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Employers added 162,000 workers in July, and the U.S. unemployment rate slipped to 7.4 percent, the lowest level since December 2008, the Labor Department said Friday.

But while the number of jobs did increase, the hiring pace was slower than in the spring, marking a setback for unemployed Americans who had hoped for a better summer.

"The labor market begins the second half of 2013 with a fizzle," economist Heidi Shierholz, with the Economic Policy Institute, says in her analysis of the data. "At this rate, it would take six years to ... get back to health in the labor market."

Over the past year, the economy has added an average of 189,000 jobs per month. As jobs have grown, the jobless rate has dropped from 8.2 percent one year ago. In June, the rate was 7.6 percent.

To some extent, the falling unemployment rate also reflects a workforce that is shrinking as baby boomers retire and young people stay in college longer. Also, some people are staying home with children or elderly parents, and millions have stopped applying for jobs because they think it's hopeless. When fewer people seek work, then the unemployment rate looks smaller.

Another labor market measure that has been getting smaller is paychecks. The July report showed average hourly earnings slipped by 2 cents to $23.98. Over the past year, hourly earnings have risen only 1.9 percent. That's about the same rate of increase as consumer prices.

On 'Tell Me More'

NPR's Marilyn Geewax speaks with host Michel Martin about the latest jobs numbers.

Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst who in 1971 leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers detailing the history of U.S. policy in Vietnam, tells NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday that unlike Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, he "did it the wrong way" by trying first to go through proper channels — a delay that he says cost thousands of lives.

"I really regarded [it] as anathema ... leaking as opposed to working within the system," Ellsberg says, speaking to NPR's Linda Wertheimer. "I wasted years trying to do it through channels, first within the executive branch and then with Congress."

"During that time, more than 10,000 Americans died and probably more than a million Vietnamese," Ellsberg says.

"That was a fruitless effort, as it would have been for Manning and Snowden," he says.

Ellsberg, an analyst with the RAND Corporation, leaked a study of U.S.-Vietnam relations from 1945-1967, known colloquially as the Pentagon Papers, handing over the document to The New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspapers.

The release of the Pentagon Papers proved politically embarrassing for President Richard Nixon and the Watergate break-in, which eventually led to Nixon's resignation, was part of a broader White House effort to identify the source of such leaks.

Ellsberg was eventually charged with espionage, theft and conspiracy, but the charges were later dismissed, unlike the case of Private Bradley Manning, who was convicted on similar counts last week for releasing secret diplomatic cables and other material to Wikileaks.

The decision to go public with the Pentagon Papers — which detailed a pattern of deception regarding Vietnam and the Vietnam War that spanned several presidential administrations – was a difficult one, according to Ellsberg.

"I decided it was worth a life in prison to do that," he says.

Asked whether he thinks Manning and Snowden, the CIA contractor who leaked details of secret U.S. electronic surveillance activities to The Guardian newspaper, had been discerning in what they chose to release publicly: "Yes, that's obvious with Snowden," he says.

"The public has been very misled about Manning, I would say," Ellsberg says. "They talk about his being indiscriminate. That's simply false. Like me and like Snowden, he had access to communications intelligence higher than top secret. He gave none of that out."

Since The Guardian's exposes, based on information obtained from Snowden, first broke in June, "the whole focus has been on the risks of truth telling, the risks of openness, which are the risks of democracy, of separation of powers," Ellsberg says.

"I've really heard nothing at all about the risks of closed society, of silence, of lies," he says.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index, the benchmark of America's largest corporations, surpassed 1,700 points for the first time in early trading Thursday. The rise is being tied to a drop in weekly jobless claims, as well as assurances from central banks in the U.S. and Europe that they would continue to bolster their economies.

"The S&P 500 has reversed course after pulling within 2 points of 1,700 three times in the past seven days," Bloomberg Businessweek reports. "The benchmark index is trading at 15.3 times estimated earnings, compared with an average valuation of 13.9 times profit over the past five years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg."

Here are the top 10 entities that are currently in the index:

Exxon Mobil Corp.

Apple Inc.

Microsoft Corp.

Johnson & Johnson

General Electric Co.

Google Inc.

Chevron Corp.

Procter & Gamble

Berkshire Hathaway B

Wells Fargo & Co.

Employers added 162,000 workers in July, and the U.S. unemployment rate slipped to 7.4 percent, the lowest level since December 2008, the Labor Department said Friday.

But while the number of jobs did increase, the hiring pace was slower than in the spring, marking a setback for unemployed Americans who had hoped for a better summer.

"The labor market begins the second half of 2013 with a fizzle," economist Heidi Shierholz, with the Economic Policy Institute, says in her analysis of the data. "At this rate, it would take six years to ... get back to health in the labor market."

Over the past year, the economy has added an average of 189,000 jobs per month. As jobs have grown, the jobless rate has dropped from 8.2 percent one year ago. In June, the rate was 7.6 percent.

To some extent, the falling unemployment rate also reflects a workforce that is shrinking as baby boomers retire and young people stay in college longer. Also, some people are staying home with children or elderly parents, and millions have stopped applying for jobs because they think it's hopeless. When fewer people seek work, then the unemployment rate looks smaller.

Another labor market measure that has been getting smaller is paychecks. The July report showed average hourly earnings slipped by 2 cents to $23.98. Over the past year, hourly earnings have risen only 1.9 percent. That's about the same rate of increase as consumer prices.

On 'Tell Me More'

NPR's Marilyn Geewax speaks with host Michel Martin about the latest jobs numbers.

America's unemployment rate sank to 7.4 percent in July, a drop of two-tenths of a percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says in its monthly summary of the U.S. economic situation. But employers added 162,000 jobs last month, coming in below economists' expectations.

"Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000 in July, with gains in retail trade, food services and drinking places, financial activities, and wholesale trade," the report states. "Over the prior 12 months, nonfarm employment growth averaged 189,000 per month."

Barclays Capital economist Peter Newland called it "a clearly weaker-than-expected report," The Associated Press reports. He adds: "But one should not overstate it — the unemployment rate continues to trend down and average job growth of 175,000 will be more than enough to continue to push it lower."

Alan Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said the numbers are fresh evidence that the economy continues to rebound from the recession, and stresses the need for policies to spur job creation and help the middle class.

Before Friday's announcement, economists had been"expecting about 185,000 new jobs were added to payrolls in July," NPR's John Ydstie told Morning Edition's Renee Montagne, saying that the number would roughly match recent average monthly increases.

"The surveys also show many economists think the unemployment rate will tick down a tenth of a percent, to 7.5 percent," John said. Friday's numbers outpaced that projection.

Update at 9:10 a.m. ET: Earlier Monthly Jobs Gains Cut

Friday's report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics includes two downward revisions of recent monthly jobs reports, with results for June changed from a gain of 195,000 nonfarm jobs to a gain of 188,000, and May's figure changed from 195,000 new jobs to 176,000.

In terms of wages, hourly earnings for all workers on private nonfarm payrolls fell 2 cents in July, to $23.98, the BLS reports. The average wage rate had grown by 10 cents in June. The hourly earnings for "private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees were unchanged at $20.14," the agency says.

Our original post continues:

Last month, the BLS reported that employers added 195,000 new jobs to public and private payrolls in June, but the unemployment rate did not budge, staying at 7.6 percent.

The new figures come days after the payroll firm ADP said that U.S. companies added 200,000 new jobs from June to July — a gain that showed businesses "hired in July at the fastest pace since December," The Associated Press said.

The U.S. economy has been a source of good news this week, as the latest gross domestic product data showed that the economy grew at an annualized rate of 1.7 percent in the second quarter in 2013, beating analysts' expectations.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index of large U.S. companies closed at a new high Thursday, after crossing the 1,700 mark for the first time in its history.

Employment data does not always fit together perfectly. As Mark Memmott wrote in The Two-Way last month:

"One part of the explanation is that the numbers are based on different surveys. Employers are quizzed about how many jobs they have — that produces the payroll employment data. Households are questioned about who's working and who's not — that produces the jobless rate. Two surveys can mean two different views of what's happening."

A Planet Money report for today's Morning Edition looks at "Four Reasons Why Millions Of Americans Are Leaving The Workforce."

A federal jury in New York City has found that Fabrice Tourre, the former Goldman Sachs trader who regulators say caused investors to lose $1 billion, is liable in the mortgage securities fraud case filed against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Regulators say Tourre, 34, a native of France who was nicknamed "Fab" in his office, packaged toxic subprime mortgages into a collateralized debt obligation that was sold to investors under the name Abacus in 2007.

"The U.S. Securities and Exchange claims Tourre hid the role of hedge fund Paulson & Co. in selecting the subprime mortgage bonds behind the investment, then made a $1 billion bet they'd fail," Bloomberg News reported earlier this week.

Tourre was found liable on six of the seven charges he faced. In 2010, Goldman Sachs agreed to pay $550 million to settle SEC charges against it in the case. Tourre left the company last year.

The SEC pursued civil charges against Tourre, meaning that his punishment could now range from a fine to a lifetime ban from trading in securities.

Tourre, who had risen to the rank of vice president at Goldman Sachs, "is the only employee of a big American bank to lose a courtroom battle to Wall Street's top regulator," The New York Times reports. Most other cases were settled before coming to a court judgment.

During the trial that lasted more than two weeks, Tourre's defense team did not call any witnesses to testify, a move that had been interpreted as a message to the jury that the regulators had failed to prove their case.

"We're obviously gratified with the jury's verdict and we appreciate their hard work," SEC lead prosecutor Matthew Martens said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A Virginia jury has recommended life in prison for three Somali pirates convicted of murdering four Americans seized from a sailing yacht off the coast of Africa in 2011.

The prosecution had sought the death penalty for Ahmed Muse Salad, Abukar Osman Beyle and Shani Nurani Shiekh Abrar, who were convicted last month of piracy, murder and kidnapping.

The three were among 19 men who attacked the 58-foot S/V Quest with the intent of ransoming her crew: retired U.S. couple Jean and Scott Adam; and two friends, Bob Riggle and Phyllis Macay.

When negotiations broke down, however, the four were shot and killed.

The victims were the first Americans killed in a wave of piracy that has plagued the Somali Coast and the Indian Ocean in recent years.

One day after his two years in limbo ended and he was confirmed by the Senate as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray told NPR that though political bickering held up his nomination he now believes he has bipartisan support for the bureau's work.

"It was a bipartisan vote to confirm me as director — 66 to 34 — and I like to think that reflects the fact that people recognize the work we're doing benefits constituents in every state," Cordray told All Things Considered host Audie Cornish.

Before Cordray could get confirmed, of course, there had to be a "showdown" over filibuster rules that had held up his nomination and those of some others — capped by an extraordinary behind-closed-doors meeting of nearly all 100 senators. And a deal had to be struck that saw President Obama withdraw two nominees for posts on the National Labor Relations Board in order to get Republicans to agree to votes on the nominations of Cordray and a few others.

With all that now behind, Cordray said his bureau is going to focus on exposing "deceptive and misleading marketing" schemes, "debt traps" that such consumers in over their heads financially and on educating consumers so that they aren't "just lambs to slaughter" when it comes to dealing with those looking to manage their investments.

"We're here to stay," he said of the bureau, which was created over the opposition of many Republicans.

We'll add the as-aired interview with Cordray to the top of this post later.

