China’s economic rise has brought the rest of emerging Asia huge benefits. But the region still needs the West
Sep 2nd 2010
WITH markets still on edge after the worst financial crisis in decades, and fears of renewed recession stalking the West, this week seemed a poignant moment for China’s People’s Daily to detect a “golden age of development”, for Asia at least. Yet developing Asia, led by China itself, is booming. China’s GDP barrelled along in the first half of the year, growing by 11.1% compared with a year earlier. The newly industrialised little tigers—Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan—as well as most of South-East Asia seem to have fully recovered from the downturn. Even Thailand, mired in political turmoil, grew by 9.1% in the second quarter.
The dream is that this gilded future is now insulated from rich-world downturns: that China—now having, after all, officially overtaken Japan as the world’s second-largest economy—can drive growth for the whole region. One day, maybe. Not yet.
That the idea has currency at all reflects a remarkable transformation in itself. During the East Asian financial crash of the late 1990s, many in the region blamed China as a proximate cause of the debacle. Its emergence as a big competitor, the argument went, stalled the rapid export growth on which countries such as Thailand had come to depend, poking large holes in their current accounts, and precipitated the collapse of confidence.
Since then, and especially since the surge that followed its accession to the WTO in 2001, China’s economic clout has grown as fast—or faster—in its own region as anywhere. And with East Asia, unlike with Europe and America, China tends to run trade deficits. It is now the biggest trading partner for both Australia and India. It is the biggest export market for Japan, South Korea and Taiwan; the second-biggest for Malaysia and Thailand; the third-biggest for Indonesia and the Philippines, and so on.
Everyone is waking up to the potential of the Chinese market. Indian poultry farmers have learned that once-discarded chicken’s feet can actually be sold. Hoteliers in Bali grapple with night-classes in Mandarin.
Still, few are yet confident in the “golden age”. People’s Daily used the term in reporting the views of “many” taking part in the “Sixth Beijing-Tokyo Forum” in Tokyo. It seems unlikely the many included the Japanese contingent. The economic news at home was worrying—though it would have been grimmer still were it not for the healthy growth in recent years in exports to China. In this context, the report read rather like a young sports champion consoling the veteran whom he has just bested.
Even in much of young, vigorous developing Asia the boom seems too precarious for triumphalism. One reason for this is statistical. Growth figures in parts of Asia have been so spectacularly good partly because they were so spectacularly bad in the first half of 2009. Singapore’s extraordinary first-half GDP growth of 17.9% looks slightly less otherworldly against last year’s first-half contraction of 5.3%. In the depth of the crisis, as trade for a while seized up, the region, as one of the most trade-dependent in the world, saw growth plummet.
That trade dependence is another reason for sobriety. Outside of China and India (which this week reported 8.8% second-quarter growth compared with a year earlier), developing Asia remains heavily dependent on external demand. And despite the heady growth of sales to China, the most important sources of demand remain the “G3” of America, Europe and Japan.
Asian exports to China fall broadly into three categories. Industrialised countries, notably Japan and South Korea, have found a big market for capital goods. Countries such as Australia and Indonesia have fed China’s growing appetite for commodities and raw materials such as coal, iron ore and palm oil. But many Asian exporters have been selling components, as part of globalised supply chains in which “made in China” often means “assembled in China from bits produced all over the place”.
.It is hard to work out from published trade figures where components imported to China from, say, Malaysia, end up. But Malaysian officials believe that some 60% of their exports to China are destined for the G3. (By contrast, less than 30% of Indonesia’s exports to China are re-exported.) A recent study of such “global production sharing” in East Asia by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) concluded that it has played a pivotal role in the region’s dynamism and growing interdependence. But it has not lessened the region’s dependence on the global economy.
Other studies have also found that China has already had quite a big positive impact on growth in other countries in the region. Besides providing an export market, it is a source of tourists, investment opportunities and demand for services. And, less measurably, it is a source of economic optimism: a boost to consumer and business sentiment.
Not quite the rising tide that lifts all boats
Its economy, however, for all its three-decades-long boom, still only accounts for 8% of global GDP in current dollars; domestic private consumption, though growing fast, remains a small part of national GDP by global standards (36%). This will grow as China reforms its economy to give a bigger share to household income, for example by lifting wages for China’s factory workers. On August 29th Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, must have enjoyed lecturing Japanese visitors on the need to tackle the problem of “relatively low wages” at Japanese factories in China.
This “rebalancing”, though, could take decades. In the short term the high-speed growth much of the rest of the region has enjoyed will moderate. Growth will not be measured against the worst of the slump; and faltering recovery in the G3 will dent exports, however well China does. The golden age is not here yet.
A list of sources used in this article can be found at
Economist.com/blogs/banyan/
Comparing This Recession to Previous Ones: Job Changes
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Chart by Amanda Cox.
Horizontal axis shows months. Vertical axis shows the ratio of that month’s nonfarm payrolls to the nonfarm payrolls at the start of recession. Note: Because employment is a lagging indicator, the dates for these employment trends are not exactly synchronized with National Bureau of Economic Research’s official business cycle dates.
The economy lost 54,000 jobs in August, driven primarily by the elimination of 114,000 temporary Census Bureau positions. Additionally, state and local governments eliminated 10,000 jobs last month.
In the private sector, payrolls increased by 67,000 in August, a modest gain over total private payrolls in July.
The chart above shows job changes in this recession compared with recent ones, with the black line representing the current downturn. The line has risen since last year, but still has a long way to go before the job market fully recovers to its pre-recession level. Since the downturn began in December 2007, the economy has shed, on net, about 5.5 percent of its nonfarm payroll jobs. And that doesn’t even account for the fact that the working-age population has continued to grow, meaning that if the economy were healthy we should have more jobs today than we had before the recession.
The unemployment rate (measured by a different government survey, and based on how many people are without jobs but are looking for work) was relatively unchanged at 9.6 percent in August, from 9.5 percent in July.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Chart by Amanda Cox.Horizontal axis shows months. Vertical axis shows the ratio of that month’s nonfarm payrolls to the nonfarm payrolls at the start of recession. Note: Because employment is a lagging indicator, the dates for these employment trends are not exactly synchronized with National Bureau of Economic Research’s official business cycle dates.
The economy lost 54,000 jobs in August, driven primarily by the elimination of 114,000 temporary Census Bureau positions. Additionally, state and local governments eliminated 10,000 jobs last month.
In the private sector, payrolls increased by 67,000 in August, a modest gain over total private payrolls in July.
