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It is rare, indeed, that a president bad mouths his own economy to Wall Street - no matter what Congress is doing. In fact, I have a hard time coming up with any precedent for it. But here was the president yesterday, urging Wall Street to be "concerned" (panic) because of the shutdown.  CNBC:  Wall Street needs to be genuinely worried about what is going on in Washington, President Barack Obama told CNBC in a White House interview Wednesday. While gridlock in D.C. is nothing new, "this time I think Wall Street should be concerned," Obama said. "When you have a...

"............For a group of tough talkers, preening swaggerers and would-be political gladiators, congressional Republicans have made it abundantly clear that they don't have the first clue how to fight and win political battles anymore. Much of the problem has to do with the fact that much of the congressional Republican caucus is made up of members who simply aren't the swiftest Porsches in the garage. Ineptitude and stupidity appear to be the Chekhov's gun of congressional Republicans; they are plainly in view on the political stage and at some point during the drama, as sure as the rising of the...

David Buckner, the founder and CEO of Bottom Line Training and Consulting, an adjunct professor at Columbia University, and the author of “Permission to Think,” explained on the Glenn Beck Program Wednesday why America hasn’t yet seen hyperinflation — but why it could be just around the corner. Buckner said that in discussing hyperinflation, people often refer to the Weimar Republic, Zimbabwe, and Bolivia, but say “it could never happen here” because a “certain kind of layering has to occur” that America hasn’t seen. That layering, he said, or the “recipe” for hyperinflation, is: 1) Economic Implosion 2) Collapse in...

The Treasury Department has begun using the last set of accounting maneuvers at its disposal to allow the government to keep paying its bills until Congress raises the country’s borrowing limit, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told congressional leaders Tuesday night. In a letter, Lew reiterated that if the debt ceiling is not raised by Oct. 17 the government will not be able to meet all its financial commitments, such as making payments to U.S. debt holders, government contractors and Social Security recipients “If we have insufficient cash on hand, it would be impossible for the United States of America to...

All is not well with France’s famed wine industry. Despite fears of a rise in wine taxes seemingly having been allayed by the country’s agriculture minister this week, industry leaders are still nursing a headache over government plans to reinforce health warnings on wine bottles and packaging. In reaction to the plan, leaders of the wine industry—which represents France’s second-biggest export sector—have mobilized and created a lobby group Vin et Societé (Wine and Society) to take on the government. … According to Sud Ouest newspaper, the French government plans to change the warning from “Alcohol abuse is dangerous for your...

Government stimulus spending, paid for by running up the federal credit card, is why we have the never-ending Great Recession, though the left keeps fantasizing that spending “saved us from a second great depression.” But the best evidence of his shrinking agenda is the trend in federal spending. It’s falling, and not at a trickle. Think Niagara (figure 1). Many Americans who have sucked up the Keynesian vapors floating around in the ether cannot imagine that government spending actually hurts the economy. But we would love for the government-as-stimulus crowd to explain the chart below of government spending versus unemployment...

For all the drama surrounding today's political drama (which came and went largely unnoticed by a stock market hypnotized by the Federal Reserve), the bottom line is that the key impact of last night's historic government shutdown has been nothing more (or less) than the temporary unpaid leave of absence, i.e. furloughs (with all accrued, owed payments promptly being remitted once the government is unhalted) of some 815,932 civilian government workers, out of a total of 2 million, or a 41% furlough rate. As the WSJ tabulates "some agencies, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are seeing all but...

Merck & Co (MRK.N), taking a cue from other drugmakers that have slashed research spending to bolster earnings, on Tuesday said it plans to cut annual operating costs by $2.5 billion by the end of 2015 and eliminate 8,500 jobs. By slimming down, Merck aims to narrow its focus to products with the best chance of winning regulatory approval and achieving substantial sales, while jettisoning research products with less likelihood of success. The planned job cuts, representing more than 10 percent of the company's global workforce of 81,000 employees, would be in addition to previously announced cuts of 7,500 positions.

With Larry Summers withdrawing from the race for Federal Reserve chair, current Fed vice chair Janet Yellen has pulled into the lead to become Ben Bernanke’s replacement. Previous to her current appointment, Yellen served as president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank The SF Fed’s district includes three of the worst states in the housing crisis – California, Arizona and Nevada. I think its fair to say that without the housing boom and bust in these states we wouldn’t have had a mortgage crisis. Given that Yellen was the top banking regulator for this geography, one has to wonder...

