New US jobless claims hit 5-year low

Yahoo News ^ | 1-5-2006 | By Amanda Cooper

[FreeKeys]

The number of U.S. workers seeking new jobless benefits fell last week to its lowest in over five years, the government reported on Thursday and a private group said the services sector grew last month, boding well for the economic outlook.

The strong data came one day before the closely watched Labor Department report on employment. Economists expect a solid 200,000 gain in nonfarm payrolls in December, with the jobless rate holding steady at 5 percent.

In other data, major U.S. retailers on Thursday reported that deep discounts lured holiday shoppers last month and pushed sales slightly ahead of modest expectations, but a disappointing profit forecast from Wal-Mart raised concerns.

Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, said its fourth-quarter profit would likely reach only the low end of its forecast after a disappointing December. Wal-Mart posted just a 2.2 percent increase in December sales at U.S. stores open at least a year.

HOLIDAY VOLATILITY

The unexpected fall in jobless claims was not the product of a particular special factor, a government analyst said, but cautioned there is often volatility around holidays.

In its weekly report, the Labor Department said 291,000 initial claims for state jobless benefits were filed last week, the lowest since September 2000 and down from a revised 326,000 in the prior week. It was the largest weekly drop since late September.

The decrease in claims outstripped Wall Street's expectations. Analysts had expected claims to dip slightly to 320,000 last week from the originally reported 322,000.

"The jobless claims drop shows good strength in the labor market at the end of the year," said Gary Thayer, chief economist at A.G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis. "It shows that the economy has recovered after the hurricanes and is heading into the new year with good momentum and good job prospects."

PINCH OF SALT

But some said the data should be taken with a grain of salt. "It's Christmas, it's a difficult week for seasonal adjustments," said David Sloan, an economist with 4CAST Ltd. in New York.

The larger-than-expected drop brought a four-week moving average of initial claims, which smooths weekly volatility to provide a better view of underlying labor market trends, down by 9,250 to 316,750, its lowest level since August.

Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasuries prices were weaker on the day but recouped some of their earlier losses as the weaker home sales data offset some of the negative sentiment sparked by the strong jobless claims figures. The 10-year note price was down 5/32 at midday to yield 4.37 percent.

A separate report from the Institute for Supply Management showed the U.S. services industry expanded further in December, as inflation within the sector eased, and new orders rose.

The U.S. service sector -- which accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy -- grew in December, aided by lower energy costs, rising new orders and continued job growth.

ISM reported its non-manufacturing index rose to 59.8, from 58.5 in November, above forecasts for a rise to 59.0.

The number 50 divides growth from decline in the sector, which includes any sort of business from restaurants and travel agencies to banks and beauty parlors.

"All the components are above the break-even point of 50. There is also relief in the prices paid component from lower energy costs along with easing in delivery time," said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Banc of America Capital Management in Boston.

"The jobs component remains quite strong versus the November figure. On balance, the bulk of the U.S. economy bodes well for solid growth in 2006," she said.

The employment component edged up to 57.1 in December from 57.0, while the prices-paid gauge fell to 69.5 from 74.2.

Minutes from a mid-December meeting of Federal Reserve policy-makers released on Tuesday showed some officials think the United States might currently be near full employment.

The Fed has hinted its 18-month long policy-tightening campaign may soon be over but officials have warned that a tighter labor market could raise the risk of inflation and give the bank a reason to keep raising rates.

Since June 2004, the Fed has brought rates up to 4.25 percent with a series of gradual increases and financial markets are pricing in a quarter-point increase at the next meeting on January 31 and some chance of another rise in March.

LAYOFFS UP, HOME SALES DOWN

In a separate report on Thursday, the employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc said planned U.S. layoffs rose 8.6 percent in December, pushing the 2005 annual total of job cuts 3.1 percent higher than in 2004.

The firm said there were 107,822 layoffs announced in December, compared with 99,279 in November. In 2005, U.S. employers announced 1,072,054 job cuts, compared with 1,039,735 in 2004, Challenger said.

The National Association of Realtors said its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in December, fell to 120.6 in November, down 2.5 percent from both October and a year ago and its lowest reading since January 2005.

Home sales have slowed in recent month's as the Fed's rate rises have finally begun to rein in the housing market.

