Eurozone unemployment, in what has become a monthly ritual, hit a record high in September, with 18.4 million Europeans out of work. According to the European Commission, “roughly 40 million Europeans are suffering ‘severe material deprivation’”, while “116 million EU citizens are judged ‘at risk of poverty.’” One of the hardest hit countries has been Greece, where austerity has pushed the poverty rate above 21 percent:

Greek incomes have fallen sharply since 2010, mainly because of repeated rounds of spending cuts and tax hikes to meet the terms of a bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund and avoid national bankruptcy. [...]

The 2011 survey said almost a fifth of respondents couldn’t keep their home adequately warm.

About a third of all respondents are late in paying rent, mortgages and credit card payments. Just over half said they couldn’t afford a one-week holiday away from home.

The ratio of Greek households at risk of poverty increased to 21.4 percent last year, from 20.1 percent in 2010, ELSTAT said on Friday.

Greek workers today launched a three-day strike against austerity. Greece’s health care system has been so pounded by austerity that patients have to bring their own supplies (such as syringes) to the doctor’s office.

Despite these numbers and stories, Greece and other European nations are plunging ahead with their austerity plans. Just last week, a study showed that Europe’s austerity packages have been counterproductive; growth would have been higher and debt-to-GDP would have been lower if the EU countries had not implemented them.

The U.S. has managed to claw its way past the financial crisis faster than Europe, in part, because it did not engage in the same level of austerity, which dampens already weak growth. But that could be just a temporary reprieve, as the so-called “fiscal cliff” that it scheduled for the end of the year would entail more fiscal contraction than that experienced by austerity-bound European nations.

Wall Street pay this year is expected to increase by up to 10 percent over 2011, according to the latest surveys. And Wall Street financiers think that number Mitt Romney would be even better for their compensation, as Bloomberg News reported:

A win by Mitt Romney in tomorrow’s U.S. presidential election is more likely to boost Wall Street compensation than if voters re-elect President Barack Obama, according to a survey conducted by eFinancialCareers.

The poll of 911 financial-market professionals found 57 percent expect the election to change compensation, while 32 percent said it won’t and 11 percent said they didn’t know, eFinancialCareers said in a statement.

Of those who expect the election to influence pay, 72 percent view a victory by Romney, a Republican, as having a “positive” effect on compensation, the survey found. Re- electing Obama, a Democrat, was viewed as positive for compensation by 18 percent and negative by 71 percent, the survey found.

Romney has vowed to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which includes measures aimed at reining in the bad pay incentives on Wall Street. It allows the Federal Reserve to veto pay packages that encourage risk that could lead to a new round of bank bailouts. It also allows for shareholder votes on pay packages; the first negative vote was handed to former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit.

High pay on Wall Street has exacerbated income inequality over the last several decades, and while bankers brought in higher and higher paychecks, they took on more and more risk, eventually culminating in a financial crisis. Now, even some Wall Street executives are pushing back against outsized pay packages. Morgan Stanley CEO acknowledged last month that Wall Street pay is “way too high.”

Tech companies use a variety of techniques in order to drive their tax rates down into the single digits, even as they post billions in profits. Case in point, Apple paid just 1.9 percent tax rate on its overseas profits last year, according to the Associated Press:

Apple Inc. paid an income tax rate of only 1.9 percent on its earnings outside the U.S. in its latest fiscal year, a regulatory filing by the company shows.

The world’s most valuable company paid $713 million in tax on foreign earnings of $36.8 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 29, according to the financial statement filed on Oct. 31. [...]

Apple may pay some income taxes on its profit to the country in which it sells its products, but it minimizes them by using various accounting moves to shift profits to countries with low tax rates. For example the strategy known as “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” routes profits through Irish and Dutch subsidiaries and then to the Caribbean.

Apple is actually getting better at reducing taxes on its overseas money, as it paid a 2.5 percent rate on those earnings last year. The fact that these foreign earnings are not being taxed by any country, as Citizens for Tax Justice explained, likely means that “instead of being earned by real, economically productive operations in developed countries, [these] are actually U.S. profits that have been shifted overseas to offshore tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.”

If Apple actually paid the U.S. corporate tax rate on that money, “the resulting $17 billion tax payment would be more than double the $8.3 billion in federal taxes that Apple has paid on its $83 billion in worldwide profits over the last 11 years.” Of course, Apple is hardly alone in using legal techniques to avoid billions of dollars in tax payments to the U.S.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) is the latest Republican to refute one of Mitt Romney’s biggest talking points in the state, as he told CBS Monday morning that Chrysler is adding jobs in Ohio, not shipping them to China as Romney has claimed both on the campaign trail and in radio and television ads:

ANCHOR: And is Jeep creating more jobs in Ohio or are they sending them to China?

KASICH: No. Chrysler has, has — Chrysler is the one automaker that has increased employment.

Watch it:

After Romney’s claims led to auto workers calling their employers because they feared for their jobs, Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchione wrote a letter to the Detroit News refuting Romney. “Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand,” Marchione wrote. “It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.” He also noted, as Kasich said, that Chrysler has added American jobs since the auto industry rescue: “With the increase in demand for our vehicles, especially Jeep branded vehicles, we have added more than 11,200 U.S. jobs since 2009.”

While some Republicans continue to defend Romney, at least six others have repeatedly contradicted his claims about the auto bailout that saved Chrysler and General Motors.