The chart above shows job changes in this recession compared with recent ones, with the black line representing the current downturn. The line has risen since last year, but still has a long way to go before the job market fully recovers to its pre-recession level. Since the downturn began in December 2007, the economy has shed, on net, about 5.5 percent of its nonfarm payroll jobs. And that doesn’t even account for the fact that the working-age population has continued to grow, meaning that if the economy were healthy we should have more jobs today than we had before the recession.
The unemployment rate (measured by a different government survey, and based on how many people are without jobs but are looking for work) was relatively unchanged at 9.6 percent in August, from 9.5 percent in July.
In Ireland, Dangers Still Loom
September 2, 2010, 6:00 am
In Ireland, Dangers Still Loom
By SIMON JOHNSON AND PETER BOONE
Peter Boone is chairman of the charity Effective Intervention and a research associate at the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. He is also a principal in Salute Capital Management Ltd. Simon Johnson, the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is the co-author of “13 Bankers.”
Is the global economic recovery still on track? The mainstream view is: yes, without a doubt. But increasingly, there are reasons to fear another financial disruption — particularly given the latest developments in Ireland.
The consensus among officials and most of the international banking community is that the global economy has stabilized and is now well down the road to recovery. The speed of this recovery is proving disappointing — as seen in the revised second-quarter growth estimate for gross domestic product in the United States, with annualized growth down to 1.6 percent. But, according to this view, easy monetary policy and still-loose fiscal policy around the world will keep sufficient momentum going.
Never mind that Japan, the United States and most of Europe are running unsustainable fiscal policies, while the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, is fretting over how to prevent deflation with a limited tool box, and Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, is calling for more fiscal tightening. To enjoy this rosy global picture, we are also told to ignore the plight of heavily indebted peripheral euro-zone nations still suffering from uncompetitive wages and prices, and concerns over default, that strangle their credit markets and growth.
An essential part of this relatively positive view is that the euro-zone economies have stopped the series of “financial runs” that, earlier this year, took intense market pressure from Greece to Portugal and Ireland and threatened to move on to Spain and potentially almost everywhere else (except, presumably, Germany). A collapse was averted in large part by the euro-zone countries’ agreeing to rescue one another — meaning that the Germans agreed to support Greece and other weaker countries — with some additional cash resources provided by the International Monetary Fund.
However, let’s be clear: Europe’s headache remains large, and this should concern all of us. Just look at Ireland to see how misunderstood and immediate the remaining dangers are. Ireland’s difficulties arose because of a huge property boom financed by cheap credit from Irish banks. Ireland’s three main banks built up loans and investments by 2008 that were three times the size of the national economy; these big banks (relative to the economy) pushed the frontier in terms of reckless lending. The banks got the upside, and then came the global crash in fall 2008: property prices fell more than 50 percent, construction and development stopped, and people stopped repaying loans. Today, roughly one-third of the loans on the balance sheets of major banks are nonperforming or “under surveillance”; that’s an astonishing 100 percent of gross national product, in terms of potentially bad debts.
The government responded to this with what are currently regarded as “standard” policies in Europe and the United States. It guaranteed all the liabilities of banks and began injecting government funds to keep these financial institutions afloat. It bought the most worthless assets from banks, paying them government bonds in return. Ministers have promised to recapitalize banks that need more capital. Despite or perhaps because of this therapy, financial markets are beginning to see Ireland as Europe’s next Greece. In the last few weeks, the perceived probability of default by Ireland (as traded in credit-default swap markets) has shot up, so that markets now price a 25 percent risk that Ireland will default within five years.
Until very recently, Ireland was seen as Europe’s poster child of prudent reforms. Mr. Trichet himself highlighted Ireland as an example that Greece and other financially stricken nations should follow. His message was simple: If only Greece or Portugal or Spain would cut public wages, reduce the budget deficit and make structural reforms as Ireland had done, then growth could occur and default could be prevented.
But it is now apparent that Ireland has not done enough to stem its march toward further crisis. The ultimate result of Ireland’s bank bailout exercise is obvious: one way or another, the government will have converted the liabilities of private banks into debts of the sovereign (that is, Irish taxpayers), yet the nation probably cannot afford these debts. According to the Royal Bank of Scotland, Irish banks have debt worth 26 billion euros, or one-fifth of Ireland’s national income, coming due in the month of September alone. Ireland’s third-largest bank just announced it was likely to need 25 billion euros in total capital injections from the government (19 percent of G.N.P.), while Standard & Poor’s argues that this figure is too low. In total, the debts of Irish banks could easily result in a charge to government debt equal to one-third of G.N.P.
These debts need to be added to the fiscal deficit, which also remains dangerously out of control. This year, the government will run a deficit of 15 percent of G.N.P., and with nominal G.N.P. falling, it could well remain that high next year, even if the government cuts spending by the 2 to 3 percent of G.N.P. currently envisaged.
The government is gambling that growth will recover to more than 4 percent a year starting in 2012, in order to make all this spending and debt affordable, and officials insist that growth is already under way. Ireland’s gross domestic product did grow in the first quarter of 2010, but that was not the good news that many news media and officials claimed.
This misunderstanding stems from Ireland’s success as a tax haven. Many years ago, Ireland cut corporate taxes to attract business. This created one of Europe’s most impressive tax havens — it is possible to set up a corporation in Ireland, channel sales through that head office (with some highly complicated links to offshore tax havens in order to avoid paying Irish tax) and then pay a minuscule corporate profits tax. Ireland boasts a large industry of foreign “tax minimizers” that do this, but these tax minimizers hardly employ any people. Nearly one-quarter of Irish G.D.P. comes from the profits of these ghost corporations.
The likes of Google, Yahoo, Forest Labs and many others helped Ireland’s exports grow in the first quarter, but the domestic economy (when excluding their profits, as measured by G.N.P.) actually contracted, and so did Ireland’s tax revenues and employment. Today, Irish unemployment is estimated at 13.8 percent, up from 13.1 percent at the start of the year.
Ireland, simply put, appears insolvent under plausible possibilities with current policies. The idea that Ireland, Greece or Portugal can cut spending and grow out of overvalued exchange rates with still large budget deficits, while servicing all their debts and building more debt, is proving — not surprisingly — wrong. Such policies leave nations burdened with large debt overhangs that effectively tax businesses and borrowers — because interest rates must stay high to reflect risk.