Employers added 162,000 workers in July, and the U.S. unemployment rate slipped to 7.4 percent, the lowest level since December 2008, the Labor Department said Friday.

But while the number of jobs did increase, the hiring pace was slower than in the spring, marking a setback for unemployed Americans who had hoped for a better summer.

"The labor market begins the second half of 2013 with a fizzle," economist Heidi Shierholz, with the Economic Policy Institute, says in her analysis of the data. "At this rate, it would take six years to ... get back to health in the labor market."

Over the past year, the economy has added an average of 189,000 jobs per month. As jobs have grown, the jobless rate has dropped from 8.2 percent one year ago. In June, the rate was 7.6 percent.

To some extent, the falling unemployment rate also reflects a workforce that is shrinking as baby boomers retire and young people stay in college longer. Also, some people are staying home with children or elderly parents, and millions have stopped applying for jobs because they think it's hopeless. When fewer people seek work, then the unemployment rate looks smaller.

Another labor market measure that has been getting smaller is paychecks. The July report showed average hourly earnings slipped by 2 cents to $23.98. Over the past year, hourly earnings have risen only 1.9 percent. That's about the same rate of increase as consumer prices.

On 'Tell Me More'

NPR's Marilyn Geewax speaks with host Michel Martin about the latest jobs numbers.

Andrew Rosenkranz says at least two or three times a week, he finds himself sitting across from an employee at his market research firm near Seattle, listening to some complicated personal problem.

Just last week, an employee described how her daughter and baby granddaughter were assaulted by a boyfriend. The daughter wanted to come back to Washington state but didn't have money for a plane ticket. And so, Rosenkranz says, the employee "was coming to ask, 'Hey, is there anything you can do to help us here?' "

A lot of conversations like that one have made Rosenkranz think his employees need more than just an advance on the next paycheck. Over and over, he says, he's seen the people who work at his company make financial choices that were likely to have bad consequences.

His employees borrow at punishing interest rates. They fail to enroll in the company's 401(k) despite the fact that the firm matches employee contributions. This actually saves Rosenkranz money; he doesn't have to make matching contributions when employees don't contribute. But, he says, he wishes more of his employees would take his money and sign up for retirement plans, because it's such a sensible move.

So Rosenkranz recently started offering his staff some time with a financial adviser. These days, this isn't so rare; a quarter of companies now offer one-on-one financial counseling, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management. And more than half offer one-on-one investment advice, up from 38 percent four years ago.

Rosenkranz contracted with a credit union called Neighborhood Trust, a group that has also provided financial counseling to staff at a burger chain, stylists at a hair salon and employees of a home care cooperative in the Bronx.

Jose Robles, the maintenance supervisor at the home care cooperative, has been struggling with debt for years, taking out loan after loan. A judge recently allowed one of his creditors to deduct $71 from Robles' paycheck.

Robles recently met with a financial adviser from Neighborhood Trust, who helped him make a spreadsheet to show what he was earning and what he was spending. Robles thought he was working his way out of debt. But when he added up all the numbers in the spreadsheet, he realized he was wrong: He was actually going deeper and deeper into debt.

"You look at those numbers and you wonder, Whoa, wait a minute, I'm spending more than I'm actually bringing in," he says. "I thought I had it under control, and I didn't."

Now Robles is trying to cut back everywhere he can, from bowling less with his kids to eating out less often. He's hoping to save a chunk of money big enough to negotiate a lump sum deal with the debt collector.

There's a hot stock tip floating around Nashville, and it's a first-of-its-kind investment fund that begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday.

The fund is a collection of stocks in publicly traded companies that have one thing in common: the city they call home.

When people buy into the Nashville Area Exchange Traded Fund — which starts trading at $25 a share — they will essentially be placing a bet based on an area code.

"So everyone will have a way to invest in our companies that is unlike that of any other city in the country," said Beth Courtney when she announced the creation of this investment fund on a riverbank with Nashville's modest skyline behind her. "Own this town," the fund's promotional materials proclaim.

Courtney and her business partners are trying to make money through the venture, which charges fees for managing the portfolio. But Mike Shmerling, chairman of LocalShares Inc., also sees an opportunity for folks to invest in the companies they know instead of the giant mutual funds full of firms they don't know much about.

"They have a relative that has been to an HCA hospital; they eat at Cracker Barrel; they shop at Dollar General; or they go to church with somebody from Tractor Supply," Shmerling says.

The plan, if it works, is to expand this concept to other cities. The team has formed a company called LocalShares, and co-founder Bill Decker says it operates on the assumption that some places are just more business friendly.

"We think we can show there's something about those local economic ecosystems that seems to be especially supportive of companies that are headquartered there," Decker says.

Nashville, as a city, is a place that at least has a buzz at the moment. It's attracting droves of young people, like Angie Nicolletta who came for a job opportunity.

"Nashville is like a new up and coming, booming city from everything that I've seen," Nicolletta says.

Nicolletta is on her usual visit to a dog park that overlooks the city's commercial center. She and others say owning a piece of Nashville sounds fun, even just for the novelty of it.

Mark Hill works in real estate and also dabbles in trading stocks. He says putting money in just one place goes against what he's learned about investing.

"It's a geographical limitation that could really bite you pretty good if you didn't watch out," Hill says.

There have been a few attempts at exchange-traded funds focused in single states: Oklahoma and Texas. Both folded because there weren't enough buyers.

Experts are dubious about an even more restricted fund. One calls it "the most absurd product to hit the market." Eric Dutram of Zacks Investment Research in Chicago is more diplomatic.

"I've never been to Nashville. I've heard good things, but it seems an odd place to start," Dutram says.

Why not a city with many more corporate headquarters in a more diverse set of industries, he asks. The Nashville fund has just two dozen companies, and half of them are related to health care.

