Arnold Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future – WSJ.com. “Toughly 80 cents of every government dollar in California goes to employee compensation and benefits”. yikes! Think that’s bad, Ontario has 10 times as much debt per capita.

What collapsing empire looks like – Salon.com. closing library systems? making the 12th grade optional? turning off street lights? Welcome to America.

How to Make an American Job Before It’s Too Late: Andy Grove – Bloomberg. long article about restarting American manufacturing. some surprising ideas (including a trade war) from the co-founder of Intel.

California on verge of system failure’ – The Globe and Mail. oy yoi yoi.

Did a Big Bet Help Trigger ‘Black Swan’ Stock Swoon? – WSJ.com. “Normally there can be hundreds of offers to buy the iShares Russell 1000 Growth Index exchange-traded fund, but at 2:46 p.m., there were just four bids north of $14 for a fund that had been trading at $51 minutes earlier”. So basically all liquidity in the market is hedge fund robots.

Detroit homes sell for $1 amid mortgage and car industry crisis | The Guardian. Some interesting stuff about community groups that are just tearing down homes without permits to get rid of the blight. Michigan is such a crazy place.

Some See a Housing Bubble Down Under – NYTimes.com. The median housing price in all of Australia is $450K USD? That’s beyond insane. The median in Sydney is twice that. via adam.

The Other Side Of China’s 8% GDP “Growth”: Ghost Cities | zero hedge. al-jazeera news piece about an empty city in china.

The Jobless Rate for People Like You – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com. The worst off: black men ages 15 to 24 without a high school degree: 48.5%. The best off: white women ages 25 to 44 with a college degree: 3.6%

Detroit house auction flops for urban wasteland – The Globe and Mail. holy crap.

The New Untouchables – NYTimes.com. it’s people who can hustle.

Mortgage rate hike could cool housing rebound – The Globe and Mail “But although rates are on the rise from April, when they hovered at 5.25 per cent, they are still far below the 7.25 per cent reached in 2000. (They were as high as 21.75 per cent in August, 1981.)”

toronto confusion

From The Star today: “Toronto jobless rate hits 10%”. From The Star yesterday: GTA housing market hot. The latter points out a a semi-detach home in the Danforth that “sold in May for $715,000 after being listed for $549,000″.

Clearly, the recession is effecting Toronto. Is it just not effecting people who are approved for half million dollar mortgages?

Canada lost 45,000 more jobs in July “Canada’s jobless rate remained steady at 8.6 per cent in July, even as the country lost about 45,000 jobs. The unemployment rate remained unchanged from June as people gave up looking for work and dropped out of the labour market.” That is one depressing quote. Summer unemployment for full time students is at 21%.

Charlie Rose – A conversation with Martin Sorrell. Head of WPP, the second largest communication (read: advertising) company in the world. sharp insight. via jody.

Record number on unemployment – The Globe and Mail. 780K people on EI now. EI claims in Ontario and Alberta went up 16% in one month. crazy.

How Trillion-Dollar Deficits Were Created – NYTimes.com. that’s nuts. As the related article states: “The first is that President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested.”

How To Brace Your Portfolio for Inflation – WSJ.com. or more so, hyper-inflation. not a ton of options for average folks though he does mention the option of grabbing a 10-year fixed rate mortgage for 5%.

Talking Business – Poking Holes in a Theory on Markets – NYTimes.com “Our default reflex is that the world knows what it is doing, and that is extravagant nonsense”

Deficit swells from $34-billion to $50-billion – in 4 months – The Globe and Mail. the article mentions that half the increase is from EI claims (which increased by 10% just last month). i love that this article didn’t last 24 hours on the Globe’s front page.