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Quantcast released a study this week looking at the browsing habits of Tesla Model S drivers. The sleek electric sports cars come equipped with a large center console monitor that includes a web browser. The headline number is that some 10% of Tesla page views went to the Drudge Report. This is despite the fact that Tesla TSLA -5.52% ownership is heavily concentrated in California, and that the car touts its environmentally friendly all-electric power system as part of its appeal. Breitbart suggested that the appeal of Drudge to Tesla drivers may be less in its generally conservative slant on...

New Jersey's largest newspaper, the Star-Ledger, has announced that it will wipe out 25% of its newsroom staff with the elimination of 167 jobs, 40 of which are newsroom jobs that make up 25% of that staff. Of the Star-Ledger's current staff of 750, the only staffers being spared are among those who are unionized. Apparently existing labor contracts protected every single union member from the axe. In 2012, the Star-Ledger endorsed Barack Obama over his Republican rival Mitt Romney for re-election as president. The editorial board based its endorsement in part on Obama's handling of the economy. New Jersey.com...

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Joe Biden. I’m filling in for President Obama, who is abroad. I want to talk to you today about the minimum wage and the overwhelming need to raise the minimum wage. There’s no reason in the world why an American working 40 hours a week has to live in poverty. But right now a worker earning the federal minimum wage makes about $14,500 a year. And you all know that's incredibly hard for an individual to live on, let alone raise a family on. But if we raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, that...

The rising insurance rates on Federal Housing Administration mortgages are putting home purchases “increasingly out of reach” for many qualified buyers who rely on FHA financing, National Association of REALTORS® President Steve Brown wrote in a letter to FHA Commissioner Carol Galante. In the letter, Brown urged FHA to lower its annual mortgage insurance premiums. Brown acknowledged the significant losses that FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund faced during the housing crisis. FHA increased its premium structure as one way to reach a required 2 percent capital reserve ratio. But now that the agency is on the path to recovery, NAR...

HIGH POINT, NC - Stanley Furniture Company, Inc. today reported it will cease domestic furniture production in the factory that supports its Young America brand. “We have a healthy Stanley business that is making money. It is supported by a wonderful heritage, strong product in the field and future pipeline, and we are looking forward to the prospects of focusing our team solely on the growth and profitability of this brand in the short-term” “We have decided to cease manufacturing operations in Robbinsville,” said Glenn Prillaman, President and Chief Executive Officer. “After a thorough review of both our own operations...

Anxious Senate Republicans are worried party leaders are focusing too much this election year on ObamaCare and not enough on jobs and the economy. The concern among GOP centrists comes as President Obama and congressional Democrats are crowing about a surge in late enrollments and claiming the political winds are shifting around the Affordable Care Act. A growing rift in the GOP was exposed when a group of Senate Republicans recently struck a bipartisan deal to extend unemployment benefits. Neither Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) nor Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) embraced the agreement. Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who spearheaded...

Has the United States ever experienced a time when a foreign nation has attempted to buy up so much of our land all at once? As you will read about in this article, the Chinese are on a real estate buying spree all over America. In fact, in some cases large chunks of land are actually being given to them. Yes, you read that correctly. China is on the way to becoming the dominant land owner in the entire country, and that is starting to alarm a lot of people. Do we really want a foreign superpower to physically own...

The statement “everything that could be invented has been invented” is frequently misattributed to the late-nineteenth-century American patent commissioner Charles Holland Duell. The Economist once credited him with the remark, and sites such as “kool kwotes” still reproduce it. In fact, Duell believed the opposite. “In my opinion,” he wrote at the turn of the century, “all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold.” While...

Submitted by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics, All governments had better open their eyes for we are on the brink of a major convergence between both the Cycle of Civil Unrest, Civil War & Revolution and International War. Both of these models converge and as I pointed out at the Cycles of War Conference, this is the first time we have seen this convergence since the 1700s. This is no plain modern event with civil unrest erupting because of an interconnected world. These are grassroots uprisings cross-fertilized perhaps from a world contagion yet they often have similarities – corrupt governments. Turkey,...

They have amassed huge college loan debts to pay for degrees made useless by his policies but young voters love the lies Barack Obama tells so they will continue to support him. They can’t move out of their parent’s basements or marry and eventually start a traditional family because Obama has crippled their efforts to live independent lives but they still love Obama’s lies. Telling themselves his policies will work is the only thing short of illegal drugs that eases their pain. The thought of ever affording a home of their own doesn’t even enter their dreams because of Obama’s...