The optimists seem to be people who do business in Nashville. They include the city's mayor, Karl Dean, who has been drumming up investors.

"I am just bullish on Nashville, and I think everybody ought to be," Dean says.

The city's business-friendly image will get a true market test as the fund tries to survive on the stock exchange.

A federal jury in New York City has found that Fabrice Tourre, the former Goldman Sachs trader who regulators say caused investors to lose $1 billion, is liable in the mortgage securities fraud case filed against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Regulators say Tourre, 34, a native of France who was nicknamed "Fab" in his office, packaged toxic subprime mortgages into a collateralized debt obligation that was sold to investors under the name Abacus in 2007.

"The U.S. Securities and Exchange claims Tourre hid the role of hedge fund Paulson & Co. in selecting the subprime mortgage bonds behind the investment, then made a $1 billion bet they'd fail," Bloomberg News reported earlier this week.

Tourre was found liable on six of the seven charges he faced. In 2010, Goldman Sachs agreed to pay $550 million to settle SEC charges against it in the case. Tourre left the company last year.

The SEC pursued civil charges against Tourre, meaning that his punishment could now range from a fine to a lifetime ban from trading in securities.

Tourre, who had risen to the rank of vice president at Goldman Sachs, "is the only employee of a big American bank to lose a courtroom battle to Wall Street's top regulator," The New York Times reports. Most other cases were settled before coming to a court judgment.

During the trial that lasted more than two weeks, Tourre's defense team did not call any witnesses to testify, a move that had been interpreted as a message to the jury that the regulators had failed to prove their case.

"We're obviously gratified with the jury's verdict and we appreciate their hard work," SEC lead prosecutor Matthew Martens said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Of all the legacies presidents leave behind, few are as important — yet as poorly understood in the moment — as their picks for chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Paul Volcker, credited with taming double-digit inflation through backbreaking high interest rates that contributed to the recession of the early 1980s, was among President Jimmy Carter's most consequential appointments.

Similarly, President Ronald Reagan's selection of Alan Greenspan, the economic "maestro" selected in 1987 — and who ran the Fed for nearly two decades — seemed mostly sage. Well, until after his 2006 retirement, when Greenspan's once nearly absolute faith in the self-correcting powers of markets was dashed against the rocks of the housing bubble and the worst recession since the Great Depression.

So whoever President Obama chooses to replace current Chairman Ben Bernanke, who is scheduled to step down in January, is likely to have an influence beyond the Obama presidency. The new chairman's four-year term would extend a year beyond Obama's second term. The choice, in short, is likely to be the gift that keeps giving.

And since Obama is unlikely to get many of his second-term economic priorities through the GOP-controlled House, the person he picks to lead the Fed may represent the president's best chance to accomplish his remaining economic agenda.

A Fed chairman might be able to accomplish some of what Obama seeks through monetary policy. Bernanke, for instance, used the technique called "quantitative easing," in which the central bank bought bonds to keep as much liquidity in the economy as possible. For Obama, it was akin to a second economic stimulus plan that the president could never have gotten through the "hell no" House.

All this helps to explain the great interest in Obama's choice, and why lobbying is in full gear by allies of the two candidates thought to top Obama's short list.

Enlarge image i

Within weeks, Uruguay is expected to become the first nation to legalize the production, distribution and use of marijuana for its citizens.

The South American country's response to incessant drug-related violence in the region signals a quest for alternatives to the U.S.-led war on drugs, and a rethinking of official U.N. anti-drug policy, which has been in effect for more than half a century.

"This isn't a pro-marijuana bill. It's a pro-reform bill aimed at benefiting all of Uruguayan society," Hannah Hetzer, of the U.S.-based Drug Policy Alliance, who worked on the bill, told NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro.

"It's ... a way of taking money away from the drug traffickers' pockets, preventing what has happened in other countries in Latin America, and taking a market that already exists but is now run by organized crime and putting it under the government control and a regulatory framework," Hetzer said.

Uruguay's groundbreaking action comes amid similar moves afoot elsewhere in the world.

In Africa, Morocco's parliament is considering draft legislation to legalize the cultivation of marijuana, which would let farmers sell to the government.

In Canada, an opposition party leader wants to legalize and tax the drug.

And in the United States, where the federal government maintains a strong anti-legalization stance, the states are moving on their own. In the past year, Colorado and Washington decriminalized marijuana use and the sale of the drug for personal use. On Thursday, Illinois became the 20th state to legalize the use of medical marijuana.

And as NPR reported this week, at least one private equity firm is trying to cash in on the fledgling legal marijuana market.

Still, from a global perspective, the attention is on Uruguay, where a swift shift in official policy could be a tipping point, says Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

"Sometimes small countries do great things," Nadelmann told the CBC. "Uruguay's bold move does more than follow in the footsteps of Colorado and Washington. It provides a model for legally regulating marijuana that other countries, and U.S. states, will want to consider — and a precedent that will embolden others to follow in their footsteps."

While most nations still prosecute marijuana growth and distribution – if not personal use — Uruguay's lower house of parliament voted this week to broadly legalize the drug. The measure, which was drafted after President Jos Mujica called for "regulated and controlled" legalization in June, is expected to pass the parliament's upper house later this month.

The New York Times reports:

"Across Latin America, leaders appalled by the spread of drug-related violence are mulling policies that would have once been inconceivable. ... Uruguay has taken the experimentation to another level. United Nations officials say no other country has seriously considered creating a completely legal state-managed monopoly for marijuana or any other substance prohibited by the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

"Doing so would make Uruguay the world's first marijuana republic — leapfrogging the Netherlands, which has officially ignored marijuana sales and use since 1976, and Portugal, which abolished all criminal penalties for drug use in 2001. Here, in contrast, a state-run industry would be born, created by government bureaucrats convinced that opposition to marijuana is simply outdated."

