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With firms cautious about hiring the number of temporary workers is increasing. About one fourth of new jobs created in the second quarter of 2012 in the U.S. were for temporary workers. In June 2012 of the 80,000 jobs created a third were for temporary workers. About 8 million Americans work part-time. This is an increase of half a million since March 2012 for people unable to find a full time job. The number of full time workers has declined by 700,000 since March 2012, and self employed workers have increased by 381,000 since March 2012. This gives the picture of a labor market with employers unwilling to commit and hiring temps, using overtime to meet demand.

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Japan is suffering from deflation, the public debt is a record 883 trillion yen or $9.78 trillion, and Premier Hatoyama was unable reduce spending. Yet the Japanese yen went up by 4% in May 2010. It went up by 11.5% vs the Euro. The causes lie in the weakness of the U.S. and European economies and the huge trade surpluses from Japanese exports, over $28 billion in 2009.

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Natural gas prices declined to $3.144 a million British Thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange for January delivery. Natural gas prices dropped sharply by 30% in December 2014. Earlier forecasts of $4.50 per million BTU by 2014 end underestimated the decline in natural gas prices in the U.S.

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Standard and Poor's changed its rating of U.S. Treasury securities from stable to negative. U.S. Treasury securites are still rated AAA. Moody's made no change in the rating. U.S gross debt as a percentage of GDP is 91.6%, with the comparable number for Germany at 80%, France 82%, Canada 84%, the UK at 77%, Japan 221%. The U.S. budget deficit as a percentage of GDP is 10.6%, the comparable number for Germany is 3.3%, France 7%, Canada 5.5%, the UK 10.4%. John Chambers, the head of the sovereign ratings committee at Standard & Poor's stated that "the sign of political gridlock was a key determinant in our outlook change." The budget deficit will go up to $1.5-$1.65 trillion, or over 10% of America's GDP in 2011. The gross debt for the U.S. is at $14.219 trillion, just short of the $14.294 trillion cap. With rising entitlement costs and the interest on debt this is expected to go over the debt ceiling as early as July 8, 2011. Again political gridlock and the divide between Republicans and Democrats about deficit reduction is causing concern about the delay in raising the debt ceiling....

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Economic aid from Qatar enables the Morsi government in Egypt to defer agreement for an IMF loan of $4.8 billion which requires Egypt to cut social programs, further aggravating a difficult economic situation for the people of Egypt. It also comes as Egypt's economy has suffered a decline from two years of protest and its foreign exchange reserves have hit new lows. Qatar gave Egypt $3 billion in low interest loans at 3.5%. Earlier Qatar deposited $4 billion at the Egyptian central bank, and gave $1 billion in grant aid.

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The British Embassy in Tehran is stormed on Nov. 29, 2011, by protesters from the student wing of the Basij militia, a volunteer militia organized by the Islamic government to protect the governing party loyal to Ayatollah Khamanei. This comes after Britain joined the U.S. and Canada in sanctions against the Iran for nuclear weapons development. The sanctions will keep Iran's banking sector out of the U.K. financial system.

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Reagan adminstration Budget director, David Stockman, faults the Republicans for not controlling runaway spending, and for tax cuts when the deficit was already growing to unmanageable proportions. The Republican party he says, has not acted responsibly by opposing tax increases for the nation's richest taxpayers of three percentage points. He adds in the municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits, and says with this the total debt reaches $18 trillion by 2015, a Greece style 120% of gross domestic product, which calls for much needed austerity.

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Crude from Canada's Alberta oil sands brings about $65, a large discount from the $115 for Brent crude and the $97 price in the U.S. The increase in U.S. oil output is causing a surplus in the U.S., reducing demand for Canadian crude. The lack of enough pipelines to bring this crude to the U.S. also affects prices. The $50 discount to Brent crude affects Canada's oil revenues and economic growth. Canada's central bank cut the growth rate forecast for 2013 to 2% from 2.3%. This is also likely to weaken Canada's currency.

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European companies rushed to make new business investment in Iran after the lifting of Iran sanctions with the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2015. This report in the NYT shows companies in Europe were wary that the nuclear detente with Iran would not last. As a result the European exports to Iran up to $12.8 billion in 2017 were up 30% but still ranked Iran as the 33rd largest trading partner, behind Serbia. Other problems were bureaucratic hurdles and a lack of coordination in Iran for moving ahead with projects. After the deal was signed companies such as Peugeot, Airbus, Total, Daimler moved ahead to invest in Iran. Yet the investments were made carefully considering the opposition of the Trump administration. In one deal Airbus agreed to provide 100 new aircraft for Iran Air's aging fleet, yet only 3 were delivered by May 2018. Daimler had a deal with Iran's Khodro vehicle maker for Fuso brand trucks, yet Daimler officials say demand was weak. A deal made by Total to explore for offshore natural gas may require a waiver under a "grandfather clause" say Total officials, or the option to turn over the investment to its minority partner CNPC, a Chinese state owned company. The U.S. ambassador to Germany, Mr. Grennell, says European companies should stop operations in Iran immediately showing the U.S. plans to take stronger action.  ...

