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Latest Articles: Economy
Social Security Recipients To Get 3.6 Percent More
Post Date: 2011-10-19 11:09:08 by Murron
1 Comments
Social Security Recipients To Get 3.6 Percent More WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some 55 million Social Security recipients will get a 3.6 percent increase in benefits next year, their first raise since 2009, the government announced Wednesday. The increase, which starts in January, is tied to a measure of inflation released Wednesday morning. About 8 million people who receive Supplemental Security Income will also receive the 3.6 percent cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, meaning the announcement will affect about one in five U.S. residents. There was no COLA in 2010 or 2011 because inflation was too low. Those were the first two years without a COLA since automatic increases were adopted in ...
The Euro Crisis in a Nutshell
Post Date: 2011-10-15 21:23:57 by jwpegler
3 Comments
There has been a lot of hand-wringing on why Europe is poised to send the world economy into a tailspin. Let's cut through the nonsense and tell it like it is. In a nutshell, a few years ago, the frugal Germans decided to enter into a single currency agreement with the profligate Geeks, in addition to other countries. The Greeks did what they always do -- spend well beyond their means. Now the Germans are left holding the bag. The current crisis is all about the German population not wanting to take responsibility for the mess that their politicians created. They only way out of this mess is for the German government to own up to their responsibilities and correct their past ...
Obama and the Reawakening of Corporatism
Post Date: 2011-10-13 18:06:24 by jwpegler
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In 1970, General Motors was the largest and most profitable company in America. Today, of course, GM is neither. Instead, in 2009 America’s largest company is Wal-Mart, which was still only a regional, privately-held retailer in 1970. Wal- Mart’s rapid rise is not unique, however. Among the 100 largest firms today, a number—including FedEx, Microsoft, Cisco, and Home Depot--didn’t even exist in 1970. So profoundly has the landscape changed that 80 percent of the Fortune 100 companies today are different from 1970. All of this is the result of an entrepreneurial revolution spurred by everything from intensifying international competition starting in the late 1950s, to ...
Senate Jobs Through Growth Act
Post Date: 2011-10-13 17:09:48 by jwpegler
4 Comments
America continues to suffer through high unemployment and a weak recovery. It has been more than two years since President Obama’s massive stimulus plan was signed into law, yet businesses are still reluctant to hire, families are hurting from job loss and our country is losing its competitive edge. The government should not try to create jobs by growing the size of government: spending our way to prosperity has not worked. It’s time for a new approach. Government should create an environment for private sector growth through fiscal discipline and pro-growth economic policies that will turn things around and add jobs. This involves spending restraint to address the record debt ...
Adam Smith argued for free trade and self-interest, but not this kind of capitalism (Adam Smith was anti-corporation - and you should be too)
Post Date: 2011-10-13 16:55:40 by Godwinson
2 Comments
Adam Smith argued for free trade and self-interest, but not this kind of capitalism Larry Elliott, economics editor The Guardian, Sunday 8 July 2007 Much to the delight of the free-market right, there's a spanking new edition of the Wealth of Nations in the shops. George Osborne has penned the foreword and says Adam Smith's masterpiece is as relevant now as it was when it was first published in 1776. Smith is on a bit of a roll across the political spectrum. Mervyn King courted controversy by putting him on the back of the £20 note, though that had more to do with the fact that Smith was Scottish than his views on the invisible hand. Gordon Brown has made a point of ...
Democrat Senate Kill Obama's Jobs Bill
Post Date: 2011-10-12 12:27:01 by jwpegler
1 Comments
The $447 billion package of tax cuts and new spending failed by a vote of 50 to 48, short of the 60 votes it needed to advance in the 100-member Senate. Voting was expected to continue for several hours but would not affect the outcome. Obama, campaigning in Florida, said the vote was not the end of the fight for the measure. In a statement after the vote, Obama accused Republicans of obstruction and said he would work with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make sure that individual proposals in the bill would get a vote as soon as possible. "Ultimately, the American people won't take 'no' for an answer. It's time for Congress to meet their responsibility, put ...
