Randomly Noted

There better not be any itchy fingers at the Federal Reserve. They won’t be getting any exercise.

It’s been a long time since U.S. central bankers have had the economic or market stimuli needed to spur their discretion over interest rate policy. Late 2008 to be precise.

That’s when the Fed decided the economy was so dire as to require zero short-term rates to revive it.

It’s going to be a long time still before short-term official interest rates climb from there. That’s a remarkable situation, but the Fed might not tighten monetary policy, even modestly, until the second half of 2011, given the economic climate.

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Here’s an agenda item for the Group of 20 major nations’ economic meeting later this week: agree that you all need to raise retirement ages and make sure you pick a high number.

How about 72?

Retirement age might seem a small and arcane issue when the powerful from the G20 nations grapple with such macro notions as how to sustain nascent economic recoveries while simultaneously developing plans to eventually return to fiscal sanity.

But retirement age is part of the long-term answer to the second part of that delicate equation. And, among the host of changes in the social contract between citizens and governments that will be necessary because many countries simply don’t have enough money to keep it up, retirement age increases rank among the most palatable choices.

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With a key monthly U.S. employment report due Friday, it’s useful to ask  a man who runs a  multinational employment services firm for his view of the jobs market.

After all, the stubbornly high unemployment rate (9.7%) is the key restraint on a more robust recovery.

So what’s the word from Jeffrey A. Joerres, who leads the Milwaukee-based Manpower Inc., which recently reported a 13% increase in first quarter revenues to $4.1 billion and net earnings of $2.8 million?

“It’s obvious that things are better, but they are not at the point that it’s all tied up and put away. The animal is still roaming around here.”

The ‘animal’ is still-high unemployment, which will crimp U.S. consumer spending, the traditional engine of U.S. growth and growth in much of the world.

Consistent with comments the Manpower chairman and chief executive made to this columnist in late January, when he said “2010 will feel better than 2009 but not that much better,” Joerres said today there will be no “sonic boom” in this U.S. recovery, “no euphoric feeling.”

The report on April employment (which follows March gains of 162,000 jobs) will show more of the same, slow improvement, Joerres ventured in an interview here in New York.

Capital spending is growing, hours worked are rising but permanent hiring is very slow to come around, he said. The temporary staffing industry, including Manpower, benefits from what Joerres sees as a “secular” change in hiring.

The uncertainty of the economic future and other factors are keeping more employers interested in temporary help for a longer period of time. (Interestingly, Joerres says 70% of temporary jobs turn into permanent ones.)

Temporary work in the U.S. peaked in 2007 at 1.8% of the work force. Joerres thinks the secular changes might push that number in the U.S. to 2.5% of the work force some time in the foreseeable future, a significant change but “not the tomato that ate New York.”

A similar trend can be seen in Europe, he said.

Speaking of Europe, it’s a key region for Manpower, which derives only 10% of its revenues from the U.S.  Joerres said “Greece cannot at this time be minimized” and that sovereign debt fears hang like “an ash cloud over Europe.” Still, Manpower’s own business in Europe continues to grow, mainly in light industrial work.

Another trend: smaller companies are turning to Manpower because they have cost-cut their way out of being able to evaluate and hire on their own, having gutted human resources capabilities.

“I’m putting more on your shoulders,” clients tell Joerres.

An interesting tidbit in the just-released minutes of the mid-March meeting of the Federal Reserve’s policy making group reinforces the notion that central bank thinking about asset bubbles is changing.

The minutes contain this quote about officials of the Federal Open Market Committee: “Members noted the importance of continued close monitoring of financial markets and institutions – including asset prices, levels of leverage, and underwriting standards – to help identify significant financial imbalances at an early stage.”

True, the Fed uses the word imbalances rather than bubbles and the list of what could go wrong and bears watching includes more than just asset prices.

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The Asian cuisine restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s China Bistro Inc. announced a clever promotion: one in which it likely will be joined by others.