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The situation facing 1.8 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip grows increasingly desperate as the economy collapses following the war with Israel. Egypt's new government and Israel say cement was being diverted to build tunnels and have reduced flow of construction materials into Gaza. Unemployment is at 44%, 11 percentage points higher than before the war with Israel in 2014, and youth unemployment at 60%, according to the World Bank's report in May 2015. One reason given for the conflict was that an impasse had been reached and economic conditions were bad with blockade by Israel, the situation following the conflict shows increased isolation of Gaza, not less. As the World Bank report puts it the economy's survival depends on restoring contacts with neighboring countries, which becomes even more difficult following the war.

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Gage points out that crime in America is about half what it was in 1991. She traces the calls for law and order in American politics back to Coolidge and Nixon. Trump's reference to restoring law and order is about checking the calls for correcting social injustice, movements for gun control, and public protest such as "Black Lives Matter," not just criminals, says Gage. In fact strict deportation has been the policy in 2 terms of the Obama administration, with immigration from Mexico at an all time low, another of the paradoxes in relation to the Trump calls for a wall with Mexico that would cost $23 billion. 

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Scott Anderson of the NYT provides an indepth look at the Arab World and its fragmentation through the eyes of five people from each part of the Arab world- Egyptian, Kurd, Syrian, Iraqi and Jordanian. He says the countries that fell apart are precisely the ones that were formed by the British and the French, and Italy, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire  using divide and rule policies- Britain in Iraq, France in Syria, and Italy in Libya- without much thought given to setting up viable nation states. This is why Iraq has a Sunni-Shia divide, Syria has similar divisions, and Libya with a largely tribal based structure, never really held together after the colonial powers left, and were held together only by strong dictators. Today's problems trace back to these historical events. This is complicated by the largely young demographic and restlessness of the people for change coupled with problems of underdevelopment in education, tribal loyalties, religious loyalties, and lack of political and social structures that could keep the countries together as change and transition to democratic processes took place. The role of the military further complicated matters in Egypt. Even Iran experienced these divisions because of the intervention of the great powers including Russia in Iran since 1900, leading to swings between liberal governments, foreign power supported governments, and a swing back to religious leadership as at present. This is one view of the region, others are presented by Ramadan (Oxford),  Bernard Lewis (Princeton), and leaders in Qatar and Emirates, other experts, some of whom point to the failure in leadership and the elites to find solutions to the problems of underdevelopment, in education, health, infrastructure, and aspirations for a voice in their governance. As the same divisions left by colonial powers affected Asia- in India, China, and Korea, but a larger vision of progress prevailed through crises and difficulties.        ...

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Of 161 million people employed in 2024 about 40-50 million in vulnerable groups living from paycheck to paycheck and without savings to support them in a medical emergency is a real problem in the US economy. It is why even as unemployment looks good at 4% and inflation down to 3% there is a lot of angst for Americans for cost of living. Fifteen million baby boomers who will turn 65 years for retirement between now 2024 and 2030 face a situation where they have less than 250,000 in savings. Many who were born between 1945 and 1962 called baby boomers are in this group with diminished savings. In the prime of their careers they were hit by the 2009 financial crisis caused by bank speculation risk taking. They also were hit by the pandemic in the peak years of income growth. Other such vulnerable groups are young people with high student who are being helped by president Biden. There are also the low income groups that have been hit by medical costs and a family emergency that were pushed into poverty. Other groups in the millions are the people at the low income levels who are working paycheck to paycheck because of housing costs. About one fourth or 25% of apartment renters are people whose households budget shows 50% or more going to housing costs which have increased 20% in the last 2-3 years, which includes the pandemic years 2022 and 2023. President Biden seeks to limit apartment rent price increases to 5% and Kamala Harris has proposed help for families for the portion above 30% of household income going to rent. The jump in cost of living from automobiles, automobile repair and housing, cost of groceries have affected other groups with large credit card debt. This is a result of the supply chain concentration in China which comes from American business overconcentrating production in China and previous administrations doing little about this. Biden's answer is to bring jobs and manufacturing knowhow and investment back to America. During the pandemic some people resisted getting vaccinated and lost their jobs, a million people lost their lives, others took early retirement seeing the stress ful lives during the pandemic, others including women quit to take care of children. This has reduced the labor supply to business leading to tight supply higher prices.The result is that there are about 5 such vulnerable groups each with about 5-10 million people for a total of about 40-50 million people at risk. For these people the cost of living presents huge challenges, including childcare. It includes young people and retirees, single women and families on low income hourly wages that have not kept up with inflation.  ...

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Oil prices drop below $38 by mid-December 2015, as the Saudis continue to push prices down further by continuing production increases. No change is planned for 2016 and analysts expect low oil prices into 2016. At $38 a barrel it becomes uneconomical for most shale oil producers to operate in the U.S. About 50,000 jobs are lost in Texas and 250,000 jobs worldwide. This is a boost for large oil importers such as India, Japan, and Europe. China also stands to benefit from low oil prices. Nigeria, Venezuela, Iran and Russia have the most to lose from an extended period of low oil prices. Politics in the Middle East also may play a part in decisions as the Saudis oppose intervention in Syria and Iraq by Russia and Iran. Rising shale oil production in the U.S. could also be one of the additional targets of Saudi policy. One consequence is that OPEC is divided with the Saudis going their own way.