Vice President Joe Biden said Congress should raise the minimum wage because it’s good for people, business, women, and the economy. He thinks you ought to call your do-nothing representative and ask why they’re not passing a raise for the people. Smokin’ Joe also burned a certain Speaker by saying that Congress ought to do it because it’s what the people want. But I’m sure Joe knows that Speaker Boehner (R-OH) can’t be bothered with what the people want. After all, he’s got an itty bitty circus tent full of extremists’ egos to stroke in an election year, since they’re...

Many people laughingly remember the image of the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld. If you did anything out of order or that he didn’t like, “No soup for you!” Sadly, thanks to the upcoming Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) in the US, banks around the world are turning away US passport holders, “No bank account for you!” But you don't even have to do anything wrong other than having been born a US citizen. Decades ago holding a US passport was a ticket to worldwide opportunity. Today it is nearly the opposite. First it started with the erosion of the...

The state's minimum wage will increase to $10.10 per hour by 2017 under a controversial bill approved Wednesday by both the state Senate and the House of Representatives on largely party line votes. The Senate passed the measure by 21 to 14, with all Republicans and one Democrat — Sen. Joan Hartley of Waterbury — voting no. One senator was absent. The House vote was 87 to 54, and all 87 supporters were Democrats. Four House Democrats, including Representatives John Hampton of Simsbury and Joe Diminico of Manchester, joined with Republicans against the measure. The bill would boost the wage...

Now that Obamacare has removed healthcare from employment, people can leave their cubicles and pursue part-time labor. With apps like Uber, that labor might happen on a micro-level. Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 anthem may need a 21st century reboot. In 2013, 75% of the almost 1 million new jobs added to the US economy were part time according to CNBC. Obamacare, a weak recovery, and global unrest are just some of the reasons cited for this phenomenon that contributes to the hot button issues of inequality and poverty. However, one nascent winner has been the rise of crowdsourced fractional...

The Real Inflation Fear - US Food Prices Are Up 19% In 2014 Tyler Durden 03/26/2014 10:20 -0400We are sure the weather is to blame but what happens when pent-up demand (from a frosty east coast emerging from its hibernation) bumps up against a drought-stricken west coast unable to plant to meet that demand? The spot price (not futures speculation-driven) of US Foodstuffs is the best performing asset in 2014 - up a staggering 19%...(snip)We're not allowed to post charts from Bloomberg so you'll have to click to the site to see the chart.

KOO: The US Is In A 'QE Trap' And Both The Markets And The Media Are Missing It Joe WeisenthalMar. 26, 2014, 4:48 AM Nomura economist Richard Koo is out with his first comments since Janet Yellen's first FOMC meeting last week. Remember, Yellen briefly spooked markets with what some perceived to be a hawkish tone, mostly owing to the specificity with which she talked about the timing of the first rate hike. According to Koo, the US is in a "QE Trap" and both the market and the media are missing it. This trap, he says, explains the hawkish...

President Obama’s populist economic pitch is fizzling. The White House hoped to hammer Republicans this year on an array of pocketbook issues centered on hiking the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, an effort meant to appeal to independents and rally Democrats to the polls. Three months in, Obama’s approval ratings are flailing in the low 40s, and Senate Democrats haven’t even been able to unify their 55 members on a minimum wage bill. That’s made it tougher to contrast the positions of Democrats with Republicans in an election year that is shaping up to be about the healthcare law...

It's not the managers who are incompetent, it's the organization itself that is incompetent. I received a number of interesting reader responses to my previous entries on the incompetence of the Federal Reserve and the Deep State: The Federal Reserve: Masters of the Universe or Trapped Incompetents? (March 21, 2014) Why Is Our Government (and Deep State) So Incompetent? (March 6, 2014) Some readers thought I was underestimating the power of these institutions to pursue essentially unlimited money-printing and related global strategies. While I understand the apparent power of unlimited money-printing and global Empire, my point (poorly articulated the first...

ALBERT EDWARDS: The Next Shock Will Be Enough To Send The Economy Into Recession Sam RoMar. 25, 2014, 8:15 AM    For years now, many economists have been predicting that a business investment recovery would come, spurring corporate profits, GDP growth, jobs, and all sorts of wonderful things for the economy. However, Albert Edwards and his colleagues at Societe Generale warn that it's not coming. "The bulls will point out, quite correctly, that on many key measures the profits situation in the US looks quite healthy," wrote Edwards in a new research note to clients. "But experience shows...

If you take an economics course, you may learn about the different events that can cause an increase in workers' pay. The demand for the product a worker makes may rise, causing the demand for workers to go up. The supply of workers may decline, causing employers to bid up wages to keep the ones they have. But there's one event the textbooks don't cover: The president of the United States gives you a raise. Many workers will get news to the effect that he has done just that. But it's not as simple as it sounds. Barack Obama thinks...