Combining something Americans hate (paying taxes) and something Americans like (eating), P.F. Chang’s is offering on April 15 a 15% discount to diners. April 15 is, of course, tax day, when you’ve got to settle accounts with Uncle Sam for 2009. Or maybe you’ve already recieved by then a tax refund. Either way, eating out is cheaper for one day.

A should-read column in a recent Economist magazine rebukes business leaders for letting the cultural argument go against them without putting up much of a fight.

Click On Above Cover Image For Link To The Article

The reasons for the anti-business deluge in much of the world are easy enough to find. In a simple, if not entirely accurate way, business people are the ones who have brought us the credit crisis and near global recession while continuing to pay themselves enormous sums.

The “Schumpeter” column in the Dec. 19, 2009, Economist lists some good things brought to us by business. A generalized prosperity unknown in times past, examples of true cooperation and creativity, and even a counterweight against too-powerful government.

I would add a couple more that are perhaps cousins of these concepts but not enunciated in the column. Modern businesses are settings for success based on merit and therefore the most effective vehicles for social mobility.

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The only thing slightly dilutive to the embarassment that accrues from realizing I have become way too attached to my BlackBerry device is the firm knowledge I am not alone.

I am confident I am not the only person in the Americas Tuesday night, who upon noticing a too-long delay between receipt of emails, started monkeying with the instrument with increasing amounts of frustration and despair.

I am confident I am not the only person who shut the instrument off, took out the battery, and, when the thing still wouldn’t work, again carried out both procedure. I did eventually go to sleep. No messages from about 730 pm to 230 am U.S. eastern time.

Research in Motion, the company behind BlackBerry, apologized today to users for the email outage, citing technical factors.

As discouraging to the company as no doubt such outages are, they do perversely prove the loyalty and dependence of the customer base. Not bad things for a business.

Have a look at journalist Joanne Lipman’s piece about women and the workplace; it’s in today’s NYT. Joanne, a former WSJ colleague went on to found Portfolio magazine for Conde Nast, makes the argument that women’s progress up Corporate America’s hierarchy has stalled out (and slid backward) as attitudes toward women have coarsened. She calls for a new era of respect for women, and urges us to instill in our daughters the confidence to become much more than the “good girls” society expects us to be. My favorite line:  “I am still one of the few women to have run a major business magazine. My career was recently summed up in a New York magazine article as leggy.” She also observes that during her years as a manager she never had a female employee ask for a promotion; this should resonate with anyone who has ever been a manager.  It’s a good piece and isn’t too far from the point I recently made about women’s attitudes toward careers. I like the way Joanne posits that women essentially have a different “culture” from men; I’ve never thought of gender difference as being cultural but I can see how it would be useful to view it as such. I’d be interested in your thoughts.

Here’s a politically incorrect comment about women in the workplace which I think has some merit and is certainly eye-catching. Nichola Pease, a U.K.-based fund manager, told members of Parliament that it can be “a nightmare” to hire and retain women. “A year maternity leave is too long, and sex discrimination claims that run into 10s of millions of pounds are ridiculous,” she said last week. She also said pay discrepancies sometimes reflect a woman’s choices rather than outright gender discrimination. Wondering what you think…

The Los Angeles Times reports on calls in that fair city for more regulations and restrictions on convenience stores in South Los Angeles based on “links found by researchers between snack foods and obesity in poor communities.”

Let’s stipulate all the research is accurate and that obesity causes serious health problems that have real financial and social costs. And that candy bars and such are easily and readily available in convenience stores.

Still. Do we really want a government ban of snack food stores? Do we want this level of inteference in our daily lives?

Okay, freedom to get fat is not a great rallying cry and obesity is a serious issue. How about better education and more practical education, especially in poorer neighborhoods, about diet and health. How about taking the long view and working towards policies - educational and otherwise - that create economic opportunity that absolutely shrink the size of “poor communities.”

California has a budget crisis. All levels of government there should have other things to do.