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http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/03/05/business/20100306_CHARTS_GRAPHIC.html?ref=economy March 5, 2010 After Jerky Swings, the Economy Begins to Look Nice and Boring By FLOYD NORRIS A DEEP recession and the credit crisis led to extraordinary falls in the American economy and perhaps even greater disruptions in financial markets. Now, both economic and market indicators have returned to what Warren G. Harding called "normalcy" when he was elected president in 1920, after the end of World War I and a subsequent recession. A lot of worry about the economy remains, and some economists are forecasting a double-dip recession, as occurred in the early 1980s, or a very slow recovery, as happened after the 1990-91 and 2001 recessions. But as the accompanying charts show, three disparate indicators - covering unemployment, corporate financial distress and stock market volatility - have gone from very high to a little below historical averages. Abby Joseph Cohen, the Goldman Sachs strategist, told a conference sponsored by George Washington University this week that lessened market volatility was one of the reassuring signs she saw. She was referring to the VIX index, which uses index options prices to show how much volatility traders expect. Another way to measure volatility is to look at the range of share prices. The chart here shows the differences between the highs and lows of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index during three-month periods. There have been some sharp movements on a few days, but the high from December through February was just 10 percent higher than the low, the smallest range since the summer of 2007. Similarly, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm, said that only 42,900 firings were announced in February, the lowest for any month since 2006. The chart shows three-month totals, which are down almost three-quarters from the highest levels last year. The data "offers more support to the notion that U.S. employers ha

"After analyzing risky mortgages made on homes in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada, where the housing markets had overheated, Mr. Paulson went to Goldman to talk about how he could bet against those loans. He focused his analysis on adjustable-rate loans taken out by borrowers with relatively low credit scores and turned up more than 100 loan pools that he considered vulnerable, the S.E.C. said. Mr. Paulson then asked Goldman to put together a portfolio of these pools, or others like them that he could wager against. He paid $15 million to Goldman for creating and marketing the Abacus deal, the complaint says. One of a small cohort of money managers who saw the mortgage market in late 2006 as a bubble waiting to burst, Mr. Paulson capitalized on the opacity of mortgage-related securities that Wall Street cobbled together and sold to its clients. These instruments contained thousands of mortgage loans that few investors bothered to analyze. Instead, the buyers relied on the opinions of credit ratings agencies like Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings. These turned out to be overly rosy, and investors suffered hundreds of billions in losses when the loans underlying these securities went bad. Mr. Paulson personally made an estimated $3.7 billion in 2007 as a result of his hedge fund's performance, and another $2 billion in 2008. He was also treated like a celebrity by members of a Congressional committee that invited him to testify in November 2008 about the credit crisis. At the time, none of the lawmakers asked how he had managed to set up his lucrative trades; they seemed more interested in getting his advice on how to solve the credit crisis. "

This year, as he sought a full-time job, Wells Fargo quickly gave him the response he wanted: When can you start? "The banks this year kept saying, 'It's a good year,' 'We just approved a lot of hiring,' 'The market is clearing up,' " Mr. Yankson said. "It was a completely different experience."

As some companies begin to rebuild stocks, the impact could wash through the economy for a few more months, adding jobs and moderating the overall decline. Then the underlying weakness of the economy will probably reassert itself, say experts. After years of borrowing against homes and cashing in stock to spend in excess of their incomes, many Americans are tapped out. Austerity and saving have replaced spending and investment in many households, constraining the economy. As many Americans transition from living on home equity loans to sustaining themselves on paychecks, weekly pay continues to effectively shrink: Over the last year, average hourly earnings for rank-and-file workers - some 80 percent of the labor force - have increased by 2.5 percent. But average weekly earnings have expanded by only 0.7 percent, less than the increase in the cost of living, because employers have slashed working hours. In September, the average workweek edged down by one-tenth of an hour, to 33 hours. For those out of work, the job market looks harsher now than at any point in the recession. The number of people who have been jobless for more than six months increased in September by 450,000, reaching 5.4 million. "We have a truly massive crisis of long-term unemployment," said Christine L. Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project in a statement, adding that nearly 400,000 jobless people had exhausted their unemployment benefits by the end of September. "Today's employment report is a marching order for Congress to pass unemployment benefit extensions to all states, quickly." The first signs of improvement are likely to be seen among temporary workers, say experts, as companies now hunkering down in the face of uncertain prospects take tentative steps to expand. But temporary help services lost 1,700 jobs in September. "Companies are extremely cautious," said Roy G. Krause, chief executive of Spherion, a recruiting and staffing comp

