The new jobs report (plus computer bleg)

Today’s job report was more interesting than the headline number suggested. There were 223,000 new jobs, and unemployment fell to 5.3%.  Yawn.  But beyond the headline:

1.  U-6 unemployment plunged to 10.5%

2.  Hourly wage growth slowed to 2.0% over the past 12 months

Unemployment fell very rapidly for about 2 years, but has been falling at 0.1% every 2 months for the past 8 months.  This is normal as we approach the natural rate.  However people then say, “What about U-6?”  The decline from 10.8% to 10.5% shows that U-6 is still falling rapidly, and will soon arrive in the 8% to 10% range considered normal for U-6.  (It was 10% in 1996, a normal year for the labor market.)

The LFPR rate is still weak, showing that it’s not just a cyclical problem.  Those workers are gone forever.

In the early part of 2015 there were signs of accelerating wage growth.  Hawks at the Fed worried about an upswing in inflation.  Liberals welcomed the news as representing long overdo gains for labor.  They are both wrong—there is no upswing in wages. The steady 2% wage gains we’ve seen for 6 years continues on. The Fed will not achieve its 2% inflation target on any sustained basis (other than oil price blips.)  The normal wage growth rate is about 3.5%.

Over at Econlog I explain how the Fed is putting too much weight on discredited Phillips Curve models.

PS.  Chris Giles and Alex Tabarrok each have excellent posts on Greece.  BTW, three days ago I assumed that a yes vote meant Syriza is gone, and a no vote meant Grexit.  Now people are saying that neither assumption is true.  Perhaps soon I’ll just tune out this issue, as I did the Israel/Palestinian issue 20 years ago, when I realized that every single press report about “important new developments” was a lie.  Nothing important has happened in Israel for many decades, and I have no intention of wasting time reading news reports on that country.  If Greece becomes like Israel, I’ll just stop caring.

PPS.  Anyone except Ray have any tips for a slow computer?  It’s an iMac, maybe 3 years old.  Should I take it in to get fixed, or is there a technique a computer novice like me can use at home.  (I tried reset on Chrome, and I deleted most of my files in downloads.)


Tags:

 
 
 

45 Responses to “The new jobs report (plus computer bleg)”

  1. Gravatar of Njnnja Njnnja
    2. July 2015 at 11:02

    Can you give more details about the iMac? CPU? RAM? OS version?

    Also, if you run Activity Monitor, can you see what processes are taking up CPU/RAM, and if you are using up all your CPU(s)/RAM?

  2. Gravatar of David Pinto David Pinto
    2. July 2015 at 11:11

    Daughter works for Apple, she would tell you to take it to the genius bar, or better, get a new computer.

    I have the mac I bought for her back in 2007. The last operating system upgrade caused it to be so slow I no longer want to use it. Eight years for a computer is pretty good, so I’m not complaining.

  3. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    2. July 2015 at 11:12

    Scott,

    how many tabs? how many chrome extensions?

    my advice, in chrome, go to this link and install Great Suspender. It turns off chrome tabs not being used on a timer. it works. link stays in place.

    Otherwise, you’ll want to max your RAM. Not hard to buy and install yourself with screw driver and two screws.

    If both those things don’t help, activity Activity Monitor and an inspection beyond your pay grade. But I think those two things help.

  4. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    2. July 2015 at 11:49

    When the second best economist funded by the future leader in VR pods, took over Greek Finances, I read his writing and thought for brief second:

    1. Varoufakis is a commie pretending to get tech (digital deflation).
    2. Varoufakis is a techie, pretending to to be a commie.

    I hoped and cheered for #2, and #1 won… read MR:

    http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/07/the-battle-for-greece.html

    I have said all along, the only way to truly measure Greece (and other countries / states / cities) should not be based on rates or debt, is about social status – the actual swagger – who gets the girls, houses, vacations (best of everything but a retirement bc they work till they die) – who is grateful to meet who – if a country/state/city gets this right, everything else is up for discussion.

    Note I don’t mean Corporatism, I mean the minimal admin digital based state, that reduces frictions from the consumer and small business level UP. The nature and size of the welfare state, vs. the military vs. the education system et al, is MEANINGLESS compared to simply thinking about govt as software.

    GaaP (Govt as a Platform)

    A caring human being needs to drive to pharmacy, pick up medicine, drop it off and make 15 minutes of chat with elderly person immobile at home and report that conversation making notes on it to a friends, family #feed and to a govt algorithm the cloud.

