediate and effective stabilizers. Moreover, the Federal Reserve’s minutes released on Wednesday -- in which the central bank had no choice but to seem wishy-washy --highlights the policy challenges in a world that has come to over-rely on central banks. Indeed, the cult of central banks has driven a wedge between asset prices and  economic fundamentals. 

Yes, the People’s Bank of China could loosen monetary policy; and, yes, the Fed could hold off hiking rates in September. But the impact on global growth would likely be limited unless these steps are accompanied by a more comprehensive policy response. Otherwise, prices need to fall a lot more before wary investors get off the sidelines.

Via: Bloomberg View

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Money Manager David Kotok: Plunging Oil Could Fall to $15

Tumbling Oil Prices have hit six-year lows, and Cumberland Advisors' David Kotok predicts that could plunge even lower.

"We could go back to $15 or $20, this is a downward slope, we don't know a bottom," the influential money manager told Bloomberg TV. A year ago, oil was about $100.

U.S. oil prices hit their lowest in almost six and a half years on Wednesday after U.S. data showed an unexpected rise in crude stockpiles.

U.S. crude oil futures, also known as West Texas Intermediate (WTI), were down $1.20 at $41.42 a barrel by 1450 GMT, after touching a low of $41.18. The front-month, September, U.S. crude oil contract is due to expire on Thursday. North Sea Brent crude was down 90 cents at $47.91 a barrel.

Oil has tumbled more than 30 percent since this year’s peak close in June amid signs that producers are maintaining output even after a surplus pushed prices into a bear market.

A further decline to $15 a barrel would be huge. Oil hasn't traded that low since early 1999, when gasoline at the pump was selling for under $1 a gallon, CNNMoney reported.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has pumped above its 30 million-barrel-a-day quota for more than a year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Angola plans to ship 1.83 million barrels a day in October, the most since November 2011, according to a preliminary loading program obtained by Bloomberg. That compares with 1.77 million barrels a day from Africa’s second-largest crude producer in September.

Meanwhile, Iraq must increase oil output to meet the needs of its growing population and provide services, Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi said on his website. The nation’s production climbed to a record 4.18 million barrels a day in July, according to the International Energy Agency.

Via: Newsmax

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Is Iran luring Obama into a trap in Iraq?

Bloomberg View’s Eli Lake and Josh Rogin recently reported that U.S. troops are sharing a base with Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq, where Tehran’s notorious proxies are spying on U.S. operations and personnel at their leisure to prepare the ground for future crimes. This worrying revelation is the latest manifestation of a misconception about the Iranian regime’s nature and its intentions in Iraq -- an error that can prove to be fatal if not corrected.

In his interviews with different media outlets, U.S. President Barack Obama has made assertions about the Iranian regime being able to become a successful regional power and help stabilize the Middle East. Also, in his secret missives to the Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Obama has promised that in the event of a final accord on Iran’s contested nuclear program, the U.S. is willing to cooperate with Iran in the fight against the Islamic State, an extremist group that is rampaging through the Middle East and has cut itself a caliphate out of territory straddling Iraq and Syria.

The assumption that Tehran can help in the fight to counter the advances of the IS stems from the shortsighted thinking that as a Shiite extremist powerhouse, the Iranian regime is the archenemy of the Sunni extremist Islamic State.

But a quick review of Iran’s actions in recent years proves that Tehran’s foreign policy in the region is not based on ideological tenets, but rather on setting up short-term -- and sometimes contradictory -- alliances to further its ultimate end: keeping the Middle East in a state of instability in order to remain the main power broker and hegemon of the region.

Via: American Thinker

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The Shale Industry Could Be Swallowed By Its Own Debt

The debt that fueled the U.S. shale boom now threatens to be its undoing.

Drillers are devoting more revenue than ever to interest payments. In one example, Continental Resources Inc., the company credited with making North Dakota’s Bakken Shale one of the biggest oil-producing regions in the world, spent almost as much as Exxon Mobil Corp., a company 20 times its size.

