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Second Amendment Check is a great organization that enables you to support the right to bear arms with your wallet, rewarding companies who support the Second Amendment, and boycotting companies who don't. This organization deserves your support (click on the "Donate" button and email them a "thank you"). You should shop according to their evaluation of gun-friendly or gun-unfriendly businesses. Second Amendment Check "reach[es] out to companies via email and telephone" to determine which businesses support the constitutional right to bear arms. They rate those willing to participate. Note that Second Amendment Check states, "If we can't get in direct...

Suicide rates are tied to the economy. The Boston Globe reported in 2011: A new report issued today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that the overall suicide rate rises and falls with the state of the economy — dating all the way back to the Great Depression. The report, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that suicide rates increased in times of economic crisis: the Great Depression (1929-1933), the end of the New Deal (1937-1938), the Oil Crisis (1973-1975), and the Double-Dip Recession (1980-1982). Those rates tended to fall during strong economic times...

The UK Has Just Had One Lost Decade, And It's About To Enter A Second Philip Aldrick, The Daily Telegraph May 18, 2013, 3:42 PMHSBC’s chief global economist has written a compelling but dark account of the challenges facing the West. Philip Aldrick considers the chilling claims. Bleak does not begin to describe the latest tome on the economic crisis by Stephen King, the HSBC chief global economist who appropriately shares a name with the best-selling horror writer. When the Money Runs Out is the economic equivalent of post-apocalyptic fiction, charting “the end of Western affluence”, and gives the author...

A Grotesque Economic Experiment Bill BonnerMay 18, 2013The newspapers and TV channels reported the Dow 15,000 story last week as though it were just a stepping stone on the way to 16,000… or 20,000… or 30,000. Heck, the sky’s the limit! Investors have reached a new level of bullishness. They’re borrowing again to buy stocks, confident that prices go in only one direction. Advisers, too, seemed sure that this was not the end of a trend, but the beginning of one. Just what you’d expect at a market top. There’s also a swift current of economic analysis telling us that...

The Economy Continues To Send A Ton Of Bearish Signals Comstock Partners May 18, 2013, 5:59 AMFlickr / ucumari Comstock Partners is a New York-based hedge fund It has long been our underlying thesis that the huge amount of household debt accumulated during the housing boom would inhibit consumer spending and economic growth for some time to come, and this is what has been happening over the last few years. The errors recently found in the famous Rogoff-Reinhart (RR) book do not change this view. Simply put, household debt averaged 77% of disposable personal income (DPI) over the 61-year period...

The City of Philadelphia shut down a career fair for ex-offenders today after an unexpected crowd of thousands showed up, résumés in hand. There were lots of disppointed job seekers and potential employers this morning. The city was expecting about 1,000 people to show up, but about three times that number were standing in a line that wrapped around the Municipal Services Building, across from City Hall. And when someone jumped the line, order collapsed. There was no yelling, no shoving — just 3,000 people all trying to get into the job fair at once....

House prices at the national level have rising since February 2012. Here are the Case-Shiller 20 index, the Loan Performance house price index and the FNC RPI 30 index. They all point to rising house prices. Mortgage rates continue to decline (longer-trend) making housing more “affordable.” Thanks mostly to The Fed’s unorthodox monetary policy. Other economic indicators are positive as well. The University of Michigan Consumer Confidence index is at its highest level since 2007. And the Conference Board’s Leading Economic Indicators increased this morning. The US dollar has been spiking. And the S&P 500 has been on a roll....

It’s Not The End Of OPEC…But Might As Well Be Matt InsleyMay 17, 2013If you could safely turn $8 dollars into $40, would you? What about turning $800 into $4,000? Same question, right? If you answered yes to those questions, which I’m sure you did, then you’re already onboard with half of today’s energy story. That is, most American shale oil wells are set to payout at the odds above. You see, the average shale oil well costs anywhere from $5-10 million to drill, complete and put into production – let’s call that $8 million in total upfront cost. Once...

CREDIT SUISSE: 'Gold Is Going To Get Crushed' Sam Ro May 17, 2013, 12:41 AM Bearish sentiment toward gold has prices for the yellow metal tumbling again. On Wednesday, George Soros revealed through a regulatory filing that he cut his gold exposure during the first quarter. In a new note to clients, Credit Suisse's Ric Deverall forecasted that gold would plunge to $1,100 this year and eventually to $1,000 within five years. This according to Bloomberg's Maria Kolesnikova. More from Kolesnikova: “Gold is going to get crushed,” Deverell told reporters in London today. “The need to buy gold for wealth...

