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How party dips can give you Norovirus and even HERPES (and sour cream is the worst for spreading bacteria) Microbiologists reveal double dipping can spread bacteria very quickly Even a small amount of someone's saliva in a dip will allow germs to multiply Bacteria in runny dips like sour cream will multiply by up to 100 times But it won't grow very quickly in thicker dips such as houmous, it's said It's not a party unless there are some chips and dip on the table, but these tasty nibbles could be hiding some very dangerous bacteria, an investigation reveals. Norovirus,...

MADISON — Federal employees in Wisconsin apparently cannot have their cake and eat it, too. What could be more than 2,000 furloughed workers who received back pay related to the 16-day partial government shutdown will have to reimburse any unemployment benefits that were applied for or collected during that time, Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development spokesman John Dipko said. That total could be in excess of $245,000. According to Dipko, nearly 2,070 federal employees in the Badger State filed claims for unemployment between Sept. 30 and Oct. 12. The number of claims made last week were not available at the...

President Obama can’t stop talking about the 1 percent of people who he says don’t pay their fair share of the nation’s taxes. But he should be obsessing about a 1.5 percent — the rotten growth rate produced by the once-mighty US economy in the second quarter. The slowdown announced Friday — on top of another slowdown in the first quarter — is further proof that the president’s class-warfare economic rhetoric and policies are pushing the country perilously close to a double-dip recession. The numbers are pretty stark: Growth of 2 percent for the first quarter was already scary, down...

As President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney get set for what’s likely to be among the most negative presidential campaigns in recent history, each man should ask himself if he really wants to win — because he’ll almost certainly face the grim prospect of another recession. Sure, it’s always difficult predicting the economic future; that just a couple months ago we all thought (including me on these pages) that we were heading for a sustained recovery, as job growth seemed to have picked up steam and most financial gurus predicted that it was just a matter of time before...

(CNNMoney) -- Spain has fallen into its second recession since 2009 as its economy shrank for the second consecutive quarter, according to a government report Monday. There are now a dozen European nations that have had their economies shrink for two consecutive quarters, a condition that generally equates to a recession. The Spanish economy, struggling with the aftermath of the bursting of a housing bubble, has been particularly hard hit by the economic turmoil rolling across Europe. On Friday, the government reported that Spain's unemployment rate hit record high of 24.4%.

Britain's economy slid into its second recession since the financial crisis after official data unexpectedly showed a fall in output in the first three months of 2012, piling pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron's embattled coalition government. The Office for National Statistics said Britain's gross domestic product fell 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2012 after contracting by 0.3 percent at the end of 2011, confounding forecasts for 0.1 percent growth. Most economists had expected Britain's $2.4 trillion economy to eke out modest growth in the early 2012, but these forecasts were upset by the biggest fall in construction...

Higher U.S. Gas Prices And The Illusion Of Economic Recovery Economics / US Economy Apr 01, 2012 - 02:25 AM By: Bob Chapman The housing recovery seems to have been a temporary affair. Preliminary data frames March as weak as last October. It looks like lower interest rates boasted sales. Those rates are up from 4.72% to 5.02%. Worse yet, Operation Twist is over. That is where the Fed sold the short end of the bond market and bought notes and bonds of 5, 7, 10 and 30 years. Even though the BIS, The Bank for International Settlements, said the...

Is The Double Dip Drifting Away? Dean Baker Oct. 21, 2011, 8:12 AM One of the items that many of the forecasters warning of a double dip held up as evidence was the drop in Philadelphia Fed's manufacturing index in September. It showed a reading of -17.5, which is definitely pretty bad. While the index, like most indexes, does generally move in step with the overall economy, the Philadelphia Fed's coverage is a relatively narrow slice of the country (most eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey). Since this reading was out of line with most other data, it seemed more likely...

This Economist Is Forecasting A Recession, And He's Never Been Wrong Economics / Double Dip Recession Oct 04, 2011 - 07:03 AM By: Money Morning David Zeiler writes: The U.S. economy is "tipping into a new recession" and there's nothing President Barack Obama or the U.S. Federal Reserve can do to prevent it, according to Lakshman Achuthan, co-founder of the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI). Now, if you're wondering why you should believe this prediction ahead of others then there's something you should know: According to The Economist, Achuthan's predictions on the direction of economy - either toward recession or...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The U.S. economy is staring down another recession, according to a forecast from the Economic Cycle Research Institute. "It's either just begun, or it's right in front of us," said Lakshman Achuthan, the managing director of ECRI. "But at this point that's a detail. The critical news is there's no turning back. We are going to have a new recession." The ECRI produces widely-followed leading indicators which predict when the economy is moving between recession and expansion. Achuthan said all those indicators are now pointing to a new economic downturn in the immediate future. His recession...