The burden is becoming heavier after oil prices fell 43 percent in the past year. Interest payments are eating up more than 10 percent of revenue for 27 of the 62 drillers in the Bloomberg Intelligence North America Independent Exploration and Production Index, up from a dozen a year ago. Drillers’ debt ballooned to $235 billion at the end of the first quarter, a 16 percent increase in the past year, even as revenue shrank.

“The question is, how long do they have that they can get away with this,” said Thomas Watters, an oil and gas credit analyst at Standard & Poor’s in New York. The companies with the lowest credit ratings “are in survival mode,” he said.

The problem for shale drillers is that they’ve consistently spent money faster than they’ve made it, even when oil was $100 a barrel. The companies in the Bloomberg index spent $4.15 for every dollar earned selling oil and gas in the first quarter, up from $2.25 a year earlier, while pushing U.S. oil production to the highest in more than 30 years.

“There’s a liquidity issue, and you start looking at the cash burn,” Watters said.

Distressed Debt

Continental borrows at cheaper rates than many of its smaller peers because its debt is investment grade. S&P assigns speculative, or junk, ratings to 45 out of the 62 companies in the Bloomberg index.

“Our cash flow easily covers interest costs, and we expect to continue maintaining our investment-grade credit rating as commodity prices recover,” said Warren Henry, a spokesman for Oklahoma City-based Continental.

Almost $20 billion in bonds issued by the 62 companies are trading at distressed levels, with yields more than 10 percentage points above U.S. Treasuries, as investors demand much higher rates to compensate for the risk that obligations won’t be repaid, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

“Credit markets have played a big role in keeping the entire sector alive,” said Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd., a consulting firm in London.

So far this year, S&P lowered the outlook or downgraded the credit of almost half of the 105 U.S. exploration and production companies that it rates, according to a May report.

Via: Bloomberg

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ANALYSIS FINDS COST OF OBAMACARE WEBSITE IS WAY MORE THAN ANYONE PREDICTED

The to-date cost of the glitchy Obamacare website has topped $1 billion, easily surpassing the $394 million originally estimated by the Government Accountability Office, according to aBloomberg Government analysis.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (Getty Images)

It’s important to note that the Bloomberg analysis runs through Sept. 30, just before the 16-day partial government shutdown. So the final cost may be more than $1 billion.

Perhaps more shocking than the site’s likely price tag is the fact that roughly one-third of that amount was spent on contracts awarded in the six months leading up to the site’s disastrous Oct. 1 launch – when those at the top were reportedly aware of the site’s many problems.

“The torrent of late spending — almost $352 million of $1 billion in awards to the top 10 contractors — indicates the magnitude of the work still to be done as opening day approached,” Bloomberg’s Peter Gosselin reported, “and helps explain the information technology problems that have dogged the exchange system since its launch.”

The Bloomberg figure may come as a shock to many Americans. Indeed, despite the GAO stating clearly that its data was incomplete, the $394 million estimate has been widely reported as the official cost of the launch of the Affordable Care Act.

Via: The Blaze

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Black Friday sales up just 2.3%

And that's with Thanksgiving day added to Friday's blowout.

How "black" retailers books are going to look is the real question. Prior to Black Friday, most big box retailers were bemoaning the fact that in order to get people in the stores, they used deeply discounted items. Typically, shoppers cherry pick the sale items and ignore the rest, reducing margins.

Bloomberg:

Retailers offered more and steeper deals on merchandise from flat-screen televisions to crockpots that, while luring shoppers, may ultimately hurt fourth-quarter earnings. Many consumers showed up prepared to zero in on their favored items while shunning the impulse buys that help retailers' profits.

"You could get the same deals online as you could get in the store, and yet there were still a ton of people out there," Charles O'Shea, a senior analyst at Moody's Investors Service in New York, said in an interview. Going out to stores, "is part of the experience," he said.