Within weeks, Uruguay is expected to become the first nation to legalize the production, distribution and use of marijuana for its citizens.

The South American country's response to incessant drug-related violence in the region signals a quest for alternatives to the U.S.-led war on drugs, and a rethinking of official U.N. anti-drug policy, which has been in effect for more than half a century.

"This isn't a pro-marijuana bill. It's a pro-reform bill aimed at benefiting all of Uruguayan society," Hannah Hetzer, of the U.S.-based Drug Policy Alliance, who worked on the bill, told NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro.

"It's ... a way of taking money away from the drug traffickers' pockets, preventing what has happened in other countries in Latin America, and taking a market that already exists but is now run by organized crime and putting it under the government control and a regulatory framework," Hetzer said.

Uruguay's groundbreaking action comes amid similar moves afoot elsewhere in the world.

In Africa, Morocco's parliament is considering draft legislation to legalize the cultivation of marijuana, which would let farmers sell to the government.

In Canada, an opposition party leader wants to legalize and tax the drug.

And in the United States, where the federal government maintains a strong anti-legalization stance, the states are moving on their own. In the past year, Colorado and Washington decriminalized marijuana use and the sale of the drug for personal use. On Thursday, Illinois became the 20th state to legalize the use of medical marijuana.

And as NPR reported this week, at least one private equity firm is trying to cash in on the fledgling legal marijuana market.

Still, from a global perspective, the attention is on Uruguay, where a swift shift in official policy could be a tipping point, says Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

"Sometimes small countries do great things," Nadelmann told the CBC. "Uruguay's bold move does more than follow in the footsteps of Colorado and Washington. It provides a model for legally regulating marijuana that other countries, and U.S. states, will want to consider — and a precedent that will embolden others to follow in their footsteps."

While most nations still prosecute marijuana growth and distribution – if not personal use — Uruguay's lower house of parliament voted this week to broadly legalize the drug. The measure, which was drafted after President Jos Mujica called for "regulated and controlled" legalization in June, is expected to pass the parliament's upper house later this month.

The New York Times reports:

"Across Latin America, leaders appalled by the spread of drug-related violence are mulling policies that would have once been inconceivable. ... Uruguay has taken the experimentation to another level. United Nations officials say no other country has seriously considered creating a completely legal state-managed monopoly for marijuana or any other substance prohibited by the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

"Doing so would make Uruguay the world's first marijuana republic — leapfrogging the Netherlands, which has officially ignored marijuana sales and use since 1976, and Portugal, which abolished all criminal penalties for drug use in 2001. Here, in contrast, a state-run industry would be born, created by government bureaucrats convinced that opposition to marijuana is simply outdated."

America's unemployment rate sank to 7.4 percent in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says in its monthly summary of the U.S. economic situation. But employers added 162,000 jobs in the month, coming in under economists' expectations.

"Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000 in July, with gains in retail trade, food services and drinking places, financial activities, and wholesale trade," the agency says. "Over the prior 12 months, nonfarm employment growth averaged 189,000 per month."

Before today's announcement, economists were "expecting about 185,000 new jobs were added to payrolls in July," NPR's John Ydstie told Morning Edition's Renee Montagne today, saying that the number would roughly match recent average monthly increases.

"The surveys also show many economists think the unemployment rate will tick down a tenth of a percent, to 7.5 percent," John says. Today's numbers outpaced that projection.

Last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employers added 195,000 new jobs to public and private payrolls in June, but the unemployment rate did not budge, staying at 7.6 percent.

The new figures come days after the payroll firm ADP said that U.S. companies added 200,000 new jobs from June to July — a gain that showed businesses "hired in July at the fastest pace since December," The Associated Press said.

The U.S. economy has been a source of good news this week, as the latest gross domestic product data showed that the economy grew at an annualized rate of 1.7 percent in the second quarter in 2013, beating analysts' expectations.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index of large U.S. companies closed at a new high Thursday, after crossing the 1,700 mark for the first time in its history.

Employment data does not always fit together perfectly. As Mark Memmott wrote in The Two-Way last month:

"One part of the explanation is that the numbers are based on different surveys. Employers are quizzed about how many jobs they have — that produces the payroll employment data. Households are questioned about who's working and who's not — that produces the jobless rate. Two surveys can mean two different views of what's happening."

A Planet Money report for today's Morning Edition looks at "Four Reasons Why Millions Of Americans Are Leaving The Workforce."

2 Guns

Director: Baltasar Kormakur

Genre: Action, Comedy, Crime

Running Time: 109 minutes

Rated R for violence throughout, language and brief nudity

With: Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Edward James Olmos, Paula Patton

A tax fraud conviction against ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi has been upheld by the country's highest court in a move that could imperil a fragile coalition government.

The Court of Cassation's five-judge panel decided Thursday to reject Berlusconi's final appeal, threatening the stability of Premier Enrico Letta's ruling coalition, which depends on support from Berlusconi's party. The flamboyant media mogul-turned-politician had earlier been sentenced to four years, but that had been commuted under an amnesty.

The charges stem from the October conviction of 76-year-old Berlusconi and three others on tax fraud charges related to the tycoon's purchase of television rights for his Mediaset network.

However, the judges ordered a lower court to review its imposition of a five-year ban on Berlusconi's participating in public office.

The Associated Press reports:

"Berlusconi has no official role in the government, but he remains influential in the center-right and backers already slowed Parliament's work last month after the high court put his case on the docket this summer, instead of the fall, to prevent some of the charges from expiring."