Obama gives any delays that he wishes to and any time that he wants to by unilateral executive fiat. When Republicans offer up a delay that they wish to implement, they are told by Reid and other Dems that "It's (ObamaCare) the law." And right after saying "It's the law," Obama/Dems feel no obligation to not offer up another delay if and when they feel like it. Republicans are told that they aren't willing to compromise. Guess what? They offer up a compromise - they go from wanting to defunding ObamaCare to voting to delay its implementation for one year....

This is the Weekly Investment & Finance Thread (Sept.-30-Oct. 4 edition)----  Trying to focus on the markets for today and each day and the economic news    This is where you can exchange some investment opinions and advice If you see another FR economic thread you like and want to link to it here, please doPost your favorite economic site links. Your favorite economic blogs and precious metals blogs and sitesPing list -- on or off let me know here or via freep-mail. If I missed you then Freep-mail me I might ping you to other interesting economic threads a few times...

Obamacare is a gigantic shell game. Americans were promised that the Affordable Care Act would lower health costs by $2,500 a year for the average family, provide coverage for tens of millions more Americans, and do all of this while reducing the federal budget deficit. It would be accomplished through 2,800 pages of legislation, tens of thousands of pages of regulatory directives and an interlocking network of new federal mandates. Many Americans were skeptical that this unprecedented effort at government re-engineering could succeed. Their skepticism is justified. Still, the Obama administration continues to try to convince us that all is...

  “Men Have Forgotten God� – The Templeon Address      More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened. Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that...

Don wrote: Just how many vacation days did President George W. Bush take during his reign? - Obama on Vacation: The $28,429,533.47 Man Dear Comrade Don, George W. Bush took vacations either at his own home in Texas or at his parents’ place in Kennebunkport. That’s not the same thing as flying off to South Africa on safari or touring Brazil or hanging at Martha’s Vineyard. It’d be nice to see the Obamas go back to Illinois, back to Hyde Park for a vacation, and hey, it would lower their carbon footprint too. But when exactly have liberals been a...

If you haven't seen it, a design company in Portland has created a video called 4 Rules to Make Star Wars Great Again. They've also set up a website and a petition which they are hoping 1 million people will sign.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)I like the video. It's very well produced and I'm sure the creators will get a lot of traffic. That said, I think you can boil all of these rules down to one underlying concept. The Star Wars universe was driven by a realistic sense of capitalist enterprise, specifically the idea of secondary and black markets that exist outside the...

ObamaCare's impact on jobs is hotly debated by politicians and economists. Critics say the Affordable Care Act, with its employer mandate to provide health insurance, gives businesses an incentive to cut workers' hours. This year, report after report has rolled in about employers restricting work hours to fewer than 30 per week — the point where the mandate kicks in. Data also point to a record low workweek in low-wage industries. In the interest of an informed debate, we've compiled a list of job actions with strong proof that ObamaCare's employer mandate is behind cuts to work hours or staffing...

This is a Vanity thread. A simple question that arose through a conversation with my wife. If Obamacare and the huge projected increases in rates, copays and deductions goes through as currently scheduled. Will the Christmas Shopping Season be effected? My own off the cuff answer is YES! The statistical 'normal family' is stretched thin financially even in normal times and these times aren't normal by any stretch of the word. What I can see in my 'crystal ball' is that discretionary spending on Christmas presents is going to go down drastically perhaps 'crash' is another way of putting it....

In a move to slash the retirement benefits of public employees in California, a group of mostly conservative policy advocates has been working behind the scenes on a possible 2014 ballot initiative. A copy of the still-secret draft initiative, which could dramatically impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of Californians and send a signal nationwide, has been obtained by Frying Pan News. If enacted, the proposed law would allow the state and local governments to cut back retirement benefits for current employees for the years of work they perform after the changes go into effect. Previous efforts to curb...

The significant efforts in recent years to measure economic freedom did not come from universities. They came from think tanks. These efforts are a powerful proof that think tanks are an essential institution in civil society. More than that, the “freedom truths” they affirm are vital for the world and the United States. This is crucial information that we all need to know. The two main efforts to document the benefits of economic freedom have been led by think tanks—namely, the Fraser Institute and Heritage Foundation. [SNIP] Despite the different methodologies used by Fraser and Heritage the results were quite...