[FreeKeys]

To put those numbers into perspective, keep in mind that total net employment is higher these days, by about 5,000,000 jobs, when compared to the level of total employment in December 2000. (See this.) Also, back in December 2000 the four-week moving average of initial claims for jobless benefits, i.e., layoffs, was upwards of 350,000, as opposed to its current level of under 320,000. (See this.)

[FreeKeys]

Those comments are based on those of Jayson Javits.

[ncountylee]

Can't be true...worst economy since Hoover. LOL

[Phantom Lord]

[DumpsterDiver]

Can't be true...worst economy since Hoover. LOL

I wonder if these reports on the economy have any validity at all.

And just to be a contrarian:

A million layoffs

Good economy or bad, layoffs now seem to be par for the course in corporate America.

According to a new labor report released this morning, corporations announced nearly 1.1 million job cuts in 2005, marking the fifth consecutive year where more than 1 million workers were laid off.

snip

[GianniV]

I stopped by the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa last Fall. The guy was a good man totally demonized for the Great Depression (he did do some things wrong in reaction to it).

But nobody every asks the question, if FDR was great, why did the Great Depression last for 8 years under him (1933 to 1941 - until WWII started)? What the heck did he do in those eight years to stimulate the economy?

[PeterFinn]

More proof that Bush is a failure - he's putting the people at the unemployment office out of a job.

[Zeppelin]

haha yeah, horrible economy alright! =P

Economics 101...a raise in income yields a drop in demand for inferior goods (i.e, Walmart).

This poor economy is forcing shoppers to go to more expensive outlets!

[GeorgeW23225]

It's all Bush's fault!! :-)

GO "W" GO !!

[Zeppelin]

***What the heck did he do in those eight years to stimulate the economy?***

I can tell you what CLINTON did in HIS eight years to stimulate...oh wait, nevermind, there could be children on this thread. =P

[Zeppelin]

I'm glad the hundreds of thousands of the wealthiest 1% are finally getting some jobs thanks to the tax cuts they received 3 years ago.

[FreeKeys]

According to a new labor report released this morning, corporations announced nearly 1.1 million job cuts in 2005, marking the fifth consecutive year where more than 1 million workers were laid off.

Aha. Good point! Thanks for posting that and giving me the opportunity to point out THIS new Walter Williams column on ECONOMIC FLEXIBILITY and American INCOME MOBILITY!

[DumpsterDiver]

new Walter Williams column on ECONOMIC FLEXIBILITY and American INCOME MOBILITY!

Say now, is "American INCOME MOBILITY!" just a euphemistic way of saying it goes from my wallet into someone else's?

I'll go read Walter's article.

[Steveone]

and the Dow approaches 11000

[Sonny M]

I'm glad the hundreds of thousands of the wealthiest 1% are finally getting some jobs thanks to the tax cuts they received 3 years ago.

I know I am definatly glad.

I just wish we had bigger tax cuts.

[HHFi]

I'm sure the New York Times will headline this as "Jobless claims drop as more people give up even looking for jobs in hopeless despair over terrible Bush economy."

[Mad_as_heck]

I think it is against the law to criticize four term President for Life Roosevelt, father of socialism in America.

We are still suffering from the effects of his cursed Raw Deal programs.

[BeHoldAPaleHorse]

"According to a new labor report released this morning, corporations announced nearly 1.1 million job cuts in 2005, marking the fifth consecutive year where more than 1 million workers were laid off."

Yes, the economy is now big enough that 1,000,000 jobs are routinely eliminated.

[Toddsterpatriot]

According to a new labor report released this morning, corporations announced nearly 1.1 million job cuts in 2005

Hate to break it to you, but if the current weekly 291,000 initial jobless claims hold, that's over 15,000,000 jobs lost this year. Fortunately, America will probably generate over 18,000,000 new jobs. So cheer up!!!!

[Wiseghy]

"Fire one million"

[Willie Green]

The Bush Administration is maintaining a false illusion of prosperity by plundering the US Treasury.

The Wall Street Journal: Dishonest Cheerleading (Again
Snow urges Congress to raise debt limit

"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

-- Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, May 28, 1816

[Cruz]

But did not senator Kerry proclaim this was the worst economy since the Great Depression?

