(Real Time Economics - U.S.)

The Fed's balance sheet expanded for the first time in three weeks, rising back over $2 trillion. Direct-bank lending rose after posting declines in the four previous weeks, though the increase was relatively small. A bigger contribution came from a more than $5 billion boost in the Term Asset Backed Securities Loan Facility, which is aimed at spurring consumer lending but hasn't been used nearly as much as originally envisioned. The largest expansion in the balance sheet came through purchases of Treasurys, agency debt and mortgage-backed securities. The Fed started a program in March to ramp up such acquisitions in order to push down long-term interest rates low. Since that time the makeup of the balance sheet has shifted substantially, with less direct emergency lending to banks and more holdings of debt. Central bank liquidity swaps increased for the first time in 14 weeks, but still remain lower than crisis levels reached soon after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.(...)

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(BBC - U.K.)

General Electric's earnings fell 47% to $2.9bn (£1.7bn) in the second quarter of 2009 from the same period last year as the slowdown took its toll. Revenues fell 17% to $39.1bn from the same quarter last year. The company has been hit by falling revenues and profits at Capital Finance, its finance arm(...)

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(Vox EU - The Net)

This column introduces timelines, produced by the New York Fed, that organise and illustrate policymakers' responses to the global financial crisis.

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Everything you need to know about the countries meeting in Italy this week (The Guardian - U.K.)

But who are the countries that are meeting and how do they compare? Here's some basic data - download the spreadsheet for loads more. We've included China because, even though it's not strictly in the G8, its every move has dominated coverage so far. (...)

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(USA Today - U.S.)

Despite massive government efforts to bolster the credit market, banks are pulling back severely on card lending. In the first four months of the year -- the latest data -- banks issued 9.8 million new credit cards, a 38% drop from the same time last year, according to Equifax credit bureau data. Low-risk borrowers can still get credit, but they're getting less than before. The average limit on a new card, after rising during the recession, slipped 3% so far this year to $4,594.."

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(The Times - U.K.)

US private employers sacked 473,000 workers in June, while mortgage applications hit a seven-month low, raising fears that America was not recovering from its recession as well as previously thought.

Private sector job losses, calculated by ADP Employer Services, were worse than the 393,000 that economists had predicted in a Reuters poll but not as bad as the 485,000 sackings in May.

Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, whose firm worked on ADP's survey, said that he expected a further 800,000 to one million job losses this year.
(...)

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Where Housing Will Be in 2012 (Business Week - U.S.)

The Obama administration's $75 billion program to reduce foreclosures has been beset by backlogs and delays, leading many overstretched homeowners to complain about unreturned phone calls and inaccurate information from lenders, while others say they were denied help for reasons that weren't clear. Details of the plan were unveiled in early March. The goal is to prevent up to 4 million foreclosures by having banks modify loans into more affordable monthly payments. (...)

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World Bank sees positive signs in Chinese economy(The Guardian - U.K.)

The World Bank has raised its growth forecast for China as the country looks to be doing better than expected in the face of the global economic downturn.

China's economy is now expected to grow 7.2% this year, the World Bank says, upgrading its previous forecast of 6.5%.(...)

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Will Gas Prices Hit Last Summer's High? (Business Week - U.S.)

By Esmé E. Deprez

With crude oil prices rallying above $71 a barrel in recent days, should Americans fear a repeat of the summer of 2008, when $4 gasoline jolted the nation? The national average on June 10 for a gallon of regular unleaded was $2.627, according to the Oil Price Information Service's American Automobile Assn. daily Fuel Gauge Report. That's up 40¢ from a month ago but significantly lower than last June, when the average price was $4.04 and well on its way to a July record high of $4.11 per gallon. (...)

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Which Nations Have The Biggest Debt Bubbles? (Wealth of Nations - The Net)

Public debt is rising at its fastest rate since World War II, as pretty much every country around the world struggles to stimulate its economy. Who's most at risk from the ballooning debt bubble? It's an important question, since markets will eventually penalize countries that struggle to service their debt (already, there have been a slew of sovereign downgrades around the world). (...)

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(The Wall Street Journal - U.S.)

Three more global corporate bond issuers defaulted this week, bringing the year-to-date tally to 135, more than four times the 32 defaults recorded in the same period of last year, Standard & Poor's said.

All three of this week's defaulters (Berry Plastics Group Inc., Metaldyne Corp. and Visteon Corp.) were based in the U.S., bringing the tally of defaults this year to 96 issuers in the U.S, the rating agency said. That matches the number of defaults for all 12 months of 2008. (...)

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Spain's Falling Prices Fuel Deflation Fears in Europe (New York Times - U.S.)

Faced with plunging orders, merchants across this recession-wracked country are starting to do something that many of them have never done: cut retail prices. Prices dipped everywhere, from restaurants and fashion retailers to pharmacies and supermarkets in March. Hoping to increase sales, Fernando Maestre reduced prices by a third on the video intercoms his company makes for homes and apartment buildings. But that has not helped, so, along with many other Spanish employers, he is continuing to fire workers. (...)

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- Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism.

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What Happens to the Unemployed? (Economix - The Net)

The "labor force status flows" statistics don't get a lot of attention, but they show some interesting information on what happens to the unemployed from month to month. Did they stay unemployed? Did they find a new job? Did they give up and drop out of the labor force? Did they die?

Since today it's all-labor-charts-all-the-time, I decided to take a peek at this undeservingly neglected report.

Of those who were unemployed in February, 17 percent found work. But a vast majority -- 64 percent -- remained unemployed, and another 19 percent dropped out of the labor force altogether.(...)

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