Top of the News: The federal Bureau of Labor statistics gives us a clearer picture of May unemployment today. Forty-eight states registered job losses, one state remained the same and only one state (North Dakota) saw an improvement. Washington reported earlier this week, 9.4 percent unemployment, but a slowing in the number of jobs lost.
The biggest monthly loser: California, dropping 68,900 jobs — and 744,000 compared with a year earlier. The West saw the highest overall jobless rate, 10.1 percent — the Rust Belt Midwest was at 9.8 percent.
The Pacific region posted its highest jobless rate on record (Oregon posted a 6.7 percentage point increase year-over-year, largest in the nation; by comparison, Washington’s was 4.3 percentage points).
The Back Story: Continuing to dig through the details of the Obama/Geithner/Summers/(Rubin) regulatory reforms. The biggest problem so far is there’s no real oversight or transparency of the kind of derivatives that brought on the great recession.
These are the so-called bespoke derivatives, the “creative” swindles, er, I mean investment vehicles, that were crafted and sold as highly specialized, one-of-a-kind deals. So is the fix in?
Today’s Econ Haiku:
North Carolina
Eyes a tax for online sales
Amazon threats flow
Check in at noon for the weekly vote. Pick your favorite haiku from the week — or write your own.