National / International News

An investigation starts after it emerges a man was not prosecuted for allegedly strangling a woman he later went on to murder.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the economy added 236,000 jobs last month, beating analyst expectations. The unemployment rate fell from 7.9 percent to 7.7 percent, its lowest point in four years.

Alan Krueger, chairman of  the White House Council of Economic Advisers, joined Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to break down the report and discuss the sequestration.

On the U.S. job market:

Krueger: We still have too many Americans unemployed, we still have a middle class that has been under stress for some time. Improving the recovery, making sure that the recovery continues, making sure that the economy continues to make good middle class jobs, remains the president's North star.

On the sequestration:

Krueger: As the president has said repeatedly, the sequester which took effect early in March is bad policy. I think people across the political spectrum will look at it and think it is bad policy. It imposes a set of indiscriminate cuts which don't solve our long term deficit problem. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts [it] will shave economic growth by 0.6 percent and reduce job growth by around 750,000 jobs by the end of the year. The president has proposed a balance approach to put us on a sustainable fiscal path, which includes closing tax loopholes, includes reforming our entitlements, and a smarter set of spending cuts.

On whether the sequestration will be undone:

Krueger: The president has been reaching out to Congress. He made phone calls to many members of Congress this past week, he had a dinner with Senators from both sides, he met with ranking members of the House. So we are working to try to put us on a better fiscal path. It is going to take some time. We would like to see the Congress move back to regular order in terms of passing a budget.

 

Villagers tell a public inquiry about their concerns over plans for a "mega dairy" housing 1,000 cattle.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the economy added 236,000 jobs last month, beating analyst expectations. The unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, its lowest point in four years.

Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial, joins Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to discuss the details behind the data and whether the new report will affect U.S. monetary policy.

Nine South African policemen are formally charged with murder after a taxi driver was dragged behind a police van and later found dead.

An ex-police officer and ex-prison worker admit selling stories to the Sun, while two other public officials plead guilty to misconduct charges at the Old Bailey.

If you're headed to the movies this weekend, you have your pick of the paranormal. There's demon possession, alien invasions, and of course, zombies. The mindless, murderous creatures have experienced a resurgence in pop culture in films like "Warm Bodies," a comedy with a zombie in the role of the romantic lead, and the TV show, "The Walking Dead," a smash in its third season on AMC. Maria Pramaggiore, a film professor at North Carolina State University, says she sees a link between horror movies and personal finance. Scroll over the photo above to find out what Pramaggiore says your favorite movie monster represents financially.

"These zombie films -- 'Warm Bodies' included -- are using death or the undead, that boundary, as sort of the ultimate expression of feeling disconnected, feeling powerless," says Pramaggiore.

Pramaggiore says classic zombies of the '20s and '30s were often exploited labor, working in places like sugar plantations. But more recent incarnations of zombies don't have jobs. They wander and threaten, and ultimately have their bodies destroyed. On the opposite end of the spectrum from zombies -- vampires.

"Vampires are sort of the upper echelon of the horror film world. They're aristocratic. They're European. They wear velvet," says Pramaggiore. "We almost see the vampire as the power of capitalism whereas the zombie figure is really the working class, the plebian. In terms of horror films, zombies are the lowest of the low. They always come in groups. They are in many senses the sort of great mass, the great unwashed, all of those negative terminologies that might be used to talk about the working poor, the working class."

Here's what Pramaggiore says classic horror creatures represent financially:

Zombies -- The walking dead are the embodiment of the "poor, working stiffs." Because zombies can't help what has happened to them, they are symbolic of everyday laborers. They don't call the shots, but rather are the ones trapped at the bottom of the pyramid, representing the dispensable work force.

Werewolves -- What happens when the wealthy stray outside their lifestyles of comfort? They're often exposed to experiences that can change them for better or worse.  In many horror films, people are bitten by werewolves when traveling abroad or to exotic locations. When these jet-setters return home, they have trouble adjusting. Werewolves represent the inability of the upper class to accept the primitive nature within all of us.

Ghosts -- Phantoms are obsessed with property: Just think about it, most ghosts haunt a specific house or piece of land.  They inhabit places in the earthly world with unfinished business. Haunted houses don't fetch much on the open market, after all.

Aliens -- Extra terrestrials are usually smart and powerful -- sometimes, they're even portrayed as superior to humans. Adjectives like those can be used to describe both aliens and your boss. In horror films, humans fear that aliens are more technically advanced and will take control of us. But because aliens don't recognize human emotions, they make decisions solely based on numbers and facts -- much like a middle manager.

Vampires -- The Donald Trump of movie monsters, vampires represent the pompous, upper crust of horror creatures. They are aristocratic, powerful, and often physically attractive (this is where they may differ from Mr. Trump).  They own property going back centuries and can amass wealth endlessly because they live eternally. These blood-suckers are known to be manipulative, magnetic, and nocturnal -- just like wealthy socialites.

A heroin user from Suffolk dies after becoming infected with anthrax, the Health Protection Agency says.