[smonk]

how can this be? whorry reid and nincompoop pelosi said that we were all doomed just last week.

[BenLurkin]

Better question: Can it be shown that FDR's policies did not actually PROLONG the depression?

There are those who say they did!

[FreeKeys]

...and nincompoop pelosi said that we were all doomed just last week.

[Steveone]

LMAO True!!

[Names Ash Housewares]

Bush Boom rocks on! Defys the critics and predictors of doom.

[GeorgeW23225]

They deserve every penny of their tax cuts.

Afterall, they created the jobs..........

[Zeppelin]

Hey I'm not rippin' on the rich! I'm tryin to slam the Dims here!

[FreeKeys]

Can it be shown that FDR's policies did not actually PROLONG the depression?

Uh, unless that's just a rhetorical question, no.

"... regarding the Great Depression: You're right, we did it." -- said Federal Reserve Board Governor Ben Bernanke, finally admitting government culpability to Nobel Laureate Dr. Milton Friedman, at Milton's 90th birthday celebration. [Financial Review, 12-9-2002] Also see Rethinking the Great Depression HERE, America's Great Depression HERE,The Roosevelt Myth  HERE, Forgotten Lessons HERE, Essays on the Great Depression HERE, and FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression by Jim Powell HERE.  Also check out the Burton Folsom speech on the Great Depression HERE and  the audio lecture, The Cause and Consequence of the Great Depression (CD) HERE. "Scratch the surface of an endemic problem -- famine, illness, poverty -- and you invariably find a politician at the source."--  Simon Carr, in his review of The Mystery of Capital  by Hernando de Soto

HERE

 

"There is no need here to attempt to explain FDR's economic reasoning, if such an explanation is even possible. Speaking of the President's acquaintance with economics, biographer John T. Flynn noted that 'it is entirely possible that no one knew less about that subject than Roosevelt.' [from The Roosevelt Myth]  What is important is that these economic fallacies would have terrible consequences. The President's faulty grasp of what had caused the Depression led him to introduce a system whose operation was quite similar to the old guild structure, with the explicit intention of reducing competition." -- Thomas E. Woods, Jr., HERE"In the opening remarks of Ludwig von Mises's first formal seminar in America, the revered teacher held up a copy of a book and announced: "to understand economics, this is the book you should read first."  According to Mises’s student and friend George Koether, the book he was holding was An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method by Morris Cohen and Ernest Nagel, first published in 1934 and now out of print. ..." -- Steven Yates, HERE

[ThinkDifferent]

Can it be shown that FDR's policies did not actually PROLONG the depression? There are those who say they did!

Great Myths of the Great Depression

Students today are often given a skewed account of the Great Depression of 1929-1941 that condemns free-market capitalism as the cause of, and promotes government intervention as the solution to, the economic hardships of the era. In this essay based on a popular lecture, Mackinac Center for Public Policy President Lawrence Reed debunks the conventional view and traces the central role that poor government policy played in fostering this legendary catastrophe.

[GeorgeW23225]

Sorry, but I didn't notice "sarcasm/off"

[GeorgeW23225]

On a lighter note........

HOOK 'EM HORNS!!! Great, great game.

Congratulations to the Longhorns!!!

[Zeppelin]

HOOKED EM!

(by the way, how'd you know I'm a Longhorn?)

[Zeppelin]

haha it's cool.

by the way, denoting sarcasm is for lightweights. =P

[GeorgeW23225]

I read your FReeper Bio.......

[Zeppelin]

aha! a clever one!

...i feel dumb...

[driftless]

The Dems are cooking their feeble brains trying to spin this news. I love the one about the "wage disparity gap" as if people working non-professional jobs should be making as much as doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. The so-called wage disparity or wealth gap has actually been going on since the start of the Industrial Revolution. So what. Of course in libs eyes, people who are not making enough money should be given more by the government...instead of going out and bettering themselves by learning skills that will earn them higher wages.

[driftless]

Try to become more coherent in your responses. Your posting about "my wallet into someone elses" didn't make any sense.

[GeorgeW23225]

Dumb is for a supporter of USC :-)

I'm the ONLY person I know here in Virginia who knew that Texas would win last night.
(I had the last laugh!!)

[Zeppelin]

muhahaha! (now I'VE had the last laugh)

your move.

