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But just because an economic system generated wealth and innovation doesn’t mean it guarantees a good society," Obama said. "Because from the outset, market-based systems have been compatible with slavery, caste systems, colonialization, war, exploration, corruption, fraud, autocracy, the poisoning of our natural environment." As Obama listed, the audience applauded. The former president went on to credit Democratic governments for "moderating capitalism's excesses" with a "social safety net." According to him, it will take "young leaders to help us think and act anew" about "creating an economic system that supports and sustains our democratic values."

Joe Biden is at it again — living in his own parallel universe. The same former vice president who says that his son, Hunter, was hired by the Ukrainian oil and gas company because of his expertise in energy policy is now claiming that President Trump has “squandered” the strong Obama economy he inherited. Here is how Mr. Biden put it in a speech last week in Scranton, Pennsylvania: “Donald Trump inherited a strong economy from Barack and me.” Then he added: “Things were beginning to really move. And just like everything else he’s inherited, he’s in the midst of...

Democratic Party candidates for President in 2020 have been claiming that Trump’s economic successes are really the result of Obama administration policies. A while back, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis created a summary report that measured the American economy while President Obama and the Democrats were in control. It’s a trip down memory lane, and shows that Democrat claims about the “Obama Economy” are nothing but smoke and mirrors designed to fool the American people. While Democrats were in charge everything that should have been up, is down, and everything that should have been down, is up. Take...

W e now know why President Obama had to struggle so hard to spur the economy and allow it to grow more than 2 percent a year. And that was the high-water mark. In the last quarter of his presidency, growth had slipped to 1.5 percent. Today it’s obvious what Obama’s problem was. He had the wrong policies‚ lots of them. How do we know this? Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, and the Republican Congress reversed Obama’s policies. The result, from the day Trump was elected, has been a more robust economy. Nearly 4 million jobs have been added, and unemployment...

In a report on President Barack Obama’s record, detailing how he led the “economic rescue” of the United States, the White House says that Obama “provided tax relief” to the typical American family. The report, posted on the White House website, is entitled: “Economic Rescue, Recovery, and Rebuilding on a New Foundation.” “President Obama inherited an economy careening toward a Great Depression,” says the introduction to the report, “and he acted aggressively to arrest the crisis, restart growth and job creation, rebuild our economy on a stronger long-term foundation, and expand opportunity for all Americans.” …

Annual pay raises don't work. The salary increase serves two purposes: to motivate workers and to keep employees from leaving for a better-paying job. In its current form, the traditional raise does neither of those things very well. "You can't really do a lot with the annual raise," said Evren Esen, director of survey programs at the Society for Human Resource Management. When the economy is decent, annual pay adjustments come in at 1 percentage point or 2 percentage points ahead of inflation for a given year. That doesn't go far. Employees expect to get at least the cost of...

For Caterpillar, the great recession was bad, for about 19 months. In May 2010, after declining sharply for just under two years, CAT posted it first positive global retail sales comps and never looked back... until December 2012 when comp sales once again turned negative and have been negative ever since. For the past 41 months! The breakdown showed that contrary to popular opinion, there has been no pick up in demand for heavy industrial machinery anywhere around the globe.

Macy's dismal first-quarter results are bringing back unwelcome memories of the financial crisis, as the retailer on Wednesday reported two metrics that harken back to that period of economic malaise. During the first quarter, the department store chain said its comparable sales fell 5.6 percent. That marks a deceleration from its fourth-quarter same-store sales decline of 4.3 percent, and represents its most severe decrease in this metric since the second quarter of 2009. During that quarter, Macy's comparable sales slid 9.5 percent. Meanwhile, the retailer reported a 36 percent year-over-year drop in operating income. That not only marks its seventh...

292 Union Pacific engines idled in Arizona Desert Total US rail traffic in April plunged 11.8% from a year ago, the Association of American Railroads reported today. Carloads of bulk commodities such as coal, oil, grains, and chemicals plummeted 16.1% to 944,339 units. - snip - Only five of the 20 commodity categories saw gains. Of the decliners, coal was the biggest. But petroleum products also plunged 25%, and grain mill products dropped 7%. Even without coal, carloads were down 3% year-over-year.

Despite his proclamation that he "saved the world from a Great Depression," the fact is that Obama will be the first President ever to not see a single year of 3% GDP growth - but only cynical fiction-peddlers would mention facts at a time like this. In yet more legacy-defending narrative, Obama told The NYTimes today that his biggest failure was being unable to sell his success in putting the American economy back on track to the American people (no matter the actual realities) careful to blame Republicans for slowing growth "by a percentage point or two." And then in...

WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose last week, but remained below levels consistent with a tightening labour market.