Morgan Stanley Explains Why The US Dollar Is The Hottest Currency In The World Again Joe Weisenthal May 16, 2013, 8:55 PM . The US Dollar is HOT. Here's a chart of the trade-weighted dollar index. You can see it rallied in 2012, and has gone nuclear in 2013. So what gives? Dollar strength is the topic of this evening's Morgan Stanley FX Pulse. The basic gist is: It's about weakening yen, strengthening data, increasing US yields relative to the rest of the world (which makes the dollar inherently more valuable), weakening euro, and more hawkish tones from Fed folks....

Remember This Moment (The 'Black Swans' Have Had Their Necks Broken) Joshua M Brown May 16th, 2013 “There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.” - Jean-Paul Sartre It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia." -Frank Zappa I want to you stop, take a breath and consider this moment we're in. Because you will look back on it and realize how amazing it was - how amazing it is! The Black Swans we'd been guessing at have had their...

An unexpected glimmer of hope might cast a new light on the Golden State. It’s getting depressingly repetitive to keep writing about California’s problems, which are legion and seemingly intractable. But this time, I’m pleased to report on an unexpected glimmer of hope that might, just might, cast a new light on the Golden State. First, a catalog of our recent woes, which, as ever, revolve around businesses and middle- and upper-income individuals decamping for other states that don’t suffer from California’s high-tax, high-regulation infection. William Ruger and Jason Sorens of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University observe in...

Economists Continue To Get The Biggest Economic Story Of The Year Wrong Sam Ro May 16, 2013, 8:41 AM Minutes ago, we got the April reading of consumer prices. Not only did the numbers reflect a complete absence of inflation, they also showed that economists continue to overestimate inflation. Headline CPI fell by 0.4% which was more than the 0.3% decline expected. This was largely due to the drop in energy prices. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, climbed by just 0.1%, which was also more modest than the 0.2 % expected. "The big story this year is...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits climbed last week at the fastest pace in six months, a worrisome sign for the economy which has been hit by government austerity. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits jumped by 32,000 to a seasonally adjusted 360,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was the biggest jump since November and confounded analysts' expectations for a more modest increase. Claims for the prior week were revised to show 5,000 more applications received than previously reported.

The price of a gallon of gasoline hit a shocking level overnight. In the Twin Cities, several chain gas stations -- mostly in the outer ring -- raised their prices to between $4.09 and $4.19 a gallon. That's about 20 cents more overnight, 60 cents in the last two weeks, and $1.20 since January. At many stations, prices rose into the $4 range yesterday afternoon, then fell overnight into the $3.90 area. What's going on here?

DEUTSCHE BANK: The New Estimates For The US Budget Are A Total Gamechanger For Fiscal And Monetary Policy Rob Wile May 15, 2013, 5:08 PM The CBO said this week that America's fiscal deficit will be much smaller than anyone thought, and that long term debt growth will slow by at least 3 points through the next decade. That's good news right? In his note today, Deutsche Bank's Joe LaVorgna says there is even more than meets the eye in the report. Specifically, the rosier CBO report means there's now less pressure on Congress to keep the Sequester, and more...

Gold And Silver Are In Liquidation Mode Again Joe Weisenthal May 15, 2013, 4:22 AM It's happening again. Gold and silver are in liquidation mode. Both of the two precious metals are back to being taken to the woodshed. Gold looks at risk of breaking below $1400/oz. again.KITCO And silver is just plain ugly.KITCO The end of the world trade (which explains a lot of gold's appeal) is looking less and less likely to play out as the precious metal bugs had anticipated. Meanwhile, improving economic fortunes makes it less appealing to have money in rocks. And big picture, now...

This is not one of those “everything is beautiful” economic news days. First, France experienced a double dip in real GDP. This is France’s second recession in four years with a 0.2 percent contraction. And France is helping to drag down the Euro-area into its sixth quarterly decline. The Shadow Economy is former Soviet-bloc countries remains high along with Greece, Cyprus and Malta. Hmm. The further away countries are from Brussels and Luxembourg, the greater the Shadow economies (I don’t think this would surprise Nigel Farage!) Second, the Empire State Manufacturing Survey General Business Conditions SA contracted -1.43%, the first...

EMPIRE FED MANUFACTURING UNEXPECTEDLY SINKS INTO CONTRACTION Matthew Boesler| May 15, 2013, 8:30 AMThe New York Fed's Empire State Manufacturing Survey for the month of May is out. The headline index fell to -1.43 from 3.05 in April, defying economists' prediction for a rise to 4.00. The new orders sub-component fell to -1.17 in May from 2.20 in April. The shipments sub-component fell to -0.02 from 0.75. Below is a summary of the data from the release: The May 2013 Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates that conditions for New York manufacturers declined marginally. The general business conditions index fell four...