Flat Is the New Fair
Post Date: 2011-10-10 16:41:20 by jwpegler
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'Suddenly, liberal Democrats are making the same argument about the tax code that I've been making for 20 years," laughs former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey. "Welcome to the party." Mr. Armey, who along with Steve Forbes has been the torch bearer for the flat tax since the early 1990s, believes that the latest applause line from President Obama that "billionaires should pay the same tax rate as janitors" may be the political gateway to sweeping tax reform. Mr. Forbes sees an opening here too and says: "The flat tax is the perfect issue for these times. It fixes the economy and doesn't cost a dime." He's right. It's the ...
Why Mises (and not Hayek)?
Post Date: 2011-10-10 11:51:12 by continental op
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Let me begin with a quote from an article that my old friend Ralph Raico wrote some 15 years ago: Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek are widely considered the most eminent classical liberal thinkers of this century. They are also the two best known Austrian economists. They were great scholars and great men. I was lucky to have them both as my teachers.… Yet it is clear that the world treats them very differently. Mises was denied the Nobel Prize for economics, which Hayek won the year after Mises's death. Hayek is occasionally anthologized and read in college courses, when a spokesman for free enterprise absolutely cannot be avoided; Mises is virtually unknown in American academia. ...
U.S. Payrolls Rise 103,000 in September, Jobless Rate at 9.1%
Post Date: 2011-10-07 08:35:52 by war
30 Comments
Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Employers added more payrolls than forecast in September, job gains were revised up in the prior two months and hours and earnings increased, helping ease concerns the U.S. labor market is deteriorating. Payrolls climbed by 103,000 workers after a revised 57,000 increase the prior month that was more than originally estimated, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey called for a rise of 60,000. The gain reflected the return to work of 45,000 telecommunications employees. The jobless rate held at 9.1 percent. Faster job growth is a sign employers remain confident the U.S. will avoid a renewed slump, even as ...
Turban Durbin (D-IL) to Bank of America Customers: ‘Get the Heck Out of That Bank’
Post Date: 2011-10-04 12:52:31 by Happy Quanzaa
5 Comments
Holding up a plastic debit card on the Senate floor this afternoon, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., had some advice for Bank of America customers angry about the new $5 monthly fee: leave. video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player “Bank of America customers, vote with your feet, get the heck out of that bank,” Durbin said on the Senate floor. “Find yourself a bank or credit union that won’t gouge you for $5 a month and still will give you a debit card that you can use every single day. What Bank of America has done is an outrage.” Durbin said consumers are rightfully outraged about last week’s announcement. “It is hard to believe that a bank ...
Bernanke says economic recovery close to faltering
Post Date: 2011-10-04 12:10:10 by Happy Quanzaa
4 Comments
WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the economic recovery "is close to faltering" and the central bank is prepared to take further steps to support it. Bernanke says that the economy is growing more slowly than the Federal Reserve had expected and that the biggest factor depressing consumer confidence is poor job growth. Bernanke says: "We need to make sure that the recovery continues and doesn't drop back and that the unemployment rate continues to fall downward." Bernanke also tells the Joint Economic Committee that lawmakers face a delicate challenge: They must avoid making deep spending cuts that could impede the recovery. But he says ...
Bank of America, CARD Act, Dodd-Frank, and soaking the poor.
Post Date: 2011-10-03 20:05:35 by CZ82
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Bank of America, CARD Act, Dodd-Frank, and soaking the poor. Posted by Moe Lane Friday, September 30th at 11:00AM EDT Congratulations, Congressional Democrats: you’ve managed to soak the working poor again. Bank of America will start charging debit-card users $5 a month to pay for purchases. The move comes as the cards increasingly replace cash and as banks look for ways to offset the loss of revenue from a new rule that will limit how much they can collect from merchants. Via Instapundit. You see, what happened here is that Senator Dick Durbin took a break from throwing minority kids out of private schools to extend his legislative magic to the field of merchant debit card fees. ...
