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...that the state has so far dodged the recessionary bullet. With an unemployment rate of 5.6%, well below the 6.7% national rate, the Lone Star State continues to add jobs - 230,000 for the past 12 months as of the end of October. And while sales-tax receipts, a major source of revenue for state and local government, are no longer growing at double-digit rates, they were still up almost 5% in November over the same time last year. Perhaps the best holiday news for Texans, who see long-distance drives as a way of life, is that...
Meanwhile, Johnson Control Inc. of Milwaukee, a major supplier to Asian automakers operating in the U.S. such as Toyota, said it expects to report a loss for the quarter ending Dec. 31. "Global automotive production is significantly worse than just two months ago," said Johnson Controls chairman and chief executive officer Stephen A. Roell. "Our customers continue to announce production reductions and plant shutdowns on a weekly basis. Every region of the world is down by a double-digit rate," he added...
There is another story in all this, of course. President Bush is approaching Hoover-Buchanan levels of end-of-office ignominy. His evident discomfort at unveiling the auto plan Friday morning comes, in part, from the ideological anomie he feels at the massive government intervention in a once major part of the American economy. But what must hurt even more for Bush - who has always had a keen sense of political reality, whatever his other shortcomings - is the self-image of a President stepping before the podium in his last days to announce a stopgap rescue for two giant, collapsing...
...Japanese consumers, there is some benefit to a stronger yen: walk into a local supermarket and one might see imported items that are specially marked down, giving new meaning to a "yen appreciation" sale. But a major concern for the Japanese economy is that currency rates, the dollar-yen in particular, are pummeling Japanese exporters as their products lose competitiveness abroad. Coupled with a general decline in global demand, the weak dollar-yen is dumping ice water on corporate profits at titans like Sony and Honda...
What will come of Zeidi himself? It falls on the Baghdad press corps to keep up pressure on the Maliki government to give their brother reporter a fair hearing in court. With a major election coming up next week, there's reason to hope that the Prime Minister may make a magnanimous (and vote-catching) gesture toward Zeidi...