Daily Corinthian • Sunday, March 17, 2013 • 7A
“What we have here is monetary stimulus vs. fiscal drag, and I think the Fed is winning.” Jim O’Sullivan Chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics
Unemployment aid applications slump to five-year low Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Fewer Americans sought unemployment aid last week, reducing the average number of weekly applications last month to a five-year low. The drop shows that fewer layoffs are strengthening the job market. The Labor Department said Thursday that applications fell 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 332,000. That reduced the four-week average to 346,750, the lowest since the week of March 8, 2008, three months after the Great Recession began. The report “provides further evidence of a gradual strengthening in labor market conditions,” Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, said in a note to clients. Investors appeared to view the report as further evidence that job growth and the economy are strengthening. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 64 points in mid-day trading, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index neared its all-time high. Applications for unemployment aid are a proxy for layoffs, and their steady decline signals that companies are laying off fewer and fewer workers. It suggests that companies aren’t worried that business might fall off in the near future. The number of applications for benefits has dropped five times in the past six weeks and has declined 13 percent since mid-November. At the same time, net hiring has picked up. Employers added an average of 200,000 jobs a month from November through February — up from about 150,000 a month in the previous four months. And the unemployment rate reached a four-year low of 7.7 percent in February. During the Great Recession, layoffs spiked, and applications for unemployment benefits peaked at 667,000 in the week that ended March 28, 2009. In a healthy economy, applications usually fluctuate between 300,000 and 350,000. Applications may pick up in coming weeks, though, as across-theboard government spending cuts force many federal agencies and government contractors to lay off or furlough workers. The spending cuts, which took effect March 1, were mandated by a 2011 budget deal. The White House and Congress haven’t been able to reach a deal to reverse them. Bricklin Dwyer, an economist at BNP Paribas, estimates that the government spending cuts will boost applications for unemployment
Still, the economy should generate steady job gains this spring, Dwyer says, even if monthly job growth dips from February’s 236,000 increase. aid by about 15,000 a week in the second half of March and between 15,000 and 20,000 a week in April. Still, the economy should generate steady job gains this spring, Dwyer says, even if monthly job growth dips from February’s 236,000 increase. Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, says he thinks the Federal Reserve’s efforts to boost growth by keeping interest rates at record lows should blunt the impact of the government spending cuts. “What we have here is monetary stimulus vs. fiscal drag, and I think the Fed is winning,” O’Sullivan says. So far, employers haven’t been laying off more workers because of higher taxes or government spending cuts. In January, Social Security taxes rose two percentage points. Someone earning $50,000 has about $1,000 less to spend in 2013. A household with two high-paid workers has up to $4,500 less. Higher taxes haven’t prevented Americans from spending more. Retail sales jumped in February by the most in five months, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Much of the increase reflected higher gas prices. But even excluding the volatile categories of gas, autos and building supply stores, so-called core retail sales rose strongly. Economists were encouraged by the report. Many now expect much faster growth in the January-March quarter. Strong auto sales and a healthy recovery in housing are spurring more hiring and economic growth. Builders started work on the most homes last year since 2008. New-home sales jumped 16 percent in January to the highest level since July 2008. And home prices rose by the most in more than six years in the 12 months that ended in January, according to real estate data provider CoreLogic.
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Battling demon of intemperance BY JIMMY REED Guest Columnist
The Mississippi Delta is known for its characters. Just as flatlanders nuance miniscule rainfall differences, ranging from “spits” to “frog drowners,” they also categorize characters, from those with benign idiosyncrasies, to those shockingly short of scruples, to raving lunatics roaming unrestrained among their fellow Alluvians. Everybody in the Delta knows everybody else in the Delta, and everybody knows a few characters, is kin to a mess of them, or IS a character. I’m a Deltan, and folks claim I’m a character. I’m not, although I flocked with a few when I farmed the flat land. One of the strangest Delta characters I knew was Lloyd “Lush” Llewellynn. His jovial red face framed a varicose-veined, bulbous nose and intelligent blue eyes, fixed always in a be-
mused, faraway stare. Even in the Delta’s soup-thick humidity and heat, when gills would serve better than lungs for respiration, he wore heavy, Victorian Era clothes, so old and shabby that Victorians might actually have worn them. He spoke with what he claimed was a Welshman’s accent, but to us sounded more like a Yankee’s Welch affectation. Lush loved beer. When he entered the local watering hole, he tapped his derby with a cane, unknotted a large bandanna, and counted out enough money to buy several quarts of warm Falstaff beer, which he lauded as fine English lager. Lush lived in a tiny Winnebago that listed to starboard. To feed himself and a dozen cats, and maintain an ample amount of Falstaff, he painted. I hired him once to paint a sign on my dad’s cotton gin.
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Lush was a gifted artist, but a hopeless alcoholic, who seemed to have materialized out of thin air one day, and dematerialized the same way. Only his caterwauling cats and ramshackle hut remained. We never saw him again. Of talented people whose lives alcohol destroys, Abraham Lincoln once said: “ … if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant to fall to the demon of intemperance.” Oxford resident Jimmy Reed is a newspaper columnist, author and college professor. His latest collection of short stories (Boss, Jaybird And Me: Anthology Of Short Stories) can be purchased at Square Books.
