Friday Reads

Good Morning and Happy Lunar New Year

The Egyptian revolution continues to be the top story around the world. We will continue to run live blog updates to give you the latest reliable news sources on the subject.  There’s a few stories on the economy that I’d like to share this morning beyond that topic.

First, Happy Lunar New Year!!

2011 is the Year of the Metal Rabbit.

Chinese astrologer Alvin Ang of Bazi Destiny foresees “the global situation may be affected by serious political change and global calamities.”

Hong Kong-based feng shui master Joseph Wong gives a different take. “This coming year everything will be better than last year,” he told CNN’s Pauline Chiou. “They will see business go upwards mostly, but take care with the shares and stocks. There will be some fluctuations in August and September.”

Fed Chair Ben Bernanke gave a speech at the National Press Club yesterday that indicated continuing concern about the ability of the current recovery to sustain any reasonable decrease in the unemployment rate.  He also indicated the need for a long term plan to deal with the Federal deficit.  There were a few mentions of the continuing need for QE and statements that the monetary policy to date had worked given the recovery of the equity markets.  He did sound a bit more upbeat than the last time we heard from him and while he acted like the recovery was slower than any one would wish, he did state that he felt it was becoming ‘self-sustaining’.

Here’s some analysis on our unemployment vis a vis the Bernanke Statements from The Economist.

The Fed’s forecast range for the unemployment rate in 2012 is 7.7% to 8.2%, and the Congressional Budget Office  forecasts an unemployment rate of 8.4% (this forecast dates to after the announcement of QE2, but isn’t meaningfully different from its forecasts from the summer of 2010). This would suggest that with QE2 in place, American unemployment is likely to be between 6% and 7% in 2012. That’s not full employment, but it’s pretty close. You can argue that more needs to be done (indeed, I think the Fed itself could do more). But it is worth noting that the Fed has put the American economy on a substantially better recovery path than it faced before (Scott Sumner would say it has returned the economy to the path off which it previously led it).A big risk is that the Fed will back away from its policy too quickly, thinking all is going well and worrying premptively about inflation. As Karl Smith says, today’s speech is somewhat reassuring on that front.

The NYT had an op ed up on Trade indicating that Republicans are trying to remove some provisions that now help workers retrain should they lose their jobs to overseas locations.  It’s worth reading just to see how truly Dickensian the Republicans seem to be these days.

Most Republican lawmakers claim they are pro-trade. Their principled position is evidently no match for parochialism and politics. Last month, a conflict over imported sleeping bags between a company in Alabama and a rival in Kentucky led Senate Republicans to block the extension of the Generalized System of Preferences, or G.S.P., which has granted preferential access to some $20 billion worth of imports from developing countries.

Now Senator Jon Kyl and his colleagues in the Finance Committee are threatening to block the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which provides income and training for American workers whose employers can’t compete with rising imports. It is due to expire on Feb. 12, and Mr. Kyl and company are refusing to extend it unless the White House promises to advance the long-pending trade deal with Colombia.

Speaking of Dickensian Republican policy, the GOP dropped the ‘forcible rape’ language from HR3.  The Hyde Amendment has long entertained the idiocy of letting one loud and obnoxious group of zealots deny Federal  funding of their personal pet peeve while the rest of us continue to fund all kinds of abominable projects. Tops on my opt out list  are renditions for torture and bail outs of Investment banks.  But, American Fetus Fetishists get special treatment.  At least this attempt at narrowing rape definitions is gone now.

House Republicans plan to sidestep a charged debate over the distinction between “forcible rape” and “rape” by altering the language of a bill banning taxpayer subsidies for abortions.

The provision in question, written as an exemption from the ban for women who become pregnant as a result of “forcible rape,” touched off a firestorm of criticism from women’s groups, and it gained enough attention to become the subject of a satirical segment on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

But a spokesman for the bill’s author, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), says the modifier “forcible” will be dropped so that the exemption covers all forms of rape, as well as cases of incest and the endangerment of the life of the mother.“The word forcible will be replaced with the original language from the Hyde Amendment,” Smith spokesman Jeff Sagnip told POLITICO, referring to the long-standing ban on direct use of taxpayer dollars for abortion services.

A real Democratic congress and president would’ve gotten rid of this stupid provision by now. However, here is something that if true will make me do the Snoopy dance.

The Obama administration is examining whether the new health care law can be used to require insurance plans to offer contraceptives and other family planning services to women free of charge.

Such a requirement could remove cost as a barrier to birth control, a longtime goal of advocates for women’s rights and experts on women’s health. But it is likely to reignite debate over the federal role in health care, especially reproductive health, at a time when Republicans in Congress have vowed to repeal the law or dismantle it piece by piece. It is also raising objections from the Roman Catholic Church and is expected to generate a robust debate about privacy.

The law says insurers must cover “preventive health services” and cannot charge for them. The administration has asked a panel of outside experts to help identify the specific preventive services that must be covered for women.

Administration officials said they expected the list to include contraception and family planning because a large body of scientific evidence showed the effectiveness of those services. But the officials said they preferred to have the panel of independent experts make the initial recommendations so the public would see them as based on science, not politics.

Many obstetricians, gynecologists, pediatricians and public health experts have called for coverage of family planning services, including contraceptives, without co-payments, deductibles or other cost-sharing requirements.

Will the Cult of the Angry Sky God get the ultimate veto on this too?

Well, back to the exercise equipment folks!  Bloomberg.com says ‘American Waistlines Expand Fastest Among Rich Nations’,

Americans grew fatter at a faster pace than residents of any other wealthy nation since 1980, during a period when obesity worldwide nearly doubled, researchers found.

Almost 10 percent of the world’s population was obese in 2008, according to studies published today by the medical journal The Lancet. The percentage of people with uncontrolled hypertension, or high blood pressure, fell, with high-income countries showing a larger drop. Cholesterol levels declined in North America, Australia and Europe, but increased in East and Southeast Asia as well as the Pacific region, researchers said.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?