A new series of economic reports out today confirm U.S. economists’ fear that the early signs of a second recession are taking hold. Weekly jobless claims hit a 2-month high indicating employers are pulling back in an already weak labor market. Labor Department figures show jobless benefits applications rose 11,000 to 428,000 last week, pushing the average up for the fourth straight week to 419,500. Economists agree that applications need to dip below 375,000 to signal hiring is picking up enough to cut the nation’s 9.1 percent unemployment rate. “The trend in jobless claims is an important input into our...

If history is a guide, the odds that the American economy is falling into a double-dip recession have risen sharply in recent weeks and may even have reached 50 percent. Economies have a strong self-reinforcing nature. When people are optimistic, they spend, which begets hiring and then more spending. When people are anxious, they pull back, which leads to a cycle of hiring freezes and further anxiety that often lasts for months. The United States appears to have entered some version of the vicious cycle. Most ominously, job growth has slowed to a pace that typically signals the start of...

The data this week was just ugly. Even the uptick in the leading economic indicators, seized upon by so many talking heads, must have a large asterisk beside it. This week we look at the increasing probability that we are headed for recession, and the follow-on implications. Then I take a perilous and speculative journey into the realm of the political, commenting on Texas (and my) Governor Rick Perry’s rather interesting comments about the Fed and Ben Bernanke. There is a lot to cover, and lots of charts, so we will jump right in. But please read at the end...

The U.S. economy has officially been out of recession for two years, but fear of falling back into the abyss has dogged the recovery every step of the way. Now, the prospect of recession no longer is a fringe view. "Recession is not inevitable, but I think there's better than a 50-50 chance now," said Bill Gross, the respected investment chief at bond fund giant Pimco in Newport Beach. Stock markets worldwide have been ringing warning bells since late July, as share prices have plunged in the steepest pullback since the 2008 financial-system crash. The Dow Jones index sank nearly...

FLORENCE, Alabama | FLORENCE, Alabama (Reuters) - The risk of a new U.S. recession has risen over the last couple of months, but an outright contraction will most likely be avoided, Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Dennis Lockhart said on Monday. Lockhart said there is plenty the central bank could do if the economy does deteriorate further, including ramping up asset purchases or shifting their composition. Recent market volatility, driven in part by concerns of slowing economies both in the United States and Europe, threatens consumer confidence and could put a crimp on spending, Lockhart told a Rotary Club meeting....

John Boehner said Tuesday the Republicans got “90 percent of what we wanted” from the budget deal. So presumably he and his colleagues are willing to take responsibility for some 450 points of yesterday’s mammoth 513-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I’m being a bit facetious – but only a bit. It’s always dangerous to read too much into one day’s move in the stock market. As we’ve learned painfully over the last several years, Wall Street investors are not entirely rational. Yet the stock sell-off – not just yesterday’s, but that of the last days – cannot...

Investors seeking reason for optimism after the worst stock-market sell-off since the 2008 financial crisis probably won't find it in Friday's July jobs report. Economists forecast that employers added only 90,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.2 percent, according to a survey by FactSet. That would mark an improvement over the 18,000 net jobs created in June — the fewest in nine months — and the 25,000 in May. But over time, 90,000 new jobs a month wouldn't even be enough to keep the unemployment rate from rising. Nor would it erase fears on...

Recession: A day after purchasing managers reported an "unexpected" slump in manufacturing, another surprise report shows consumer spending falling for the first time in nearly two years. Double dip, anyone? Despite of the largest Keynesian spending splurge in the history of the planet, the economy continues to founder. The last two years' "stimulus" — meant to get consumers and businesses humming again — was in excess of 10% of GDP, an unheard of economic intervention, exceeding even FDR's during the Depression.

Chances are 'substantial' that the United States is headed back into a recession, says economist, author and Yale University Professor Robert Shiller. A weak U.S. housing market and a murky global economy indicate that the country is at a "tipping point" at the edge of a fresh economic contraction.

Six weeks ago this column observed that with the price of gold having passed $1,500, the U.S. economy was already in the midst of a downturn, and that it would be foolhardy to wait for always backward looking and unreliable government statistics to reveal what gold already had. Though unemployment figures are as unreliable as the rest, Friday's anemic report points to a slowdown in economic activity that the dollar's fall in concert with gold's spike foretold. The reason why is very basic. Contrary to the popular view among economists that currency devaluation is necessary during periods of economic hardship,...