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The current economic expansion in the U.S. in April 2014 is at 58 months from the beginning of recovery in 2009. In this exceptional account Josh Zombrun of WSJ compares the current expansion to previous expansions since 1950, with the views of experts such as Stan Hall of the NBER committee, which studies turning points. This expansion is forecast to go for 90 months into 2016 by the U.S. Federal Reserve, and 102 months into 2017 by the CBO. Sooner or later, says Stan Hall, some adverse unpredictable event takes place that ends the expansion. So far the expansion has been slow and protracted, as predicted by economists Reinhart and Rogoff from previous financial crises in the last century, giving it room to grow as corporate earnings continue to improve. Fed chairwoman's sense of slack in the economy also provides room for employment and incomes to grow in the later stages of the expansion. This is good news for the emerging market economies such as India and China, and for the European Union, faced with slowing growth. So how does this expansion compare with earlier ones. The expansion of the 1991-2001 of the tech boom was 120 months, 1961-1969 of the Sixties 106 months, 1982-1990 of the Reagan era 92 months. The controversial one on shaky foundations is the recent housing boom 2001-2007 of 73 months ending in a huge bust with the 2008 financial crisis. The shorter expansions are the 1975-1980 Post-Vietnam one for 58 months, and the 1970-1973 spurt before the OPEC price surge. Figures are from the NBER, CBO and the Federal Reserve's Summary of Economic Projections....

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Washington Post editorial on the Obama Georgetown speech of April 13, 2009. It questions whether President Obama has the candour and courage to tackle the tough issues of deficit reduction and entitlement reform. New healthcare spending for coverage itself will add to entitlement, and it says some of the savings mentioned by the President are phony or already needed for new spending for the economic recovery and health care. At the same time the paper gives Obama good marks for his clarity and grasp of the crisis and steps for recovery, and the policy agenda in the areas of health care, energy and education. The questions about courage and candor also raise all the questions about facing upto the facts about insolvent banks that Krugman, Rosenfeld, the Economist and others have raised. Is Obama dodging the hard choices, is he dithering? On the toughest issues like foreclosures, insolvent banks, global regulation pushed by the Europeans, will he end up making inadequate or faulty choices, and when he comes around to making the tough choices, will he have lost so much valuable time as to prolong the crisis and stretch it out to many years....

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Stevenson and Caselli describe the mood in Buenos Aires as negotiations with hedge fund holdout bondholders fail in July 2014.

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Apple App Store sales are estimated at $15 billion for 2014, increasing by 50% from 2013. Apple says it has directly or indirectly created one million jobs in the U.S., with two thirds of this in software development by developers to run programs on iPhone, iPad and iPod. The App Store opened in 2008 after the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Other jobs created by Apple are the 300,000 working at parts and materials suppliers, or construction workers at Apple facilities. Apple employs directly 66,000 workers in the U.S., with 30,000 of this in retail stores.

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Caterpillar is asking workers at its Canadian plant to accept a large cut in wages and benefits. Wages and benefits at Caterpillar's rail equipment plant in LaGrange, Illinois, are less than 50% of the costs at the Caterpillar locomotive assembly plant in London, Ontario. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics U.S. manufacturing labor costs per unit of output were 13% lower in 2010 than in 2000. This compares with an increase of 2.3% in Germany, increase of 18% in Canada, and increase of 15% in South Korea. Caterpillar is also asking for more flexible work rules at the Canadian plant. The flip side of this is that U.S. workers are earning significantly less in manufacturing, especially considering inflation, and the middle class is shrinking in the U.S. At the same time wages in the U.S. that are more competitive with wages in Mexico and China with flexible work rules and use of automation and technology, is helping to reverse the shrinking of the manufacturing sector in the U.S....

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The Labor Department's rate of labor underutilization is 14.8% of thepotential workforce, much higher than the 8.1% unemployment rate. Which means that a lot of workers are not able to make the fullest use of their skills. If unemployment stays high for a very long period some workers lose their skills and become less employable. THat could leave the floor for unemployment at amuch higher level. Something like this is happening now and stay with us as the unemployment rate grows and the underutilization of labor rate with it. Physiscists call it "hysteresis"., a kind of laggard impact of some sustained force. An example is if you squeeze a nerf ball for so long that it doesn't bounce back when you release it. Higher underutilization of labor which could hit 20% by 2010 at the rate at which job losses are ocurring of half a million a month, would mean pressure on wages and fears of deflation, lower tax revenues and fears of persistent deficits, less cash to invest and companies having less capital to invest leading to lower earnings. And falling behind the curve is what Krugman fears could be happening now, even with the large stimulus and budget of the new President, because of a series of problems ocurring at the same time and reinforcing each other. And the efforts of the government still not large or effective to meet the scale of the challenge. See the link to this. ...

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Britain's Tax Service reports the number of taxpayers reporting incomes of 1 million pounds a year declined by over 60% in fiscal 2010-2011 from the prior year. In 2010 the Labor government of Gordon Brown introduced a 50% income tax rate for this income group, up from 40%. The number of million dollar incomes filed declined to 6000 from 16000 in 2009-2010, and revenues declined from 13.4 billion pounds or 9% of total taxes from taxpayers to 6.5 billion pounds or 4.4% or about half. The Labor government had hoped for additional 2.5 billion pounds in revenue, showig unintended consequences and surprises in economic policies.

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A black supporter of Obama, Ms. Hart, tells him- " I'm exhausted of defending you, defending your administration. I've been told that I voted for a man who was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class." This encounter happened at an hour long town hall meeting on CNBC, which John Harwood moderated. Harwood asked Obama whether he was having difficulty connecting with average Americans because of attending Ivy League schools and spending part of his youth overseas. The incident reflects the frustration and disappointment felt by average Americans with the Obama administration and with Obama.