(by the way, I've met Vince...he's a really nice guy and well spoken...he sounded totally different on the TV last night...was probably just waaay too pumped.)

[Southack]

"Good economy or bad, layoffs now seem to be par for the course in corporate America."

...And that's yet another reason why the U.S. economy continues to grow while Old Europe's economy stagnates: flexibility.

In contrast, Old Europe has laws that make layoffs difficult. That keeps outdated jobs (think: 8 track tape assembler) staffed, dragging down a company's profits and hindering that company's ability to innovate.

The U.S. once had similar laws for railroads. Every train was required to have a caboose staffed with two railroad union employees. Couldn't have a non-union member in the caboose unless two union members were staffed there...and you couldn't have fewer than 2 in the caboose, even though the need for people in the caboose was eliminated a century earlier with mechanical (and then elctrical and hydraulic) switches and the like.

After railroads became unprofitable, Congress finally repealed those old laws (saving several railroads and keeping low cost freight hauling viable in the U.S.).

Of course, keeping low cost freight viable meant that those union caboose job holders got laid off.

That was bad for them (pretty cushy jobs, difficult to personally replace with similar no work but union scale wages).

But it was great for our overall economy and great for the railroads. Cheap freight aids the entire economy...something that a single law change enabled.

Because layoffs followed...and then profitability returned...and in the meantime all Americans received the benefit of cheaper shipping costs.

People who think that layoffs are *bad* are viewing the world from the perspective of the cushy union employees in the caboose of those old trains...as in, it's tough to get paid high union wages for doing no work. Those caboose job-holders had good money for no effort, and they couldn't find replacement jobs that offered the same conditions.

Too bad.

But the entire rest of the American economy benefited from firing those parasites. They needed to be laid off...fired with malice.

Those layoffs were good for our economy. They gave us cheap freight.

So from an American perspective or a consumer perspective or a business/corporate perspective, those layoffs were a good thing. In fact, most layoffs *are* good overall.

They just smash the individual job-holders in the teeth.

This is also known as "creative destruction." Inefficient jobs must be killed in order for more efficient jobs/companies to prosper.

The more inefficient jobs that you kill, the better. The faster that you kill those bad jobs, the better.

Overall.

It just bites on a personal level.

[GeorgeW23225]

Vince sounded just fine to me last night. He was much calmer than I would have been.

He let his "talent" do his talking......

[BenLurkin]

Excellent reply.

Thank you!

[FreeKeys]

I love the one about the "wage disparity gap" as if people working non-professional jobs should be making as much as doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. The so-called wage disparity or wealth gap has actually been going on since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

I feel like indulging in some serious overkill tonight. Please bear with me. No, humor me. Ah heck, my apologies in advance... Oh -- and thanks for the feedback, Ben!

And check out the charts on THIS page, and on THIS, THIS and THIS one.

   "Never mind the low wages and harsh living conditions of the early years of capitalism.  They were all that the national economies of the time could afford.  Capitalism did not create poverty -- it inherited it.  Compared to the centuries of precapitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first chance the poor had ever had to survive.  As proof -- the enormous growth of the European population during the nineteenth century, a growth of over 300 percent, as compared to the previous growth of something like 3 percent per century."-- Ayn Rand

   "Economic growth was non-existent during the centuries 500-1500 -- and per capita GDP rose by merely 0.1 percent per year in the centuries 1500-1700. In 1500, the estimated European per capita income was roughly $215; in 1700, roughly $265." -- Andrew Bernstein

"In a poor country like ours, the alternative to low-paid jobs isn't well-paid ones; it's no jobs at all." --  Jesús Reyes-Heroles, Mexico's Ambassador to the USA

---

|  THE FIXED QUANTITY OF WEALTH FALLACY  | The fixed quantity of resources fallacy  |
| THE FIXED QUANTITY OF RESOURCES FALLACY  | "The Sweatshop Scam"  |  more | more |
|  Understanding ordinary envy AND the much more virulent cases of hatred masked as envy|

---

As Robert A. Heinlein said, "Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty."

In a modern open-market capitalist society, entrepreneurs get rich and the poor get better off as a result -- OF COURSE they're not going to get as rich as fast (duh). So, of course the gap thereby gets wider -- but the top AND BOTTOM of the gap both rise to levels much higher than before. The gap is widening?? Well, hooray for everyone’s sake! ESPECIALLY the poor!

