As governments try to tackle huge structural budget deficits, one means of attack is to delay paying state pensions by gently raising the official state-retirement age. Protests are expected in Spain on Tuesday February 23rd against an official plan to lift the retirement age by two years to 67. Official retirement ages have failed to keep pace with rising life expectancy, making pensions increasingly unaffordable.

In a recenet report, the FDIC listed 702 banks with $403 billion in assets as “problem” banks in Q4, up from 552 banks with $346 billion in assets in Q3, and 252 and $159.4 billion in assets in Q4 2008. Not all problem banks will fail - and not all failures will be from the problem bank list - but this shows the problem is significant and still growing.

State and local government debt levels were relatively constant throughout the 1990s as governments used new tax revenues to pay down old debt. But since 2000, debt levels have been soaring, creating huge potential liabilities for taxpayers in the future.

Many states and cities are struggling under heavy debt loads built up over the past decade as governments boosted their borrowing substantially since 2000. At the same time, borrowing has consistently outpaced debt that was retired, pushing up the total debt-load that state and local governments face to $2.2 trillion today.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has just released its major report on tourism. The United States appears to have the highest international tourism receipts. Americans also spend a lot traveling to other countries. The country is second to Germany in outbound tourists.

With slower growth of the retired population, politically active youth and businesses freer to spend cash on campaigns, it is actually credible that businesses and young people might inflict noticeable political damage on a candidate who aims to pay for retirements with higher taxes, and help defend a candidate who considers Social Security or Medicare benefit cuts.

Although Internet usage at times appears widespread, latest U.S. Census data shows that subtantial parts of the population still lack home Internet, including 42 percent of all households headed by someone 55 and older, and one-third of households headed by someone under 25 years of age.

President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors has released the annual Economics Report of the President.  The economic projections in the report and form the baseline for the President’s budget and all Administration policy making through the year. We can learn a lot from these projections.

Many states managed to grow state spending in the last decade far faster than inflation and population growth, soaking up every new dime in bubble-generated tax revenue they could.   It may seem like states were forced to make a lot of hard decisions last year, but in fact they were sheltered from really dealing with the full measure of their own fiscal problems by large influxes of Federal “stimulus”... More

Reflecting both the waning influence of organized labor and a dismal economy, there were just five major work stoppages in 2009. That is the lowest number of events since the Labor Department began keeping records in 1947.

Over the last two years, as America has experienced the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, workers have been battered. Employment has fallen sharply, with the employment rolls shrinking 5 percent from their peaks and unemployment around 10 percent. Hourly compensation has approximately kept pace with inflation but has not risen significantly in real terms.However, this broad picture masks a sharp difference... More

Both the number of volunteers and the volunteer rate rose over the year ended in September 2009. About 63.4 million people, or 26.8 percent of the population, volunteered through or for an organization at least once between September 2008 and September 2009. In 2008, the volunteer rate was 26.4 percent.

In 2004, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the quasi-government mortgage giants, purchased 44 percent of all subprime mortgages-backed securities sold worldwide. That same year, home ownership rates in America peaked after a 15 year rise propelled by government efforts to expand ownership. Since then, rates have been declining steadily, as a recent Census report on 2009 discloses.

Revised BLS figures show that 65.435 million payroll employees in Dec 2009 were women, and only 64.996 million were men.

The green line in this graph shows deficits as proposed by President Obama last year.  The blue line shows deficits as proposed by President Obama this year.  The dotted yellow line shows the deficit consistent with holding federal debt (as a share of GDP) constant.We can draw five important conclusions from this graph.