    I know what this costs, we all do. It’s called Uber. We even know the type of added value hire, they call themselves Social Media Experts, that extra #feed post is worth $1-2.

    If anybody in friends and family feed wants to check in / chat the lady on Dashcam (after a stroke a year ago, my grandma is CarolCam) for free after $100 camera.

    So anyway…

    IMO, Greece could likely get super favorable terms with bold action, like

    “we closed our state telecom, private sector mobile, broadband providers will only pull wire – Mobile will be and will only do Skype (voip) to the house.”

    It’s not hard to signal “WE GET IT!”

    But you can’t say it, you have to do it.

    And deep down, Greeks all know, some resent but all still know, that if they leave, this switch is either going to happen anyway, or they will wither further toward Venezuela.

    I really did think when the other Steam guy was yammering about NGDP, that he’d come up with some weird plan based on increasing private sector RGDP increased debt forgiveness.

    Like if he delivered pensions for the bottom 80% don’t get touched, and we’re shutting down all govt owned industry, nobody would CARE about debt and many even current acct balances.

  5. Gravatar of Kevin Kevin
    2. July 2015 at 11:57

    For a Mac, download the latest combo updater from Apple (https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1820?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US), and install that, instead of taking the upgrade via the app store.

  6. Gravatar of ChacoKevy ChacoKevy
    2. July 2015 at 12:08

    To everyone: How does Mac handle factory resets? Reinstall the OS like I would on a windows machine?
    When providing help to family members, I almost never ask them questions anymore. They either don’t understand what I’m asking or lie to save face from having done something naughty. What used to be my last option, a fresh installation of the operating system, is now my go to.
    Them: “I’m having computer issues”
    Me: “Oh yeah? Well, back up your stuff, cuz I’m bout to nuke your OS from orbit!”

  7. Gravatar of TallDave TallDave
    2. July 2015 at 12:09

    I suspect many of those workers would not have left if the world’s CBs had adopted NGDPLT in say, 2005. I really think the effect of bad policy has been underestimated.

    Re the computer — mine is actually older than yours and still going well after SSD swapout a couple years ago. If it’s not a virus, swapping an internal HD for SSD could give you a few extra years of good performance. I was really surprised how well that worked, I’m not a hardware guy but it was relatively easy to install (YMMV depending on PC make/model) and this is already two years longer than I thought I would keep this PC. Good luck, as Jarrod Lanier has said these issues have nontrivial economic costs.

  8. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    2. July 2015 at 12:17

    “Unemployment fell very rapidly for about 2 years”
    -Closer to one year-it began falling very rapidly in November 2013.
    “Nothing important has happened in Israel for many decades, and I have no intention of wasting time reading news reports on that country.”
    -Arafat died and Israel withdrew from Gaza and made Hezbollah withdraw from the border and has stopped even thinking of getting anything out of negotiations with anyone. And it made calling for boycotting the settlements illegal. That’s all that happened in the last twenty years.
    “In the early part of 2015 there were signs of accelerating wage growth.”
    -Wouldn’t the falling oil prices have given employers an excuse to slow nominal wage growth?

  9. Gravatar of benjamin cole benjamin cole
    2. July 2015 at 12:27

    Martin Feldstein, who has been predicting inflationary doomsdays since at least 2009, just predicted an inflationary holocaust due to rising wages. The Fed has to apply the monetary noose, insists Feldstein.

    2% YOY wage hikes?

  10. Gravatar of TallDave TallDave
    2. July 2015 at 12:48

    Also, check your “available” RAM (I hope Apple calls it the same thing). When computers run slow the culprit is often “swapping,” memory being stored on disk rather than RAM because RAM is full. A lot of times in Task Manager you can find processes that should have been shut down when the application closed (esp browsers, at least in Windows) that are still eating available memory.

  11. Gravatar of Bonnie Bonnie
    2. July 2015 at 15:02

    Have you always used Chrome on your Mac or is that recent? And is the computer generally slow? The reason I ask is because Google installs a bunch of tracking and data collection crap with Chrome that churns away even when you’re not browsing. With Google, nothing is free and they get their money’s worth from the data they collect from you. I wouldn’t use it.