France Double-Dips As European Recession Is Now Longest On Record Tyler Durden 05/15/2013 07:42 -0400 Confirming that in a world in which either commercial or central banks have to be constantly be churning out debt, and in a world in which Europe is doing neither (with European commercial loan growth posting sequential declines across the board, and the ECB's balance sheet still declining although likely not for long), "growth" as defined by conventional standards, is impossible, we got today's European Q1 GDP data. Not only was it bad, but it was even worse than most had expected. And while Germany...

#1 27 Percent Unemployment/60 Percent Youth Unemployment In Greece #2 Detroit, Michigan Is Insolvent And Is Rapidly Running Out Of Cash #3 Economic Despair In France #4 7,000 Abandoned Buildings In Dayton, Ohio #5 Overwhelmed By Squatters In Spain #6 The Collapse Of Chinese Power Consumption #7 Horrible Economic Data Coming Out Of The Second Largest Economy On The Planet #8 One Out Of Every Five U.S. Households On Food Stamps #9 Child Hunger In America #10 The Tremendous Suffering Of Hundreds Of Millions Of Desperately Poor People That We Never Hear About

For folks too young or too unaware what has happened to our economy the past 30 years, here is an answer. Ronald Reagan, G.H.W. Bush and the Republican Party are responsible for what we know as "Reaganomics," an economy that continues today resulting in few "labor unions” and the resulting low wages and lack of worker benefits. Newly elected Reagan’s (1981) first attack on the middle class economy was his dismantling a labor union representing 11,000 striking air traffic controller employees, whom he “fired.” Their PATCO union was destroyed. Reagan and his rich, conservative friends (not one who needed job...

U.S. Economy Staring Into The Abyss! Only Gold Is Worth Buying Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2013May 12, 2013 - 07:38 PM GMT By: Robert M Williams "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." - Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) A number of important figures are now talking about the possibility of increasing the US Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing given the “decline in inflation.” In March we heard comments from Fed Presidents Eric Rosengren and Narayana Kocherlakota calling for QE well into 2014 while Chicago Fed President Richard Evens thought the Fed needed to do more. Then in April the St....

The Mini-Golf Tax. The “Iron Man” Tax. The Burning Man Tax. I’m pretty sure most Nevadans enjoy one or more of those activities, which means if Democrats in the Legislature pass their new Nevada Entertainment and Admissions Tax, every Nevadan will curse them when they try to enjoy themselves on the weekend after a long workweek. Wow, this is stupid. So, instead of imposing a corporate tax on Wal-Mart like nearly every other state in the country, you’re going to tax me when I go to the movie theater? So I’ll pay $11.88 instead of $11? I love carrying 12...

Exxon Mobil and Qatar Petroleum International have announced plans to build a $10 billion natural gas liquefication facility in the Gulf Coast port of Sabine Pass. The announcement comes as the two companies and the rest of the natural gas industry eagerly await permission from the U.S. government to begin exporting natural gas, which is cooled and liquefied before being shipped overseas.

President Obama went to Texas on Thursday to kick off a nationwide tour pushing his economic policies, apparently unaware that Texas has thrived the past four years by doing pretty much the opposite of what Obama has prescribed. Since taking office, Obama has pushed more government as the way to get the economy moving. He dramatically boosted spending, imposed massive amounts of new regulations, ran enormous deficits, and has imposed more than $1 trillion in tax hikes. [snip] Texas, meanwhile, has pursued a far different path from the one Obama advocates.

The "Labor Hoarding" Effect Lance Roberts Thursday, May 09, 2013(Click to the site to see the charts. I could not transfer them) Just recently the April employment report was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) which showed a surprise jump in employment for the month of April of 165,000 jobs. The general consensus for the report was 153,000 jobs so the "better than expected" news was credited to the surge in the financial markets. There has been much analysis of the data since the report with views that ranged from ebullient to dismissive. However, the reality is that,...

President Obama told an audience of high school students in Texas on Thursday that the economy is "poised for progress" after clearing away the rubble of economic crisis. OBAMA: Our deficits are falling at the fastest rate in years. But now we’ve got to budget in a smarter way so it doesn’t hurt middle-class families or prevent us from making the critical investments that we need for your future. So a lot of sectors of our economy are doing better. The American auto industry is thriving. American energy is booming. American ingenuity and our tech sector continues to be the...