Investors must wonder whether businesses and homeowners can afford these higher interest rates, so banks and investors cut credit lines and reduce lending. This strangles economies, even when the fiscal authorities take tough steps needed to cut deficits.
Ireland had more prudent choices. It could have cut the budget deficit while also acknowledging insolvency and requiring creditors to share some of the burdens. But a strong lobby of real estate developers, the investors who bought banks’ bonds and politicians with links to the failed developments (and their bankers) prefer that taxpayers, rather than creditors, pay. The European Central Bank, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund share some responsibility; they advocate these unlikely programs so that European and global banks, which provided the funds to the Irish banks, do not suffer losses from such bad lending decisions.
The Irish government plan is — with good reason — highly unpopular, but the coalition of interests in its favor seems strong enough to ensure that it will proceed, at least until it either succeeds and growth recovers, or ends in failure with the default of banks or the nation itself.
Under the current program, we estimate that each Irish family of four will be liable for 200,000 euros in public debt by 2015. There are only 73,000 children born into the country each year, and these children will be paying off debts for decades to come — as well as needing to accept much greater austerity than has already been put into force. There is no doubt that social welfare systems, health care and education spending will decline sharply.
Watch for renewed emigration from a famously footloose population. If current policies continue, the calamity of the Irish banking system will lead to a much deeper recession and the consequences will be felt for decades. Watch also for further global financial disruption as this kind of deal starts to fall apart.
In Ireland, Dangers Still Loom
By SIMON JOHNSON AND PETER BOONE
Peter Boone is chairman of the charity Effective Intervention and a research associate at the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. He is also a principal in Salute Capital Management Ltd. Simon Johnson, the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is the co-author of “13 Bankers.”
Is the global economic recovery still on track? The mainstream view is: yes, without a doubt. But increasingly, there are reasons to fear another financial disruption — particularly given the latest developments in Ireland.
The consensus among officials and most of the international banking community is that the global economy has stabilized and is now well down the road to recovery. The speed of this recovery is proving disappointing — as seen in the revised second-quarter growth estimate for gross domestic product in the United States, with annualized growth down to 1.6 percent. But, according to this view, easy monetary policy and still-loose fiscal policy around the world will keep sufficient momentum going.
Never mind that Japan, the United States and most of Europe are running unsustainable fiscal policies, while the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, is fretting over how to prevent deflation with a limited tool box, and Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, is calling for more fiscal tightening. To enjoy this rosy global picture, we are also told to ignore the plight of heavily indebted peripheral euro-zone nations still suffering from uncompetitive wages and prices, and concerns over default, that strangle their credit markets and growth.
An essential part of this relatively positive view is that the euro-zone economies have stopped the series of “financial runs” that, earlier this year, took intense market pressure from Greece to Portugal and Ireland and threatened to move on to Spain and potentially almost everywhere else (except, presumably, Germany). A collapse was averted in large part by the euro-zone countries’ agreeing to rescue one another — meaning that the Germans agreed to support Greece and other weaker countries — with some additional cash resources provided by the International Monetary Fund.
However, let’s be clear: Europe’s headache remains large, and this should concern all of us. Just look at Ireland to see how misunderstood and immediate the remaining dangers are. Ireland’s difficulties arose because of a huge property boom financed by cheap credit from Irish banks. Ireland’s three main banks built up loans and investments by 2008 that were three times the size of the national economy; these big banks (relative to the economy) pushed the frontier in terms of reckless lending. The banks got the upside, and then came the global crash in fall 2008: property prices fell more than 50 percent, construction and development stopped, and people stopped repaying loans. Today, roughly one-third of the loans on the balance sheets of major banks are nonperforming or “under surveillance”; that’s an astonishing 100 percent of gross national product, in terms of potentially bad debts.
The government responded to this with what are currently regarded as “standard” policies in Europe and the United States. It guaranteed all the liabilities of banks and began injecting government funds to keep these financial institutions afloat. It bought the most worthless assets from banks, paying them government bonds in return. Ministers have promised to recapitalize banks that need more capital. Despite or perhaps because of this therapy, financial markets are beginning to see Ireland as Europe’s next Greece. In the last few weeks, the perceived probability of default by Ireland (as traded in credit-default swap markets) has shot up, so that markets now price a 25 percent risk that Ireland will default within five years.
Until very recently, Ireland was seen as Europe’s poster child of prudent reforms. Mr. Trichet himself highlighted Ireland as an example that Greece and other financially stricken nations should follow. His message was simple: If only Greece or Portugal or Spain would cut public wages, reduce the budget deficit and make structural reforms as Ireland had done, then growth could occur and default could be prevented.
But it is now apparent that Ireland has not done enough to stem its march toward further crisis. The ultimate result of Ireland’s bank bailout exercise is obvious: one way or another, the government will have converted the liabilities of private banks into debts of the sovereign (that is, Irish taxpayers), yet the nation probably cannot afford these debts. According to the Royal Bank of Scotland, Irish banks have debt worth 26 billion euros, or one-fifth of Ireland’s national income, coming due in the month of September alone. Ireland’s third-largest bank just announced it was likely to need 25 billion euros in total capital injections from the government (19 percent of G.N.P.), while Standard & Poor’s argues that this figure is too low. In total, the debts of Irish banks could easily result in a charge to government debt equal to one-third of G.N.P.
These debts need to be added to the fiscal deficit, which also remains dangerously out of control. This year, the government will run a deficit of 15 percent of G.N.P., and with nominal G.N.P. falling, it could well remain that high next year, even if the government cuts spending by the 2 to 3 percent of G.N.P. currently envisaged.
The government is gambling that growth will recover to more than 4 percent a year starting in 2012, in order to make all this spending and debt affordable, and officials insist that growth is already under way. Ireland’s gross domestic product did grow in the first quarter of 2010, but that was not the good news that many news media and officials claimed.
This misunderstanding stems from Ireland’s success as a tax haven. Many years ago, Ireland cut corporate taxes to attract business. This created one of Europe’s most impressive tax havens — it is possible to set up a corporation in Ireland, channel sales through that head office (with some highly complicated links to offshore tax havens in order to avoid paying Irish tax) and then pay a minuscule corporate profits tax. Ireland boasts a large industry of foreign “tax minimizers” that do this, but these tax minimizers hardly employ any people. Nearly one-quarter of Irish G.D.P. comes from the profits of these ghost corporations.