About 97 million people planned to shop online or in stores on Friday, with about 140 million intending to do so Thanksgiving through Sunday, the National Retail Federation said. That's down from 147 million last year.

Via: American Thinker

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Rand Paul Warns: FDA Is ‘Coming After Your Doughnuts’

In some of Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) first non-plagiarism news in a while, the Kentucky senator warned on Monday that the Federal Drug Administration’s new ban on trans fats was another intrusion by the nanny state, this one aimed at your morning indulgences.

“They’re coming after your doughnuts!” Paul told a crowd at The Charleston Meeting in South Carolina, in addition to taking a shot at New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempted soda ban.

“Some unelected bureaucrat has banned trans fat,” he continued. “So I say, we need to line every one of them up. I want to see how skinny or how fat the FDA agents are that are making the rules on this. Not only that, any of them with a BMI over 16, or whatever the number you’re supposed to have, I want to see them on the treadmill, and I want to see someone from OSHA lashing them while they’re working on the treadmill.”

“If we’re going to have a nanny state, and everybody’s gotta eat the right thing, and you can’t eat a doughnut, maybe we ought to enforce it on the government workers first,” Paul said.

New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chait was quick to rebut Paul’s charges:

They are not, in fact, coming after your doughnuts. Trans fats are not essential to make doughnuts or, really, anything. Some restaurants still use trans fats because, even though they’re incredibly bad for you, they’re longer-lasting and slightly cheaper than other oils, and very few customers would ever know the difference.

Via: Mediaite.com

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[VIDEO] NRA beat Bloomberg anti-gun group in 65 of 67 Va. delegate races

TOPICS: WASHINGTON SECRETS GUN CONTROL NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION KEN CUCCINELLI NEW YORK CITY CAMPAIGNS 2013 VIRGINIA GOVERNOR RACE MICHAEL BLOOMBERGNearly 10 percent of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun group Mayors Against Illegal Guns retired from their job or were sacked in Tuesday’s elections, including the organization’s two leaders: Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino.

Some 95 key members of the group that targets and criticizes lawmakers backed by the National Rifle Association are losing their title of “mayor.” According to an election review of Bloomberg'smembership list of about 1,000, three quit the group, 69 retired from their jobs, and 23 were rejected by voters.

On the retirement list: Bloomberg and Menino.

Among the defeated members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns were the mayors of Annapolis, Md.; Omaha, Neb.; Atlantic City, N.J.; Rochester, N.Y.; and Seattle, Wash.

Guns and Bloomberg's group were issues in some of the campaigns where the incumbents were defeated. In Chambersburg, Pa., newly-elected Republican Mayor-elect Darren Brown declared that among his first moves will be unhooking the town from the anti-gun group.

"The very, very first thing I'd like to do is get Chambersburg off the Mayors Against Illegal Guns list," Brown said.

What's more, while Bloomberg's Independence USA PAC can claim a victory in its campaign and advertising against Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, a review of all NRA-endorsed candidates in the state show that the mayor had virtually no impact.

For example, of the 67 NRA-endorsed candidates for the Virginia House of Delegates, 65 won their election on Tuesday.

What’s more, after the 2011 legislative elections in Virginia, there were 63 states delegates rated an "A" by the NRA and that number grew to 65 on Tuesday.

Via: Washington Examiner

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Health Consumers Finding Out They Were Sold a Lemon

I was going to write a piece about this silly graph that has been making the rounds, purporting to show that only a few people stand to lose from Obamacare:

But Josh Barro beat me to it:

Unfortunately, except the 80% largely unaffected, these numbers are garbage.

According to Lizza, Gruber marks 14% of the population as clear winners because they are uninsured now but gain access to affordable coverage. That would be about 45 million people as of 2016, when the Affordable Care Act is in full swing.

But according to the Congressional Budget Office,the law will only increase insurance coverage by about 26 million people through 2016, or 8% of the population. That's the group that can be called "clear winners"; 14% is too aggressive an estimate.

