Free Republic

Peter Schiff is predicting that Obama's policies will send us further into another financial crisis. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uo_wE85JKk&feature=sub

WASHINGTON — A fitful economic recovery is drawing strength from a stabilizing job market and signs that manufacturing will contribute to the rebound. The latest sign was a government report today that the number of newly laid-off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week. And the four-week average for claims, which smooths out fluctuations, fell for the 16th straight week, to its lowest point since September 2008, when the financial crisis hit with full force. Further evidence of a gradually healing economy was a report that orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket durable goods rose...

Oklahoma has the unwanted distinction of having the largest revenue shortfall of any state, according to a new report. That reality is illustrated by the state's revenue collections, which are down by more than 25 percent from a year ago. The state last week ordered yet another round of cuts, this time instructing agencies to cut 10 percent from their budgets. A November state budget report by the National Conference of State Legislatures says Oklahoma's 18.5 percent shortfall for the current fiscal year edges out Arizona's 18 percent, with Illinois in third at 16.5 percent. State agencies appeared to be...

Hey Obama constituencies! How’s that “HOPE” and “CHANGE” working for ya? Labor: Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 12-4-2009: National unemployment has risen from 7.6% in January 2009 to 10% in November 2009. Among the major worker groups, unemployment rates for adult men (10.5 per-cent), adult women (7.9 percent), teenagers (26.7 percent), whites (9.3 per-cent), blacks (15.6 percent), and Hispanics (12.7 percent) showed little change in November. The unemployment rate for Asians was 7.3 percent. African Americans: Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Money.CNN.com reports:

On December 8, Susan Gustafson at MLive.com proclaimed that "GM's announcement of no more layoffs is good news after years of hemorrhaging jobs": General Motors' announcement this morning that it plans no further layoffs in the immediate future is huge news for both the automaker and Michigan as a whole after years of steady erosion in the ranks of hourly and salaried workers. .... the company doesn't expect the numbers of hourly workers on indefinite layoff to increase. That same day, Robert Snell at the Detroit News reported the same thing: General Motors Co. does not plan any job cuts...

Tales of Woe Ring True in L.A. Jewelry District Some merchants are selling gold as scrap just to survive David Lazarus December 23, 2009 I knew things would be bad even before I set out this week to see how jewelry stores were faring this holiday season. I knew owners of these small businesses were facing a triple whammy: the crappy economy, sky-high gold prices and a product that's a luxury and by no means a necessity. I expected to hear more than a few tales of woe. But I wasn't ready for the complete devastation I came across. "It's...

Lehigh Valley employers expect to hire cautiously during the first quarter of 2010, according to a survey by temporary staffing firm Manpower. From January to March, 10 percent of interviewed companies plan to hire more employees, while 12 percent expect to reduce payrolls. Three-quarters of employers expect to maintain staff levels and 3 percent were uncertain of hiring plans. While more employers expected to cut jobs than add them, the results were better than those in the previous quarter, when 9 percent planned to hire and 16 percent planned to fire. The survey only addresses the number of employers that...

Even as the Senate sleepwalks toward handing him a major victory on health care, President Obama isn't inspiring confidence among voters on his handling of the issue, or of the economy for that matter, according to a new poll. The Quinnipiac University survey released today found that 56 percent disapprove of Obama's performance on health care and 53 percent oppose the bill, which the Democratic-controlled Senate moved forward with another procedural vote this morning. [para excerpted] The poll also found that 51 percent of respondents don't like how the president is handling the economy and 56 percent disapprove of how...

If you are under 30, you really need to read this column and pass it on to your friends. Your elected officials are dooming you to a new sort of bondage, a form of 21st Century slavery, if you will. First, some background. On October 16, 1854, Abraham Lincoln, then a former one-term Congressman, gave a three hour speech in Peoria, Illinois in which he decried the extension of slavery into the territories. The Republican Party was barely three months old. Lincoln warned that slavery was a “monstrous injustice” based on the raw principle of “self-interest” at odds with the...

The Obama administration's new plan to give a boost to small businesses reflects continued trouble in that sector, which is facing new failures even as much of the nation's economy is stabilizing. As credit lines have shrunk and consumers have cut back on spending, thousands of small businesses have closed their doors over the last year. The plight of struggling firms has been aggravated by the reluctance of banks to lend money, said Brian Headd, an economist at the Small Business Administration's office of advocacy. "While bankruptcies are up, overall, small business closures are up even more," Headd said. California...

