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...of you know you're in strange
economic times when...
It
pays more to turn in a bank robber than to rob a bank
"Bank
Heists Rise in Houston, But Crime Not Paying Well" (LoanSafe)
When ex-convict
Henry Bata passed a note demanding money from a Houston bank teller, he
threatened the woman, claimed to be part of a violent bank-robbing gang and
walked away with close to $5,000.
Bata, a
42-year-old Conroe resident, pleaded guilty to the robbery and is now headed
to prison for a 30-year sentence – which means he’ll spend one
year behind bars for each $166 chunk of cash he nabbed.
Not only are
Houston bank robberies taking place at a faster pace than last year and on
track to surpass the record of 171 holdups in 2010, but culprits are getting
hard prison time, sometimes for stealing even less than Bata, said the FBI.
“More
often than not, they are walking away with considerably less than what Crime
Stoppers offers,” in their standard $5,000 reward, noted FBI Special
Agent Shauna Dunlap. “So it pays more to turn in a bank robber than
robbing a bank, and we’re seeing that a
lot.”
Eating
in is the new dining out
"Economy
Drives Diners to Their Grocery Stores" (UTSanDiego.com)
People are
eating out less, buying more prepared food
With
recession-squeezed consumers eating out less, grocery stores are seeing a
sales boost from an expanding menu of prepared meals.
For years,
traditional grocery stores have lost ground to restaurants and takeout, as
busy people looked for a quick-fix dinner or lunch option.
Now those
people want bargains as much as convenience. As they seek to stretch their
food dollars, they are finding that many supermarkets have been improving
their ready-to-go offerings.
The result is
that some stores have seen 7 percent to 10 percent growth in sales of
prepared items, said Wade Hanson of Technomic, a
Chicago-based food and restaurant industry consulting firm.
Jobseekers
are being blamed for high unemployment
"Are the
Unemployed Looking For Work in All the Wrong Places?" (Washington Post)
Here’s
one explanation for our stubbornly high unemployment rate: A construction
worker gets laid off and spends months looking for more construction work,
rather than readjust his expectations and acquire new skills to find work in,
say, the health-care industry, which has experienced steady growth throughout
the recession. It’s what economists describe as as
a “mismatch” between job openings and those seeking unemployment,
and some argue that it’s responsible for why so many are unemployed. If
those seeking work realigned their expectations, got more training, or were
simply willing and able to move to a different state for work, then we could
bring down unemployment to more reasonable levels. Indeed, a lot of recent
hiring has been across sectors.
Central
bankers are becoming armchair psychologists
"Are You
Happy? Ben Bernanke Wants to Know" (ABC News)
Ben Bernanke
wants to know if you are happy.
The Federal
Reserve chairman said Monday that gauging happiness can be as important for
measuring economic progress as determining whether inflation is low or
unemployment high. Economics isn't just about money and material benefits,
Bernanke said. It is also about understanding and promoting "the
enhancement of well-being."
Some
scams are legal
"Pimco's Bill Gross Says Stocks Were A Ponzi Scheme For
The Last Hundred Years" (Forbes)
Anyone with an
investment portfolio is probably familiar with the well-worn phrase
“past performance is no guarantee of future results.” Bill Gross
goes a step further in his August Investment Outlook, writing that not only
should we not expect big returns from equities any time soon,
maybe we should never expect them again.
“The cult
of equity is dying,” the founder and co-CIO of Pimco
begins his monthly commentary, which goes on to call the 6.6% historical real
return from stocks that many investors have taken for granted a “Ponzi
scheme.” (Gross has a penchant for the term, previously slapping the Ponzi
moniker on Fed policies like QE2.)
The argument
goes something like this: $1 invested in the S&P 500 in 1912 turned into
more than $500 adjusted for inflation by 2012, but that 6.6% rate of return
came with real GDP only running at a 3.5% clip annually. Gross says that
“somehow stockholders must be skimming 3% off the top each and every
year,” and that those profits must have come at the expense of lenders,
laborers and the government.
Michael J. Panzner
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