| A shorter working week is set to become the new norm, according to a report out this week from nef (the new economics foundation), the UK’s leading independent think tank. |
| the study, 21
hours, forecasts a
major shift in the length of the formal working week as a consequence of dealing
with key economic, social and environmental problems. And this can be seen as a
positive opportunity, say the researchers, rather than a threat.
|
According to nef, there are several forces pushing us
towards a shorter working week: lasting damage to the economy caused by the
banking crisis, an increasingly divided society with too much over-work
alongside too much unemployment, and an urgent need for deep cuts in
environmentally damaging over-consumption. These combine with a growing interest
in people spending more time producing and delivering a share of their own goods
and services – from co-produced care and neighbourhood-based activities, to
food, clothing and other necessities. Read more at neweconomics.org |
The number of mortgages issued in January slumped by nearly half, as UK homebuyers deserted the market after stamp duty relief ended. |
The lack of confidence in the market was further laid bare by the level of people remortgaging falling by 15 per cent to 24,000 in January – the lowest level for eight years. |
| The Council of Mortgage Lenders said that house purchase loans plummeted by 49 per cent to 32,000, worth £4.7bn, in January compared to the previous month. |
The data will reinforce concerns that the UK housing market may be set to suffer its own double-dip recession, following the Halifax last week reporting a 1.5 per cent fall in house prices between January and February. Nationwide also reported a 1 per cent fall in house prices in January. |
It’s not rocket science, and anybody can do it, and more and more can’t afford to do anything else. | Schumacher’s idea was that state-of-the-art factories and an economy dependent on exports to the rest of the world are not actually that useful to a relatively poor nation |
| t in a future in which all of us will be a good deal poorer than we are today, his insights have a wider value. A state-of-the-art factory, after all, is more expensive in terms much more concrete than paper money; it takes a great deal more exergy to build and maintain one than it does to build and maintain a workshop using hand tools and human muscles to produce the same goods. |
| Thus trying to fill our gas tanks with some manufactured substitute for gasoline, say, drains our remaining supplies of concentrated energy at a much faster pace than the other option – that of doing as much as possible with relatively low concentrations of energy, and husbanding the highly concentrated energy sources for those necessary tasks that can’t be done without them.Read more at energybulletin.net |
The Papandreou government is determined to correct the abuses of the past and it enjoys remarkable public support. There have been mass protests and resistance from the old guard of the governing party, but the public seems ready to accept austerity as long as it sees progress in correcting budgetary abuses – and there are plenty of abuses to allow progress. |
| So makeshift assistance should be enough for Greece, but that leaves Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland. Together they constitute too large a portion of euroland to be helped in this way. |
| The survival of Greece would still leave the future of the euro in question. Even if it handles the current crisis, what about the next one? It is clear what is needed: more intrusive monitoring and institutional arrangements for conditional assistance. A well-organised eurobond market would be desirable. The question is whether the political will for these steps can be generated.Read more at www.ft.com |
WASHINGTON, Feb 19 (Reuters) - U.S. demand for crude oil and petroleum
products fell sharply in January as the economy sputtered along the road to
recovery, industry group American Petroleum Institute said Friday. |
January's total petroleum product deliveries, excluding exports,
averaged 18.407 million barrels per day, down 3.8 percent from a year ago,
according to its report. |
Deliveries of distillate fuels, which include heating oil and diesel,
fell 12.2 percent to 3.578 million bpd. |
API Chief Economist John Felmy said an 11.5 percent drop in demand for
low sulfur distillate fuel, which is used by trucks, is a bad sign for the
economy. |
Unless Bailout 2.0 gets going in earnest, then it looks like this news could be a precursor to a new wave of bankruptcies Investors are selling out of “junk” bonds at the fastest since September 2005, in the latest indication that concerns over sovereign debt are spreading to other credit markets. |
In the week that ended on Wednesday, nearly $1bn was withdrawn from US funds that hold high-yield corporate bonds (junk bonds), according to Lipper FMI – the largest outflow in almost four and a half years. |
| As a result, the past month has seen the biggest sell-off of US junk bonds since the equity market bottomed out in March 2009, |
“If the result of sovereign problems is fiscal tightening and higher rates, a double-dip recession becomes an increasing possibility. This outcome would dent, if not fully derail, the positive trend in corporate fundamentals.” |
| Junk bonds, issued by companies with credit ratings below investment grade, soared in price last year as investors poured more than $30bn into bond funds, |
| This demand for higher yields led to record bond issuance, allowing even cash-strapped companies to refinance. Read more at www.ft.com |
What is disturbing is that the outlook for wages and incomes over the short and long term looks bleak even when the recovery is in full swing. The pay rewards for work have been severely lacking for a majority of workers over the past three decades. Whether the measure is wages, earnings, or total compensation, the inflation-adjusted pay narrative remains the same: Workers have seen their inflation-adjusted pay go up only a little during the past four business cycle expansions while most of the gains have been captured by the top 10% to 15% of workers. A major lesson of the Great Recession is how financially vulnerable workers are with jobs and incomes less secure than ever. “It isn’t a healthy economy,” says Paul Osterman, professor of human resources and management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “There is a broad sense that it’s a precarious labor market.” |
Perhaps, people should take responsibility for the consequences of their have-your-cake-and-eat-it attitude, but he whole force of the commercial propaganda media is deployed against them thinking for themselves. Social media could, in this sense, be a potent weapon against the hypocrisy of conventional wisdom. | the portrayal of ordinary Americans as helpless victims may be one of the most significant barriers in the way of the constructive changes we desperately need to make. This is as true of community as anything else. |
| People who don’t want to pay what community costs up front, or don’t think the payback is worth the investment, are not going to invest in it. |
| the need for a principle of authority and a boundary between members and nonmembers is a practical issue, distinct from the moral issues often confused with it. |
| very few people in our culture are willing to accept the core presupposition that underlies these things – the necessity, especially but not only in times of crisis, of placing the needs of the community ahead of the wants of the individual. |
| The obsessive fixation on the isolated and supposedly independent ego that pervades contemporary culture, |
| is precisely this attempt |
A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035
is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the
United Nations body that issued it.
|
Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report,
said he would recommend that the claim about glaciers be dropped: “If
Hasnain says officially that he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong
presumption, than I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan
glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments.”
|
| most Himalayan glaciers are hundreds of feet thick and could not melt
fast enough to vanish by 2035 unless there was a huge global temperature
rise. The maximum rate of decline in thickness seen in glaciers at the
moment is 2-3 feet a year and most are far lower.
Read more at www.timesonline.co.uk |
| “The reality, that the glaciers are wasting away, is bad enough.
But they are not wasting away at the rate suggested |
Alberta’s new Energy Minister says his government needs to examine ways to moderate the pace of oil sands development, signalling a shift away from policies that favour unconstrained oil patch growth.
|
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen any sort of explicit acknowledgment that the pace and scale of development is something that can be addressed and indeed is something the government of Alberta has the ability to address,” said Simon Dyer, the oil sands program director for the Pembina Institute.
|
One way the government could slow development would be to halt lease sales, Pembina’s Mr. Dyer said. But since industry has already snapped up most of the oil sands area, such a move might not have a big impact. A more controversial move would be to pause approvals of new projects, he said.
Read more at www.theglobeandmail.com |
|
New Economics - Shorter working week soon inevitable