  12. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    2. July 2015 at 15:44

    Well benjamin, maybe Feldstein was right after all. We now have our first Six Million Dollar Teen;

    http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Giants-give-6-million-signing-bonus-to-teen-6364002.php

    ‘The Giants did not merely dip their toes in the water Thursday on “opening day” for international free-agent signings. They dived into the pool off the 10-meter board, agreeing to a record $6 million signing bonus for a shortstop from the Bahamas.

    ‘The money goes to Lucius Fox, who celebrated the deal at his 18th birthday party just a few miles of ocean away from Marlins Park.’

    Who is projected as a major league outfielder without power!

  13. Gravatar of Gordon Gordon
    2. July 2015 at 16:06

    Do you have any Chrome extensions installed? Some (not many) generate revenue by using your cpu or your network bandwidth. One of the best examples of this is the Hola free vpn extension. And Chrome by default will start in the background when you start your computer. It will also remain in the background even if you close all the browser windows. Though you can turn this feature off via the Chrome settings.

    Also, are you good about applying updates to your computer? Adobe Flash has been experiencing the worst sort of security problems since the beginning of the year. If you don’t let updates apply automatically as soon as they are available, your computer could be compromised which would affect performance.

  14. Gravatar of Jason Smith Jason Smith
    2. July 2015 at 16:16

    I’d second activity monitor above.

    Also adding new memory isn’t that difficult of a task:

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT1423

  15. Gravatar of Daws Daws
    2. July 2015 at 16:52

    IMO the US should annex Greece off the waiver wire if they agree to structural reforms and give Greece and Puerto Rico special skilled immigration rules

  16. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    2. July 2015 at 17:42

    Njnnja, Sorry, I don’t know CPU. I believe the software is OS X Lion. I believe the RAM is 4 GB, but am not sure—does that sound plausible for a mid-2011 model? (My info sheet that came with the computer has a blank space after memory upgrade, and 4 GB seems to be the base.) Thanks for the tip.

    Everyone, Thanks for the tips. Money is not a big concern for me (compared to time), so perhaps an upgrade to 16 GB makes sense. I’ll also look into the other suggestions. I probably leave too many windows open.

    Patrick, You should see some of the new NBA contracts.

    Daws, I’d be willing to trade Puerto Rico and 2 second round draft picks for just the Greek Islands, you can keep the mainland.

  17. Gravatar of Ray Lopez Ray Lopez
    2. July 2015 at 18:07

    @sumner: “Perhaps soon I’ll just tune out this issue”…seems you’re good at that.

    @Morgan Warstler – I admire your enthusiasm, which is a requirement for being a frontman, but you, like Goldman Sachs (who advised Greece on cooking their books), really don’t get Greece (I am a citizen and live there, when I’m not in SE Asia, presently I’m in the Philippines – PH). Greece is an old country full of old people set in their ways. They are not just going to get up and dance to your tune anymore than granny on CarolCam is. Greece depends on expats sending back their money (as does the Philippines), tourism (which is inelastic to price, more or less, though Turkey has been making inroads, now getting 43M visitors a year vs GRE’s 20M; compare to Spain, France, Italy at 60-80M visits/yr), and they export olive oil (some of it to Italy where it’s repackaged), and cement (they have a plant in Mexico, Hercules I think, maybe in partnership with Cemex). They are not going to be aping the USA or Japan or Germany by making cars anytime soon (though they did try that with a kit car in the 1970s). So your “GRE, just be like the USA” solution will not work due to historical and cultural reasons. PS–come to the PH if you think GRE is kluge. I’ll show you kluge here. But the difference is: PH has a young and growing population where simple solutions work well, and “basic” is not an insult; Greece is old with a declining population. Lots of young growing bodies in PH means rapidly growing GDP with a simple and simplistic economy (one example among many: they don’t have different models of things here, just one basic model like the P200 Canon printer found only in PH and it’s very ‘basic’ but works. Numerous such examples. Supply is constrained by the leading families that control PH, but with a growing population this problem is masked).

  18. Gravatar of benjamin cole benjamin cole
    2. July 2015 at 18:09

    Patrick S—

    I hate free agency. Baseball teams should be teams.

    Forget principle and ideology.

    The designated hitter is solid waste.

  19. Gravatar of Njnnja Njnnja
    2. July 2015 at 19:07

    4 Gb should be decent, especially if it was OK before, but you can never have too much memory, and it is a really easy install on an iMac (at least on the 2008 vintage that I upgraded). Go to www,crucial.com and use their system scanner to see what kind of memory and how much you can get.