Construction Spending in U.S. Unexpectedly Increased in August
Post Date: 2011-10-03 10:02:56 by war
7 Comments
Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Construction spending in the U.S. unexpectedly rebounded in August, propelled by the biggest jump in state and local government outlays in more than two years. The 1.4 percent gain reversed the revised 1.4 percent drop in July, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median estimate of 52 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a 0.2 percent decline. The industry was up 1.4 percent from August 2010 before adjusting for seasonal variations, the first positive reading this year. Increased building of multifamily residences, like apartments and townhouses, adds to evidence that Americans are moving away from home buying in favor of renting. ...
Ahead of the Bell: Construction Spending
Post Date: 2011-10-03 07:44:10 by Happy Quanzaa
3 Comments
WASHINGTON (AP) - Spending on new building projects is expected to have fallen again in August. The consensus forecast is that construction spending fell 0.2 percent, according to a survey of economists by Fact Set. The new report will be released at 10 a.m. Eastern time on Monday. In July, construction spending declined 1.3 percent. It was the biggest setback in six months and reflected the weakest pace for government spending on building projects in five years. Overall construction dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $789.5 billion in July, just 3.5 percent above an 11-year low hit in March. That's roughly half the $1.5 trillion pace considered healthy. Analysts say it ...
Battered by Economic Crisis, Greeks Turn to Barter Networks [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2011-10-02 11:24:33 by lucysmom
90 Comments
VOLOS, Greece — The first time he bought eggs, milk and jam at an outdoor market using not euros but an informal barter currency, Theodoros Mavridis, an unemployed electrician, was thrilled. The barter network in Volos has grown to 400 members. “I felt liberated, I felt free for the first time,” Mr. Mavridis said in a recent interview at a cafe in this port city in central Greece. “I instinctively reached into my pocket, but there was no need to.” Mr. Mavridis is a co-founder of a growing network here in Volos that uses a so-called Local Alternative Unit, or TEM in Greek, to exchange goods and services — language classes, baby-sitting, computer support, ...
The price of gold came down on that rainy day
Post Date: 2011-10-02 11:00:29 by lucysmom
3 Comments
WITH markets falling and prospects for world growth souring, everything should be in place to send the price of gold, the ultimate safe-haven asset, soaring. Just weeks ago this was true. On September 2, gold reached an all-time high of $US1921 an ounce. But instead of maintaining its new heights, only three weeks later gold lost just over 20 per cent of its value, to hit $US1532.72, its lowest point since July and reached without any signs of a rebound in the world economy. snip The pillars supporting high gold prices have collapsed, said Julian Jessop, chief global economist at think tank Capital Economics. ''First, demand for gold as an inflation hedge has fallen as the ...
ACLU objects to killing of al Qaeda leader [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2011-09-30 12:40:46 by Sebastian
179 Comments
The American Civil Liberties Union has objected to the killing of the U.S.-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen by U.S. forces. Awlaki was a U.S. citizen, and the ACLU said President Obama does not have the authority to kill an American without due process of law. The White House confirmed the cleric was killed by a U.S. drone attack. “The targeted killing program violates both U.S. and international law,” ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said. “As we’ve seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are ...
The LEFT is Incapable of Learning: So Stop Listeng to Them
Post Date: 2011-09-28 20:06:15 by jwpegler
8 Comments
I've been sitting here for the past few days looking at Capitalist Eric's tag line: "To fight this recession (of the early 2000s) the Fed needs more than a snapbakc; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCuelly of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the NASDAQ bubble". -- Paul Krugman, 2002 Today, Paul Krugman is desperate to produce another bubble. He doesn't care what bubble, just as long as the government does something... ANYTHING... good or bad. Learning from history is key to not repeating other people's mistakes. The really strange thing about the left is ...