Congress passed a two-month unemployment extension bill for those who were facing the possibility of losing their unemployment insurance benefits. The unemployment benefits extension program is set to go into February 2010, but there has been a great deal of confusion as to what the unemployment extension means and who qualifies. Originally, a six-month extension was wanted, however, the bill passed a two-month extension, which does the following: To begin, the extension will allow the continuation of Emergency Unemployment Continuation Program, which provides unemployment benefits in relation to a specific state’s unemployment rate. Secondly, the unemployment benefits extension continues the...

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz warned there's a "significant" chance the U.S. economy will contract in the second half of next year, and urged the government to prepare a second stimulus package to spur job creation. "The likelihood of this slowdown is very, very high," Stiglitz told reporters in Singapore. "There is a significant chance that the number will be in the negative range." Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University, called on Washington to make more funds available to state governments who face a drop in tax revenue. The U.S. economy, the world's largest, must grow at least 3 percent...

Bankruptcy And Fiscal Collapse,Global Economic Crisis Tipping Point Forecast For Spring 2010 Economics / Global Debt Crisis Dec 19, 2009 - 07:04 AM By: Global_Research LEAP/E2020 believes that the global systemic crisis will experience a new tipping point from Spring 2010. Indeed, at that time, the public finances of the major Western countries are going to become unmanageable, as it will simultaneously become clear that new support measures for the economy are needed because of the failure of the various stimuli in 2009 (1), and that the size of budget deficits preclude any significant new expenditures. If this public deficit...

The Adam Lambert Problem "Wrong track" poll numbers aren't just about the economy. By PEGGY NOONAN The news came in numbers and the numbers were fairly grim, all the grimmer for being unsurprising. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll reported this week that more than half of Americans, 55%, think America is on the wrong track, with only 33% saying it is going in the right direction. A stunning 66% say they're not confident that their children's lives will be better than their own (27% are). It is another in a long trail of polls that show a clear if...

White-Collar Jobless Join FedEx, UPS For Holidays By SAMANTHA BOMKAMP, AP Transportation Writer December 19, 2009 Ed Gullo never thought he'd be on this side of a package delivery. Gullo, 61, of Newburgh, N.Y., is driving a truck for FedEx during the holiday shipping rush that started after Thanksgiving. Gullo is no veteran truck driver. He's a news writer with experience at ABC and CNN, who found gigs hard to come by in the weak economy. FedEx and UPS, the world's two largest package delivery companies, hire thousands of extra workers every holiday season, usually college students and 20-somethings. This...

The Unemployment rate is up over 10% and African Americans are 6% higher than the national average. Does our government play a historic role in disenfranchising Blacks in America? Since Obama is an African American/Blackman should he be more informed and concerned with the specific needs of Black people in this country? I often ask people who say Blacks shouldn’t get special treatment, but how many slaves volunteered to come to America and build it for free? Like the President, I have studied Malcolm X intensely and I grew up admiring him as a youth. I studied all of his...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) - Ed Gullo never thought he'd be on this side of a package delivery.</p> <p>The 61-year-old from Newburgh, N.Y., is driving a truck for FedEx during the holiday shipping rush that started after Thanksgiving.</p> <p>Gullo is no veteran truck driver. He's a news writer with experience at ABC and CNN, who found gigs hard to come by in the weak economy.</p>

What has been lost in the housing talk recovery is the grim statistics that commercial real estate has fallen 37 percent in value in the last year. This wouldn’t be such a big problem aside from the tiny detail that some $3 trillion in commercial real estate loans are still outstanding. The commercial real estate debacle is already happening with defaults reaching 16 year highs. This is already occurring before many of the commercial real estate loans reach their refinance dates. In some instances banks are simply ignoring non-payment and giving borrowers a few more months or even years. Why?...

Stocks Hit By Dollar, Jobless Claims By Melinda Peer 12/17/09 - 09:44 AM EST NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Stocks opened lower Thursday as weekly jobless claims rose more than Wall Street expected and the dollar strengthened. More on C Amazon.com: Analysts' Upgrades, DowgradesBank of America, New CEO Face ChallengesFedEx Earnings Down, but Beat Estimates Market Activity FedEx Corporation| FDX DOWNDiscover Financial Services| DFS DOWNDow Jones Industrial Average| ^DJI DOWNThe Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by 62.7 points, or 0.6%, at 10,378.5 shortly after Thursday's opening bell. The S&P 500 was lower by 7.1 points, or 0.6%, at 1102.1 and...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of newly laid off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week as the recovery of the nation's battered labor market proceeds in fits and starts. The Labor Department said Thursday that the number of new jobless claims rose to 480,000 last week, up 7,000 from the previous week. That was a worse performance than the decline to 465,000 that economists had expected.

