NEWS  

June 19th, 2016 | Written by Peter Buxbaum   

Global Growth Forecast Again Revised Lower

World Bank Downgraded Forecast to 2.4 Percent

"The World Bank has downgraded its 2016 global growth forecast to 2.4 percent from the 2.9-percent pace projected in January. The move is due to sluggish growth in advanced economies, stubbornly low commodity prices, weak global trade, and diminishing capital flows.

According to the latest update of its Global Economic Prospects report, commodity-exporting emerging market and developing economies have struggled to adapt to lower prices for oil and other key commodities, and this accounts for 40 percent of the downward revision. Growth in these economies is projected to advance at a meager 0.4-percent pace this year, a downward revision of 1.2 percentage points from the January outlook. . .

A significant increase in private sector credit — fueled by an era of low interest rates and, more recently, rising financing needs — raise potential risks for several emerging market and developing economies, the report finds. . . one development that bears caution is the rapid rise of private debt in several emerging and developing economies. In the wake of a borrowing boom, it is not uncommon to find non-performing bank loans, as a share of gross loans, to quadruple. . .
In an environment of anemic growth, the global economy faces pronounced risks, . .




Read more >> Global Trade Magazine E-Blast

BEA Advisory: First Quarter State Personal Income Statistics Coming June 22

Media Advisory
June 20, 2016
First Quarter State Personal Income Statistics to be Released June 22
SUITLAND, Md. -- Preliminary statistics on people’s incomes by state in the first quarter of 2016 will be released Wednesday, June 22 by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. These state personal income statistics will provide BEA’s first look at state economies for the January-March quarter of 2016 and serve as a basis for government and business decision making. For example: Federal government agencies use state personal income statistics to allocate funds and determine matching grants to states. The statistics are also used in forecasting models to project energy and water use. State governments use the statistics to project tax revenues and demand for public services. Academic regional economists use the statistics for applied research. Businesses, trade associations, and labor organization use the statistics for market research. The news release, along with hyperlinks to the associated tables in PDF and XLS formats, will be forwarded to you. The statistics, released at 8:30 a.m. eastern time, also will be available on BEA’s website (www.bea.gov).
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Contact
Jeannine Aversa	(301) 278-9003	jeannine.aversa@bea.gov
Thomas Dail		thomas.dail@bea.gov
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Spies In The Skies // No Surprise?

America is being watched from above. Government surveillance planes routinely circle over most major cities — but usually take the weekends off.
posted on Apr. 6, 2016, at 11:46 a.m.              Each weekday, dozens of U.S. government aircraft take to the skies and slowly circle over American cities. Piloted by agents of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the planes are fitted with high-resolution video cameras, often working with “augmented reality” software that can superimpose onto the video images everything from street and business names to the owners of individual homes.

At least a few planes have carried devices that can track the cell phones of people below. Most of the aircraft are small, flying a mile or so above ground, and many use exhaust mufflers to mute their engines — making them hard to detect by the people they’re spying on.

The government’s airborne surveillance has received little public scrutiny — until now. BuzzFeed News has assembled an unprecedented picture of the operation’s scale and sweep by analyzing aircraft location data collected by the flight-tracking website Flightradar24 from mid-August to the end of December last year, identifying about 200 federal aircraft. Day after day, dozens of these planes circled above cities across the nation.

The FBI and the DHS would not discuss the reasons for individual flights but told BuzzFeed News that their planes are not conducting mass surveillance.

The DHS said that its aircraft were involved with securing the nation’s borders, as well as targeting drug smuggling and human trafficking, and may also be used to support investigations by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. The FBI said that its planes are only used to target suspects in specific investigations of serious crimes, pointing to a statement issued in June 2015, after reporters and lawmakers started asking questions about FBI surveillance flights.

“It should come as no surprise that the FBI uses planes to follow terrorists, spies, and serious criminals,” said FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano, in that statement. “We have an obligation to follow those people who want to hurt our country and its citizens, and we will continue to do so.”
But most of these government planes took the weekends off. The BuzzFeed News analysis found that surveillance flight time dropped more than 70% on Saturdays, Sundays, and federal holidays.
“The fact that they are mostly not flying on weekends suggests these are relatively run-of-the-mill investigations,” Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology, told BuzzFeed News.
. . . The government’s aerial surveillance programs deserve scrutiny by the Supreme Court, said Adam Bates, a policy analyst with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C. “It’s very difficult to know, because these are very secretive programs, exactly what information they’re collecting and what they’re doing with it,” Bates told BuzzFeed News.
The BuzzFeed News analysis almost certainly underestimates the scope of surveillance by federal aircraft. Some two dozen planes operated by the FBI and more than 130 registered to the DHS never appeared on Flightradar24, suggesting that some surveillance planes may be hidden from public view on plane-tracking websites. (See here for details on the BuzzFeed News analysis.)