Another 30 million people in the U.S. (9%) will still be uninsured in 2016.

Actually, he’s still too kind: A lot of folks with employer-sponsored insurance are also going to see their insurance changed, though not quite as quickly. And not “The benefits will get so much more awesome!” but “The Cadillac tax kicked in and we had to drop most of our plans except for the ones with high deductibles.” A friend who sits on the benefits committees of two organizations says that their experts predict that pretty much all plans will end up being of the “consumer-driven” (read: high-deductible) model once the so-called Cadillac tax kicks in.

Via: Bloomberg

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Insurers Now “Scared to Death” of Obamacare

Bloomberg has a must-read story this morning highlighting yet more faults with Obamacare’s exchanges. Specifically, the faults in the exchanges’ computer software aren’t just hitting consumers trying to shop for plans—they’re hitting insurers as well:

Insurers are getting faulty and incomplete data from the new U.S.-run health exchange, which may mean some Americans won’t be covered even after they sign up for an insurance plan.…The companies are receiving electronic files that can’t open or have so much missing information on new enrollees they’re unusable, the consultants said.

Some insurers have been forced to fix entries by hand, said Bob Laszewski, an insurance-industry consultant based in Arlington, Virginia.

“If we don’t see substantial improvement by the end of this week, then I would throw up the yellow flag,” said Dan Schuyler, a consultant advising states and insurers on the exchanges. “If we don’t see it in the next two to three weeks, it’s time for red flags. The concern is some people could get to Jan. 1, and not have coverage.”

Last week, the Administration claimed that heavy volume was the prime cause of the exchanges’ delays. But today’s Bloomberg report, as with other news reports over the weekend, all suggest bigger issues with the federal data hub and other elements of the IT infrastructure needed to support enrollment.

Via:The Foundry

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A Truly Smart Idea Republicans and Democrats Actually Agree On (No, Seriously)

REPORT: U.S. federal gov't 'fiscal gap' $200 trillion!

Worried about the economic future of your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren? Brace yourself for a big number. By one prominent economist’s calculation, the U.S. federal government faces a long-term “fiscal gap”—the difference between projected future expenditures and receipts—of about $200 trillion.

This sounds like the kind of thing that’s embraced by deficit hawks and small-government types on the Right and strongly resisted by most Democrats. In fact, the fiscal gap is a nonpartisan accounting concept. Twelve winners of the Nobel prize for economics have endorsed a bill to require the federal government to do an official annual calculation of the fiscal gap (as opposed to the $200 trillion figure, which is a rough and unofficial estimate). The luminary endorsers of the bill, who rarely find common ground on political issues, include liberal Kenneth Arrow and conservative Robert Lucas.

The existence of a huge fiscal gap says America is spending beyond its means, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the government needs another big round of cuts, at the expense of social programs and the military, when the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.

Some spending pays for itself in the long run by strengthening the economy’s ability to generate growth and tax revenue. Education and infrastructure are potential examples. Increasing that kind of spending can actually shrink the long-term fiscal gap.

Via: Bloomberg, Business Week

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Electric Car Battery Maker A123 FIles for Bankrupcy

 

A123 Systems Inc. fell as much as 16 cents, or 70 percent, to 7 cents a share in over-the-counter trading as of 9:43 a.m. Photographer: Jeffrey Sauger/Bloomberg

 

The filing may fuel a debate over government financing of alternative-energy and transportation businesses. Federal grants and loans to companies including A123, Fisker Automotive Inc. and Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA) have drawn scrutiny from congressional Republicans following the September 2011 bankruptcy filing of solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC two years after it received a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Energy Department.

“This action is expected to allow the company to provide for an orderly sale,” A123 said in a press release. Johnson Controls plans to acquire A123’s automotive-business assets in a deal valued at $125 million and will provide financing of $72.5 million to support A123’s operations, according to the release. A deal to sell a majority stake to a Chinese company fell through, A123 said.

