China needs an urbanization plan
In teaching a course on China’s Political Economy, I made an interesting chart showing China’s urbanization rate lags far behind the urban workforce: the gap between % of registered urban residents and % actual labor force working in urban area (mostly migrant workers) has been quite persistent over the years, averaging about 15%.
(click to enlarge; source: author’s own calculation and China’s Statistical Bureau)
Nationalization: What’s wrong with Swedish model?
El Erian discusses bank nationalization and why he thinks Swedish model can’t be applied to the US. (source: fora.tv)
Barro: depression likely to follow after big crashes
A follow up to my previous post on “odds of depression“, Robert Barro explains his findings based on recessions/crashes worldwide:
Labor market is fast deteriorating
Now unemployment rate reached 8.1%. If you compare my earlier post in January, it’s almost certain that the job losses in current recession will surpass the 1981-83 recession. We’re in an uncharted territory, double digit jobless rate is not out of question.
(click to enlarge; graph courtesy of NYT)
And job cuts quickly spread to other sectors, beyond financials.
Also, Jan Hatzius, Chief US economist at Goldman Sachs analyzes the unemployment report and his outlook of the economy.