* Having seen Cate Blanchett's electric Blanche DuBois, and had a public pretend-squabble with our own Bob Mondello about it, I felt like I was all up in Charles McNulty's head when I read his take on Blue Jasmine. [The Los Angeles Times]

* Long names. Languid looks. Lust, longing, and life perpetually turned up to 11. My colleagues Jasmine Garsd and Felix Contreras take apart the telenovela over at NPR Music's Alt.Latino, complete with a conversation about the music that drives and celebrates them. [Alt.Latino]

* My buddy Patrick Decker, who's a food stylist for people like Rachael Ray, sent me a link this morning to Slate's Browbeat item on a new Mary Poppins mashup from Pogo, aka Nick Bertke, and I've been bouncing around at my desk to it ever since. Thought I'd point it out, because who doesn't like a Mary Poppins mashup built on a nice laid-back groove? (Also, Happy Anniversary, Patrick and Stephan!) [Slate]

* Do you know about QI? The British quiz show with Stephen Fry? And his panel of notables whose job is to be smart and/or funny, and usually opt for the latter? Because I had somehow not seen it until last night, despite another friend's repeated recommendations. I may have giggled uncontrollably, much like Fry himself does in this outtake. Also, Google might help you find the one where the host hypnotizes a lobster. (Or possibly kills it; it's not quite clear.) Or the one where they're supposed to be talking about why a camel can't get through the eye of a needle, and end up riffing about how you might get a cat into a balloon. As you do. [The QI Elves]

* Should a show judge its characters? Is storytelling better when it's prescriptive or descriptive? James Poniewozik makes the case that Breaking Bad isn't obliged to serve justice to its compromised central character. [Time]

* If Jaws were made in 2014, it would feature Shia LaBeouf. "Bora Bora, you said. It had to be Bora freakin' Bora!" [The New York Times]

* Librarians: This is how you know we love you. [Morning Edition]

For three consecutive weeks this summer, the Spanish-language TV network Univision has won the prime-time ratings among young adult viewers. Latin drama series called telenovelas — similar to but not the same as soap operas — are no small part of that equation.

"This time of year, Univision runs fresh new telenovelas while the other networks air old episodes from last season and cheap reality shows," NPR's Mandalit Del Barco reported recently. "Viewers are tuning in to watch popular telenovelas imported from Mexico's Televisa network."

When we announced to listeners on Alt.Latino's Facebook and Twitter pages that we'd tape a show about the culture and significance of telenovelas, we received mixed reactions. That's because telenovelas are loved by some, hated by others and undeniably ubiquitous in Latin culture. To some, they represent a passion comparable to soccer; to others, they're pure, fun Latin kitsch; and to others still, they represent the racism, classism and sexism that so often permeates Latin culture.

At Alt.Latino, we pride ourselves on looking at everyday topics in Latin culture from a fresh perspective. So we decided to invite Professor Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, from the University of Georgia, to join us as a Guest DJ. She specializes in studying telenovelas, Latin culture and society.

Rarely is the relationship between science and everyone so direct as it is in the case of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), in particular foods. It is one thing to turn on your plasma TV or talk on your iPhone; it is an entirely different proposition to knowingly ingest something that has been modified in the lab.

It is no coincidence that reactions for and against GMOs are often radical and polarized. We see purists who want to ban any kind of GMO, claiming ill effects for health and environment. We also see the defenders of GMOs claiming benefits for health and the environment, as well as solutions to global hunger and malnutrition.

Behind the debate lurks the giant shadow of Monsanto, the world's largest producer of GM crops and controller of a large fraction of the seeds available to farmers.

Few debates are as important. We see here echoes of what happens with global warming and vaccines, where the rational and irrational get mixed up into a single, confusing soup of argument. We see a huge popular distrust of the alliance between science and giant corporations, of scientists that have "sold out." They are sometimes even compared to those working for the tobacco industry, fairly or not.

Hundreds of scientific studies have been performed over recent decades to determine the impact of GM crops on plantations and human and animal health. A list with over 600 articles can be found at the site of Biology Fortified, an independent, nonprofit organization. In June, the UK environmental secretary Owen Patterson offered his strong support for GM crops:

There are some that describe GM crops as "Frankenfoods", deliberately termed to imply that they pose a risk to human health and the environment. ... First, there was no scientific evidence associating GMOs with higher risks for the environment or for food and feed safety than conventional plants and organisms. Second, the use of more precise technology and the greater regulatory scrutiny probably makes GMOs even safer than conventional plants and food.

After a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve said it will continue to buy $85 billion in bonds every month and will leave the federal funds rate at the historic rate of near zero.

Of course, when the Fed releases its statement, the markets and the media read the tea leaves. Basically nothing much changed from the Fed's previous statement, except one word: The Fed said the country's economic activity "expanded at a modest pace." Previously, they had said the economy was growing at a "moderate" pace.

The AP says this means the Fed has downgraded the U.S. economy from its June assessment.

The wire service adds:

"Stronger job growth has fueled speculation that the Fed could start reducing its purchases as soon as September. But economic growth remains sluggish and unemployment high at 7.6 percent.

"Financial markets had a muted reaction to the Fed's policy statement. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 30 points shortly after the statement was released; it was up 13 points moments before. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was 2.64 percent, down slightly from 2.66 percent before the announcement."

Because my morning routine involves the waking, feeding, dressing, brushing and sunblocking of a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old, certain personal morning grooming habits fall by the wayside. Like, all of them. This is why I think of the gym mainly as a place to wash up.

Which is a long way of saying I ran out of shaving cream the other day.

It was a travel-size, 2.5 ounce can that I carried in my gym bag for about three months. At the local Duane Reade, it cost $2.99 to replace. But then, a few aisles over, I found a 7-ounce can of shaving cream that also cost $2.99 — almost three times as much shaving cream for the same price.

And yet, there's a value in the convenience of the smaller can. The 7-ounce can — let's call it "The Mick"— actually outweighs the 2.5 ounce can — henceforth, "Roger" — by about 8 ounces, once you include the extra metal involved. (This difference is a rough approximation that I basically made up, by the way.)