The Energy Debate Continues at www.bloomberg.com/sustainability

The company listed assets of $459.8 million and debt of $376 million as of Aug. 31 in Chapter 11 documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware.
The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company said yesterday it expected to fail to make an interest payment due yesterday on $143.8 million of notes expiring in 2016.

Largest Shareholders

A123’s largest shareholder is Heights Capital Management Inc. of San Francisco, with 12.5 million shares, or a 7.3 percent stake, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. IHI Corp., based in Tokyo, has 8.45 million shares, or about 5 percent, and General Electric Co., based in Fairfield, Connecticut, holds 7.37 million shares, or about 4.3 percent.

The 30 largest consolidated creditors without collateral backing their claims are owed a total of more than $161 million, according to court papers. U.S. Bank NA, as trustee, is listed as the largest unsecured creditor with a claim of $142.8 million, according to court papers. Hudson Bay Capital Management LP has a claim of $2.8 million, Jabil Circuit Inc. has a claim of $1.7 million and Hydro Quebec has a claim of $1.5 million.

Via: Bloomberg

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Obama Has Left The Economy And The Middle Class Buried Under The Weight Of His Failed Policies

OBAMA HAS PRESIDED OVER A RECORD PERIOD OF ECONOMIC STAGNATION

Since Obama Took Office, The Nation Has Lost 61,000 Jobs And The Unemployment Rate Has Remained At Or Above 7.8 Percent (What The Rate Was When Obama Took Office) For 45 Straight Months. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 10/5/12)

• Jim Pethokoukis: "10.7%: Unemployment Rate If Labor Force Participation Rate Was The Same As When Obama Took Office" (Jim Pethokoukis, Twitter Feed, 10/5/12)
• By This Point Obama's Advisers Predicted The Unemployment Rate Would Be Near 5.4 Percent. (Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, "The Job Impact Of The American Recovery And Reinvestment Plan," 1/9/09)

• Under Obama, The Nation Has Lost 1,035,000 Construction Jobs And 610,000 Manufacturing Jobs. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 10/5/12)

• The Manufacturing Sector Shed 16,000 Jobs In September And 22,000 Jobs In August. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 10/5/12)

Former Obama Council Of Economic Advisers Chairman Austan Goolsbee Said The Jobs Numbers "Need To Be A Lot Better." FORMER OBAMA COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS CHAIRMAN AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: "You want to take multiple months to take an average, that's far more accurate than any one month. If you look at the last few months, it's been okay. We should take some heart in that the numbers are improving but they're not improving fast enough. They need to be a lot better. I mean if you look around the world, I think one of the things to note is, we're not growing that fast, and we're one of the fastest growing of all the advanced countries. This is a pretty tough spot that the entire advanced economic world is in, especially in Europe, and so that's just a big weight that we're trying to get off. We're making slow progress but it's got to be faster." (CNBC's "Squawk Box," 10/5/12)

• "The Economy Is Growing At The Same Sluggish Pace It Has Been Since The Spring." "Those figures are roughly in line with economists' forecasts, and although the revisions were positive, the economy is growing at the same sluggish pace it has been since the spring." (Annalyn Censky, "September Jobs Report: Unemployment Rate Tumbles," CNNMoney, 10/5/12)
• "The Country Generally Needs At Least 150,000 New Jobs Each Month Just To Keep Up With Population Growth." (Annalyn Censky, "September Jobs Report: Unemployment Rate Tumbles," CNNMoney, 10/5/12)
• "That's Hardly Fast Enough To Recover All The Jobs Lost Since 2007." "That's hardly fast enough to recover all the jobs lost since 2007. Of the 8.8 million jobs cut during the recession, about 4.3 million have been added back. The Labor Department signaled last week that it may revise the job gains higher, but even so, the job market still has a long way to go before it's fully healed." (Annalyn Censky, "September Jobs Report: Unemployment Rate Tumbles," CNNMoney, 10/5/12)

