The gang over at Bankrupting America took their camera’s to the Restoring Honor rally in D.C. today to test the attendees government spending IQ… The result are interesting. Before watching the video see if you can answer the following questions: Bush or Obama? This president spent a record-breaking $3 trillion in a single year. Bush […]
Economy
CNBC: Economy Caught in Depression, Not Recession
I be the first one to admit I’m a pessimist on the economy, but not even I’m this pessimistic: Positive gross domestic product readings and other mildly hopeful signs are masking an ugly truth: The US economy is in a 1930s-style Depression, Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg said Tuesday. Writing in his daily briefing to […]
Weekly Initial Jobless Claims Rise… Unexpectedly… Yet Again…
This is getting silly, it seems like every time new jobless claims rise the media uses words like “unexpected’ or “surprising” to describe the news… There’s nothing surprising or unexpected about this week’s jobless report, not after reports on plunging new home sales in May, and the sharp drop in consumer confidence. Suffices to say […]
Initial Jobless Claims Rise… Unexpectedly… Again
Here we go again, another week and another, um, “unexpected” rise in initial jobless claims: The number of new claims for unemployment benefits jumped unexpectedly last week as heavy snows caused layoffs to rise. In addition, many state agencies in the mid-Atlantic and New England regions that process the claims were closed due to the […]
New Jobless Claims Rise… Unexpectedly… Again…
Here we go again… another week, another “unexpected” rise in new jobless claims: The number of U.S. workers filing new applications for unemployment insurance unexpectedly surged last week, while producer prices increased sharply in January, raising potential hurdles for the economic recovery. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 31,000 to 473,000, the Labor Department […]
WSJ: Andrew Cuomo has more to answer for than does Bank of America
Politicians love to blame the financial crisis and by extension the recession on greedy bankers, but as the Wall Street Journal notes today many of them, like New York Attorney General and former Clinton Administration Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo have much to answer for: With his fraud lawsuit last week against […]
Unemployment Rate Drops to 9.7%
I was going to post this yesterday, but there was something about the numbers that just didn’t make sense to me so I decided to hold off until I could dig through the report. Anyway, the Associated Press got to use it’s favorite adverb, “unexpectedly“, again today: The job market is lurching toward improvement. It […]
First-time Jobless Claims Rise Unexpectedly… Again
This is getting ridiculous, and as predictable as sunrise… Just how many times can new jobless claims rise “unexpectedly” before the Associated Press realizes there’s nothing unexpected about it: The number of newly laid-off workers filing initial claims for jobless benefits rose unexpectedly last week, evidence that layoffs are continuing and jobs remain scarce. The […]
Train Wreck: Retail Sales Fall, Jobless Claims Rise, Foreclosures set Record and the Dollar Crisis
Whew, I can’t believe I got all that in headline! Anyone who has read this blog for any period of time knows I’m a pessimist on the economy, in short I don’t see any reason to be hopeful: Retail sales unexpectedly fell in December, leaving 2009 with the biggest yearly drop on record and highlighting […]
December Unemployment Holds Steady at 10 Percent
I’m looking for good news in the December Jobs Report, but I can’t find any… From Reuters: U.S. employers cut 85,000 jobs in December, confounding expectations the labor market was finally stabilizing and piling pressure on President Barack Obama to spur job growth. Unemployment, which held steady at 10 percent, remains the Achilles heel of […]
Commerce Department Revises 3rd Quater GDP Downward… Again
Two months the media and Obama Administration were trumpeting the announcement that third quarter GDP had grown at an annualized rate of 3.5%. Unfortunately, their celebrations were a bit premature the Commerce Department today announced their final estimate of third quarter GDP… Not surprisingly third quarter GDP was a lot lower than they originally estimated: […]
Good News: National Debt Already Tops Debt Limit
From CBS News: The latest calculation of the National Debt as posted by the Treasury Department has – at least numerically – exceeded the statutory Debt Limit approved by Congress last February as part of the Recovery Act stimulus bill. The ceiling was set at $12.104 trillion dollars. The latest posting by Treasury shows the […]
WSJ: Geithner Under Fire Amid Frustration on Economy
Normally I’d say the calls for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s resignation were just hot air but given the recent disclosures about his role in AIG bailout while President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, I suspect this is more than just normal political blustering: Snowballing frustration about the economy burst into a political fracas […]
House Passes Health Care Refore Bill
I meant to post this yesterday but it slipped through the cracks of what was another manic Monday. The House of Representatives passed Nancy Pelosi’s 1,990 page health care reform bill by a vote of 220 to 215 on Saturday night. The House of Representatives late Saturday night approved a historic bill to remake the […]
AP: What Recovery?
The Associated press has been one of the President’s biggest cheerleaders but with unemployment now topping ten percent even they’re asking What recover? Just when it was beginning to look a little better, the economy relapsed Friday with a return to double-digit unemployment for only the second time since World War II and warnings that […]