Indianapolis offers the full urban deal: great architecture, hot restaurants, famous museums and a walkable downtown. It also has had one of the worst panhandler problems I’ve seen. At almost every street corner, it seemed, someone was squeezing you for money. In August, Indianapolis joined numerous other cities that have attempted to curb aggressive begging. And as has happened elsewhere, the American Civil Liberties Union immediately filed a suit. “The ACLU of Indiana,” its executive director, Jane Henegar, said, “believes in the power of the First Amendment to give everyone a voice, even when those voices confront us with our...

I've always said that to get the market's real reaction to actions or inaction of the Federal Reserve you have to wait for the next day, not the two hours after the news. That being the case, yesterday's session suggests Wall Street still doesn't know what to make of the decision to keep buying assets as a form of accommodation ... the question is to whom is the Fed accommodating? Main Street isn't benefiting from the Fed: > Jobs are scares, and the ones that exist are low-paying or part time or (mostly) both > Wages are decreasing rapidly >...

In a new letter to Congress, the political rhetoric is on the rise as Treasury Secretary Lew warns: •*LEW SAYS EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES EXHAUSTED NO LATER THAN OCT. 17 Adding that results could be catastrophic if the US government is unable to pay its bills, he warned that any attempt to priotize payments would "Default by another name."

The slave population, shown in the above map based on the 1860 census, was concentrated in counties where cotton plantations dominated the local economy. Whites in these areas today express more racial resentment and are more likely to vote Republican and oppose affirmative action than other Southerners, a new study finds. Whites who live in areas of the South once dominated by the plantation economy and slavery are much more likely than other Southerners to express colder feelings toward African Americans, to oppose affirmative action, and to vote Republican. Those are among the findings of a groundbreaking new study titled...

... Paycheck fairness, and that involves raising the minimum wage to a living wage, and we must get that done. It affects our whole country, it affects our families, and it affects our women. And we passed Lilly Ledbetter – the first bill the President signed. And let’s thank our President, I know Valerie Jarrett was here this morning giving a call to arms and we’re so fortunate to have her there and the President in the White House because the agenda of CAP about making progress for our country, is the President’s agenda. ... So, paycheck fairness, of course...

A failure to raise the U.S. borrowing limit would be more damaging to financial markets than a government shutdown, Moody's Investors Service said on Tuesday. Moody's expects that the United States will avoid a shutdown and increase the debt limit, the rating agency said in a report. But failure to lift the cap on what the government can borrow could "theoretically affect all categories of government spending, including debt service." Congressional authorization for the government to spend money runs out at the end of the fiscal year on September 30, unless Congress passes a "continuing resolution" to keep the government...

In the preceding weeks, Republicans have pushed against Obamacare and suggested an alternative. Public sentiment is on their side. Polls show Americans have an increasing aversion to Obamacare and are concerned about how it will affect them. Unfortunately, Obamacare is particularly harmful for members of the millennial generation. Last week, the Republican Study Committee (RSC) put forward a sensible, innovative, and compassionate alternative to Obamacare. Titled “The American Health Care Reform Act” and accompanied by the twitter hashtag #ABetterWay, this proposal would solve the problems Obamacare created and ignored. The Problem In May, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services...

... When Standard & Poor's reduced the U.S.’s credit rating from AAA to AA-plus, it was the first time the U.S. ever suffered a downgrade to its credit rating. The S&P took this action despite the plan Congress passed last week to raise the debt limit. The downgrade, S&P said, "reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics." It's those medium- and long-term debt problems that also worry economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, who served...

This is the Weekly Investment & Finance Thread (Sept.-23-27 edition)----  Trying to focus on the markets for today and each day and the economic news  This is where you can exchange some investment opinions and advice If you see another FR economic thread you like and want to link to it here, please doPost your favorite economic site links. Your favorite economic blogs and precious metals blogs and sitesPing list -- on or off let me know here or via freep-mail. If I missed you then Freep-mail me I might ping you to other interesting economic threads a few times a...

It’s become common over the past year or two to note how well Wall Street is doing while Main Street is still struggling. Sadly, that tale of two economies has resulted from a conscious choice by those at the very top levels of our nation’s financial and political elites. The choice was inadvertently highlighted in a recent USA Today column by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In that column, Pelosi describes some of the political dynamics surrounding the beginning of the bailout era five years ago. In Pelosi’s telling of the story, public opinion was never mentioned once. That’s significant...

