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The Federal Reserve Bank, with a capitalization of $62 billion, has recently lost $192 billion, as interest rates have risen, according to ETF Guide and Scott Minerd, the Global Chief Investment Officer at Guggenheim Partners. This, despite attempts by the central bank of the United States to keep interest rates much, much lower "Our estimate shows that the spike in bond yields since the first quarter of this year,” writes Minerd, “has caused a mark-to-market loss of $192 billion on the Fed’s holding assets, equivalent to approximately all of the unrealized gains that the Fed had accumulated since it began...

Labor unions are breaking with President Obama on ObamaCare. Months after the president’s reelection, a variety of unions are publicly balking at how the administration plans to implement the landmark law. They warn that unless there are changes, the results could be catastrophic. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) — a 1.3 million-member labor group that twice endorsed Obama for president — is very worried about how the reform law will affect its members’ healthcare plans. Last month, the president of the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers released a statement calling “for repeal or...

The head of the National Treasury Employee Union (NTEU), which represents employees of the Internal Revenue Service, met with President Barack Obama in the White House one day before the manager of the IRS’s “Technical Unit” suggested establishing a “Sensitive Case Report” for the tax-exempt status applications of Tea Party groups, according to data from the official White House visitor log and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The White House visitor log shows that NTEU President Colleen Kelley met with Obama--“POTUS,” President of the United States--on March 31, 2010. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report on...

Today's fun story is the return of Twinkies, due in stores this summer. Less fun for Pres. Obama's labor agenda is that Hostess's new owner is not hiring union labor to bake and deliver its products. Because the former Hostess liquidated in bankruptcy several months ago, no labor contracts exist between Hostess and powerful unions such as the Teamsters. The steady decline of private sector unions is nothing new, but the Hostess restructuring is a test case for unions and Obama's ability to repay them for their support. Pres. Obama's latest nemesis –Twinkie The Kid Obama is a union man,...

The United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers is reportedly the first union to officially call for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. The health care law is prompting some serious buyer’s remorse in Big Labor, which worked hard on behalf of the administration to pass it: The union’s statement can be found here. The full text is below: United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers International President Kinsey M. Robinson issued the following statement today calling for a repeal or complete reform of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA):

Labor: Who says intransigence doesn't pay? After driving Hostess out of business by refusing to negotiate, union bakers have been rewarded by the White House with Trade Adjustment Assistance. It's all the foreigners' fault. Politics: Who says intransigence doesn't pay? After driving Hostess out of business by refusing to negotiate, the White House has decided to reward the union bakers with Trade Adjustment Assistence, blaming foreigners. What a sweet deal. ... the AFL-CIO-affiliated Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers International (BCTGM). It refused to deal, taking the entire company, including fellow workers, down with it. Turns out the union...

In an effort to cut defense spending, the Obama Administration plans to cut health benefits for active duty and retired military personnel and their families while not touching the benefits enjoyed by unionized civilian defense workers. The move, congressional aides suggested, is to force those individuals into Obamacare, Bill Gertz reported at the Washington Beacon. Gertz added: The proposed increases in health care payments by service members, which must be approved by Congress, are part of the Pentagon’s $487 billion cut in spending. It seeks to save $1.8 billion from the Tricare medical system in the fiscal 2013 budget, and...

Michigan is one step closer to becoming a Right to Work state. Last night, both the state House and Senate passed bills that would forbid the public sector unions from taking 2% out of workers’ paychecks for dues payments, regardless of whether or not they’re members. The bills can’t be passed into law until Tuesday, owing to procedural requirements, but they’re almost sure to prevail, at which point Gov. Rick Snyder has vowed to sign them. The House and Senate each passed bills on the same day they were introduced that give private and public sector workers the right to...

This is the end of Hostess Bakery Company. It was started in 1930 and died a few days after Barack Obama was reelected. The smiles have barely left the faces of his supporters, and now thousands of them across the country are being fired and laid-off. “We deeply regret the necessity of today’s decision, but we do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike. Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders.” With these 45 words the world has been turned...

During a speech today in Washington D.C., AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the looming debt disaster a "manufactured crisis" and said "there isn't a fiscal cliff." "There is no fiscal cliff," Trumka says in prepared remarks to the National Mediation Board Conference in Washington on Thursday. "What we’re facing is an obstacle course within a manufactured crisis that was hastily thrown together in response to inflated rhetoric about our federal deficit." Obama met with Trumka earlier this week, in addition to other far left leaders, to discuss economic policy. Apparently a $3500 tax increase on every family doesn't serve as...