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With inflation running at 6.7% in Russia, the central bank has decided not to increase interest rates following the U.S. Fed's bond purchase tapering decision in Jan 2014. The ruble declined by 6% in Jan 2014 and 15% for the last year. With the economy slowing the central bank finds it difficult to raise interest rates, and with inflation the bank has less flexibility to lower rates and increase credit availability. The ruble's lower value is a result of a shrinking current account surplus, with the added effect of capital flight from markets seen as riskier by investors. Currency collapse is a sensitive issue for many Russians after the 1997 crisis and collapse of the ruble. Central bank chief Ms. Nabiullina was on television explaining the decline to ordinary Russians, saying- " It's not that the ruble is weakening but the dollar and the euro are rising in price." Economists say the ruble's weakening won't add as much to inflation as slowing demand will make it harder for retail chains to raise prices....

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Daniel Altman's proposal for a tax on wealth over $1 million. He makes the case for taxing wealth not incomes to reduce inequality as this is where the situation in terms of inequality has worsened for the U.S. in recent decades. To support this proposal Altman cites the change in the U.S. Ginni coefficient, which measures inequality. The Ginni coefficient is anumber from 0 to 100 which goes up with higher income inequality. From the late 70's to the 1990's, the Cnesus Bureau showed this to be in the low 40's. By 1992 the Ginni coefficient went up to the mid-70's, according to the Federal Reserve data. It increased to about 80 in 2010. In 1992 the top 10% in the U.S. population controlled 20 times the wealth of the bottom 50%. By 2010 this figure triples to 65 times. and the graduated income tax even if it redistributes a small share of the wealth does little to affect the trend of wealth extremes from building up and threatening the social fabric of America, reducing mobility and opportunities for the bottom 50% to unprecedented levels since the 1950's. ...

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It is a reminder of far household debt went up in 10 years. Household debt was only 66% of GDP in 1998, Today it is 96% of GDP, and it is 130% of disposable income. For it to go back to the level only 10 years ago, it would have to drop 30%.

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Applebaum describes how Obama as president took action on the stimulus after the 2008 financial crisis, but did not take the necessary action to stem foreclosures and aid a recovery in housing. This now appears to be one of the critical failures of his presidency.

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Paul Tough's detailed and vivid account of the problems in Chicago's South Side in 1987 when Obama worked there as acommunity activist, in 2007 when Obama visited the area and expressed his vision about what was needed for the Roseland section, and in 2012 when Tough visits Roseland to document life today in this part of Chicago. He sees the same problems and a need for an all round approach to help kids of parents without work living below the poverty line to provide not just financial help but the kind of support and institutional help that would help them overcome the disabling effects of growing up in broken homes and counteract the destructive effects of a poor environment surrounding them. He left Roseland with a feeling that the President has not pushed hard to accomplish much of what he started out to do and let opportunities slip by.

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Krugman points out that the federal tax rate for the top 1% is 34% in 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office, because president Obama let the high end Bush tax cuts to expire. It is the number to remember says Krugman- 34. In 2008 the figure was 28.2. Under Hillary Clinton the average tax rate for the top 1% would go up by 3.4 percentage points, according to the Tax Policy Center. Some of this would help pay for the tution plan to provide access to the middle class to public universities. Under populist Trump, Krugman points to the elimination of the inheritance tax and tax rates going down substantially, and no such programs to promote the upward mobility that everyone is talking about, and no way to pay for a big infrastructure building effort for growth and jobs- upward mobility that is the focus of every candidate's election campaign including Sanders, Trump in appealing to older white working class families, Clinton, Ryan, Bush, and others in both parties.   ...

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Krugman points out the gains on three fronts evident from the Census Bureau report of 5.2% gain in median income of households in the U.S. He says the first is the growth in incomes of ordinary working class and middle class families, second the large decline in the poverty rate, and third the further rise in insurance coverage in 2015 for people without health insurance. He points to the steady efforts of the Obama administration to improve lives of ordinary families as working based on the Census report though results have taken time, and could have been better. The Stimulus, says Krugman could have been larger following the blow of the 2009 financial crisis and increased unemployment at the time. Janet Yellen at the inequality conference of the Boston Fed in 2014 pointed out the problems of 62 million households having net worth of about $10,000, and why this was running against the American idea of a better life for all Americans. In that sense the Census report is a movement in the right direction but a lot remains to be done.   ...

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Earnings of the typical American man working full-time year round declined in 2010, and is now in inflation adjusted terms below the level in 1978, according to the U.S. Census Department. The income of a typical Ameircan family has declined for three consecutive years and is now at $49,445 for 2010. This is the level reached in inflation adjusted terms in 1996. 15.1% of the American people lived below the poverty line in 2010, and 22% of children lived below the poverty line. The poverty line is set at $22,314 for a family of four in 2010. Statisics from the U.S. Census Department.

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Friedman says Obama's 2012 presidential campaign lacks bold vision, a failure to articulate tangible achievements, and owes too much to campaign consultants. He describes it as being developed in test tube fashion. The failure to embrace and strongly advocate his own presidential commission's Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan, which could be coupled with long term investment in the productive potential of the U.S. economy, shows the lack of courage to prepare a plan going forward. It is likely to cost support of independent, center and center-right voters in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

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A study by the National Employment Law Project shows most of the job creation in the economic recovery to 2014 in the U.S. is replacing the better paying jobs with lower paying jobs in fast food retail and similiar low paying industries.