For Jobless, Little Hope of Restoring Better Days

Many jobs were cut in the economic downturn. Though jobs are increasing slowly, and unemployment decreasing, a lot of impacted sectors will take an even slower pace to fully recover. As health care and enery-related jobs have boomed, other specific job types that endured mass cuts like the housing-related market has yet to show decent recoveries. Construction workers are among the biggest sufferers, stung by a housing collapse that led to the loss of two million jobs. Since the recovery began, the industry has added just 47,000 jobs. But good news to the business sector, skilled professions like accounting and management consulting are recruiting more!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/business/for-jobless-little-hope-of-full-recovery-study-says.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=job%20cuts&st=cse

- Xiao Wei Thian

Airlines brace for heavy Europe crisis impact

Airlines industry have always not been doing so well for its soaring costs and now troubled even by European debt crisis. As an industry itself, not many airlines survived but ones that going for the lower-end markets. The Europe's crisis and the continous failure of politicians to come to a solution, the Airline sector says it will face over $8 billion in losses next year.

European Airlines will likely be outperformed by Asian carriers which are seen to have rising demands if the crisis drags on.

http://news.yahoo.com/airlines-brace-heavy-europe-crisis-impact-145356631.html

-Xiao Wei Thian

Pay gap in UK widening faster than any other European OECD country

OECD reported on the new findings of pay gaps that UK’s income inequality, though still lower than US’s, is growing faster than any other countries in OECD, Income inequality is an indication of inadequate social policies the country has to offer to the poorer sectors. UK’s gap is influenced by top-end in which money earned by the country's highest-earning 1 per cent equated to 14.3 per cent of total UK income in 2005, doubling from 7.1 per cent of the total in 1970. The pay gap is a better indicator than income inequality gap that the agents in the investigation are in working class. The top-paying working class earned large sums of money in the midst of financial crisis while the bottom-paying working class took the hit severely, Income inequality is like a snowball on hilltop, and once it gets rolling, it is hardly stoppable without governmental support.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2070119/Pay-gap-UK-widening-faster-OECD-country.html


- Xiao Wei Thian

Mortgage Delinquencies Decline

The number of mortgage delinquencies should be
able to decline significantly by the end of next year if the U.S. economy does
not suffer from any more setbacks. The rate of mortgage delinquency is the
ratio of borrowers 60 or more days behind their payments. They could possibly tick
to about 6 percent through the first quarter of 2012. The slowly refining job
market and steadying housing market are contributing to cut this rate.

http://news.yahoo.com/2012-mortgage-delinquencies-seen-dropping-sharply-050638824.html

Global Crisis in Europe

Europe must act quickly in order to defuse a
debt crisis that is threatening the global economy. U.S. Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner visited the European leaders on the eve of a summit that could
possibly yield a plan for resolving the crisis. One of the reasons being that
the United States is very vulnerable to any financial contagion that might
erupt in Europe. If the banks with European government debt cut off its
lending, then the global economy will definitely suffer.

http://news.yahoo.com/us-prods-europe-crisis-publicly-privately-080240485.html

President Obama, Champion of the Middle Class

President Barack Obame recently gave a speech where he portrayed himself as a champion of the middle class in order to benefit him in his re-election in 2012. In his speech, he stated that extended payroll cuts were vital to economic recovery. In addition, he also vowed to punish the individuals in the Wall Street fraud. President Obama furthermore pushed the fact that wealthier Americans should pay higher taxes. This speech was a part of a strategy to put the blame on the Republicans for hindering President Obama's efforts to bo

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-hits-republicans-wall-street-populist-speech-013621548.html

Executive Compensation

In this NPR interview, it has become clear that it's not only CEOs who make the "big bucks." Some of the reasons historically given for the continuously rising trend of executive compensation don't apply very neatly to college presidents--such as performance pay, percentage of profits, and even firm size. Colleges don't experience billions in revenue every year. What justification is there to pay a college president in excess of $1 million annually? What would university presidents in say, 1900 say?