As some companies begin to rebuild stocks, the impact could wash through the economy for a few more months, adding jobs and moderating the overall decline. Then the underlying weakness of the economy will probably reassert itself, say experts. After years of borrowing against homes and cashing in stock to spend in excess of their incomes, many Americans are tapped out. Austerity and saving have replaced spending and investment in many households, constraining the economy. As many Americans transition from living on home equity loans to sustaining themselves on paychecks, weekly pay continues to effectively shrink: Over the last year, average hourly earnings for rank-and-file workers - some 80 percent of the labor force - have increased by 2.5 percent. But average weekly earnings have expanded by only 0.7 percent, less than the increase in the cost of living, because employers have slashed working hours. In September, the average workweek edged down by one-tenth of an hour, to 33 hours. For those out of work, the job market looks harsher now than at any point in the recession. The number of people who have been jobless for more than six months increased in September by 450,000, reaching 5.4 million. "We have a truly massive crisis of long-term unemployment," said Christine L. Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project in a statement, adding that nearly 400,000 jobless people had exhausted their unemployment benefits by the end of September. "Today's employment report is a marching order for Congress to pass unemployment benefit extensions to all states, quickly." The first signs of improvement are likely to be seen among temporary workers, say experts, as companies now hunkering down in the face of uncertain prospects take tentative steps to expand. But temporary help services lost 1,700 jobs in September. "Companies are extremely cautious," said Roy G. Krause, chief executive of Spherion, a recruiting and staffing comp

More than 60 percent of the cartels' revenue -- $8.6 billion out of $13.8 billion in 2006 -- came from U.S. marijuana sales, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Now, to stay competitive, Mexican traffickers are changing their business model to improve their product and streamline delivery. Well-organized Mexican cartels have also moved to increasingly cultivate marijuana on public lands in the United States, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center and local authorities. This strategy gives the Mexicans direct access to U.S. markets, avoids the risk of seizure at the border and reduces transportation costs. Unlike cocaine, which the traffickers must buy and transport from South America, driving up costs, marijuana has been especially lucrative for the cartels because they control the business all the way from clandestine fields in the Mexican mountains to the wholesale dealers in U.S. cities such as Washington. "It's pure profit," said Jorge Chabat, an expert on the drug trade at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City.

emember how Republican Scott P. Brown's victory in January's Senate race in Massachusetts was supposed to represent a mortal blow to health-care reform? "Probably back to the drawing board," Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) declared the next day. "Might be dead," Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) surmised. "We're back to where we were maybe even years ago," concluded Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). But rather than dooming the effort, Brown's win appears to have helped Democrats refocus the legislation and their strategy for selling it. Once on track to produce a bill that Republicans were prepared to depict as partisan and laden with special-interest perks, Democrats now expect to unveil legislation that costs less and more aggressively tackles health-care inflation -- a package they say could leave them less vulnerable in November. It drops the "Cornhusker Kickback" that so infuriated voters, and includes a few Republican ideas tacked on by President Obama. "There's no government takeover of health care; there's an expansion of the private market, subsidies, more choice -- I mean, it's so much of what many of us had hoped for from the very beginning," said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), a moderate and reluctant supporter of the original Senate bill. The House and Senate will launch the final legislative phase this week, with the aim of holding votes before the end of the month. The action will come in two phases. First the House will vote on the bill the Senate approved on Christmas Eve. Then each chamber is expected to consider a package of "fixes" offered under a budget rule known as reconciliation that will protect it from a GOP filibuster in the Senate. Democrats could still fail to pass the overhaul for any number of reasons, and Republicans are vowing an epic showdown on the Senate floor to derail the reconciliation package. Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, which holds jurisdiction over reconciliation bills, has called the

The tuition was daunting - about $41,000 for a 14-month program - but he said the admissions recruiter portrayed it as the entrance price to a stable life. "The recruiter said, 'The way the economy is, with the recession, you need to have a safe way to be sure you will always have income,' " Mr. Newburg said. " 'In today's market, chefs will always have a job, because people will always have to eat.' " According to Mr. Newburg, the recruiter promised the school would help him find a good job, most likely as a line cook, paying as much as $38,000 a year. Last summer, halfway through his program and already carrying debts of about $10,000, Mr. Newburg was alarmed to see many graduates taking jobs paying as little as $8 an hour washing dishes and busing tables, he said. He dropped out to avoid more debt.

Sohn said the Central Valley and Inland Empire, which have suffered some of the worst foreclosure rates in the nation, are dragging down the rest of the state. Coastal California is rebounding well, he said, and the comeback in Asia's economy is helping California's major ports.