The Philadelphia murder trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, an abortion provider accused of cutting the spinal cords of infants delivered alive during abortion procedures, has exposed not only the grisly details of his practice, but also the negligence of several Pennsylvania governmental agencies. The case is causing some to question whether abortion clinics are appropriately monitored across the country, including in Maryland, where the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) introduced new regulations for the state’s surgical abortion facilities last year. Maryland has one of the highest abortion rates in the country, according to data from the New York-based...

The Legislature’s attempt to craft an entertainment tax in 2003 read a little bit like the children’s story of the hen who couldn’t persuade her barnyard animal friends to help her gather and grow grain for the winter. Lawmakers then considered a proposal by the Nevada Taxpayers Association to tax admissions to nearly every form of entertainment and recreation. But when it came time to write the bill, a common refrain was sounded by many targeted for the tax. “Not I!” said the movie theaters. “Not I!” said the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “Not I!” said the baseball parks, bowling...

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney says the president is traveling to Texas tomorrow because while there’s lots of gridlock and partisan infighting in Washington, the Lone Star State is home to the kind of economic growth Obama wants to highlight. President Obama will tour a high-tech high school and a chip-machine manufacturer near Austin on Thursday. So, why Texas, where Rick Perry credits Republicans for the state’s economic success?

A Gold Number Literally Off The Charts Dave GonigamMay 8, 2013“Setting a record” doesn’t begin to do the story justice. The Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department is out with its monthly figures on China’s gold imports via Hong Kong. The Chinese government is notoriously secretive about its total imports, so the Hong Kong figures are the best we have to go on. The March number is 223.5 metric tons — literally off the charts… “This is quite out of expectation, as all these imports were done before the market slump in April,” a trader at the Bank of China...

Nowhere is [the result of mainstream media bias] more obvious than in the relentless imploding viewership of once financial media titan, CNBC, which lately has become a sad, one-sided caricature of its once informative self, whose only agenda is to get the most marginal Joe Sixpack to dump his hard-earned cash into 100x P/E stocks, and where according to data from Nielsen Media Research, the total and demographic (25-54) viewership during the prime time segment (9:30am - 5:00 pm) just tumbled to 216K and 40K - the lowest recorded viewership since mid 2005 and sliding. So why the relentless collapse...

A buoyant stock market isn’t enough to make most people happy. For proof, consider that Investor’s Business Daily’s Economic Optimism Index —historically a good predictor of consumer-confidence indicators released later in the month by The Conference Board and the University of Michigan — fell in May by 2.4%.

Gallup's U.S. Economic Confidence Index was -8 last week, matching the five-year weekly high set the week ending Feb. 3. The current score is up from -13 the previous week.

Obama has done it. He has brought America down. It only took him just over four years. The Republicans could have stopped him. They didn’t. How did the nihilistic left succeed in destroying America? Simple. They learned just a little of the capitalism they hate, and they drove your nation into outright bankruptcy. And here is what the GOP has to say about it: just about nothing. The once-mighty United States is now the most indebted nation on Earth. In round numbers, here are just some of the vital statistics as the patient dies: National debt: $17 trillion, or $50,000...

On Friday, the stock market, driven by record profits and a better than expected jobs report, - not to be confused with a good one - closed at its all time record high. Closing at 1,614, the S&P 500 closed up 148% from the low it reached in 2009. Not bad given that the economy is up a paltry 5.5% over that same period. Already the markets are up over 10% since the beginning of the year. There are a number of reasons for this. One is the fact that the 500 companies represented the index have been reporting strong...

Retailers are cutting worker hours at a rate not seen in more than three decades — a sudden shift that can only be explained by the onset of ObamaCare's employer mandates. Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/economy/050313-654674-retail-workweek-3-year-low-on-obamacare.htm#ixzz2Sd5AKiY6 Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook

The Case Against Economic Deflation Economics / DeflationMay 06, 2013 - 06:54 PM GMT By: Alasdair Macleod Regular readers will know I am in the inflation, possibly hyperinflation camp; but there are those that think the future is more likely to be deflationary. In the main this is the view of neoclassical economists, Keynesians and monetarists, who generally foresee a 1930s-style slump unless the economy is stimulated out of it. Rather than repeatedly go into the errors of their ways, we must accept that they are in charge. They have decided that prices must not fall, and they see moderate...