As to the big drop-off in flights on the weekends, . . . the weekend dip reflects the controversial practice of using undercover agents and informants to entice suspects into joining fake terrorist plots devised by the FBI. . .
In June of last year, the Associated Press reported that it had linked more than 50 planes, mostly small Cessna Skylane 182 aircraft, to 13 fake companies created as fronts for the FBI. Also using Flightradar24, AP reporters tracked more than 100 flights in 11 states over the course of a month.BuzzFeed News extended the list of FBI front companies, drawing from other sources that have investigated the agency’s airborne operations. We then looked for planes registered to these front companies in data provided by Flightradar24. (Its data comes from radio signals broadcast by transponders that reveal planes’ locations and identifying information, picked up by receivers on the ground that are hosted by volunteers across the country.)

Read more >> Buzzfeed
America is being watched from above. Government surveillance planes routinely circle over most major cities — but usually take the weekends off.

Peter Aldhous

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Charles Seife

BuzzFeed Contributor

To contact Peter Aldhous securely, his PGP fingerprint is 225F B2AF 4B8E 6E3D B1EA 7F9A B96E BF7D 9CB2 9B16.
To contact Charles Seife securely, his PGP fingerprint is 97D0 0237 92A1 3896 C5D8 D57B 7969 BAA4 08CE FFA1.

"Who needs a machine gun?" asks Jonathan Pie

Published on Jun 17, 2016

Views:7118

In his latest episode, Jonathan Pie focuses on the Orlando shootings, asking why it should be public interest to know every detail, "May as well send us a press release and send us the bullets."

U.S. International Transactions: First Quarter 2016 and Annual Revisions

EMBARGOED UNTIL RELEASE AT 8:30 A.M. EDT, Thursday, June 16, 2016

News Release: U.S. International Transactions

The U.S. current-account deficit—a net measure of transactions between the United States and
the rest of the world in goods, services, primary income, and secondary income—increased to
$124.7 billion (preliminary) in the first quarter of 2016 from $113.4 billion (revised) in the fourth quarter of 2015, according to statistics released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).
The deficit increased to 2.7 percent of current-dollar gross domestic product (GDP) from 2.5
percent in the fourth quarter.
The $11.3 billion increase reflected a $9.6 billion decrease in the surplus on primary income
to $37.5 billion and a $4.0 billion increase in the deficit on secondary income to $40.3 billion.
These changes were partly offset by a $2.0 billion decrease in the deficit on goods to $186.4
billion and a $0.4 billion increase in the surplus on services to $64.6 billion.

Notice About Tables Included in the News Release of the International Transactions Accounts
BEA is increasing the number of tables published in the news release of the International
Transactions Accounts. This news release includes tables with additional details for the current account and financial account:

Table 1. U.S. International Transactions                                      page  8
Table 2. U.S. International Trade in Goods                                         10
Table 3. U.S. International Trade in Services                                      14
Table 4. U.S. International Transactions in Primary Income                         16
Table 5. U.S. International Transactions in Secondary Income                       17
Table 6. U.S. International Financial Transactions for Direct Investment           18
Table 7. U.S. International Financial Transactions for Portfolio Investment        20
Table 8. U.S. International Financial Transactions for Other Investment            22
Table 9. Revisions to U.S. International Transactions                              24

The statistics in tables 1-8 are available in BEA's Interactive Web Application.

Current Account Transactions (tables 1-5)
Financial Account (tables 1, 6, 7, and 8)
Statistical Discrepancy (table 1)
Revisions
The statistics of the U.S. international transactions accounts released today have been revised
for the first quarter of 2012 to the fourth quarter of 2015 to incorporate newly available and
revised source data, improved estimation methodologies, and updated seasonal adjustments. Key
changes introduced in this annual revision are summarized below and in table A.

 

 

Revisions to fourth quarter 2015

     Revisions to Fourth-Quarter 2015 International Transactions Accounts Aggregates
                         [Billions of dollars, seasonally adjusted]

                                                                       Estimate
                                                        Preliminary                Revised
    Current-account balance                                  -125.3                 -113.4
       Goods balance                                         -187.3                 -188.4
       Services balance                                        53.5                   64.2
       Primary-income balance                                  42.8                   47.1
       Secondary-income balance                               -34.3                  -36.3
    Net lending from financial-account transactions           -29.4                  -21.8
    Statistical discrepancy                                    95.9                   91.6

The first-quarter statistics in this release are preliminary and will be revised on September 15, 2016.