As 2009 comes to a close I am reminded of the pattern(s) of behavior regarding B. Hussein Obama and his goal to fundamentally change America. Maybe it has to do with Christmas looming on the horizon, Obama tinkering with the auto industry and all the layoffs that caused (my family and I thank you for that one, from the bottom of our hearts you charming Marxist) or perhaps it has to do with your using the Constitution as a place to wipe your shoes as you destroy America, or any number of things that you have done illegally, amorally, and...

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Americans are the most pessimistic they've been since the beginning of this year, when the US was mired in a deep recession, while confidence in President Obama and Congress is at the lowest level of 2009, according to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. Of those surveyed by telephone during the past weekend, 55 percent feel the nation is headed in the wrong direction, compared with 33 percent who felt the US was headed in the right direction. That's the worst showing since January, during the height of the economic crisis, when 59 percent felt that nation was on the...

On a chilly Saturday morning this month, the future soldiers of the U.S. Army huffed and puffed through push-ups, sit-ups and stretches in Whittier Narrows Regional Park in South El Monte. There was the gangly white kid with the blond buzz cut and the buffed-out Latino dude, head draped in a black bandanna. And then there was Jennifer Ren, small, slight and bespectacled, an immigrant from China who gamely kept up with the guys and sees the Army as a ticket to U.S. citizenship and a job in accounting and finance. Down the training line was Christopher Ly, the son...

Dec. 15, 2009, 8:55 a.m. EST U.S. producer prices soar 1.8% in November Core PPI increases 0.5%; both rates come in higher than expected By Greg Robb, MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Higher energy costs pushed the U.S. producer price index to surge 1.8% in November, the Labor Department reported Tuesday -- a rate that far exceeded analysts' expectations. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had predicted a rise of 1.0% for the month. Core producer prices, excluding volatile food and energy, rose 0.5% -- also above forecasts and the largest increase since October 2008. Read forecasts of major indicators. The November gain...

More than half of the nation’s unemployed workers have borrowed money from friends or relatives since losing their jobs. An equal number have cut back on doctor visits or medical treatments because they are out of work. Almost half have suffered from depression or anxiety. About 4 in 10 parents have noticed behavioral changes in their children that they attribute to their difficulties in finding work. Joblessness has wreaked financial and emotional havoc on the lives of many of those out of work, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll of unemployed adults, causing major life changes, mental health...

Low rate expectations are pushing dollars abroad. That capital needs to stay here to grow businesses and create jobs. The Federal Reserve implemented an emergency monetary policy after the 2008 Lehman bankruptcy to salvage the world financial system. In his testimony yesterday* before the Senate Banking Committee, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said, "We must be prepared to withdraw the extraordinary policy support in a smooth and timely way as markets and the economy recover." This leaves all-out emergency monetary stimulus in place, but with a different, much weaker justification. With the system stabilized, the Fed hopes that artificially low interest...

Job Market Worsens For Recent College Graduates Unemployment among young adults is worse than the U.S. average. Don Lee December 14, 2009 Reporting from Washington - The unemployment rate dropped last month for men and women, blacks and whites, lifting hopes that the long dry spell in the jobs market may be coming to an end. But for recent college graduates and other young adults, the labor situation didn't just remain dire -- it got worse. For 20- to 24-year-olds, the jobless rate rose four-tenths of a percent to 16% in November, even as unemployment nationally slipped to 10% from...

The unemployment rate dropped last month for men and women, blacks and whites, lifting hopes that the long dry spell in the jobs market may be coming to an end. But for recent college graduates and other young adults, the labor situation didn't just remain dire -- it got worse. For 20- to 24-year-olds, the jobless rate rose four-tenths of a percent to 16% in November, even as unemployment nationally slipped to 10% from 10.2%. And data from the Labor Department show that the unemployment figure for college graduates in that age group was 10.6% in the third quarter --...