We have had a tax increase implemented. Now, with the additional revenues (taxes) added onto what we were previously taking in each year ($2.3-2.4 trillion dollars), we will still be able to make the interest payment (about $425 billion annally or $35 billion per month) on the federal debt outstanding... And thus we cannot default. After that, we use the remaining tax dollars to pay for Social Security, then Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, food stamps and a very large portion of our military budget. So... why do we need to borrow another $1 trillion plus in May?

The US Economy Is The Envy Of The World Again, And Just Like That The Bears Have Been Annihilated Joe WeisenthalMay 7, 2013, 4:44 AMJust two and a half weeks ago, the bears were starting to feel good. Markets around the world seemed to be rolling over. Commodities were falling. People were talking about deflation. And then, the market turned, and then we got Friday's strong jobs report. Now the market is back to making new highs again, and the market bears are crushed. A new note from Olivier Korber at SocGen is titled "US payrolls annihilated 'sell in May.'"...

We lost 148,000 full time jobs last month, despite media accounts that said the jobs report was “strong,� or a “sign of recovery�.  And we can pin most of the losses on Obamacare. Were it not for the implementation this year of the national healthcare law that penalizes companies that hire full-time employees, this job market would be a lot better. Fortunately, while the market celebrated the anemic jobs report and the media reported on what they termed a “strong� jobs report, some of us actually read the jobs report. And what we read wasn’t all that great, even if...

How To Beat Your Bias Greg GuenthnerMay 6, 2013 Friday marked another banner day for the stock market. The S&P 500 is now up more than 13% so far in 2013… “That’s like smashing all of 2012’s strong stock market performance into the first four months of this year,” quipped my colleague Jonas Elmerraji on Friday afternoon. “It’s a breakneck pace.” I know what you’re thinking… What now? What happens after six months of gains? You rode this wave higher. You’re sitting on some profits. Now, it’s time for a gut check. The only problem is that your gut’s probably...

ROSENBERG: The Fed Is Trying Like Crazy, But Nothing It's Doing Can Save The Economy Sam RoMay 5, 2013, 9:28 AMDavid Rosenberg, the veteran Wall Street economist and and bearish strategist at Gluskin Sheff, gave an intense presentation on Friday at John Mauldin's Strategic Investment Conference. Titled "Bernanke: The Wizard Of Potemkin," this presentation offers a sobering look at the anemic U.S. economy, the labor market mess, and the Federal Reserve's controversial efforts to get everything back on track. Before you can even think about getting bullish, you must consider the eye-opening charts from Rosenberg's presentation. Thanks to Gluskin Sheff...

<p>Good News! Non-farm payrolls increase by 165,000 and the unemployment rate declined to 7.5%.</p> <p>Bad News! It had to be helped by a 193,000 increase due to the BLS Birth/Death adjustment. That is a net LOSS of 28,000 jobs! And 9.55 million Americans have given up looking for work. Not to mention 89,936,000 NOT in the labor force.</p>

Two months after the sequester slashed spending across the federal government, the latest jobs report shows the economy is still adding jobs and unemployment is going down. When asked aboard Air Force One Friday if that indicates the economy can withstand the cuts or if it is too soon to tell, White House press secretary Jay Carney maintained the cuts are harming the economy, despite the jobs numbers. "You know, what we know as a general principle going forward, is that every time we get data, no matter what it says, we will know that it would have been better...

<p>Good News! Non-farm payrolls increase by 165,000 and the unemployment rate declined to 7.5%.</p> <p>Bad News! It had to be helped by a 193,000 increase due to the BLS Birth/Death adjustment. That is a net LOSS of 28,000 jobs! And 9.55 million Americans have given up looking for work. Not to mention 89,936,000 NOT in the labor force.</p>

This Car Won’t Move Jeffrey TuckerMay 3, 2013 The latest unemployment data reveal the hope and tragedy of the American economic plight. Cheers went up for a modest increase in hiring, one that: • barely keeps up with population; • features mostly temp workers; • leaves out prime-age males and all young workers; • and keeps labor participation rate at a low level from 1979. This is good news? Hmmm… But the central bank will save us, right? So say economic journalists. They love metaphors. Actually, professional economists love them too. The latest phrase being tossed around is that world...

It turns out, rich people are happier than poor people. A new Brookings Institution paper finds that people who live in rich countries are more satisfied with their lives than those in poor countries, and rich people within individual countries are happier than their poor neighbors. That old “money can’t buy happiness” chestnut, formally called Easternlin’s paradox by economists after an influential 1974 study that concluded rich nations are no happier than poor ones, is such an enduring myth because it holds a lot of appeal, said Justin Wolfers, one of the paper’s authors, a nonresident fellow at Brookings and...