    Iirc, lion was particularly awful about “system process” or something like that using up tons of resources in what was supposed to be the background but actually took over even when you were active. Try the upgrade to Mavericks or Yosemite. Good luck!

  20. Gravatar of benjamin cole benjamin cole
    2. July 2015 at 19:10

    OT —
    And when are we going to see the woolly mammoths they keep promising? They keep saying they sequenced the DNA and they can hump an elephant and produce a woolly mammoth. Where is it?

    Add on I want hyperloops! Shut down national defense spending for a few years build a bunch of hyperloops and see if they work.

    If the loops don’t work then go back to wasting money on national defense and at least we’ll have that out of the conversation

  21. Gravatar of Jonathanh Jonathanh
    2. July 2015 at 21:12

    Scott, in the top left of your screen is an apple icon. Click that and choose “about this Mac” from the menu. It will tell you some basic statistics about your computer. Increasing your RAM and your hard drive to SSD will speed up your computer and allow you to use it for much longer. Meanwhile, you should reboot and make sure you have at least 10% free space on your hard drive and run weekly disk permission repair. Close all your programs and run ” disk utility”. Open disk utility, click on your hard drive and run “repair disk permissions” from the first aid tab. This can take several minutes so be patient and let it finish. Assuming no viruses or malware, your computer will run better after this.

    A 2011 iMac should also be capable of running the latest OS X operating system . If you decide to upgrade be sure to create a backup before proceeding. And check that your existing programs will be compatible.

    Good luck and thanks for all the educational posts!

  22. Gravatar of Don Geddis Don Geddis
    2. July 2015 at 21:56

    Dilbert has a solution to making your laptop lighter; perhaps that will help.

  23. Gravatar of benjamin cole benjamin cole
    2. July 2015 at 22:52

    Scott Sumner: if you have Craigslist in your area, a smart Apple-fixer will come to your door for $50 an hour…just get some references…in L.A. I had great luck 3 out of 4 times…offer to pay in cash as in US Grants…

  24. Gravatar of lysseas lysseas
    3. July 2015 at 00:34

    Dr Sumner, I believe both of your assumptions about the greek referendum are correct. The notion that a “no” does not mean exiting the euro, is feverishly supported by the greek government. In spite of Varoufakis himself claiming on TV – only a couple of months ago, when denying the possibility of referendum- that whatever the question, a referendum would in fact be about the euro and that asking in this way the greek people to choose would be unfair to them. But then again, he has claimed almost everything and its opposite, so…

  25. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    3. July 2015 at 04:25

    Njnnja, Thanks, that helps.

    Johnthanh, Very helpful, thank you.

    Don, I’d be dumb enough to try that, but it’s not a laptop. 🙂

    Ben, Good idea.

    lysseas, I hope so, I’d just like some clarity on this issue–they should decide one way or another.

  26. Gravatar of Blue Eyes Blue Eyes
    3. July 2015 at 04:40

    Bonnie, very useful tip. My Macbook burns through its battery even when the lid is closed. Now I think about it, it started about the time I switched to Chrome as my main browser, ditching the glitchy Safari.

    Thanks!

  27. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    3. July 2015 at 05:34

    Talldave, I agree that central banks damaged the workforce in 2008, by pushing some people toward retirement or disability. But I don’t see that group coming back–I hope I’m wrong.

    E. Harding. Wages tend to follow NGDP, not the CPI. So when the CPI rose sharply in 2007-08, wages didn’t follow because NGDP growth was not strong.

    Sorry, but I just don’t care about those Israeli data points you mentioned. Obviously by just reading the headlines I have a sense of what’s going on in Israel, but I no longer see any benefit from reading long journalistic reports. At least other chromic problems eventually get resolved (N. Ireland, Sri Lanka, etc.)

  28. Gravatar of Ray Lopez Ray Lopez
    3. July 2015 at 07:41

    OT – I hope Sumner’s revisionist history book on the early Fed that apparently is coming out this year contains at least a passing reference to the below. Somehow I doubt it. -RL

    ‘Monetary Policy and the Onset of the Great Depression’ (Dec. 2013 by Mark Toma, economics professor) – challenges Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s now-consensus view that the high tide of the Federal Reserve System in the 1920s was due to the leadership skills of Benjamin Strong, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In this new work, Toma develops a self-regulated model of the Federal Reserve, which stands in contrast to a conventional discretionary model. Given the easy redemption of dollars for gold and the competition among Reserve banks, the self-regulated model implies that the early Fed could control neither the money supply nor the price level. Exploiting an untapped data set, later chapters test the thesis of self-regulation by focusing on the monetary decisions of individual Reserve banks. The micro-based evidence indicates that “Reserve banks really did compete” – and that Benjamin Strong as decisive leader during the 1920s is a myth.

