Recession Redux

Today's business pages are filled with nasty adjectives to describe the recession we can't seem to shake. The latest spate of bleak prognoses for economic recovery follows yesterday's grim jobs data. In June, the economy lost another 467,000 jobs, pushing the unemployment rate up to 9.5 percent. The New York Times calls it "a sobering indication that the longest recession since the 1930s had yet to release its hold." Economists polled to make sense of the data seem lost. "There’s nothing in here to show that the economy and the market are pulling out of the grip of recession," Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh, tells the NYT. The Washington Post points out that until yesterday's jobs numbers came out, there was hope that things were improving. Now, it seems like the economy is getting sicker. "The number of job losses had decreased every month since January before spiking again in June, and economists think it is highly likely that the jobless rate will hit double-digits later this year," the newspaper writes.

Of course, the worse-than-expected payroll numbers sent the markets bombing downward on Thursday, with the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq all falling by more than 2 percent. It was a humbling moment for traders who were reminded that a resurgent Dow doesn't always mean everyone is better off. "People are realizing that the stock market rally doesn't mean the economy is coming back," Joseph Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading, told CNNMoney.com. The jobs figures also sunk the price of crude oil, which fell by $2 a barrel in trading on Thursday, Bloomberg reports.

The NYT leads off its business coverage today with another revelatory piece about China's green-energy ambitions. The upshot? The Chinese are moving far more quickly than the United States into alternative sources of energy. "Although coal remains the biggest energy source and is almost certain to stay that way, the rise of renewable energy, especially wind power, is helping to slow China’s steep growth in emissions of global warming gases," the NYT writes. By the NYT's calculation, China may be at least two years ahead (or more) of the United States in mandating a switch to renewable energy sources—two years, that is, if the Senate eventually approves a climate change bill similar to the one that eeked through the House last week. Of course, China is still the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluter, Reuters reminds us. But it's trying to change that. The Chinese government has a $150 billion plan to attract investment in wind power. Reuters writes, "China is set to raise its wind power capacity to 100 gigawatts (GW) by 2020, eight times its current level and more than Britain's entire current power capacity, as part of a stimulus package aimed at boosting renewable energy."

Did Bernie Madoff have a secret Austrian connection? A cluster of U.S., U.K., and Austrian authorities are investigating Sonja Kohn, the former chairwoman of Austria's Bank Medici AG, who they believe was "paid more than $40 million in kickbacks to funnel billions of dollars of investments" to Madoff, the WSJ reports. Prosecutors allege that Kohn took the kickbacks and in exchange made three Bank Medici funds into "feeder funds" that gave Madoff access to an estimated $3.5 billion from European investors. Back stateside, federal marshals in NY seized Madoff's $7 million Manhattan penthouse apartment as part of its strategy to reimburse victims of his ponzi scheme the NYT reports.

Deep into tech territory but with another legal twist as the Justice Department confirmed it was conducting an "antitrust investigation into the settlement of a lawsuit that groups representing authors and publishers filed against Google," the NYT writes. The main issue for Justice is the concern that the agreement grants Google (GOOG) exclusive rights to profit from millions of so-called “orphan works,” books that are out of print and whose authors or rights holders are unknown or can't be located. All this antitrust activity brings back memories of Microsoft (MSFT) in the late 1990s, so it is with just a hint of irony that we report that the supposed software dinosaur continues to innovate with its new Bing search engine, this time adding a smattering of Twitter posts to its search results, Business Week reports. Its prediction? Google won't be far behind.

And finally, we go back to China where the country's principal trading index, the Shanghai composite index, rose by 52 points Thursday, the NYT points out, "putting the index up 68 percent this year." (Reuters points out the Shanghai composite was up again this morning, weathering nicely the rotten U.S. jobs figure from yesterday.) To hear analysts talk about the Shanghai index you'd have thought you were being teleported back in time. "Sentiment has staged a remarkable recovery," Jing Ulrich, chairwoman of China equities at J.P. Morgan told the NYT. "This is about confidence. The money has always been there, even in the dark days of 2008."

Today's Business Press will not be published on Saturday. Enjoy your Independence Day!