Madison - About a dozen law enforcement officers, including FBI agents, visited the home of a former top aide to Gov. Scott Walker on Wednesday as part of a growing John Doe investigation. The home on Dunning St. on Madison's east side is listed in property records as belonging to Cynthia A. Archer, who was until recently deputy administration secretary to the Republican governor. "We're doing a law enforcement action," one of the FBI agents told a reporter. He didn't identify himself or provide further comment but confirmed that he and three others were with the FBI and that sheriff's...

The Rotunda continues to fill up as the 4pm deadline approaches. The Ustream video showed an almost empty Rotunda 35 minutes ago. Now the Rotunda is packed.

What's the best way to get Americans back to work? Raise taxes, according to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Specifically, he wants to raise the federal gas tax as a means to fund infrastructure spending. "We need a dedicated source of revenue to create infrastructure in this country," he tells Aaron Task in the accompanying clip. "We need to create jobs. The best way to do that is through infrastructure development." Simply maintaining the existing infrastructure in this country will cost $2.2 trillion over five years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. That doesn't include Obama's objective of high-speed...

Public schedule of Vice President Joe Biden for Thursday, Feb. 24: At 10:45 AM, the Vice President and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis will meet with President of the AFL-CIO Richard Trumka and with presidents of AFL-CIO labor organizations. Whatever do you suppose they're plotting inside this transparent Obama administration White House? Well, we'll never know. Because this meeting of an elected federal official with top labor union officers is closed to press. Then there are the meetings with lobbyists held just off the executive office grounds to avoid reporting them in White House logs. You are dismissed.

“…. the events in Wisconsin, and other states, unfold it is instructive to consider who is orchestrating the actions of the unions as they fight to keep their stranglehold on our economy. Investigated for terror ties Although you might not have gotten it from the old media, last September the FBI raided the homes of several people in the Midwest including those of two current or former Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73 Executive Board members. The FBI is investigating the SEIU’s Chicago local (a Barack Obama favored union), for its ties to terror organizations bent on the destruction...

Democratic senator is introducing legislation for a bailout of troubled union pension funds. If passed, the bill could put another $165 billion in liabilities on the shoulders of American taxpayers. The bill, which would put the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation behind struggling pensions for union workers, is being introduced by Senator Bob Casey, (D-Pa.), who says it will save jobs and help people. As FOX Business Network’s Gerri Willis reported Monday, these pensions are in bad shape; as of 2006, well before the market dropped and recession began, only 6% of these funds were doing well. Although right now taxpayers...

The nation’s non-union contractors, who constitute the bulk of the construction industry, say President Obama has given a “massive payback” to unions by implementing an executive order that would help them secure billions of dollars in construction contracts on public projects -- and a House Republican congressman agrees. The executive order, implemented in mid-April, encourages federal agencies to use “project labor agreements” or PLAs on their construction projects, which could require any non-union workers to pay into ailing union pension funds and follow work guidelines set out by a union. Ben Brubeck, who is director of the labor and federal...

Usually it takes a national government to spend itself into a debt measured in the trillions. Yet it comes as little surprise that the same profligacy that pervades the corridors of federal power infects this country's 87,000 state, county and municipal governments and school districts. By 2013, the amount of retirement money promised to employees of these public entities will exceed cash on hand by more than a trillion dollars. That's according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, which earlier this month released a troubling analysis of 126 state and local pension plans. The center's researchers found...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama will deliver the eulogy Sunday for the 29 miners who died in a coal mine explosion earlier this month. The service, announced today by West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, will be held in Beckley, W.Va., and will include prayers, musical performances, tributes to the miners, and remarks from Mr. Manchin and other dignitaries. Vice President Joe Biden will join the president to participate in the service, according to a White House news release issued today. The service will be held at the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center, at 200 Armory Drive in Beckley, at 3:30 p.m....

White American workers are "so f---ing rabidly racist" their sentiments can be used to scare blacks into supporting comprehensive immigration reform for illegal Latinos, argued SEIU Executive Vice President Gerry Hudson. "On white workers, I think we got some real problems. I've spent a lot of time in Wisconsin and places like that, where I have heard some of the most anti-immigrant sentiments around," said Hudson, speaking April 6 at a Washington, D.C., conference sponsored by Dissent magazine, which is closely linked with the Democrat Socialists of America group.