Venezuela 30 percent annual inflation rate

Joeslogic · May 9, 2010

While Greece embraces Socialism and FAILS.

Venezuela embraces it also and FAILS

May 7, 11:19 PM (ET)

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuela's annual inflation rate has surpassed 30 percent after consumer prices surged in April.

The Central Bank and National Statistics Institute on Friday reported a 5.2 percent increase in consumer prices during April, driving up the annual rate to 30.4 percent.

President Hugo Chavez's government has been struggling against the highest inflation rate in Latin America and a weakening economy in general.

Prices increased 11.3 percent from January to April, up from 6.7 percent inflation in the same 2009 period.

Venezuela's economy shrank by 3.3 percent last year amid a downturn in its all-important oil industry. It's the nation's first recession since 2003.

The country imports most of its food, and Chavez on Friday announced the government will create an import-export corporation aiming to break with the private sector's "hegemony." It wasn't immediately clear how the new state entity would operate.

Chavez said wealthy Venezuelans involved in the import business "buy abroad, come here and ask for more than it really costs."
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Joeslogic · May 9, 2010

With the economy on the brink of collapse. The jobs prospect getting more and more bleak. Due to Obama's turn to Socialism as the answer I guess he never took the queue from the other Socialism failures around the globe. And even the stupid people are beginning to notice the obvious despite Obama's media propaganda machine who has been saying the economy recovered for the past 6 months. So as Obama's popularity numbers plummet where does he turn?

He starts crying like a baby and pointing blame elsewhere.

Fucking loser.

Obama bemoans 'diversions' of IPod, Xbox era

(AFP) â€“ 3 hours ago

HAMPTON, Virginia â€” US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media.

Obama, who often chides journalists and cable news outlets for obsessing with political horse race coverage rather than serious issues, told a class of graduating university students that education was the key to progress.

"You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank all that high on the truth meter," Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.

"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said.

He bemoaned the fact that "some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction," in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.

"All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy."

Obama, who uses the handful of Commencement addresses that he delivers each year to meditate on societal developments broader than the minutiae of everyday politics, warned the world was at a moment of "breathtaking change."

"We can't stop these changes... but we can adapt to them," Obama said, adding that US workers were in a battle with well-educated foreign workers.

"Education... can fortify you, as it did earlier generations, to meet the tests of your own time," he said.

Hampton University is a historically black college, and Obama noted the huge disparity in educational achievement between African Americans and other racial groups in the United States and the world.

But he urged the graduates to take inspiration from the example of Dorothy Height, a civil and women's rights icon who died, aged 98, last month, who fought racial prejudice to secure a college education.

"A black woman, in 1929, refusing to be denied her dream of a college education," Obama said, reprising Height's life story.

"Refusing to be denied her rights, refusing to be denied her dignity, refusing to be denied... her piece of America's promise."

Obama argued that from the days of the pioneer politicians who founded the United States, until the modern day, education and knowledge had been the key to progress and US democracy.

He drew a line between Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and today's challenges.

"What Jefferson recognized... that in the long run, their improbable experiment -- called America -- wouldn't work if its citizens were uninformed, if its citizens were apathetic, if its citizens checked out, and left democracy to those who didn't have the best interests of all the people at heart.

"It could only work if each of us stayed informed and engaged, if we held our government accountable, if we fulfilled the obligations of citizenship."[/url]
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Big_unsexy · May 9, 2010

Joe, are u posting to look smart

Joeslogic · May 9, 2010

The unemployment rate in October hit 10.1 percent, a 26-year high. Some economists now think the rate could go a bit higher and peak at 10.2 percent by June. Still, that's far lower than some forecasts earlier this year of 11 percent. Unemployment hit a post-World War II high of 10.8 percent at the end of 1982 as the country was emerging from a severe recession.

President Barack Obama called April's job growth "very encouraging news" but said much remains to be done to put more Americans to work.

