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calculatedriskblog.com — Earlier this week there was some discussion about the increase in the ISM Manufacturing employment index.

ISM's Employment Index registered 53.1 percent in October, which is 6.9 percentage points higher than the 46.2 percent reported in September. This is the first month of growth in manufacturing employment following 14 consecutive months of decline. An Employment Index above 49.7 percent, over time, is generally consistent with an increase in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on manufacturing employment.

To check this statement, I posted a scatter graph of the relationship between the ISM Manufacturing employment index and the reported monthly change in manufacturing employment. (See: ISM and Manufacturing Employment) Sure enough, the increase in the employment index suggests an improvement in the BLS manufacturing employment numbers.

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nytimes.com — News last week of the first major influx of Chinese capital and wind turbine manufacturing expertise into the renewable energy market in the United States — a 600-megawatt wind farm planned for the plains of west Texas — had many readers of the Green Inc. blog in a state of agitation.

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nytimes.com — Fisker Automotive, a small California-based manufacturer of luxury vehicles, on Tuesday is expected to reveal plans to build plug-in hybrid electric cars at a former General Motors plant in Delaware.

The White House said Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is scheduled to visit the plant, near his hometown of Wilmington, for an announcement about its future. G.M. closed the plant, which was the last automotive factory on the East Coast, in July as part of its post-bankruptcy restructuring.

Fisker’s plans will mark the first major redevelopment of a piece of the old G.M., which is now a separate company charged with disposing of unwanted assets in order to repay G.M.’s creditors. It also will be among the rare instances in which an automotive plant has resumed building vehicles after being shuttered; most are eventually torn down or converted to other purposes.

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solveclimate.com — At a time when rates of joblessness continue to rise in America, a new study upholds the promise of a major jobs boost from a green economy.

The study, released this week by the non-profit American Solar Energy Society (ASES) and Management Information Services (MIS), found that an aggressive and immediate build out of renewable energy and energy efficiency (EE&RE) would net at least 4.5 million new jobs by 2030 (meaning, the figure accounts for the number of jobs that could be lost in the transition to a clean energy economy).

Many of these jobs "could not easily be outsourced," the authors said.

The study arrived at the same time that climate change legislation continued its march through the U.S. Congress. Opponents of the bill claim that its clean energy policies could cost the U.S. trillions of dollars and many millions of jobs over the next several decades. The AES/MIS research refutes both these claims.

The groups' latest study builds on earlier work. In early 2009, ASES and MIS released a report concluding that an aggressive scale up of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies could generate some $4.3 trillion in revenue in the United States by 2030. The analysis was based on an analysis of six technologies: energy efficiency, concentrating solar power, solar photovoltaics, wind power, biomass power, biofuels and geothermal power.

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nytimes.com — Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Monday that global trade imbalances played a central role in the global economic crisis and warned that both the United States and fast-growing Asian nations needed to do more to prevent them from recurring.

“We were smug,” Mr. Bernanke said of the United States in a question and answer session following his speech.

In answer to another question, he said the American financial regulatory system was “inadequate” at managing the immense inflows of cheap money from China and other countries that had huge trade surpluses.

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nytimes.com — As economists, pundits and politicians debate the reasons for the dollar’s rapid fall, Robert Stevenson and his workers in downtown Buffalo, N.Y., watch the slide with glee.

Mr. Stevenson’s family-owned company, Eastman Machine, has been making cutting tools for the textile industry for 120 years. A year ago, in the depths of the financial crisis, Mr. Stevenson had to lay off a dozen workers, but the dollar’s almost 20 percent decline since March has made his goods much more competitive overseas. Next month, Mr. Stevenson hopes to sign a multimillion-dollar deal in Europe that could enable him to rehire his workers.

“This wouldn’t have happened five years ago, or even two years ago,” he said. “Business conditions are still slow but the dollar has allowed us to be much more aggressive overseas.”

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washingtonpost.com — President Obama has proposed cutting more than $100 billion in subsidies over 10 years, a contentious component of health-care reform that will be fought in earnest as the bills move through Congress. But unlike some issues that touch off partisan sparring, Medicare Advantage has an unlikely band of bipartisan defenders who have already battled to restore $10 billion of the proposed reductions. In a health-care debate defined by big numbers and confusing details, the prospect of losing benefits such as a free gym membership through the Silver Sneakers program is tangible, and it has spooked some seniors, who are the nation's most reliable voters and have been most skeptical about reform.

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latimes.com — The battle over healthcare entered a new, more frenzied stage Wednesday, as lawmakers and powerful interest groups jockeyed for advantage now that most believe some form of an overhaul will ultimately be signed into law. The Senate Finance Committee's passage Tuesday of a sweeping healthcare bill -- with the support of all of its Democratic members, plus Republican Olympia J. Snowe of Maine -- offered powerful evidence that a moderate legislative blueprint can command a majority in the Senate with at least token GOP support. Passage of a major bill by the House also is considered increasingly likely.

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nytimes.com — A delegation of senior White House officials met on Wednesday at the Capitol with the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and the chairmen of the Finance and health committees, as Democrats turned their full attention to merging competing versions of the comprehensive health care legislation. The effort to combine the two bills is complicated and, politically, a potentially treacherous task. The Democrats must negotiate sharp disagreements between the liberal and centrist members of their party while also trying to hold the support of Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, the one Republican so far to support the legislation.

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nytimes.com — Goldman executives are perplexed by the resentment directed at their bank and contend the criticism is unjustified. But they find themselves in the uncomfortable position of defending Goldman’s blowout profits and the outsize paydays that are the hallmark of its success. For Goldman employees, it is almost as if the financial crisis never happened. Only months after paying back billions of taxpayer dollars, Goldman Sachs is on pace to pay annual bonuses that will rival the record payouts that it made in 2007, at the height of the bubble. In the last nine months, the bank set aside about $16.7 billion for compensation — on track to pay each of its 31,700 employees close to $700,000 this year. Top producers are expecting multimillion-dollar paydays.

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