Although the unemployment rate for African-Americans dropped to 15.6 percent in November, the unemployment rate for black teens between the ages of 16 to 19 currently stands at 49.4 percent - a sharp increase from last month's number of 41.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number only accounts for the number of teens actually participating in the labor market.

A sign reading "Welcome to Obamaville Colorado's Fastest Growing Community" appeared at a homeless tent city in Colorado Springs this week. You probably didn't hear about it because outside of two Colorado television stations nobody found this newsworthy. By contrast, when word got out in March of a tent city in Sacramento, California, news media couldn't get enough of the story. Is it because that happened so soon after Inauguration Day that it could easily be blamed on George W. Bush, and that given the name given to this area that's no longer possible?

Current mortgage rates should be the answer to everyone's prayers--the chance to refinance at articificially low rates and enjoy artificially low payments into the hereafter. But, as David Streitfeld explains in the NYT, banks aren't refinancing all that many loans. Why not? They've raised lending standards to where they should have been on the first go-round, which makes many homeowners ineligible Many loans are underwater, and banks won't lend more than the house is worth (shocking, we know). Many loans have been securitized, so your current bank can't just modify them on its own. Some key stats: An estimated six...

Being Frugal Is Back In Fashion KATHY M. KRISTOF Hit hard by job losses, strapped with debt or just plain weary of shopping for shopping's sake, millions of Americans are changing their free-spending ways. Ask Juli Thurston how things have changed from her spendthrift past and she's likely to point to a thick silver ring that she bought from Tiffany's for $175. She recently put it up for sale on EBay. In today's economy, something less flashy will do just fine, thank you. In fact, the only real accessorizing Thurston is doing these days is tightening her belt. After relocating...

Someone has put a lot of thought into a welcome sign that may surprise you, it's in front of a homeless camp off I-25 in Colorado Springs. Its message, "Welcome to Obamaville, Colorado's fastest growing community." Despite repeated calls no one could answer the question, who put up the sign? To some homeless the sign's message says enough. Mark Limonez, a homeless man living in "tent city", says the sign doesn't make him feel good about trying to get back on his feet. "Guys are trying to work but there's not enough work out there, so they go pan handling...

The November unemployment rate made a modest (and statistically insignificant) turn for the better with the claim that America only lost 11,000 jobs in November. That claim seems wildly suspect. It seems implausible that we went from losing 190,000 jobs in October to only 11,000 jobs lost in November

Political success, as reflected in the recent gubernatorial races appears ever-more staked on the state of the economy. Official unemployment recently measured 10 percent, though the more-honest gauge (U-6) shows the nation running unemployment at a Depression-like 17.2 percent. In response to high unemployment numbers, Barack Obama has said, "I will not rest until all Americans who want to work can." Yet Mr. Obama's policies belie his words. In fact, what his administration is doing will ensure massive unemployment and endless economic stagnation. To understand why I make such a sweeping assertion, it is necessary to comprehend how our economy...

cut n paste link here: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20091211/1afedpay11_st.art.htm?loc=interstitialskip

Meanwhile, his comrades in Copenhagen want to give kids nightmares with LIES!Obama told Republicans at a White House meeting to "stop trying to frighten the American people" on the shape of the economy when any of us can see with out own eyes what a mess it is in. What a shame he doesn't tell his comrades in Copenhagen to do the same as they portray climate change as a child's nightmare with this scare-o-rama playing at the Copenhagen Conference: [VIDEO AT SITE] This is as vile a propaganda effort as the attempt by world socialists to sow nightmares in...

Rosenberg: Market Volatility Will Double And Stocks Will Collapse Vincent FernandoDec. 11, 2009, 5:06 AM | Having been on the wrong side of the market in 2009, Gluskin Sheff's David Rosenberg is doubling down his bearish bet. It's the smartest course of action for him at this point -- so expect market volatility to double in 2010: Bloomberg: “We’ll be in a year of heightened volatility,” Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc. in Toronto, said in an interview. “We’ll see periods in 2010 where the VIX will be north of 30 in a period of risk aversion...

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) called for an end to Washington’s unprecedented borrowing and spending binge during floor remarks today opposing Democrats’ 2,500-page omnibus spending bill. Noting that “America is broke,” Boehner challenged President Obama to go through the measure, which contains more than 5,000 earmarks, “line-by-line and page-by-page” as he promised the American people he would. Following are VIDEO and the full text of Boehner’s remarks...

Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 27% are not angry about the government's policies, including 10% who are Not at All Angry........ The data suggests that the level of anger is growing. The 71% who are angry at federal government policies today is up five percentage points since September. Even more stunning, the 46% who are Very Angry is up 10 percentage points from September.

Home foreclosure filings in New York rose nearly 70 percent in November compared to the same month a year ago, a much steeper increase than what happened nationally. The number of foreclosure filings in the U.S. rose 18 percent in November on a year-over-year basis, according to RealtyTrac, an online real estate company based in California. Even with the big jump in New York, the state continues to rank toward the bottom in terms of per-capita foreclosures in the United States. New York was 39th on the list. And, compared with the previous month, foreclosures are down 8 percent in...

RUSH: It is a crying shame, ladies and gentlemen, that that economic speech at Brookings that President Hoax and Change just gave was not in primetime. Hoax and Change. It's a shame it was not in primetime so all of America could have the choice of listening to his latest version of "I inherited and I am great." That is the theme of his speeches, I inherited, and I'm great. He dumped all over the Bush administration. TARP was flawed, his treasury secretary designed it! His tax cheat secretary designed it! It was flawed? My God, it is unbelievable what...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Low interest rates will prevail through most of next year as the U.S. economy expands modestly and the unemployment rate remains stuck in double digits, the UCLA Anderson Forecast group said on Wednesday. "Specifically, we forecast that after growing at 2.8 percent in the most recent and current quarters, real GDP growth will settle into a 2 percent growth path for much of 2010 and be closer to 3 percent in 2011," the forecasting unit said in its report. "With such sluggish growth, the unemployment rate will likely peak at 10.5 percent in the first quarter...

He promised shovel ready jobs if the Congress rushed through the $787 billion dollar stimulus earlier this year. He promised 400,000 to 3.5 million jobs and that unemployment would not rise above 8%. But as we all know by now absolutely nothing that he promised was real. It was all made up. (see 4:21min video) Now that he can no longer deny the reality of unemployment as high as 10.2% nor can he deny the made up Congressional districts in which made up jobs appeared, Soetoro admitted that he lied about jobs. No he didn’t say that he lied, and...

There are plenty of reasons to be more optimistic about the job picture than we were a month ago. The economy only lost 11,000 jobs in November, by far the best figures since 2007. Service jobs are up. Temp work is up, which often presages permanent job growth. But here's one thing that's not turning up: Hiring. From CNN.com, on the BLS numbers for October: For now, employers are still hesitant to add workers. The number of new hires remains near its low since the report began being produced nine years ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The...

The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that there have now been 1,000,000 foreclosures filed so far in 2009 and the group expects the foreclosure number to double before the end of the year. U.S. Home Vacancies Hit 18.7 Million on Bank Seizures (Update2) [1] Thanks to our controlled and uncontrolled media, we know when you take the derivative of the foreclosure crisis you get those greedy predatory lenders at AIG, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America plotting to steal our tacky (I mean tract-y) houses. Conventional wisdumb and the media always blame the usual suspects and FOX News wraps it...

The president believes that increased per-employee productivity is a problem that he needs to “work on.” In other words, the president sees his challenge now as how to get the American worker to be less productive, so that companies require more employees to maintain current output. Indeed, existing workers are putting in slightly more time, as the Chicago Tribune reports: “Economists were encouraged by an increase in the average workweek to 33.2 hours from 33, which was the lowest on record.” But the new Obama crisis is that these same workers are producing more goods and services. The president seems...

The borrower is slave to the lender. Our nation can’t spend its way out of debt. We must produce more than we consume. Washington D. C. and Wall Street are giddy with the unemployment rate drop from 10.2 percent to 10 percent. The truth is that only taxable wages can pay our nation’s bills and reduce our national debt. This November 2009 chart cuts through the chase. The bottom line from Zero Hedge is, “On a rolling 12 month basis, individual tax withheld has dropped by nearly 8% YoY, from $1.42 trillion to $1.31 trillion, while company withholding are down...

The header The idea of a resume is to fit the most pertinent information into a small space. (On that note, a resume should NEVER, under any circumstances, be more than one page long.) Your name and contact information should not be size 40 font, and you should include multiple ways of contacting you; phone, address, and email are sufficient. The objective This should be no more than 5 or 6 words, and should state exactly what you are looking for. Keep in mind your wording could give them an impression of how experienced, or inexperienced you are. If it...