Wall Street appeared to look past the positive U.S. jobs report and instead focused on Europe's spreading debt crisis. Stock prices fluctuated wildly. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down nearly 140 points.

The number of jobs added in April signaled that businesses are more confident, thanks to rising customer demand. Consumers increased spending in March by the largest amount in five months. Factory production grew in April at the fastest pace in nearly six years. Demand grew briskly for a variety of services in that same month.

Also heartening: Employment in February and March turned out to be stronger than previously thought. Payrolls grew by 230,000 in March, better than the 162,000 first reported. And 39,000 jobs were actually added in February, compared with the previous estimate of a loss of 14,000.

Manufacturers in April added the most jobs since 1998. Construction companies boosted jobs for the second straight month. Retailers, professional and business services, education and health services, leisure and hospitality, and the federal government, which hired 66,000 temporary census workers, all posted job gains.

Jobs were cut in state and local governments, which are suffering through budget crises; transportation and warehousing firms; and information companies, mostly telecommunications firms.

Sandra Westlund-Deenihan, president of Quality Float Works, recently rehired a welder laid off last summer. She plans to hire at least three more people soon. The firm, which employs 18 people and is based in Schaumburg, Ill., makes metal floats used in air conditioners, gas pumps and display cases at grocery stores.

She's now more confident about the recovery, which she feared might be "a false hope" earlier this year.

"Orders are coming in consistently," she said. "Most customers want everything right now because they had let their inventories run down during the recession."

The 290,000 net job gains in April come from a survey of businesses. The government also does a separate survey of households. The household poll found far larger job gains last month: 550,000 more people said they were employed. The household survey is used to calculate the unemployment rate.

Economists are encouraged by the sharp jump in employment in the household survey: It's shown a net 1.6 million jobs created over the past four months. By contrast, the business payroll survey has shown 573,000 jobs added in the same period.

The difference is encouraging because the household survey often is the first to detect employment trends in a recovery. Some economists say that's because it can better pick up hiring trends at startup companies. After the 2001 recession, for example, the household survey showed job gains before the payroll survey did.

The household poll is also more inclusive. It covers agricultural workers, the self-employed, domestic employees and people who work in family businesses without pay -- none of whom are included in the payroll survey.

There will need to be far more job growth to reduce unemployment.

Friday's report showed that 15.3 million people were out of work in April. And the number of people working part time who would rather have full-time jobs rose by 98,000 to 9.2 million.

Counting people who have given up looking for work and part-timers who would prefer to be working full time, the so-called underemployment rate rose to 17.1 percent in April, up from 16.9 percent in March. It's close to record high of 17.4 percent set in October.

The number of people out of work six months or longer reached 6.7 million in April, a new high. These people made up 45.9 percent of all unemployed people, also a record high.

Hiring isn't expected to be robust enough anytime soon, and economists think unemployment will remain above 9 percent by the November midterm elections. That could make Democratic and Republican incumbents in Congress vulnerable.

For employers to boost hiring significantly, the economy would need to grow at an annual rate of 6 percent to 8 percent a quarter, rather than the 3.2 percent pace logged in the first three months of this year, economists say. Such growth would mean shoppers were spending much more freely.

That scenario isn't likely, both because of high unemployment and sluggish wage gains. Nationwide, average hourly earnings rose just a penny in April, to $22.47.

Another issue is that small businesses, which usually help drive job creation during recoveries, are having trouble getting loans. That tight credit is crimping their ability to expand operations and hire.

Many economists think it will take until at least the middle of the decade to lower the unemployment rate to a more normal 5.5 percent to 6 percent.

AP Business Writers Christopher S. Rugaber and Stephen Manning in Washington and Christopher Leonard in St. Louis contributed to this report.
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Many economists think it will take until at least the middle of the decade to lower the unemployment rate to a more normal 5.5 percent to 6 percent.
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Under George Bush the unemployment before the Democrats took over congress was 4.6%

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Venezuela 30 percent annual inflation rate

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