The likes of Google, Yahoo, Forest Labs and many others helped Ireland’s exports grow in the first quarter, but the domestic economy (when excluding their profits, as measured by G.N.P.) actually contracted, and so did Ireland’s tax revenues and employment. Today, Irish unemployment is estimated at 13.8 percent, up from 13.1 percent at the start of the year.
Ireland, simply put, appears insolvent under plausible possibilities with current policies. The idea that Ireland, Greece or Portugal can cut spending and grow out of overvalued exchange rates with still large budget deficits, while servicing all their debts and building more debt, is proving — not surprisingly — wrong. Such policies leave nations burdened with large debt overhangs that effectively tax businesses and borrowers — because interest rates must stay high to reflect risk.
Investors must wonder whether businesses and homeowners can afford these higher interest rates, so banks and investors cut credit lines and reduce lending. This strangles economies, even when the fiscal authorities take tough steps needed to cut deficits.
Ireland had more prudent choices. It could have cut the budget deficit while also acknowledging insolvency and requiring creditors to share some of the burdens. But a strong lobby of real estate developers, the investors who bought banks’ bonds and politicians with links to the failed developments (and their bankers) prefer that taxpayers, rather than creditors, pay. The European Central Bank, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund share some responsibility; they advocate these unlikely programs so that European and global banks, which provided the funds to the Irish banks, do not suffer losses from such bad lending decisions.
The Irish government plan is — with good reason — highly unpopular, but the coalition of interests in its favor seems strong enough to ensure that it will proceed, at least until it either succeeds and growth recovers, or ends in failure with the default of banks or the nation itself.
Under the current program, we estimate that each Irish family of four will be liable for 200,000 euros in public debt by 2015. There are only 73,000 children born into the country each year, and these children will be paying off debts for decades to come — as well as needing to accept much greater austerity than has already been put into force. There is no doubt that social welfare systems, health care and education spending will decline sharply.
Watch for renewed emigration from a famously footloose population. If current policies continue, the calamity of the Irish banking system will lead to a much deeper recession and the consequences will be felt for decades. Watch also for further global financial disruption as this kind of deal starts to fall apart.
02/09/2010 Bernanke Says He Failed to See Financial Flaws
By SEWELL CHAN
WASHINGTON — Ben S. Bernanke, who told Congress in 2007 that the subprime mortgage crisis was “likely to be contained,” said Thursday that he had failed to recognize flaws in the financial system that amplified the housing downturn and led to an economic disaster.
Under pointed but polite questioning from members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Mr. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, signaled that the central bank was eager to embrace its expanded powers under the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law that President Obama signed in July.
Mr. Bernanke spoke favorably of forcing huge banks to hold much more capital, particularly if they were systemically important — so much capital that being big would be costly. He declared that “for capitalism to work,” executive pay had to be linked to performance. And he said Americans were justifiably angry that bankers “who drove their companies into a ditch walked off with lots of money.”
He reiterated that the Fed could not have prevented Lehman Brothers from declaring bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008, the financial crisis’s nadir moment. But he said he might have unwittingly “supported this myth that we did have a way of saving Lehman,” by failing to make it clear to Congress at a hearing shortly after the bankruptcy that the Fed did not have other options.
“This is my own fault, in a sense,” Mr. Bernanke said, adding that he was worried at the time about contributing to panic in the markets. “I regret not being more straightforward there.”
Mr. Bernanke said that when he made his remarks in 2007 he thought the subprime problems were “manageable.”
“What I did not recognize was the extent to which the system had flaws and weaknesses in it that were going to amplify the initial shock from subprime and make it into a much bigger crisis,” he said.
While Mr. Bernanke stuck with his long-held stance that the Fed had not aided the housing bubble by keeping interest rates too low for too long in 2002-4, he embraced the view of Gary B. Gorton, an influential Yale finance professor.
Professor Gorton has compared the crisis to a classic bank run, but with the “banks” in this case being short-term wholesale financing markets — a loosely regulated, uninsured system known as shadow banking.
Mr. Bernanke offered an analogy of his own, likening the housing crisis to E. coli bacteria that can have deadly consequences when passed along through a vulnerable food safety system.
“E. coli got into the food system, and it created a much bigger problem,” he said. “There was an awful lot of dependence on short-term, unstable funding, which is analogous to the deposits in banks before the period of deposit insurance.”
Asked about the role of financial innovation in the economy, Mr. Bernanke, said that “innovation is not always a good thing.” Some innovations have unpredictable consequences, are used primarily “to take unfair advantage rather than to create a more efficient market,” and create systemic risks, he said.
In a 2002 speech when he was a Fed governor, Mr. Bernanke argued that central banks should not try to use monetary policy to pop asset bubbles. As part of his nearly three hours of testimony on Thursday, Mr. Bernanke held to that view, but said that at the time he had called for careful supervision and regulation to maintain financial stability.
“We didn’t do that,” conceded Mr. Bernanke, who became Fed chairman in 2006. “Going forward, we need to be able to do that.”
As he did in an address to the American Economic Association in January, Mr. Bernanke argued against the perspective that the Fed stood by passively, “not recognizing the obvious,” as housing prices soared.
“As of 2003 to 2004, there really was quite a bit of disagreement among economists about whether there was a bubble, how big it was, whether it was just a local or a national bubble,” Mr. Bernanke testified.
He added: “By the time it was evident that it was a bubble and that it was going to create risk to the financial system, it was rather late to address it through monetary policy.”
Mr. Bernanke said the most important lesson of the crisis was the need to end the “too-big-to-fail problem,” a view echoed by Sheila C. Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, who also testified Thursday.
The Dodd-Frank legislation gives the Fed oversight over the largest financial institutions, including those that are not banks. It gave the Fed a prominent role in the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a body of regulators with the power to seize and break up a systemically important company if it threatens economic stability. The F.D.I.C. would manage that process, known as resolution.
In deciding which large companies will fall under its supervision, Mr. Bernanke said, the Fed will look at size, complexity, interconnectedness and degree of involvement in areas like payments and settlements systems.
He also said the Fed was overhauling how it supervises banks. Alongside traditional examiners, the Fed has assigned additional finance experts, accountants, economists and lawyers to work on oversight. “We really need to take a much broader, multidisciplinary approach,” he said.
Mr. Bernanke and Ms. Bair said it was also imperative that the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, an international coordinating body of regulators, impose tougher standards on how much and what kinds of capital banks must hold.
The increased capital requirements should include capital that is more aligned with risk and able to absorb losses more effectively, and that works in a countercyclical manner, so that banks have more of it during times of financial stress, he said.