If the rich weren’t free to "get ever richer," developing or investing in ever-increasing productivity, the poor would NEVER have any chance to improve their conditions at all, let alone to obtain their ever-increasing access to the latest tools of that expanding productivity, making every hour of their labor ever-more valuable. And YOU wouldn't EVER have the chance to read this or anything else brought to you by advanced technology. 

Freedom incents the creators to empower YOU and as many other people in the world as possible. There's little an entrepreneur likes better than a bunch of ever-richer loyal customers. Remember, the wealth you see around you didn’t always exist; it was and is CREATED wherever the right CONDITIONS OF FREEDOM (including the rule of natural law evenly applied, with the rigorous protection of individual rights including property rights and respect for contracts, effective prosecution of the perpetrators of force and fraud, and the ease of engaging in trade without the interference or "permissions" of politicians and bureaucrats) are established and guaranteed._

Now recognize the true nature and scope of evil and wherein it really lies. And don't be too limp a wimp to to call viciousness viciousness even if all your friends and neighbors fawn like groupies over any mantle of global "compassion" in which the evil appears to be cloaked.

-.

Find: "Popular understanding of economics is at least two centuries behind economists' understanding of the economy." HERE
And: "Wealth is not a fixed quantity and one person's success does not come at the expense of others ... Economists have understood [that] for over two centuries, but moralists have not caught up." HERE

---

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men together in a society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." -- Frédéric Bastiat

   "Wealth, when you get right down to it, is not the cause of poverty." -- Mitchell B. Pearlstein, paraphrasing George Gilder

   "Ultimately it is only wealth that can reduce poverty." -- Thomas Sowell

  "If we want the whole world to be rich, we need to start loving wealth. In the difference between poverty and plenty, the problem is the poverty and not the difference. Wealth is good.  ... wealth is not a world-wide round-robin of purse snatching, and ... the thing that makes you rich doesn't make me poor. ... Without Productivity, there wouldn't be any economics, or any economic thinking, good or bad, or any pizza, or anything else.  We would sit around and stare at rocks, and maybe later have some for dinner. ... Wealth is based on productivity, and productivity is expandable.  In fact, productivity is fabulously expandable."-- P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich
 

(Again)      "Wealth is based on productivity, and productivity is expandable.  In fact, productivity is fabulously expandable." -- P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich

---

"of the vast increase in the well-being of hundreds of millions of people that has occurred in the 200-year course of the industrial revolution to date, virtually none of it can be attributed to the direct redistribution of resources from rich to poor. The potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways of distributing current production is nothing compared to the apparently limitless potential of increasing production." --Robert Lucas

"...evidence abounds that the fundamental cause of Third World poverty is not First World greed ... it is the economic, political and social obstacles that developing nations themselves raise to progress by their aspiring poor." -- Katherine Kersten in the Minnesota Star Tribune,March 20, 1996

"The trade barriers at the borders of the rich world may have disappeared, but if [a banana picker in the Central African Republic] wants to sell his bananas abroad he first has to get them onto a ship bound for America or Europe. That takes 116 days, and an incredible 38 signatures -- each one an opportunity for some official to collect a bribe." -- Tim Harford, The New York Times
"Despite the head-shaking of the foes of free trade, it does seem that the ability to actually sell one's stuff would constitute an immediate improvement in one's economic prospects." -- David M. Brown

 "Look around: It just isn't true that countries get rich at each other's expense. Would America be better off now if Europe and Japan had stayed poor after 1945? Did its jobs migrate, its economy stagnate, leaving rising poverty and chronic unemployment? Not exactly: America thrived. One of the things that helped it after 1945 was expanding opportunities for trade with other rich countries. Americans would be worse off today if Europe and Japan had stayed poor. What's changed? Why isn't this still true? In my view: Nothing; it's still true. The faster India grows, the better off every other country will be... I do not regard the prospect of global capitalism as "harrowing." I regard it as the best opportunity for relieving human misery the world has ever seen." -- Clive Crook, deputy editor of The Economist,in the February 25th, 1997 issue of Slate, in a letter to John Judis