So the question becomes: How much would I pay to eliminate my load by half a pound per day? Would I pay a penny a day? Obviously. Would I pay 2 cents a day? Sure. But that's the limit. Three cents a day just seems like too much. Bottom line: I'd pay $1.32 to carry Roger instead of The Mick for three months. (There are 22 weekdays in a typical month; I generally don't shave on weekends.)

But then there's the psychological cost of knowing I'm a sucker for paying three times as much per ounce. How much would I pay not to think of myself as a sucker? It would be convenient if the answer were $1.33 or more, thus negating the convenience premium of Roger. But it isn't. I just don't feel like that much of a sucker because I know I'm paying more for the convenience.

If you have followed me this far, let me throw a five-bladed, pivot-head monkey wrench into the works. Our original calculation assumed a 5-ounce difference in weight between Roger and The Mick. But there will come a time in the shaving-cream-can cycle of life when I would need to buy a new Roger, while The Mick would still have 4.5 ounces of shaving cream left to give. And — crucially — a round after that, when I would be on my third Roger and still my first Mick. By this point, The Mick would be almost empty — and just a few ounces heavier than Roger.

Add in the psychological satisfaction I'd derive from beating the system during the period when the Mick was lightest, for which I'd pay at least a penny a day, and my decision is made: Buying The Mick is the more rational choice, by a whisker.

Special DVD Extra: Somewhere there is a secret, industry-sponsored Shaving Cream Hall of Fame. Enshrined in this underground Shaving Cream Hall of Fame is the guy who invented the nozzle that even with the lightest touch squirts out more shaving cream than any one face can possibly accommodate — but not so much shaving cream as to have the user curse all the excess shaving cream and begin to question the (very precarious) underpinnings of the shaving cream-industrial complex.

In the latest in a string of insider trading cases, federal prosecutors this week indicted SAC Capital, one of the most prominent and profitable hedge funds in the world.

But when it comes to the 2008 financial crisis that sent the economy into a tailspin, criminal prosecutions have been few and far between.

"The folks responsible for this incredibly painful economic damage that struck our economy have gone free," says Neil Barofsky, a former federal prosecutor who also served as special inspector general overseeing the big Troubled Asset Relief Program bank bailout, signed into law by President Bush in 2008.

Insider trading prosecutions have resulted in more than 70 convictions so far.

"This sends a very, very powerful message to the entire industry," Barofsky says.

So why haven't any high-profile bankers gone to jail for selling all those trash mortgages and helping to wreck the economy?

"People ask me about it all the time and I try to give the best explanation I have as being inside of the system," says Barofsky, who notes that when the financial crisis hit, white-collar crime investigators already had their hands full with expanding insider trading investigations.

But the government should have thrown a lot more investigators at the financial crisis, he says.

William Black, a top lawyer for the Office of Thrift Supervision during the savings and loan debacle in the 1980s, agrees.

"I've been saying it for years," he says. "You have to make the effort."

He notes that during the savings and loan crisis, he was involved with a lot of criminal prosecutions. "At peak we had a thousand FBI agents working those cases."

By comparison, Black says, when the financial crisis hit there were only 120 FBI agents working on bank fraud.

And mortgage fraud cases against big financial firms are just tough cases to bring, Black says.

"Insider trading is a much more understandable case for a jury, typically," he says.

It's pretty simple: Somebody gets access to confidential information — say a drug trial was going badly. So they use that secret information to cheat and make a lot of money in the stock market.

The financial crisis was more complicated. It involved mortgage securitizations and sophisticated investment instruments.

"It would be much more difficult than the insider trading cases," says Black.

After the financial crisis, the government lost a case involving Bear Stearns, the global investment bank that failed in 2008 before being sold to JPMorgan Chase. Maybe that didn't help.

Also, back then the government wanted to save the banks. So maybe launching a full-scale prosecutorial assault didn't seem like the best idea.

Barofsky says narratives also tend to take hold in Washington. And for the 2008 financial crisis, it's this: A lot of people on Wall Street were wrong, they made mistakes, they were greedy, but they didn't commit actual crimes.

You could hear that when Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, spoke to CNBC host Jim Cramer last week.

Dimon: "I think if someone did something wrong, they should go to jail."

Cramer: "Well who did? Who went to jail?"

Dimon: "One of the great things about America is, failure is not illegal or wrong. ... You make investments. They don't always pay off. It doesn't mean you're a criminal."

Northern California's Salinas Valley is often dubbed America's salad bowl. Large growers there have long relied on thousands of seasonal workers from rural Mexico to pick lettuce, spinach and celery from sunrise to sunset. Many of these workers seem destined for a life in the fields. But a program that helps field workers, like Raul Murillo, start their own farms and businesses is starting to yield a few success stories.

Murillo leases a three-acre strawberry farm from a cooperative called ALBA Organics. It trains longtime workers in organic farm management and helps with things like fertilizer and irrigation tools.

Murillo can sell his berries back to ALBA's cooperative, which does a brisk business with grocery stores in the nearby Bay area.

If God permits, he says, he'll continue turning a modest profit so he can hire more people who need the work. Under ALBA's rules, Murillo can only lease this land at a subsidized rate for a few years — after that he's on his own. But it's a risk he's willing to take. Even though he'd leave behind the steady paycheck he gets still working for big growers.

It's about being your own boss, instead of working for a foreman, he says. And at 45, he wants to try going out on his own before he gets too old.

Murillo's story is not unlike many of the 50 or so other farmers-in-training here at ALBA. Many have spent their entire lives in the fields, moving from one harvest to the next, from California, down to Mexico, then back.

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We're catching up with a harrowing story out of Syria about a Polish photographer who was kidnapped last week and is possibly being held for ransom. NPR's Rima Marrouch sent this report.