Several European countries have expressed resistance to the Basel process, seeking either to weaken some of the requirements or to stretch out the period of time before the new rules will take effect.
A version of this article appeared in print on September 3, 2010, on page B3 of the New York edition.
WASHINGTON — Ben S. Bernanke, who told Congress in 2007 that the subprime mortgage crisis was “likely to be contained,” said Thursday that he had failed to recognize flaws in the financial system that amplified the housing downturn and led to an economic disaster.
Under pointed but polite questioning from members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Mr. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, signaled that the central bank was eager to embrace its expanded powers under the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law that President Obama signed in July.
Mr. Bernanke spoke favorably of forcing huge banks to hold much more capital, particularly if they were systemically important — so much capital that being big would be costly. He declared that “for capitalism to work,” executive pay had to be linked to performance. And he said Americans were justifiably angry that bankers “who drove their companies into a ditch walked off with lots of money.”
He reiterated that the Fed could not have prevented Lehman Brothers from declaring bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008, the financial crisis’s nadir moment. But he said he might have unwittingly “supported this myth that we did have a way of saving Lehman,” by failing to make it clear to Congress at a hearing shortly after the bankruptcy that the Fed did not have other options.
“This is my own fault, in a sense,” Mr. Bernanke said, adding that he was worried at the time about contributing to panic in the markets. “I regret not being more straightforward there.”
Mr. Bernanke said that when he made his remarks in 2007 he thought the subprime problems were “manageable.”
“What I did not recognize was the extent to which the system had flaws and weaknesses in it that were going to amplify the initial shock from subprime and make it into a much bigger crisis,” he said.
While Mr. Bernanke stuck with his long-held stance that the Fed had not aided the housing bubble by keeping interest rates too low for too long in 2002-4, he embraced the view of Gary B. Gorton, an influential Yale finance professor.
Professor Gorton has compared the crisis to a classic bank run, but with the “banks” in this case being short-term wholesale financing markets — a loosely regulated, uninsured system known as shadow banking.
Mr. Bernanke offered an analogy of his own, likening the housing crisis to E. coli bacteria that can have deadly consequences when passed along through a vulnerable food safety system.
“E. coli got into the food system, and it created a much bigger problem,” he said. “There was an awful lot of dependence on short-term, unstable funding, which is analogous to the deposits in banks before the period of deposit insurance.”
Asked about the role of financial innovation in the economy, Mr. Bernanke, said that “innovation is not always a good thing.” Some innovations have unpredictable consequences, are used primarily “to take unfair advantage rather than to create a more efficient market,” and create systemic risks, he said.
In a 2002 speech when he was a Fed governor, Mr. Bernanke argued that central banks should not try to use monetary policy to pop asset bubbles. As part of his nearly three hours of testimony on Thursday, Mr. Bernanke held to that view, but said that at the time he had called for careful supervision and regulation to maintain financial stability.
“We didn’t do that,” conceded Mr. Bernanke, who became Fed chairman in 2006. “Going forward, we need to be able to do that.”
As he did in an address to the American Economic Association in January, Mr. Bernanke argued against the perspective that the Fed stood by passively, “not recognizing the obvious,” as housing prices soared.
“As of 2003 to 2004, there really was quite a bit of disagreement among economists about whether there was a bubble, how big it was, whether it was just a local or a national bubble,” Mr. Bernanke testified.
He added: “By the time it was evident that it was a bubble and that it was going to create risk to the financial system, it was rather late to address it through monetary policy.”
Mr. Bernanke said the most important lesson of the crisis was the need to end the “too-big-to-fail problem,” a view echoed by Sheila C. Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, who also testified Thursday.
The Dodd-Frank legislation gives the Fed oversight over the largest financial institutions, including those that are not banks. It gave the Fed a prominent role in the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a body of regulators with the power to seize and break up a systemically important company if it threatens economic stability. The F.D.I.C. would manage that process, known as resolution.
In deciding which large companies will fall under its supervision, Mr. Bernanke said, the Fed will look at size, complexity, interconnectedness and degree of involvement in areas like payments and settlements systems.
He also said the Fed was overhauling how it supervises banks. Alongside traditional examiners, the Fed has assigned additional finance experts, accountants, economists and lawyers to work on oversight. “We really need to take a much broader, multidisciplinary approach,” he said.
Mr. Bernanke and Ms. Bair said it was also imperative that the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, an international coordinating body of regulators, impose tougher standards on how much and what kinds of capital banks must hold.
The increased capital requirements should include capital that is more aligned with risk and able to absorb losses more effectively, and that works in a countercyclical manner, so that banks have more of it during times of financial stress, he said.
Several European countries have expressed resistance to the Basel process, seeking either to weaken some of the requirements or to stretch out the period of time before the new rules will take effect.
A version of this article appeared in print on September 3, 2010, on page B3 of the New York edition.
03/09/2010 U.S. Lost Jobs in August, but Fewer Than Expected
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
Private job growth in the last three month was stronger than initially estimated, the government said Friday in its August report on unemployment.
Still, the economy lost another 54,000 jobs last month, mostly because of the loss of temporary Census jobs, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent from 9.5 percent.
Private companies, however, added 67,000 jobs in August, the Labor Department said, more than the 41,000 forecast. In July, the private sector growth was revised to 107,000 jobs, rather than 71,000, and the June number was revised upward to 61,000 in June from 31,000.
Over all, the government lost 121,000 jobs overall in August. State and local governments, many of them grappling with severe budget deficits, cut 1o,000 jobs, and another 114,000 temporary Census positions came to an end.
The numbers for prevous months were also revised to show a loss of 175,000 jobst in June rather than 221,000, and a loss of 54,000 in July, instead of 131,000.
The total number of unemployed people rose to 14.86 million in August from 14.59 million in July.
While the report continued to show that the pace of the recovery remains, it provided some reassurance the economy would not slipped into a double-dip recession. But concerns remain about the pace of economic growth.
President Obama on Monday said his administration was weighing new steps to bolster the economy, but any measures are likely to be small. His options are limited given that Congress has shown little appetite for more spending before the midterm elections in November, in which Republicans are hoping to reclaim both the Senate and the House.
Republicans have said that the unemployment rate remains high because the president’s stimulus spending as well as his overhauls of health care and the financial industry are a drag on the recovery. Mr. Obama and Democrats have been emphasizing that the recovery is moving in the right direction, albeit at a slow pace. The president has chided Senate Republicans for holding up a jobs bill that would offer tax breaks to small businesses and ease credit with a $30 billion initiative to channel loans through community banks.