  29. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    3. July 2015 at 07:52

    Digital Deflation IRL, just because:

    https://medium.com/things-ive-written/we-live-in-the-future-041-4f833f8c475e

  30. Gravatar of collin collin
    3. July 2015 at 08:56

    One strange argument I had with my rightish wing in-laws is how can the US economy job market can be growing with so many disruptions in the world. I stated that the US economy acts in opposite of the global economy. If the global economy is trouble then everybody rushes to the US and if the global economy is stronger than the US weakens. In 1998, the Asian flu was terrible while the US had its strongest run since the Roaring Twenties. (This assumes the Bush Boom was the US getting sicker by the year.) Now with Greece bankruptcy, Russia/Ukraine sort of war and Middle East Civil wars, investors are heading for India, China and the US.

    Right now we are living in a strange labor market in which there are skilled labor shortages (think diesel mechanics) and real wages are not increasing.

  31. Gravatar of Matt Waters Matt Waters
    3. July 2015 at 10:17

    Tabarrok’s piece on MR didn’t sit right with me. It seemed to quote a Greek saying what amounted to “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate” for their own Depression.

    In modern American terms, many people attributed the 10% unemployment in 2009 to something like “because of these affordable housing laws and people using their houses as ATM’s, we need to go through this pain for the economy to adjust.” Actually only a small part of unemployment was due to the housing market’s decline. There really wasn’t a moral justification for many laid-off teachers, factory workers, etc. It was pure, unnecessary cyclical unemployment.

    That does NOT mean the laws surrounding the 2003-05 housing bubble were perfect. Even if the laws didn’t cause 10% unemployment, that does not mean the laws didn’t have other ill effects. For Greece, their ills have both the ECB’s monetary policy and their own structural policies to blame. Voting “yes” will not really hurt many of the people who caused Greek’s structural policies. Without significant cultural change, they will remain entrenched. But it will keep them on the Euro, i.e. the 1932 gold standard, ensuring continued Depression conditions.

  32. Gravatar of TallDave TallDave
    3. July 2015 at 10:48

    Scott — well, call me an optimist, but while some of that damage will be irreparable I do think the American economy can surprise a lot of people if we get monetary policy right.

    lysseas — Are Greeks starting to understand what a NO vote means? Food shortages certainly bring the point home, a disorderly exit is going to be very ugly in the short-term.

  33. Gravatar of Matt Waters Matt Waters
    3. July 2015 at 11:10

    “Food shortages certainly bring the point home, a disorderly exit is going to be very ugly in the short-term.”

    Why would there be food shortages? As far as I know, that should only happen if Greece implements price controls under the new currency.

  34. Gravatar of Vivian Darkbloom Vivian Darkbloom
    3. July 2015 at 12:02

    “Why would there be food shortages?”

    Here’s why—it’s already underway. Greeks are having a hard time importing stuff:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11714655/Greek-banks-down-to-500m-in-cash-reserves-as-economy-crashes.html

  35. Gravatar of Ashton Ashton
    3. July 2015 at 13:06

    Scott, I have a couple of unrelated questions I hope you don’t mind me asking, just for the sake of helping my own understanding.

    – You’ve stated before that your preferred policy at the ZLB is for the CB to pursue QE to the max, and for the Treasury to tell them to not worry about the capital risks. What kind of risks are involved here, and how would they have to be dealt with?

    – How would you respond to Mian and Sufi’s claims that a run-up in leverage on low net-worth households was essentially responsible for the Recession via a consumption shock following the depreciation of house prices?

    – Do you think excessive leverage is an issue at all? Should we undertake policies like tax reform to encourage saving, and implement capital requirements on banks?

    – If the Recession was mild in Dec 2007, and then made worse by tight money mid-2008, what was the original cause of the Recession? Was it also monetary disequilibrium?