A Hertfordshire man facing prosecution for driving through a puddle that splashed a police officer has his case thrown out by magistrates.

Justin Bieber fans captured the moment the pop star suffered breathing problems and had to leave the stage at his concert at London's O2 Arena.

Pyongyang steps up its threats in the wake of the latest U.N. Security Council resolutions to clamp down on the North's nuclear program.

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A man who was handed in to a police station by a man dressed as Batman admits trying to cash a stolen cheque.

A Metropolitan Police officer who was cleared by a court of making racially offensive comments is sacked for gross misconduct.

February's jobs numbers were better than expected. The jobless rate is now the lowest it's been since President Obama took office. The rate's recent peak was 10 percent in October 2009.

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Children born in the summer who are put in to ability streams when young can suffer educationally as a result, academics say.

The remains of the unknown sailors were found a decade ago in the wreck of the USS Monitor, the United States' first ironclad warship. It sank months after its history-making clash with an iron-armored Confederate ship in 1862.

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The remains of the unknown sailors were found a decade ago in the wreck of the USS Monitor, the United States' first ironclad warship. It sank months after its history-making clash with an iron-armored Confederate ship in 1862.

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In lush Escondido, California, Karen Archipley started an organic vegetable farm with her husband about six years ago.

 “We're looking at rainbow chard, and luciano kale...we harvest this every Saturday for Sundays farmers markets, and now we're selling more to the stores as well,” says Archipley.

 The whole farm is just three acres, but it provides well for the Archipleys, plus a few employees.

 “You can take the size of a parking lot, and make a very good living,” says Archipley, who also tells me about a nearby farm called Amber Waves Organics, run by Ray Shields.

 Shields is retired Navy.

 “This is the lifestyle that I want to pursue,” says Shields. “I want to have a sustainable, organic farm of such a size that I can provide employment opportunities for maybe eight, maybe ten veterans, if I can get them to come there.”

 But traditional farm loans aren't designed for his vision, says Elizabeth Ü, the author of the forthcoming book Finance for Food.

 “Financing either goes to very large scale industrial farmers, or primarily to farmers of commodity crops that aren't even intended for human consumption,” says Ü.

 The big banks that loan to big farms aren't interested in a half-acre of eggplant. And startup farmers like Shields look too risky for most small business loans.

 “A lot of beginning farmers go into credit card debt, because that is the one form of capital available to them,” Ü explains.  

 A new microloan program from the USDA aims to fill this gap. Small, beginning farmers can get up to $35,000, at about one percent interest.

 “I'm seeking to reach out to customers that may have never walked through our doors before,” says Val Dolcini, who heads the California Farm Service Agency, who adds that applications are coming in fast: “A microgreens operation in Sonoma county, a sheep rancher in Solano County, a peach grower in Fresno.”

 In Escondido, Ray Shields has put in his application, to grow organic peppers. He should get about 30,000 dollars, just in time for planting season.

The French Navy is due to land on a beach in Hampshire.

As of Jan. 1, the wealthiest Americans -- those in the top 1 percent -- will have to pay more in federal income taxes. About 6 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center.  That’s the highest rate the 1 percent has paid since 1979. But federal income tax is just one part in the incredibly complicated tax system. Overall, the 1 percent are actually paying less in taxes than they were in ‘79 and the 1 percent looked very different then, than they do today.

Let’s start with the obvious differences. If you were a 1 percenter in 1979 you didn’t have a cell phone or an iPod. You probably had a tape deck that you used to listen to the number one album of the year, “52nd Street,” by Billy Joel. I would venture to guess that your favorite song was “Big Shot.”

From now on I will refer to 1 percenters as big shots. The average income for a 1979 big shot adjusted for inflation was about $413,000.

Jon Bakija was one of the authors of a paper titled “Jobs and Income Growth of Top Earners and the Causes of Changing Income Inequality: Evidence from U.S. Tax Return Data." He says,  “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that all fed taxes were about 35 percent of income for people in the top one percent of the income distribution in 1979.”

That’s the same as the new rate for big shots in 2013. Today the average income of a big shot is $1.4 million.

So let’s say we bring a 1979 big shot into the present to buy a house  in one of the 10 wealthiest zip codes in 2013 America.

If the 1979 big shot follows the golden rule and doesn’t spend more than 30 percent of  gross income on the monthly mortgage payment, it would take the 1979 big shot 30 years to pay off the average house in one of those wealthy neighborhoods. It would take today’s big shot about nine years.

So why are big shots so much wealthier today? Partly it has to do with the people in the 1 percent who work in finance. “You know the Wall Street types the hedgefund types,” says Steve Kaplan, who teaches at Chicago Booth.

Statistically speaking, the percentage of people working in finance hasn’t changed much in the last 35 years. But those big shots who work in finance are earning in 3.5 times more of the nation’s income than they were in 1979.

And much of that income is not subject to federal income tax. When you factor all the taxes other than income -- like payroll, state and local -- the wealthiest 400 big shots in America today pay about 16 percent taxes on their income. Using those same calculations the average American pays 22 percent.