In any case, the report on Friday provided the latest evidence that the recovery was proceeding slowly. Last week, the Commerce Department revised its estimate for growth in the second quarter down to an annual rate of 1.6 percent, from 2.4 percent. The consensus on the outlook for the second half of the year is growth of 1.5 to 2.5 percent, substantially less than what is needed for the recovery to pick up steam.
Earlier this week, the Conference Board released a monthly survey showing that consumer confidence improved slightly in August but indicated that Americans remained apprehensive about the economy and the job market. Other indicators showed that the housing market clearly slowed over the summer and that retail sales were weak in August. The crux of the problem is circular, economists said: consumer demand needs to pick up, but that is largely dependent on whether people have jobs.
And while corporate profits were generally robust in the second quarter, many companies had trimmed costs and jobs to achieve them, and many economists say corporations need actual revenue growth instead of making their earnings grow from cutting costs. Outlooks for the rest of the year were tepid.
Many economists have pinned hopes for job creation on manufacturing, but the Labor Department said that sector lost 27,000 jobs in August. An increase of about 10,000 jobs had been expected for manufacturing, but the report cited a decline in auto and auto-related jobs.
Despite the August numbers, Thomas J. Duesterberg, the president of the Manufacturers Alliance-MAPI, said the association forecast about 278,000 new jobs would be added by the end of the year, or about 15,000 to 20,000 new manufacturing jobs each month.
“We do think that manufacturing is going to continue to grow at a modest pace this year and next year,” he said. “So many jobs were cut in the previous two to three years that companies are very lean, and in order to ramp up levels of production, they are going to have to start hiring.”
Mr. Duesterberg, said that exports have continued to grow, and in fact, several industrial sectors — aerospace, basic chemicals, paper products and machinery — were running a trade surplus, which could encourage job creation. Companies are also holding back because of uncertainty over how future policies, including those for taxation and regulation, will impact their businesses and ultimately their hiring plans.
“It is very clear that there is this air of uncertainty from a policy perspective overhanging the business sector,” David A. Rosenberg, the chief economist for Gluskin Sheff, said.
The average number of hours worked in private sector was stable at 34.2 weeks, the report said. An increase would suggest that employers were asking more from their workers, a sign that could augur well for future hiring.
Average hourly earnings by workers on private payrolls edged up 6 cents to $22.66in August, from $22.60 in July, the department said.
The number of people out of work for 27 weeks or more declined by 323,000 to 6.2 million in August, from 6.6 million in July, while the median length of unemployment fell to 19.9 weeks in August, from 22.2 weeks in July.
The broadest definition of the unemployment rate, which includes the people who want jobs but did not search, rose to 16.7 percent in August, compared with 16.5 percent in July.
Some struggling with unemployment say they will settle for any work, even with pay cuts.
Susan Howard, a Leander, Tex., single mother with a master’s degree said she was laid off from her software-on-demand job in June and since then had been interviewing for jobs that would pay half her previous salary.
But with only $406 a week in benefits and some child support, she has stopped paying her mortgage, deferred her car payments, reached out to a ministry for help with utility bills and enrolled her son in a reduced-cost school lunch program.
“My résumé is posted on every career résumé site there is,” she said. “I have been called in for three interviews, but none of them have ever gotten back to me.”
Private job growth in the last three month was stronger than initially estimated, the government said Friday in its August report on unemployment.
Still, the economy lost another 54,000 jobs last month, mostly because of the loss of temporary Census jobs, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent from 9.5 percent.
Private companies, however, added 67,000 jobs in August, the Labor Department said, more than the 41,000 forecast. In July, the private sector growth was revised to 107,000 jobs, rather than 71,000, and the June number was revised upward to 61,000 in June from 31,000.
Over all, the government lost 121,000 jobs overall in August. State and local governments, many of them grappling with severe budget deficits, cut 1o,000 jobs, and another 114,000 temporary Census positions came to an end.
The numbers for prevous months were also revised to show a loss of 175,000 jobst in June rather than 221,000, and a loss of 54,000 in July, instead of 131,000.
The total number of unemployed people rose to 14.86 million in August from 14.59 million in July.
While the report continued to show that the pace of the recovery remains, it provided some reassurance the economy would not slipped into a double-dip recession. But concerns remain about the pace of economic growth.
President Obama on Monday said his administration was weighing new steps to bolster the economy, but any measures are likely to be small. His options are limited given that Congress has shown little appetite for more spending before the midterm elections in November, in which Republicans are hoping to reclaim both the Senate and the House.
Republicans have said that the unemployment rate remains high because the president’s stimulus spending as well as his overhauls of health care and the financial industry are a drag on the recovery. Mr. Obama and Democrats have been emphasizing that the recovery is moving in the right direction, albeit at a slow pace. The president has chided Senate Republicans for holding up a jobs bill that would offer tax breaks to small businesses and ease credit with a $30 billion initiative to channel loans through community banks.
In any case, the report on Friday provided the latest evidence that the recovery was proceeding slowly. Last week, the Commerce Department revised its estimate for growth in the second quarter down to an annual rate of 1.6 percent, from 2.4 percent. The consensus on the outlook for the second half of the year is growth of 1.5 to 2.5 percent, substantially less than what is needed for the recovery to pick up steam.
Earlier this week, the Conference Board released a monthly survey showing that consumer confidence improved slightly in August but indicated that Americans remained apprehensive about the economy and the job market. Other indicators showed that the housing market clearly slowed over the summer and that retail sales were weak in August. The crux of the problem is circular, economists said: consumer demand needs to pick up, but that is largely dependent on whether people have jobs.
And while corporate profits were generally robust in the second quarter, many companies had trimmed costs and jobs to achieve them, and many economists say corporations need actual revenue growth instead of making their earnings grow from cutting costs. Outlooks for the rest of the year were tepid.
Many economists have pinned hopes for job creation on manufacturing, but the Labor Department said that sector lost 27,000 jobs in August. An increase of about 10,000 jobs had been expected for manufacturing, but the report cited a decline in auto and auto-related jobs.
Despite the August numbers, Thomas J. Duesterberg, the president of the Manufacturers Alliance-MAPI, said the association forecast about 278,000 new jobs would be added by the end of the year, or about 15,000 to 20,000 new manufacturing jobs each month.
“We do think that manufacturing is going to continue to grow at a modest pace this year and next year,” he said. “So many jobs were cut in the previous two to three years that companies are very lean, and in order to ramp up levels of production, they are going to have to start hiring.”
