True Blue Tribune (05/29/14)

Accountable Healthcare Staffing Inc. will assume the staffing pool of AZ Nurses Choice, the third such staffing agreement recently finalized by AHS. AZNC will receive payment in the form of profit sharing for a period of time. AHS is working on a similar agreement with a pharmacy staffing company.

Reuters (05/29/14) Anna Driver; Terry Wade

Houston-based energy staffing firm Swift Worldwide Resources, which was purchased by Wellspring Capital LLC in November for an undisclosed sum, expects to go public or be acquired in the next five years, according to Tobias Read, Swift’s chief executive officer.

Bloomberg (05/30/14) Shobhana Chandra

Consumer spending unexpectedly declined in April after the biggest increase in almost five years. Household purchases, which comprise about 70% of the economy, fell 0.1%, the first decrease in a year, after a revised 1.0% increase a month earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Seventy-seven economists polled by Bloomberg had forecast a 0.2% increase.

Bloomberg (05/29/14) Aki Ito

During periods of high long-term joblessness, the U.S. Federal Reserve should attempt to reach full employment by letting inflation rise above the Fed’s target, says John Williams, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco president. “Faced with high long-term unemployment following the Great Recession, optimal monetary policy would allow inflation to overshoot its target more than in standard models,” Williams says in a paper co-written with Glenn Rudebusch, the Fed district bank’s research director.

Prices may respond to short-term unemployment more than they do to long-term unemployment, so inflation may rise even with large numbers of people out of work for long periods, the paper argues. Therefore, the Fed should make sure it broadly defines full employment and incorporate the long-term unemployed in the definition, the paper says.