Free Republic

Ambac Financial Group Inc. warned that its board declined to make an interest payment and said it is negotiating plans for a prepackaged bankruptcy proceeding with senior debtholders. Shares dropped 48% to 43 cents in recent premarket trading...

The Fiscal Survey of States is published twice annually by the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) and the National Governors Association (NGA). The series was started in 1979. The survey presents aggregate and individual data on the states’ general fund receipts, expenditures, and balances. Although not the totality of state spending, these funds are used to finance most broad-based state services and are the most important elements in determining the fiscal health of the states. A separate survey that includes total state spending also is conducted annually. The field survey on which this report is based was conducted...

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- decreased at an annual rate of 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to advance estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP decreased 0.5 percent.

The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met by conference call on Friday, November 28. The committee maintains a chronology of the beginning and ending dates (months and quarters) of U.S. recessions. The committee determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in December 2007. The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 73 months; the previous expansion of the 1990s lasted 120 months. A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy,...

IN Booms and Depressions, I have developed, theoretically and statistically, what may be called a debt-deflation theory of great depressions. In the preface, I stated that the results "seem largely new," I spoke thus cautiously because of my unfamiliarity with the vast literature on the subject. Since the book was published its special conclusions have been widely accepted and, so far as I know, no one has yet found them anticipated by previous writers, though several, including myself, have zealously sought to find such anticipations. Two of the best-read authorities in this field assure me that those conclusions are, in...

(Tempe, Arizona) — Economic activity in the manufacturing sector failed to grow in September, while the overall economy grew for the 83rd consecutive month, say the nation's supply executives in the latest Manufacturing ISM Report On Business®. The report was issued today by Norbert J. Ore, C.P.M., chair of the Institute for Supply Management™ Manufacturing Business Survey Committee. "The PMI indicates a significantly faster rate of decline in manufacturing during September, marking a departure from the 2008 trend toward negligible growth or contraction each month. This is the lowest level for the PMI since October 2001. This month's report is...