CNBC's Brian Sullivan: "It's Not Good News For The Economy." CNBC'S BRIAN SULLIVAN: "It's not good news for the economy because as we've talked about you really need 125,000 jobs created a month to keep up with population and immigration growth." (MSNBC's "Morning Joe," 10/5/12)

• Sullivan: "The Labor Force Participation Rate At 65.6% Rate Is Awful." MSNBC'S JOE SCARBOROUGH: "Again just to push back with you though, Brian, the only reason that number went down below 8 is because, not because we're adding jobs to bring the unemployment rate down but because people have stopped looking for work, right? CNBC'S BRIAN SULLIVAN: "I agree with that, the labor force participation rate at 65.6% rate is awful." (MSNBC's "Morning Joe," 10/5/12)

The Average Duration Of Unemployment Has More Than Doubled From 19.8 Weeks To 39.8 Weeks. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 10/5/12)

• There Are Currently 802,000 Unemployed Workers That Have Given Up Looking For Work. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 10/5/12)

The Real Unemployment Rate, Including Those That Are Working Part-Time Due To Economic Reasons, Is At 14.7 Percent. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 10/5/12)

There Are Currently 23.2 Million Americans That Are Either Unemployed, Underemployed Or Have Given Up Looking For Work. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 10/5/12)

• There Are Currently 12.1 Million Unemployed Workers. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 10/5/12)
• The Number Of Workers Working Part-Time For Economic Reasons Is 8.6 Million. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 10/5/12)
• There Number Of Workers Marginally Attached To The Labor Force Is 2.5 Million. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, Accessed 10/5/12)

 Via: GOP.com

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More Americans now commit suicide than die in car crashes as miserable economy takes its toll

Suicide is a bigger killer than car crashes, according to an alarming new study.

The number of people dying from suicide has drastically increased, while car accident deaths haven lessened, making suicide the leading cause of injury death.

Suicides via falls or poisoning have risen significantly and experts fear there could be en more going unrecognised, specifically in cases of overdose.

The number of car crashes has declined, while suicides have increased

'Suicides are terribly under-counted,' said Ian Rockett, author of the study, published on Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health.

'I think the problem is much worse than official data would lead us to believe. We have a situation that has gotten out of hand.'

 

More...

• Tony Scott 'left $1million estate to wife and children' before committing suicide
• Horror at New York zoo as man, 25, is brutally mauled by a TIGER after leaping into its den from monorail in bizarre suicide attempt
• Two British soldiers killed in 'suspected suicides' on bases in southern Afghanistan

He added that his goal is to see the same attention paid to other injuries as has been paid to traffic injuries.

The results were compiled using National Centre for Health Statistics data gathered from 2000 to 2009. 

Researchers noted a 25 per cent decrease in car accident deaths, medicalxpress.com reported, while deaths from falls rose 71 per cent, from poisoning 128 per cent and from suicide 15 per cent.

Former U.S. Senator Gordon Smith spoke at a news conference to launch the suicide prevention programme

Higher automobile standards were credited for the traffic deaths drop, with harsher penalties for underage drinking and failing to wear seat belts named as contributing factors.

Previous research has suggested that suicide rates go up during recessions and times of economic crisis.

'Economic problems can impact how people feel about themselves and their futures as well as their relationships with family and friends,' Feijun Luo of CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention told Bloomberg.

'Prevention strategies can focus on individuals, families, neighborhoods or entire communities to reduce risk factors.'

The shift makes suicide the most frequent cause of injury deaths, followed by car crashes, poisoning, falls and murder.

The study also looked at gender and race, concluding that fewer women die from the top four causes than men, while Hispanics have fewer car crashes and suicides than whites but a higher murder rate.

In 2009, more than 37,000 Americans took their own lives, a number that the government and private groups such as Facebook are fighting to lower.

Via: Daily Mail

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