  36. Gravatar of lysseas lysseas
    3. July 2015 at 13:35

    TallDave, I honestly cannot tell. I see people ready to believe the most absurd things, and as I mentioned before the government is working very hard to spread their message that a no will be an extra weapon in negotiating a better deal. Also I m afraid that the time between the January elections and now is too short for many people to accept that they have made a terrible mistake by voting for them no matter what has happened in between. We ll have to wait and see I guess. What I can say though is that food shortages have not been made apparent yet (just cash shortages for the moment…)

  37. Gravatar of Bw Bw
    3. July 2015 at 16:44

    Get a solid state drive. I have a 2008 MacBook that runs like a beauty. Only a $100 or so.

  38. Gravatar of TravisV TravisV
    3. July 2015 at 19:50

    Bob Murphy has a new post criticizing Prof. Sumner:

    http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2015/07/scott-sumner-to-fed-there-is-no-justification-for-listening-to-my-advice.html

  39. Gravatar of Ognian Davchev Ognian Davchev
    3. July 2015 at 21:40

    Scott you should either roll back Chrome (there is a bug in the latest version) or use Safari or FireFox.

    This is according to my brother who works in IT and uses a Mac.

  40. Gravatar of TallDave TallDave
    3. July 2015 at 23:43

    Are these reports accurate?

    http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/07/04/11/31/greece-facing-food-and-medicine-shortages-as-its-economy-crashes-ahead-of-sunday-s-referendum

  41. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    4. July 2015 at 06:53

    Ray, Nope, I don’t discuss it.

    Collin, What about 2008-09?

    Matt, I thought he was saying “liquidate statism”

    Ashton, You said:

    “You’ve stated before that your preferred policy at the ZLB is for the CB to pursue QE to the max, and for the Treasury to tell them to not worry about the capital risks. What kind of risks are involved here, and how would they have to be dealt with?”

    No, that is absolutely NOT my preferred policy. I prefer shifting to NGDPLT, which would probably mean that QE is not needed. But the central bank should provide whatever base money the public demands, when NGDP expectations are on target.

    I believe that under 5% NGDPLT QE would not be needed.

    You asked:

    “How would you respond to Mian and Sufi’s claims that a run-up in leverage on low net-worth households was essentially responsible for the Recession via a consumption shock following the depreciation of house prices?”

    That doesn’t explain why house prices fell. And it doesn’t explain why people would want to work less. Any explanation must account for the big fall in NGDP—and that means monetary policy. Everything else is a distraction, which might explain the relative performance of certain industries, or certain parts of the country.

    Yes, we have too much debt, and we should change our tax rules and banking regulations which strongly encourage debt and discourage equity.

    The Fed stopped increasing the monetary base from August 2007 to May 2008. That slowed NGDP growth and triggered the recession. Then money got much tighter in late 2008 as the Fed failed to accommodate a rise in demand for base money. They said (in September 2008) that they weren’t easing monetary policy because they were worried about inflation. The idea of a powerless Fed is a complete myth.

    Thanks Bw and Ognian.

    Travis, Bob never gives up. Gotta hand it to him.

  42. Gravatar of lysseas lysseas
    4. July 2015 at 07:10

    TallDave, yes they seem pretty accurate; i figure that by next week shortages will become obvious to the public. However the referendum will take place tomorrow.

  43. Gravatar of collin collin
    4. July 2015 at 08:40

    What about 2008 – 2009? Two things:

    1) Lags in economic movement. The one reason why I rationalized why the financial crisis was unavoidable is in 2008 the US was in denial how bad the housing crisis and shadow banking was. If the Fed had dropped the interest rate in 2008, oil goes to ~$200 and there is run on the dollar.

    2) In reality the US after the 2008 bust had an awful year in 2009 but grew more competitive compared to the world. The US energy started and Real wages in the form of benefits dropped a lot. (Employees did not see a dropped in wages but companies covered $500 – $1,000 of medical expenses.)

  44. Gravatar of DanC DanC
    5. July 2015 at 08:33

    as mentioned by Johnthanh the most frequent problem given the age of your Mac is a full hard drive. Get a backup hard drive, pretty cheap these days, and move files off the Mac.

    If using Yosemite go to Apple icon, About this Mac, go to storage tab, will tell you about your hard drive

    Lion is a similar procedure but I don’t remember it right now, start the same steps but maybe look under system report I think

    If that isn’y the problem try the disk utility system repair.

    You can download EtreCheck at http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck that checks what is going on with your Mac. It works on lion but is really designed to work with Yosemite.

    Might want to update to Yosemite after checking hard drive and disk utility.

  45. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    6. July 2015 at 05:25

    Thanks Dan

Leave a Reply