  "I observed the talks and was shocked not only by the riotous atmosphere, but also by the protesters' misconceptions about trade, the WTO and the developing world. As an Indian national, I know only too well how lack of trade, investment and freedom keeps the world's developing nations in a state of perpetual poverty and environmental degradation. Sadly, the largely middle-class Americans who trashed Seattle last week had little if any comprehension of this fact." -- Barun Mitra, in a column in the Wall Street Journal 12-9-99. Mitra heads the The Liberty Institute, in New Delhi, India

 "The 'progressive' Left, even while wailing about international poverty, has long decried the Westernization of the 'developing world', the polite term for societies kept poor by socialist governments." -- from The Free Market Means Civilization by Lew Rockwell, President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, originally published in Spintechmag.com,12-22-2000.

  "Fortunately, political freedom and economic progress are natural partners.  Despite capitalism's lingering reputation as the source of all the world's evils, the fact remains that every single democracy is a capitalist country.  Half a century of economic experimentation proved beyond doubt that tyranny cannot yield prosperity. ... Socialism collapsed because it is a policy of unrestrained intervention.  It tries to fix what is 'wrong' with the spontaneous, self-organizing phenomenon called capitalism.  But, of course, a natural process cannot be 'fixed.' ... Socialism is an ideology. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon." -- Michael Rothschild in BIONOMICS: Economy as Ecosystem

 "Capitalism is not an "ism." It is closer to being the opposite of an "ism," because it is simply the freedom of ordinary people to make whatever economic transactions they can mutually agree to." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell

 "Not understanding the process of a spontaneously-ordered economy goes hand-in-hand with not understanding the creation of resources and wealth." -- Julian Simon

 "The market is not an invention of capitalism.  It has existed for centuries.  It is an invention of civilization." -- Mikhail Gorbachev, June 8, 1990

   "How a conflict-ridden, grossly over-populated place with no resources whatsoever gets rich is simple. The British colonial government turned Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing." -- P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich

  "In terms of natural resources, Africa is the world's richest continent. It has 50 percent of the world's gold, most of the world's diamonds and chromium, 90 percent of the cobalt, 40 percent of the world's potential hydroelectric power, 65 percent of the manganese, millions of acres of untilled farmland as well as other natural resources.  Despite the natural wealth, Africa is home to the world's most impoverished and abused people. Of the 41 black African nations, only three (Senegal, Botswana and Mauritius) allow their people the right to vote and choose their own leaders. Only two (Botswana and Senegal) permit freedom of expression and criticism of government policies. In countries like Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, Sudan, Chad and others, ethnic genocide has taken the lives of untold millions of innocent victims. Slavery is still practiced in the Sudan and Mauritania." -- Dr. Walter E. Williams

  "Another current catch-phrase is the complaint that the nations of the world are divided into 'haves' and the 'have-nots.'  Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." -- Ayn Rand

"What transformed the world of horse-drawn carriages, sailing ships, and windmills step by step into a world of airplanes and electronics was the laissez-faire principle." -- Ludwig von Mises in The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science

"Capitalism is not just a system for producing wealth. It is, above all else, a system based on the noblest moral principle: the protection of the individual's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Free markets are founded on the individual's right to pursue a career, trade the products of his effort, and enjoy the wealth he has earned without having to seek permission from others or pay ransom for the privilege of living." -- Robert W. Tracinski

-- all excerpted from this page.

[driftless]

Thanks for posting those comments by the real geniuses in the world. Their comments should be printed on the front pages in bold type by all our big lib rags like the Slimes and the Compost. Most of the ignorati believe what the big lib rags spew out. Little to they realize that all the "compassion" the lib rags bestow on the benighted are actually ball and chains that keep them mired in self-pity and poverty.

[ChadGore]

There's nothing cute about this monster:

[FreeKeys]

Eeewwwwwwwww! Yuuuuck! I was about to have dinner, but now I've lost my appetite.

In fact, I think I'm going to be sic...k..............

[ichabod1]

pushing the 2005 annual total of job cuts 3.1 percent higher than in 2004.

Home sales have slowed in recent month's(sic)

some said the data should be taken with a grain of salt.

deep discounts lured holiday shoppers last month... a disappointing profit forecast from Wal-Mart raised concerns.

The drop undoubtedly reflects more people giving up on finding work.