Photographer Marcin Suder was staying at a media center in the rebel-held town of Saraqeb in Idlib province when a group of masked men reportedly stormed in Wednesday morning. They beat a Syrian media activist, stole equipment and abducted Suder.

It's unclear who might be responsible for the kidnapping. According to The Associated Press, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Friday that it's likely Suder was taken by radicals seeking ransom and that the abduction "probably has the character of a robbery."

I spoke with Mohamad al-Khaled, an activist from Saraqeb who says he was at the media center when Suder was kidnapped. He says Suder had spent the previous day taking pictures of a woman and her daughter, who survived a cluster-bomb attack.

The Saraqeb media center is a small apartment where foreign journalists and activists from across Syria often stay during their assignments and visits. Like other Syrian media centers, it has a generator to produce electricity and is usually equipped with satellite Internet to send out stories and photographs.

These places sometimes give an illusion of comfort, with the Internet connection making it possible to have contact with friends and family. But there are no safe places in Syria. Three days before Suder's kidnapping, Saraqeb was hit by several airstrikes.

But Suder "felt he needs to be there," Khalid al-Issa, a photographer from the nearby town of Kafranbel, told me. He says Suder was staying in Kafranbel for a few days before heading to Saraqeb.

"I told him that Saraqeb is dangerous, but he said he is a war correspondent and he needs to be there," al-Issa said.

Syrian filmmaker Obeida Zyton told me: "We all used this network before. We stayed at the media center and we felt safe. Now, not any more."

Situated between Aleppo and Damascus, Saraqeb used to be a sleepy town of 40,000 people. Seventy percent of residents have fled because of airstrikes and fighting, according to Ahmad Kadour, a former law student turned activist from Saraqeb. He says the regular army lost control over the town last year and that it has become known for its colorful graffiti and wall writings such as this one: "The more death surrounds us, the more we know how to live."

According to Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based press freedom group, Syria is the deadliest country for journalists. The center estimates that 28 journalists were killed in Syria last year and 21 were kidnapped.

Overall, the Syrian conflict has claimed more than 100,000 lives, according to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Birds do it. Bats do it. Now even educated people do it. We are talking about echolocation; the process whereby certain animals emit sounds that bounce off objects, helping identify what lies ahead.

Now a team of researchers has created an algorithm that could give the rest of us a chance to see with sound.

Lead study author Ivan Dokmanic of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Switzerland says the project started with a question.

"Is it possible to just produce a sound and be like Batman or just hear the shape of the room?"

Dokmanic and his team made it happen.

First, they set up a few microphones around a room. Then, "hook these microphones up to an amplifier and a computer, produce some sound, and then just calculate the shape of the room based on the echoes that you receive from the walls in the room," Dokmanic explains.

So what's it good for?

For starters, it could be used in architectural acoustics. Say you're building a concert hall and you know just how you want it to sound, says Dokmanic. "Just plug this into our algorithm. And then this algorithm will produce the room that produces these echoes."

Or the technology could be used as an aid for blind people. Dokmanic says it could, "give some kind of optic feedback maybe to the user saying, okay, the general form of the room is like this or there are obstacles here and there."

It could also be used in audio forensics. A recording that captured the sound of a crime being committed could then be used to reconstruct the room, providing evidence to investigators.

But these applications are not available just yet. Dokmanic says he and his team are in the process of raising funds to expand the technology, and hope to turn it into a smart phone app.

"I hope not too long—but the realistic horizon is two years to get something that's really usable by everyone," says Dokmanic.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew says the debt ceiling needs to be raised, but without another economically damaging partisan fight.

In a series of interviews on the Sunday morning political talk shows, Lew said Congress needs to lift the "cloud of uncertainty" over the nation's finances and raise the limit before it fully expires on Sept. 30.

"The fight over the debt limit in 2011 hurt the economy, even though, in the end, we saw an extension of the debt limit," the secretary said on NBC's Meet The Press.

"We saw confidence fall, and it hurt the economy. Congress needs to do its job. It needs to finish its work on appropriation bills. It needs to pass a debt limit," he said.

Republicans have demanded deep cuts in non-defense-related spending in exchange for an appropriations deal. Some Democrats, however, don't want to agree to funding at levels set by across-the-board spending cuts that went into effect in March.

Lew's remarks echo a message that President Obama has taken up in recent days.

Speaking in Florida on Thursday, Obama said that if Republicans want to continue their "My way or the highway attitude," dire consequences and deadlock were likely to result. "It could plunge us back into financial crisis," he said.

"Threatening that you won't pay the bills in this country, when we've already racked up those bills, that's not an economic plan — that's just being a deadbeat," he said.

Artist Faith Ringgold is best known for what she calls her story quilts — large canvases made in the 1980s, on which she painted scenes of African-American life: sunbathing on a tar roof, a mother and her children, a quilting bee. She frames the canvases in strips of quilted fabric, carrying out an old African, and African-American quilt-making tradition.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington is showing an earlier aspect of Ringgold's art: big, strong, vivid paintings from the 1960s that reflect the violence and social upheaval of that time.

Faith Ringgold is now 83 — and still stunning with her long braids and colorful beads. "[It] was important to be determined," she says of her time developing as an artist in the 1960s. The stop signs that appeared in the pop art movement spoke to her: "There were a lot of stop signs in my life. ... People telling you what to do, when to do it, and so on," she says.

In the '60s, those days of civil rights struffles and conflicts over equality of ther aces, Ringgold was making traditional art — painting landscapes primarily.

She showed her work to Ruth White, the owner of the popular Ruth White Gallery, who said Ringgold couldn't be black and simply paint landscapes during such a tumultuous time. "Some people might have been upset or hurt by it," she says. "But I was happy that she had the courage to tell me that. "