For more than seven years, Federal Reserve officials have touted their progress toward achieving "full employment," with the most recent target a 4.9 percent unemployment rate. With Friday's nonfarm payrolls report showing that the goal has been achieved, perhaps the Fed can raise the "Mission Accomplished" banner along with a welcome mat to the world of "full employment." The jobless rate last reached this level in February 2008, following a run from June 2005 to April 2008 during which unemployment never eclipsed 5 percent. Getting a "4-handle" on the number -- using Wall Street lingo -- was supposed to represent...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employment gains slowed more than expected in January as the boost to hiring from unseasonably mild weather faded, but rising wages and an unemployment rate at an eight-year low suggested the labor market recovery remains firm. Non-farm payrolls increased by 151,000 jobs and the unemployment rate slipped one-tenth of a percentage point to 4.9 percent, the lowest since February 2008, the Labor Department said on Friday. The payrolls gain was a sharp step-down from the average 231,000 jobs per month during the fourth quarter. "The fact that payroll gains fell back to earth is not necessarily...

During his State of the Union address, the President said that the United States has “the strongest, most durable economy in the world.” It was a clear shot across the bow at those who might not be feeling the love at the moment and critics who don’t see things through rose colored glasses. So how is the recovery going? The unemployment rate as defined by the Department of Labor is certainly back down to a manageable number, but that doesn’t really speak to the factors which affect people in their day to day lives.The Wall Street Journal took at...

Economy: Third-quarter GDP was yet another big disappointment. If the country got a million dollars every time this has happened under President Obama, we'd probably be able pay off the national debt. The Bureau of Economic Statistics reports that real GDP growth for Q3 came in at a meager 1.5%, below forecast. That means the economy has an annualized growth rate of 2.1% so far this year, well below the 3% economists were expecting. It's certainly not the economy Obama described in his State of the Union speech last January. Then, he assured us that "after a breakthrough year for...

<p>As a patriotic and proud citizen of the United States, I have a story to share that has not only impacted my family, hundreds of colleagues, but also current and future United States workers.</p> <p>As I watched the grim faced Disney Executive, it was obvious that bad news was going to be delivered. The dead silence was broken when the Disney Executive made a harsh announcement. All of you in this room will be losing your jobs in the next 90 days. Your last day of employment for this company will be January 30, 2015. Your jobs have been given over to a foreign workforce. In the meantime you will be training your replacements until your jobs are 100 percent transferred over to them and if you don’t cooperate you will not receive any severance pay. Also, if we don’t feel confident that we have captured everything that you do we can, at our discretion, keep you longer than the 90 days until we have captured everything that you do with this job. Don’t discuss this meeting with anybody else in the company. Everybody in the room was appalled at the message. I was completely silent thinking how this was going to affect my coworkers and how I was going to break the news to my wife and children back at home as I was the only person in my home with a steady job. How would I pay for all the expenses that go along with a home, a wife, and children?</p>

Pittsburgh (CNN)Vice President Joe Biden warned on Monday that "something is wrong" with the American economy as he launched a Labor Day march here with speculation swirling that he may run for President. In a highly populist speech that could foreshadow the themes he would highlight on the campaign trail, Biden said workers have been "clobbered" in the modern economy. "It used to be when productivity went up in America, everybody got to share. The people who caused the productivity increase, they got to share. They got a piece of the action," Biden said before leading a march of an...

McDonald’s plans to shrink by 59 locations this year in the US, the first time in at least 45 years that the fast food restaurant has closed more US stores than it has opened, as the company cuts costs and tries to revive sales. The world’s biggest restaurant chain has not reduced the net number of its US stores since at least 1970, according to a previous Associated Press review of McDonald's regulatory filings.

(Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Co (PG.N) reported its sixth straight quarter of falling sales, hurt mainly by the stronger dollar. Even after stripping out the impact of the dollar and acquisitions, sales rose just 1 percent, raising concerns about the slow pace at which P&G is turning around its business. The company's shares fell as much as 4.3 percent in morning trading on Thursday, after it said sales would fall by a low-to-mid single-digit percentage in the year ending June 2016.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. economy grew more slowly over the past three years than the government had previously estimated, held back by more frugal consumers and steeper spending cuts by state and local governments. Related Stories 1. US economy likely rebounded to solid growth rate in spring Associated Press 2. China’s Stocks Drop for Second Day Before Economic Growth Data Bloomberg 3. Services, Finance and Oil Drive U.K. Growth to 0.7% Bloomberg 4. China June exports up 2.8 percent, imports down 6.1 percent Associated Press 5. Singapore Economy Contracts Most Since 2012 on Manufacturing Bloomberg The economy expanded at...