By Oliver Biggadike March 11 (Bloomberg) — The dollar will retain its status as the world’s reserve currency as long as U.S. financial markets are sound and government spending is sustainable, Standard & Poor’s said. The greenback is “the world’s most accepted currency,” even after the global recession that began in the U.S., John Chambers , chairman of the S&P sovereign ratings committee, wrote in a report released today. The dollar supports the nation’s top AAA credit ranking, improves the government’s access to external financing and helps lower borrowing costs, he wrote. “The dollar’s widespread acceptance stems from the U.S. economy’s fundamental strength, which in our view comes from the economy’s size and the flexibility of labor and product markets,” New York-based Chambers wrote with David Beers , global head of sovereign ratings at S&P in London. “We view U.S. banking and capital markets to be dynamic and unfettered relative to their peers.” Pacific Investment Management Co., the world’s biggest manager of bond funds, said in its August 2009 Emerging Markets Watch report the dollar’s reserve status was endangered as the government pumped “massive” amounts of money into the economy to stimulate growth. The dollar has gained 4.9 percent this year against the euro, the second biggest destination for international reserves, rising to $1.3657 at yesterday’s close. To contact the reporter on this story: Oliver Biggadike in New York at obiggadike@bloomberg.net
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Dollar to Keep Reserve Role If Markets Stay Sound, Standard & Poor’s Says
by The Huffington Post News Team on January 8, 2010
One in five working-age American men does not have a job, according to the latest federal employment numbers, an all-time low that illustrates the extraordinary toll this recession has taken on male-dominated professions in particular. Men are more likely to work in sectors like manufacturing and construction that are more sensitive to economic downturns. But this downturn has been particularly brutal on those industries, leading some observers to call it a ” mancession .” Only 80.3 percent of men age 25-54 had jobs in December — the lowest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started collecting that data in 1948 — at which point the figure was 94.4 percent. When the recession began in December 2007, less than 13 percent of men in this age bracket were out of work. The numbers are derived from what the BLS calls its employment-to-population ratio. While the non-working number in this case includes men who have voluntarily chosen to stay out of the workforce, such as students and stay-at-home dads, in many ways it provides a clearer picture of the depth of the nation’s unemployment situation. The percentage of women age 25-54 who have work is also down, but not as dramatically. Some 69.1 percent of those women are employed, about the same as in 1998. Women dominate the fields such as education, health services and government. The health industry and government payrolls are booming, and are expected to continue growing, thanks to an aging population and recently-enacted stimulus programs to boost the economy, respectively. Overall, the percentage of Americans over age 16 that holds a job continues to slide, reaching 58.2 percent. That’s a 25-year-low. “It is striking that we have managed to reverse more than 26 years of increasing labor force participation in this downturn,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. “It will take a long time for workers to get over the effects of this recession.” The official unemployment rate, which doesn’t include people who are underemployed or who have given up looking for work, remained at 10 percent. According to the BLS, employers nationwide shed an additional 85,000 jobs in December. Analysts had predicted a decline of just 10,000 jobs. The extent of the job losses indicates that the optimism generated by last month’s slight dip in the unemployment rate (from 10.2 to 10 percent) may have been unfounded. Revised figures released today show an actual increase of 4,000 jobs in November – but that’s now been offset 20 times over in December. More than 6.3 million people are looking for jobs, according to the new figures, a 14 percent increase from December 2008. Visit this link for a deeper dive into the numbers. Get HuffPost Business On Facebook and Twitter !
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1 in 5 Working-Age American Men Don’t Have A Job
