The Dow touched 13,000 today on news that the Greeks will be bailed out with another $140 billion, of course that money really goes to the big banks, not Greece. The new so-called bailout will only be delivered if the Greek government complies by the end of the month with a long list of austerity measures that will ensure the continued decline of their economy.
The Greeks must also prepare two state industries for handover to the pirates by June, and the banker appointed to be in charge of their government plans to literally loot the entire country. Absolutely every public asset of value is being sold off for a pittance to the corporate robber barons. The Communist Party of Greece is on the rise, their slogan could simply be, “We told you so.”
The President’s Report on the Economy came out on Friday and it contains an interesting graph. The Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps track of labor costs compared to the prices businesses charge, and they chart the product of the two factors as the “mark up over unit labor cost.” The year 1947 is used as the base line for this chart and the graph it uses doesn’t historically deviate far from that line. Earnings go down during recessions as you might expect, since employees still need to be paid while prices tend to slump, and then rebound above the line in the good times when prices rise.
This century has been different. Starting in 2001, the line has been moving steadily upward in the employer's favor, but during the Bush recession it only leveled off and didn’t decline. Since the end of the recession the graph began moving up again, and this time it’s going nearly straight up. In short, labor costs have fallen dramatically while prices have risen. This fits in with my contention that the unusually high unemployment claims every week (even as jobs are being created) are from the universal and deliberate effort to replace current employees with new, lower paid workers.