India's government still struggles to provide reliable basic services to a majority of its citizens, trapping hundreds of millions of them in poverty. Now the country's richest firms have been told they must help. Under the new amended Companies Act passed last month by parliament, large businesses have been asked to spend 2.0 percent of their profits each year on "Corporate Social Responsibility" (CSR). "The idea is that if we could divert some corporate energy and the corporate way of doing business into our development sector, for a country like India it could help enormously," the head of the Indian...

Phony Government Statistics: GDP- By: Larry Walker, II -“There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.” ~ Proverbs 6:16-19 ~Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is one of the broader measures of economic activity and is the most widely followed business indicator reported by the U.S. government. But according to Economist Walter J. Williams of Shadow...

Do you consider yourself to be "lower class"? Most Americans wouldn't dream of thinking that way. Even at the toughest times of my own life, I always considered myself to be "middle class". Traditionally, the vast majority of Americans have described themselves as either "middle class" or "working class", but now we are witnessing a huge shift. According to survey results that were just released, the percentage of Americans that identify themselves as "lower class" is now at an all-time high. It is still only 8.4 percent of the country, but the fact that this number is rapidly growing shows...

There was a time, long ago, when some still believed the myth that the Federal Reserve, and the selection of its Chairman, were supposed to be apolitical and impartial. Luckily, that was a long time ago, because otherwise some may question not only the logic, but the motives, behind what the media reports is an aggressive push by White House officials to "muster support among Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee to back Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet Yellen," according to Reuters which cited three sources said on Friday, laying the groundwork for her expected nomination to the Fed's top...

It's amazing how little President Obama has learned about economics in his four and a half years in the White House. Growth, incentives, tax reform, tax increases, private investment, the middle class, a second great depression, the sequester—all these issues have one thing in common: Obama doesn’t understand their role in our economy. The jobless rate is 7.3 percent. But if the millions who’ve dropped out of the job market altogether since Obama took office in January 2009 were counted, the unemployment rate would be 10.8 percent. “In other words, the United States faces a permanently larger pool of jobless...

Having attained power in late 1917 on a raft of promises — land to Russia's peasants, bread to Russia's starving cities and peace to Russia's World War I-weary soldiers — V.I. Lenin was able to dispense with every one of them by advancing civil war from 1918 to 1921 to justify his acts by crisis. In place of promises of liberty and rights, Lenin gave Russians propaganda, empowering the Bolsheviks to govern through knoutish messages, if not the barrel of the gun. In so doing, he sought to undermine Russia's weak democracy and to transform society fundamentally. "The Russian Revolution...

President Barack Obama will join members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other political heavyweights at the group’s annual Phoenix Awards Dinner during its legislative conference in Washington, DC on Saturday. Obama, the dinner’s keynote speaker, made waves during the same event in 2011 at the height of the CBC’s demands that Obama do more about the economic woes of African-Americans, when he told the group to “stop complaining” and get to work with him. But those were the bad old days of Obama’s first term, when black members of Congress echoed the frustration and disappointment of their constituents, in...

WASHINGTON — House Republicans are considering demanding Medicare and other budget savings, reining in the Obama administration's environmental agenda including greenhouse gas restrictions, and other proposals as the price for extending the government's ability to borrow money, GOP lawmakers and aides said Friday. Republicans said that during closed-door discussions this week about what to include in upcoming legislation renewing federal borrowing authority, options have included blocking administration plans to curb coal ash pollution; forcing civil servants to contribute more to their retirement plans; and requiring Congress to approve many major regulations. Republicans said that during closed-door discussions this week about...

The recent Pew poll found that 53% of Americans were opposed to ObamaCare, while only 41% supported it. The recent CNN poll: 57% polled were opposed to ObamaCare, while only 39% support it. The even more recent Rasmussen poll: 52% of Americans are opposed to ObamaCare, while only 41& support it.

American incomes have tumbled over the last decade. But for many people in Washington, D.C., it’s been something of a party. The income of the typical D.C. household rose 23.3% between 2000 and 2012 to an inflation-adjusted $66,583, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, its most comprehensive snapshot of America’s demographic, social and economic trends. During this period, median household incomes for the nation as a whole dropped 6.6% — from $55,030 to $51,371. The state of Mississippi, which had one of the biggest declines, dropped 15% to $37,095: Nearly one in three people there have an income...