Proving the GOP conservatives are suckers: The Rich are really job destroyers not "job creators". As the rich got richer, they eliminated jobs. [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2011-09-26 11:43:41 by Godwinson
129 Comments
The chart above showing the relationship between the Koch brothers' net worth and the number of people they employ. And so we see that the net wealth of the Koch brothers has grown, but that wealth has not trickled down in the form of job creation at their company. In fact, the Koch brothers have been JOB DELETERS in favor of padding their bank accounts. I bet if I found the data it would show salaries of their remaining employees have also been reduced. The ExxonMobil chart above also shows the lack of correlation between rising income and "job creation". How long will you GOP/conservative/libertarian suckers keep arguing that the rich should be left alone because they ...
The False Dichotomy of Greed
Post Date: 2011-09-24 09:49:00 by lucysmom
3 Comments
The Euro crisis appears to be developing into something similar to the 1980s Latin American debt crisis when the idea that, to quote Walter Wriston, who ran First National City/ Citibank from the 1960s into the 1980s it was assumed that: “countries don’t go out of business.” The Latin American leadership demonstrated that they, in effect, could, by defaulting. As a number of bloggers on MB have pointed out, government finances are not like household finances, although they are often seen that way. That much is well understood in the financial community, although perhaps not as well in the wider public. What is not acknowledged in the financial community is the assumption ...
Economics Debunked: Chapter Two for Sixth Graders
Post Date: 2011-09-22 19:06:50 by lucysmom
40 Comments
Once upon a time, about a hundred years ago, economics was different from how it is today. Many famous people had thought about economics, including Adam Smith, Ricardo, Marx, and others. Economics was not a perfect science, and lots of people who thought about economics disagreed. But in the last century, economists started to agree about two things: economics should become as mathematical as it possibly could, and politicians should listen to economists. Economics at the time was not a very mathematical science, at least compared to the way it is today. Economists used to write articles with very few equations, or even without any equations at all. When did economists start to use math ...
Meg Whitman Will Be Named Full-Time CEO Of HP Today
Post Date: 2011-09-22 12:13:38 by socalv8
0 Comments
After less than a year, HP's board has decided to toss CEO Leo Apotheker and replace him with board member and ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman, Kara Swisher at All Things D, reports. The announcement is expected to come after the market closes. The stock seems to have popped a little on the news, but it's still down for the day by 2%. Whitman will not become interim CEO, either. She's going to be the full-time CEO. Click for Full Text!
The Biggest Bubble of All Time: Commodities Market Speculation
Post Date: 2011-09-22 11:14:10 by lucysmom
22 Comments
Sorry, this is a day late (but hopefully not a dollar short). Back in fall of 2008 I wrote a piece examining what was then the biggest bubble in human history: www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/ppb_96.pdf. Say what? You thought that was tulip bulb mania? Or, maybe the NASDAQ hi-tech hysteria? No, folks, those were child’s play. From 2004 to 2008 we experienced the biggest commodities bubble the world had ever seen. If you looked to the top 25 traded commodities, you found prices had doubled over the period. For the top 8, the price inflation was much more spectacular. As I wrote: “According to an analysis by market strategist Frank Veneroso, over the course of the 20th century, there ...
Obamanomic Report: U.S. Stocks Drop on Fed’s Plan to ‘Twist’
Post Date: 2011-09-21 18:25:01 by Happy Quanzaa
2 Comments
U.S. stocks slid, while Treasuries and the dollar rallied, after the Federal Reserve announced plans to buy $400 billion of long-term debt in an effort to combat “significant downside risks” to the economy. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index tumbled the most in a month, losing 2.9 percent to 1,166.76 at the 4 p.m. close in New York and extending a three-day drop to 4.1 percent. Ten-year Treasury yields dropped to a record low and 30-year bond rates slid to the lowest since January 2009, while two-year yields rose. The Dollar Index climbed 1 percent to a seven-month high of 77.802. Lead, nickel and sugar fell more than 3 percent to lead the S&P GSCI Index to a one-month ...
Obamanation National Anthem: "My EBT"
Post Date: 2011-09-20 07:41:44 by Happy Quanzaa
4 Comments
Raw Video " MY EBT " by @MREBT ( OFFICIAL VIDEO )
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