Mr. Duesterberg, said that exports have continued to grow, and in fact, several industrial sectors — aerospace, basic chemicals, paper products and machinery — were running a trade surplus, which could encourage job creation. Companies are also holding back because of uncertainty over how future policies, including those for taxation and regulation, will impact their businesses and ultimately their hiring plans.
“It is very clear that there is this air of uncertainty from a policy perspective overhanging the business sector,” David A. Rosenberg, the chief economist for Gluskin Sheff, said.
The average number of hours worked in private sector was stable at 34.2 weeks, the report said. An increase would suggest that employers were asking more from their workers, a sign that could augur well for future hiring.
Average hourly earnings by workers on private payrolls edged up 6 cents to $22.66in August, from $22.60 in July, the department said.
The number of people out of work for 27 weeks or more declined by 323,000 to 6.2 million in August, from 6.6 million in July, while the median length of unemployment fell to 19.9 weeks in August, from 22.2 weeks in July.
The broadest definition of the unemployment rate, which includes the people who want jobs but did not search, rose to 16.7 percent in August, compared with 16.5 percent in July.
Some struggling with unemployment say they will settle for any work, even with pay cuts.
Susan Howard, a Leander, Tex., single mother with a master’s degree said she was laid off from her software-on-demand job in June and since then had been interviewing for jobs that would pay half her previous salary.
But with only $406 a week in benefits and some child support, she has stopped paying her mortgage, deferred her car payments, reached out to a ministry for help with utility bills and enrolled her son in a reduced-cost school lunch program.
“My résumé is posted on every career résumé site there is,” she said. “I have been called in for three interviews, but none of them have ever gotten back to me.”
中国、内陸経済は離陸するか（アジアＢｉｚ新潮流）
中国の北京から山西省などを抜け、チベットにつながる全長3000キロ超の京蔵高速道路。そのうち山西省から北京に向かう区間で今年８月14日から約10日間、100キロにわたって車がまったく動かないという大渋滞が発生し、中国はもちろん欧米メディアで「史上最悪の大渋滞」と話題になった。高速道路上にとじ込められた車の大半はトラック。山西省から沿海部に向けた石炭やセメント、鉄鋼製品などの輸送用だ。
「史上最悪」と話題になった中国の８月の大渋滞（河北省）＝ＡＰ
山西省は中国最大の産炭地だが、国内のエネルギー需要の急増で省内の炭鉱は国有石炭会社の大規模炭田から個人経営の中小炭鉱までフル稼働状態。財産を築いた炭鉱主は「煤老板（メイラオバン）」と呼ばれ、中国全土でマンションやオフィスビルを買いあさり、不動産投機の原因と言われるまでになっている。山西省などの内陸部は沿海部へのエネルギー、資源の供給地帯として成長の新たなステージに入っている。
37％の企業が珠江デルタ脱出を計画し、そのうち63％が広東省から撤退する――。最近、香港工業総会が広東省に工場を置く香港企業にヒアリングした結果だ。深セン、広州、東莞などを中心とする珠江デルタは電子機器、家電、自動車など産業が発展し、世界トップクラスの産業集積だが、この１、２年深刻化した人手不足や賃金高騰で工場の脱出が加速している。移転先の中心は内陸だ。広東省の縫製、靴、帽子などの工場は湖南省、家電は安徽省、電子機器は四川省などに移転するケースが多い。その結果、内陸では新たな雇用が生まれ、関連産業や消費も活性化しつつある。
これまで内陸の経済を支えてきた農業にも上向きの気配がある。中国政府の農産物買い入れ価格の引き上げ、農民への直接支払いで、農村の経済水準が底上げされつつあるからだ。2008年11月に打ち出された景気刺激策による内陸のインフラ整備の工事で農民の出稼ぎ場所が内陸に生まれたことも農村経済に追い風となっている。
1978年にトウ小平氏が発動した「改革開放」政策30年で、高度成長を遂げたのは沿海部だ。今、起きている内陸の活況は「改革開放」の第２フェーズといえるだろう。だが、このまま内陸経済は離陸するのか？
人類史上、沿海から離れて内陸に向け開発を進めた代表例に、北米大陸の西部開発とロシアのシベリア開発がある。ともに今の米国、ロシアの国家の枠組みを規定し、経済力を押し上げる契機となった。中国の内陸開発にも共通性があるが、ひとつ違う点がある。米国の「ＧＯ ＷＥＳＴ」は太平洋に至り、カリフォルニアができあがった。ロシアのシベリア開発も太平洋岸に達し、東の不凍港ウラジオストクが建設された。だが、どこまで行っても海に至らない中国の内陸開発には当然、ゴールはない。それは単に物理的なゴールの不存在だけでなく、開発そのものがゴールのない政策になりかねない不安も暗示していよう。
