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Krugman says the the higher population growth in Texas has led to higher job growth there relative to the rest of the country. Other factors mitigating the effects of the recession in Texas- the housing and mortgage lending laws in Texas prevented the building up of home equity debt and foreclosures that hit other states, and the oil industry in Texas helped with higher oil prices. Lower wages in Texas, lower living costs, and lower housing costs have attracted jobs to the state. In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2%, lower than California and close to that of New York.

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The U.S. Dodd-Frank legislation has a provision requiring U.S.- listed oil, gas and mining companies to disclose payments to governments for access to mining and oil resources. The S.E.C. will decide how to implement this rule which goes into effect in 2012. This has a severe effect on the economies of developing countries as it siphons away significant part of revenues for the resources into the hands of government officials. From Nigeria to Equatorial Guinea in Africa, and in other parts of the world in Latin America and Asia, this is a serious problem and results in underdevelopment and retarded societies.

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Winkler says Nokia may make it but it looks more likely that Research In Motion may not make it through the current storm.

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Banks claims on other banks in China increased for the financial sector from 25% in 2009 to 43% of total loans. The risk is that many of these claims are credit extended to China's shadow banking system which makes loans to property developers and other high risk borrowers. In this situation the non performing loan ratios released by the large Chinese banks and the core capital adequacy ratios are not a good measure for protection from risk in China's banking system and conceal hidden risks. Bank of China's nonperforming loan ratio fell to 0.94% in June from 1% at the end of 2011, and its core capital adequacy ratio moved from 10.08% to 10.15%. Orlik cites China bank analyst at Fitch, Charlene Chu, abut claims on banks having less regulatory risk weighting and thus concealing risk, which makes capital adequacy ratios inadequate to cope with the amount of real risk in the bank's loan portfolio. Just as happened in Spain after decades long boom and sense of safety in the banking system, problems were lying below the surface and the situation can change rapidly. ...

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Forecasts show global oil output exceeding demand by 630,000 barrels a day for the fourth quarter of 2012. This is partly the result of extra oil supplies coming in from Saudi Arabia to counter the situation with Iran at the same time as oil demand is slowing with the economic slowdown in the U.S., Europe and China. Prices of crude declined to $85.73 a barrel on the Nymex, and $107.85 for Brent crude on the ICE Futures Exchange on Oct. 24, 2012. Goldman Sachs cut the 2013 price forecast for Brent crude to $110 a barrel from $130. Earlier the QE III monetary easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve had rallied oil prices because of a weakening of the dollar.

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Portugal's parliament gave preliminary approval to a new budget bill with 4.3 billion euros in tax increases on income, captal gains, property and car ownership, and 1 billion euros in spending cuts compared to the 2012 budget. Banco Espirito Santo was able to sell 750 million euros in 3 year bonds with an interest rate of 5.875%. Over 200 investors from France, UK, Germany made buying offers of more than 2.7 billion euros. The rate is lower than expected and reflects ECB policy support for bond markets of countries requesting aid.

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Alan Blinder calls for something better than Social Darwinism to tackle the problem of foreclosures in the U.S. economy. Martin Feldstein has made the same call repeatedly. Homeowners under water need help from the government to avoid foreclosures. Rising foreclosures reduce the chances of a recovery in housing markets and U.S. economic recovery.

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Former U.S. Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, on what the automatic spending cuts from the sequester- after the failure of the Supercommittee in Congress to reach agreement- will mean for the Defense Department and defense preparedness.

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The European Banking Authority has worked on an exam for European banks since October 2011- separate from earlier stress tests- to determine the capital shortfall at banks arising from potential losses on bank holdings of sovereign debt. The EBA says banks in the eurozone will have to come up with 114.7 billion euros in new capital by June 2012, to meet reserve capital requirements for core Tier 1 ratio of 9%. The EBA looked at bank holdings of European government bonds as of Sept. 30, 2011. Loss rates for government bonds were applied at current market prices for the debt, and banks that fell short of the Tier 1 capital ratio of 9% were identified. This is different from the stress tests in that the stress tests were designed for banks to withstand deteriorating economic conditions, where a range of losses were applied to test for resilience. Spain and Italy have capital shortfalls of 26.2 billion euros and 15.4 billion euros respectively. Germany has a capital shortfall of 13.1 billion euros, France 7.3 billion euros, Portugal 6.9 billion euros, Belgium 6.3 billion euros. Banks have till January 2012 to show how they will come up with new capital. EBA officials will ask banks to do this without restricting lending. Germany's Commerzbank has a 5.3 billion euros capital shortfall, and may need government funds. Italy's UniCredit SpA plans to make a 7.5 billion euro share offering to its existing investors which will address most of its 8 billion euro shortfall. Spain's Banco Santander is divesting assets in Brazil, Colombia and Chile to meet a 15.3 billion euros shortfall. France's BNP Paribas and Societe Generale have shortfalls of 1.5 billion euros and 2.1 billion euros, which they plan to meet by selling billions of euros of assets....