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Food prices continue to go up and consumers are feeling the pinch. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the price of food has spiked to its highest rate since September 2011. Consumers are now paying more for such staples as ground beef, chicken and turkey, eggs, bacon, citrus fruit, coffee, peanut butter, and margarine. Normally, politicians would try to alleviate this financial strain on American families. Yet, this administration seems to want to make food more expensive.

Fresh off a Philadelphia Fed survey of manufacturers finding that the Affordable Care Act is acting as a drag on hiring and increasing part-time employment, a Dallas Fed survey finds the much same thing. Like the Philly Fed survey, it was tacked on to an existing monthly survey of conditions. In this case, a net 23.5% of respondents say the number of workers employed is lower due to the effects of what’s commonly called Obamacare. Part-time work is up, the amount of work outsourced is up, wages and salary compensation per worker is down, other benefits are down, and prices...

Taxes? Who wants to think about taxes around Labor Day? But if you count on your tax refund and you're one of the millions getting tax credits to help pay health insurance premiums under President Barack Obama's law, it's not too early. Here's why: If your income for 2014 is going to be higher than you estimated when you applied for health insurance, then complex connections between the health law and taxes can reduce or even eliminate your tax refund next year.

More than a thousand locals lined up Friday morning for several hours under the scorching sun and heat in Miami for a box full of food. The event located at the Central Shopping Plaza at 3825 NW 7th Street started at 9:00 a.m.

Fewer people applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week, another sign the job market is improving. The Labor Department said Thursday that weekly claims for jobless aid fell 14,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 298,000. The prior week’s figures were revised up slightly to 311,000. The less-volatile four-week average rose 4,750 to 300,750. It remains close to levels that predate the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Applications are a proxy for layoffs. Employers aren’t just keeping workers. They’re hiring at a pace last seen during the tech boom. They added 209,000 jobs in July, the sixth straight month that job...

The Schiller Park, Ill., bakery, where Twinkies were invented in 1930, will close according to an announcement by Hostess Brands on Wednesday....

(CNSNews.com) – The average price for all types of ground beef per pound hit its all-time high -- $3.884 per pound -- in the United States in July, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That was up from $3.880 per pound in June. A year ago, in July 2013, the average price for a pound of ground beef was $3.459 per pound. Since then, the average price for a pound of ground beef has gone up 42.1 cents--or about 12 percent. Five years ago, in July 2009, the average price for a pound of...

There's a lot of economic anxiety in America today, so it's no surprise that the Federal Reserve has discovered substantial pessimism about Americans' own personal financial situation. The Feds most recent survey shows that 1/3 of Americans believe themselves to be worse off 5 years after the recession ended.Wall Street Journal: More American households say they are worse off  rather than better five years after the recession, a new Federal Reserve survey found. The report, released for the first time on Thursday, found 34% of households said they were “somewhat worse” or “much worse” financially in 2013 compared to 2008....

German investors are feeling the pain of escalating tensions with Russia that may have already pushed Europe's largest economy into reverse... ....Europe, the U.S. and other Western nations have issued increasingly tough sanctions against Russia over its role in destabilizing parts of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin responded this week by banning various food imports from the U.S., Europe, Australia, Canada and Norway. Several companies have already warned of damage to come, and economic data have soured as businesses postpone big spending decisions. Germany is Russia's biggest trading partner in Europe and thus has most to lose. Now Russian leaders...

Since the media has spent the last six years ignoring the decline of the American workforce, and writing comically lunkheaded propaganda stories about how the unemployment picture “improved” when it was actually people giving up altogether and dropping out of the game, it seems appropriate to switch gears and applaud the small signs of life.... it has absolutely nothing to do with some mythical “recovery” finally chugging to life as Obamanomics suddenly starts working, after six years of failure and trillions of dollars spent. It’s because extended unemployment benefits were not renewed.

<p>Not only is the American population aging, businesses in the U.S. also are growing older.</p> <p>Older firms are increasingly controlling the largest market share in different sectors of the economy, according to a paper by the Brooking Institution’s Robert E. Litan and Ennsyte Economics’s Ian Hathaway. By 2011, the portion of U.S. businesses aged at least 16 years reached 34%, compared to 23% in 1992. Moreover, those mature companies went from employing only 60% of private-sector workers in 1992 to employing nearly three quarters of the private-sector labor force in 2011.</p>

The high-rise at 500 N. Lake Shore Drive is the second-most expensive in the city, with rents for a one-bedroom apartment approaching $3,000 a month, well beyond the reach of most Chicago residents. But that's not too much for the Chicago Housing Authority, which has used federal tax dollars to pick up most of the tab for four lucky residents in the year-old building, with its sweeping views of Lake Michigan, a concierge and a dog-grooming center. The tenants moved in over the past two years as part of a push by the CHA to expand its housing voucher program...

On July 3, 2008, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama infamously called President George W. Bush “unpatriotic,” and his polices “irresponsible” for adding $4 Trillion to the country's "credit card." This was almost more than all other US presidents combined, he argued, and therefore was putting America on a dangerous path to fiscal insolvency. Less than six years into his own administration, however, the president has failed to reverse the untenable course set by his predecessor; and, indeed, is making America's heavy debt burden even worse. CNS News reports: The total federal debt of the U.S. government has now increased more than...

For the first time ever, the average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity in the United States has broken through the 14-cent mark, climbing to a record 14.3 cents in June. ... Back in June 1984, the seasonally adjusted price index for electricity was 103.9—less than half what it was in June 2014. Electricity prices have not always risen in the United States. The BLS has published an annual electricity price index dating back to 1913. It shows that from that year through 1947, the price of electricity in the United States generally trended down, with the index dropping...

The job market is still not the greatest, but we just got one hopeful sign that it might be improving a bit. The economy added 209,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate ticked up to 6.2 percent from 6.1 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. Believe it or not, both of those numbers are encouraging. The reason the first number is encouraging is because, duh, jobs. The encouraging part of the second number, the unemployment rate, is less obvious. Normally, higher unemployment is bad news, and people seeing HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT on the evening news tonight will naturally...

One week after falling to a 14-year low, the number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits rose sharply last week but remained near a postrecession bottom. Initial jobless claims climbed by 23,000 to 302,000 in the seven days ended July 26, retracing the entire decline in prior week, according to Labor Department data . The level of claims was in line with Wall Street expectations.

In the early-1990s, political Washington moved to change the nature of the CPI. The contention was that the CPI overstated inflation (it did not allow substitution of less-expensive hamburger for more-expensive steak). Both sides of the aisle and the financial media touted the benefits of a “more-accurate” CPI, one that would allow the substitution of goods and services. The plan was to reduce cost of living adjustments for government payments to Social Security recipients, etc. The cuts in reported inflation were an effort to reduce the federal deficit without anyone in Congress having to do the politically impossible: to vote...

US home construction fell 9.3 per cent in June, a surprising sign of weakness for a sector that has struggled to maintain momentum over the past year. Housing starts sank last month to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 893,000, the weakest showing since September 2013, the Commerce Department said Thursday. It was the second-straight monthly drop....

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(Reuters) - The U.S. economy contracted at a much steeper pace in the first quarter than previously estimated, turning in one of its worst-ever non-recession performances, but growth already appears to have rebounded strongly. The economy was held back by an unusually cold winter, the expiration of long-term unemployment benefits and cuts to food stamps, which curbed consumer spending. It was also weighed down by a slowdown in the pace of restocking by businesses. All these temporary factors have since faded, lifting growth early in the second quarter.