Revelers worldwide mark St. Patrick’s Day BY JENNIFER PELTZ AND VERENA DOBNIK Associated Press
NEW YORK — Crowds cheered and bagpipes bellowed as New York City’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade kicked off Saturday, and people with a fondness for anything Irish began a weekend of festivities from the Louisiana bayou to Dublin’s Parnell Square. With the holiday itself falling on a Sunday, many celebrations were scheduled instead for Saturday because of religious observances. In New York, the massive parade, which predates the United States, was led by 750 members of the New York Army National Guard. The 1st Battalion of the 69th Infantry has been marching in the parade since 1851. Michael Bloomberg took in his last St. Patrick’s Day parade as mayor, waving to a cheering crowd as snowflakes fell on Fifth Avenue. Marching just behind him was Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who presented Bloomberg with a historic Irish teapot earlier. “The Irish are found in every borough, every corner of New York,” Kenny said at a holiday breakfast. “In previous generations they came heartbroken and hungry, in search of new life, new hope; today they come in search of opportunity to work in finance, fashion, film.” Hundreds of thousands like the parade route in New York, cheering the marching bands, dance troupes and politicians. “We’re crazy, the Irish, we’re funny and we talk to everyone,” said 23-year-old Lauren Dawson, of Paramus, N.J., who came to her first St. Patrick’s Day parade. In downtown Chicago, thousands lined the Chicago River and cheered as workers on a boat dumped dye into the water, turning it a bright
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“The Irish are found in every borough, every corner of New York. In previous generations they came heartbroken and hungry, in search of new life, new hope; today they come in search of opportunity to work in finance, fashion, film.” Enda Kenny Irish prime minister fluorescent green for at least a few hours in an eye-catching local custom. In a sea of people in green shirts, coats, winter hats, sunglasses and even wigs and beards, 29-year-old Ben May managed to stand out. The Elkhart, Ind., man wore a full leprechaun costume, complete with a tall green hat he had to hold onto in the wind. “I’ve got a little Irish in me, so I’m supporting the cause,” he said. May bought the outfit online to wear to Notre Dame football games. But he figured it was fitting for this occasion too. “I probably will get to drink for free,” he said, after posing for a photograph with a group of women. “That’s what I’m hoping,” said his girlfriend, Angela Gibson. Kenny, who visited Chicago for St. Patrick’s Day last year, was again making the holiday a jumping-off point for an extended trip to the U.S., with stops in Washington and on the West Coast over the ensuing several days. “I will use my visit to promote Ireland’s many strengths and to further reinforce our deep and abiding political and economic relationship with the United States,” Kenny said in a statement this week. He and President Barack Obama were scheduled to meet at the White House on Tuesday and exchange shamrocks, a tradition that
dates to Harry S. Truman’s administration. Obama also is slated to meet separately Tuesday with Peter Robinson, the leader of Northern Ireland’s Catholic-Protestant government. Thousands of revelers gaudily garbed in green crammed the oak-shaded squares and sidewalks of downtown Savannah, Ga., on Saturday, for a celebration that’s a 189-year-old tradition. Led by bagpipers in green kilts, a parade kicked off Saturday morning, hours after customers began lining up at downtown bars. More than 1,000 worshippers also packed the pews of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist for the Mass that traditionally precedes the parade. Bev Kehayes, of Greensboro, N.C., joined friends near the start of the parade route. She made hats with green feathers and flowers just for the occasion. “It’s good, clean fun. Heaven forbid there’s a little alcohol involved,” said Kehayes, who says she’s missed only three of the celebrations in Savannah in 29 years. In Ireland, Dublin’s five-day St. Patrick’s Day festival was unfolding with a new addition. For the first time, up to 8,000 visitors from around the world were due to march in a so-called people’s parade on Sunday, when Ireland’s capital city also intends hold its usual procession of bands and pageantry.
In Maine, St. Patrick’s Day prompted Gov. Paul LePage to relent on a vow to veto any bill that reached his desk before lawmakers pass his proposal to pay a state debt to hospitals. He signed a measure Friday allowing bars to serve alcohol a few hours earlier than usual, starting at 6 a.m., on the Sunday holiday. About 1,500 miles southwest, the city of Houma, La., was holding its unconventional celebration — an IrishItalian parade, with a celebration that features both Irish cabbage and Italian sausage — on Sunday. The event resumed last year after a 10-year hiatus. In Rolla, Mo., the Missouri University of Science and Technology continued a St. Patrick’s tradition that began in 1908, when students declared that the patron saint of Ireland also was the patron saint of engineers. A slate of events, which included a student portraying St. Patrick being transported downtown on a manure spreader, were to wrap up with a parade Saturday. Annapolis, Md., held its first St. Patrick’s Day parade March 10. A 40-year-old parade tradition took on a sense of renewal March 3 in Belmar, N.J., a shore town that took a heavy blow from Superstorm Sandy. But along with the festivities, in some places, came warnings from police that they would be on the lookout for drunken drivers and other misbehavior. New Jersey Transit officials said alcoholic beverages would be prohibited Saturday on any train between Manhattan and Hoboken, N.J., a nightlife-friendly city across the Hudson River. Transit police arrested 16 people during St. Patrick’s Day last year, including two people who were charged with aggravated assault on two conductors.
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When I pulled up to his hovel, he opened the door and wheezed, “Top o’ the mornin’, Guvnuh. By Jove, our appointment slipped me mind. I’ll pop on out in a jiffy.” I asked Lush to paint the gin’s name in calligraphic letters, large enough to be read by truckers coming to pick up cotton bales. He knew how, but couldn’t start; in palsied tremors, his hands shook. “Your Honor, I need to quaff a dram or two to settle me nerves,” he said. “Please advance me enough for a couple of quarts.” When he had swilled the first quart, his eyes focused and his hands became as steady as a surgeon’s. He sketched the lettering without using a stencil, and set to painting. As we drove away, he gulped down the second quart. Artists never look back. Lush didn’t; he knew his handiwork was perfect.
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