 

Source: http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/international/transactions/2016/trans116.htm?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=News+Releases
NOTE: See the navigation bar at the right side of the news release text for links to data tables, contact personnel and their telephone numbers, and supplementary materials.

 

Q4 2015 Gross Domestic Product By State Released

 

EMBARGOED UNTIL RELEASE AT 8:30 A.M. EDT, Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Information Industry Group Led Growth Across States in the Fourth Quarter
Gross Domestic Product by State, 4th quarter 2015
Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased in 41 states and the District of Columbia in the fourth quarter of 2015, according to statistics on the geographic breakout of GDP released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. 

Real GDP by state growth, at an annual rate, ranged from 3.0 percent in Indiana to –3.4 percent in Wyoming. Information; construction; and professional, scientific, and technical services were the leading contributors to real U.S. economic growth in the fourth quarter.

Blogger's Note: Data is subject to annual revision
Annual Revision of Gross Domestic Product by State
In conjunction with today's release of fourth quarter 2015 gross domestic product (GDP) by state statistics, BEA is making available on its Web site revised statistics for 2008–2014 and annual statistics for 2015. The annual revision of GDP by state incorporates newly available and revised state source data, most notably the 2012 Economic Census for industries (except for manufacturing, which was previously incorporated).
Additional information on this revision will be available in an article in the July 2016 issue of the Survey of Current Business

The information industry group grew 10.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015. This industry contributed 0.50 percentage point to U.S. real GDP growth and contributed to growth in 49 states and the District of Columbia. This industry was the leading contributor to growth in 16 states and contributed 0.90 percentage point to real GDP growth in California.

Construction grew 7.6 percent in the fourth quarter. This industry contributed 0.30 percentage point to U.S. real GDP growth and contributed to growth in 46 states and the District of Columbia. Alaska, New Mexico, North Dakota, and West Virginia were the exceptions. This industry contributed 1.02 percentage point to real GDP growth in Hawaii.

Professional, scientific, and technical services grew 3.9 percent in the fourth quarter—the 11th consecutive quarter of growth for this industry. This industry contributed 0.28 percentage point to real GDP growth for the nation and contributed to growth in 48 states and the District of Columbia. This industry contributed 0.92 percentage point to real GDP growth in the District of Columbia.

Other highlights

• Nondurable goods manufacturing also made a significant contribution to real GDP growth in the fourth quarter. This industry grew 4.5 percent for the nation, contributed 0.24 percentage point to U.S. real GDP growth and contributed to growth in 45 states and the District of Columbia. This industry was the leading contributor to growth in Indiana, the fastest growing state in the fourth quarter.
• Mining declined 10.7 percent for the nation in the fourth quarter. This industry subtracted more than 2.2 percentage points from real GDP growth in Alaska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.
• Finance and insurance declined 3.1 percent in the fourth quarter. This industry subtracted 0.22 percentage point from U.S. real GDP growth and subtracted 0.75 percentage point or more from real GDP growth in South Dakota, Delaware, and New York.

Tables 1–3 (Excel) show these results in more detail; complete detail is available on BEA's Web site at www.bea.gov.

The next quarterly GDP by state release is scheduled for July 27, 2016 and will cover the first quarter of 2016

Source: http://www.bea.gov/index.htm

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Technical Contact
Catherine Wang	(301) 278-9670	gdpbystate@bea.gov
Todd Siebeneck	(301) 278-9705
Media Contact
Jeannine Aversa	(301) 278-9003	jeannine.aversa@bea.gov
Thomas Dail		thomas.dail@bea.gov
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What Do You Know About H2O in Mesa

Ya gotta wonder if less than 465 people - out of a population of 465,000 - does that mean that only 1:1000 are curious enough to find out about water?
QUESTION: How much does water and wastewater treatment cost?

Hint: The answer is in the City's Budget FY2016/17 >>. $140.1 Million$

BTW: Chris Brady, in the blue polo shirt has been the Chief Executive Officer - City Manager - for the last ten years and, for some reason chooses to appear on local city-owned television station Mesa Channel 11

Published on Apr 12, 2016

Views: 463

This Mesa Now take a look at where Mesa gets its water, how its treated and how it makes it to your house.