Home Depot is transferring roughly 20,000 part-time workers to the taxpayer-funded Obamacare exchanges, marking another step in the nationwide rollout of President Barack Obama’s most prized accomplishment. “Unfortunately, the ACA [Affordable Care Act] precludes us from offering the limited liability medical plan we’ve been offering the part-time associates,” said Stephen Holmes, the company’s director of corporate communications. The 20,000 employees will have more options on government-run exchanges, he told The Daily Caller. Home Depot Inc. employs roughly 340,000 people, but declined to give a precise number of people who will be impacted by the change. The government-run exchange requires people...

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage said Wednesday it will cut 332 more jobs at its offices in the Twin Cities. The cuts follow a decline in mortgage refinancing activity throughout 2012 and in early 2013, Peggy Gunn, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman, said in an email Wednesday. The cuts will take place over the next 60 days. The layoffs at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage follow an announcement of 350 job cuts in the same division July 18.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Even as the economy shows signs of improvement and poverty levels off, new U.S. census data suggests the gains are halting and uneven. Depending on education, race, income and even marriage, not all segments of the population are seeing an economic turnaround.

"This financially religious system has embraced an unholy trinity of supposed virtues: crony capitalism, psychotic risk-taking, and general apathy towards others." ... "What have these ideas produced lately? A sluggish economy, high rates of unemployment, and Fed-led stimulus and 'quantitative easing' that will inevitably lead to higher inflation. These all, of course, hit the poorest Americans the hardest." ... Read more here.

Fiscal Crisis: One day after President Obama bragged about how fast the deficit is declining, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the government is in far worse fiscal shape than it previously thought. Liberals have been rejoicing lately about the fast drop in the nation's deficit, which is projected to hit $642 billion this year, down from $1.1 trillion last year. [snip] It's not that Obama and Co. have suddenly gotten religion when it comes to fiscal responsibility. They simply see the current deficit decline as an excuse to abandon all spending restraint. But the CBO's latest long-term budget report...

(CNSNews.com) - During the four years that marked President Barack Obama’s first term in office, the real median income of American households dropped by $2,627 and the number of people in poverty increased by approximately 6,667,000, according to data released today by the Census Bureau. The record total of approximately 46,496,000 people in the United States who are now in poverty, according to the Census Bureau, is more than twice the population of Syria, which, according to the CIA, has 22,457,336 people. In 2008, the year Obama was elected, real median household income in the United States was $53,644 according...

Question of the Day Q: Five years after the financial collapse, are you more willing to spend and use credit? Yes No Not sure

A travel trailer and camper manufacturer announced Friday that it will lay off 163 workers and close its Clackamas plant. Dutchmen Manufacturing Inc., a Goshen, Ind.-based company, said in a notice to workers that layoffs will begin Nov. 15. The plant is at 12618 S.E. Jennifer St. "This action will affect the entire facility and is expected to be permanent," the company wrote in a Tuesday letter to Clackamas County and state labor officials. A separate notice to employees dated Friday suggested that those laid off in Clackamas will not have the right to bump employees elsewhere. "As you may...

I think the poor need another Reagan in the White House. The income of black heads-of-households dropped by 10.9 percent from June 2009 to June 2013. This decline in black income is more than double the overall 4.4 percent drop nationally in real, adjusted for inflation, median household income during the same four years of alleged “recovery.” In dollar terms, the median income per year ... in female-headed households and black households has dropped, respectively, by $2,300 and over $4,000 since Obama's stimulus-led “recovery” began in June 2009. The CBO report shows that after-tax household income, adjusted for inflation, increased...

Even putting his best gloss on the case and even outright contradicting hard numbers from his own administration, President Obama has a tough time selling the current economy as a comfy place in which to live and do business. According to the White House's own five-years-later report on the fiscal crisis and the administration's wrassling therewith, Americans remain trillions of dollars in household income behind where they were in 2008. That's when the report is being honest—it also claims a TARP profit that will come as a surprise to Christy Romero, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief...

Chris Roquemore once thought of himself as working class. But it's hard to keep thinking that, he said, when you're not working. The 28-year-old father said he sparred with his supervisors at a retail chain about taking time off after his mother died — and ended up unemployed. Since then, Roquemore has worked odd jobs and started studying nursing at Long Beach City College, trying to get "a career, not a job." All those changes, in turn, changed the way he thought of himself. Roquemore is among the small but surging share of Americans who identify themselves as "lower class."...