source: nikkei
「史上最悪」と話題になった中国の８月の大渋滞（河北省）＝ＡＰ山西省は中国最大の産炭地だが、国内のエネルギー需要の急増で省内の炭鉱は国有石炭会社の大規模炭田から個人経営の中小炭鉱までフル稼働状態。財産を築いた炭鉱主は「煤老板（メイラオバン）」と呼ばれ、中国全土でマンションやオフィスビルを買いあさり、不動産投機の原因と言われるまでになっている。山西省などの内陸部は沿海部へのエネルギー、資源の供給地帯として成長の新たなステージに入っている。
37％の企業が珠江デルタ脱出を計画し、そのうち63％が広東省から撤退する――。最近、香港工業総会が広東省に工場を置く香港企業にヒアリングした結果だ。深セン、広州、東莞などを中心とする珠江デルタは電子機器、家電、自動車など産業が発展し、世界トップクラスの産業集積だが、この１、２年深刻化した人手不足や賃金高騰で工場の脱出が加速している。移転先の中心は内陸だ。広東省の縫製、靴、帽子などの工場は湖南省、家電は安徽省、電子機器は四川省などに移転するケースが多い。その結果、内陸では新たな雇用が生まれ、関連産業や消費も活性化しつつある。
これまで内陸の経済を支えてきた農業にも上向きの気配がある。中国政府の農産物買い入れ価格の引き上げ、農民への直接支払いで、農村の経済水準が底上げされつつあるからだ。2008年11月に打ち出された景気刺激策による内陸のインフラ整備の工事で農民の出稼ぎ場所が内陸に生まれたことも農村経済に追い風となっている。
1978年にトウ小平氏が発動した「改革開放」政策30年で、高度成長を遂げたのは沿海部だ。今、起きている内陸の活況は「改革開放」の第２フェーズといえるだろう。だが、このまま内陸経済は離陸するのか？
人類史上、沿海から離れて内陸に向け開発を進めた代表例に、北米大陸の西部開発とロシアのシベリア開発がある。ともに今の米国、ロシアの国家の枠組みを規定し、経済力を押し上げる契機となった。中国の内陸開発にも共通性があるが、ひとつ違う点がある。米国の「ＧＯ ＷＥＳＴ」は太平洋に至り、カリフォルニアができあがった。ロシアのシベリア開発も太平洋岸に達し、東の不凍港ウラジオストクが建設された。だが、どこまで行っても海に至らない中国の内陸開発には当然、ゴールはない。それは単に物理的なゴールの不存在だけでなく、開発そのものがゴールのない政策になりかねない不安も暗示していよう。
source: nikkei
米国株、大幅高で始まる ダウ4日続伸し120ドル高、米景気の警戒後退
【ＮＱＮニューヨーク＝滝口朋史】３日の米株式相場は大幅高で始まった。ダウ工業株30種平均は午前９時40分現在、前日比120ドル04セント高の１万0440ドル14セントで推移している。朝方発表の８月の米雇用統計が市場予想ほど悪化せず、米景気の先行きに対する過度の警戒感が後退。景気動向に敏感な金融株や一般産業株など幅広い銘柄に買いが広がっている。ハイテク株の比率が高いナスダック総合株価指数は、３日続伸し同33.16ポイント高の2233.17で推移している。
８月の雇用統計で非農業部門の雇用者数は５万4000人減と、減少幅は市場予想（約11万人減）に比べ小幅にとどまった。民間部門の雇用者数は６万7000人増と、２万8000人程度の増加を見込んでいた予想を上回った。米雇用環境の回復が鈍化し、個人消費の減少などを通じて米景気の重荷になるとの悲観的な見方が後退した。
前日の通常取引終了後に発表した四半期決算が大幅な増収となり最終損益が黒字化したゲームソフト大手のテイクツー・インタラクティブ・ソフトウエアが14％以上の急伸。前日夕に次世代電力網（スマートグリッド）関連のＩＴ（情報技術）ベンチャーを買収すると発表したネットワーク機器大手のシスコシステムズも２％近く上げている。
ダウ平均構成銘柄ではホームセンター大手ホーム・デポが約３％上昇し、上昇率首位。米銀大手バンク・オブ・アメリカやＪＰモルガン・チェースも買われている。航空機大手ボーイングや建機大手キャタピラーも高い。ダウ平均構成銘柄は全銘柄が上昇している。
一方、朝方発表した四半期決算で売上高が市場予想に届かなかった食品大手のキャンベル・スープが２％あまり下落している。
８月の雇用統計で非農業部門の雇用者数は５万4000人減と、減少幅は市場予想（約11万人減）に比べ小幅にとどまった。民間部門の雇用者数は６万7000人増と、２万8000人程度の増加を見込んでいた予想を上回った。米雇用環境の回復が鈍化し、個人消費の減少などを通じて米景気の重荷になるとの悲観的な見方が後退した。
前日の通常取引終了後に発表した四半期決算が大幅な増収となり最終損益が黒字化したゲームソフト大手のテイクツー・インタラクティブ・ソフトウエアが14％以上の急伸。前日夕に次世代電力網（スマートグリッド）関連のＩＴ（情報技術）ベンチャーを買収すると発表したネットワーク機器大手のシスコシステムズも２％近く上げている。
ダウ平均構成銘柄ではホームセンター大手ホーム・デポが約３％上昇し、上昇率首位。米銀大手バンク・オブ・アメリカやＪＰモルガン・チェースも買われている。航空機大手ボーイングや建機大手キャタピラーも高い。ダウ平均構成銘柄は全銘柄が上昇している。
一方、朝方発表した四半期決算で売上高が市場予想に届かなかった食品大手のキャンベル・スープが２％あまり下落している。
米雇用者数、８月５万4000人減 市場予測より小幅
【ワシントン＝御調昌邦】米労働省が３日発表した８月の雇用統計によると、非農業部門の雇用者数（季節調整済み）は前月に比べて５万4000人減った。マイナスは３カ月連続で、減少幅は前月の改定値と同じだった。前月に続き、米政府の国勢調査に伴う臨時職員が減ったことが影響した。市場で注目されている民間部門の雇用者数は前月比６万7000人増で、プラス幅は前月（10万7000人）より縮小した。全体の失業率は9.6％となり、前月に比べて0.1ポイント悪化。米景気は減速感が強まっており、雇用改善の動きは依然として鈍い。
非農業部門の雇用者数の減少幅は市場予測の平均（約12万人減）よりも小さかった。民間部門のプラス幅は予測（４万4000人）よりも多かった。失業率については予想通りの結果だった。
民間の雇用者数を業種別にみると、建設業が前月比１万9000人増となり、４カ月ぶりのプラスとなった。このほか教育・医療が４万5000人増となったのが目立った。一方、製造業は２万7000人減で８カ月ぶりに前月比マイナスとなった。
失業率が上昇したのは今年４月以来４カ月ぶり。８月は雇用者が増えたが、それ以上の伸び率で失業者が増加したことが背景。これまで就職をあきらめていた失業者の一部が労働市場に戻ってきたとみられる。
03/09 欧州金利据え置き
【ベルリン＝是枝智】欧州中央銀行（ＥＣＢ）は２日、フランクフルトで理事会を開き、金融緩和の継続を決めた。金融機関に対し、希望する資金を担保の範囲で全額供給する「無制限オペ」について、貸出期間１か月や１週間のオペを少なくとも来年１月まで、３か月物も今年１２月まで延長する。ドイツやフランスなどユーロ圏１６か国に適用する政策金利も過去最低の年１％に据え置いた。
トリシェ総裁は理事会後の記者会見で、ユーロ圏の２０１０年の経済成長率の見通しを、前回６月の「０．７～１．３％」から「１．４～１．８％」に上方修正した。
（2010年9月3日 読売新聞）
トリシェ総裁は理事会後の記者会見で、ユーロ圏の２０１０年の経済成長率の見通しを、前回６月の「０．７～１．３％」から「１．４～１．８％」に上方修正した。
（2010年9月3日 読売新聞）
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