Free Republic

By Mr. Curmudgeon:While Islamic militants riot outside U.S. embassies overseas, and kill American counselor officials and their support personnel, another terrorist act just as deadly took place on American soil. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced his independent, in your face, answer-to-no-one agency will flood the U.S. economy with $40-billion-a-month in counterfeit greenbacks to buy worthless mortgage-backed securities. He said the Fed would continue the policy "until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability." That's Fed speak for "Forever."Commodity prices, like oil for instance, soared after Benny boy's announcement. So much for "price stability."As if to prove...

We have been warning conservatives about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s taxpayer-funded Super PAC that has so-far pumped something like $2 trillion into the economy to help re-elect President Obama. Yesterday, the Fed doubled down on this failed strategy and announced an unprecedented plan for an open-ended round of Quantitative Easing (QE3) and extended the period for which it will keep interest rates between 0 and 1/4% to mid-2015. What this means is that the Fed will print money at a projected “burn rate” of $40 billion a month until… forever. Here is one of the key paragraphs from the...

In one more example of why we are going to need more-er and open-ended-er QE from the Fed, today's dismal data rolls on. Industrial Production dropped 1.2% MoM - its largest drop since March 2009 - and missed expectations by the most since December 2008. The market (expectedly) is unimpressed and stable - fully aware that the Fed's new infinite QE will simply be expanded to an infinte-er QE should things go from worse to worse-er. To add more salt to the wound, Capacity Utilization dropped to its lowest of the year and missed expectations by its most in 16...

The International Franchise Association held a convention in Washington this week where most of the Radio Shack, Dunkin Donuts, Curves and other franchisers were grumbling about new federal regulations, especially the impact of Obamacare. Most, said Atlanta Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken franchiser David Barr, presumed that the reports about how hard Obamacare will hit them were overblown. "They had their head in the sand," he told Secrets

(Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits rose more than expected last week, with several states reporting an increase related to Tropical Storm Isaac. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 382,000, the highest in two months, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week's figure was revised up to show 2,000 more applications than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 370,000 last week. A Labor Department official said Tropical Storm Isaac, which drenched parts of the country, accounted for about 9,000 of the...

After raising more than $100 million over the past seven years, GreenVolts, a California startup that makes concentrating photovoltaic systems, has closed its doors after a major investor abruptly withdrew financial support for the company. “A sudden, and unexpected, change in direction from a major strategic investor has affected GreenVolts’ access to funding,” the company said Wednesday in a statement, referring to ABB, the Swiss power and automation giant. “The impact was at the last minute and so severe that GreenVolts cannot continue normal operation and has reduced its workforce to a small team to provide customer support and engage...

The median income of American households dropped to its lowest level since 1995 last year, extending its decline during President Barack Obama’s tenure and highlighting the depth of the damage to the middle class inflicted by the recession and weak recovery. According to annual data from the Census Bureau, median income adjusted for inflation – a closely watched measure of the financial health of average Americans – fell to $50,054 in 2011, or 1.5 per cent below its 2010 level and 4.1 per cent below its score when Mr Obama took office in 2009.

If President Obama had run in 2008 promising to cut family incomes, shove more people into poverty, create greater inequality and make people more dependent on the federal government — and that black Americans would fare worse than everyone else — would he have won that election? Well, the latest Census Bureau report shows that these are precisely the results Obama has delivered since taking office.

The bounce expected from Barack Obama's Democratic Convention speech collapsed the following day under the reality check that the current unemployment figure is 8.1 percent. And 40.7 percent of those people have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. Those numbers tell only a small part of Obama's failure to deliver on his promises. The real unemployment figure is closer to 19 percent. The official count doesn't include the 8 million unemployed who have given up and stopped looking for a job, the people who have had to settle for part-time work, those who had to take lower-paying...

The following is the text of a statement Tuesday by rating agency Moody’s: Budget negotiations during the 2013 Congressional legislative session will likely determine the direction of the US government’s Aaa rating and negative outlook, says Moody’s Investors Service in the report “Update of the Outlook for the US Government Debt Rating.” If those negotiations lead to specific policies that produce a stabilization and then downward trend in the ratio of federal debt to GDP over the medium term, the rating will likely be affirmed and the outlook returned to stable, says Moody’s. If those negotiations fail to produce such...

According to new analysis of unemployment data by the National Employment Law Project, while 60 percent of the jobs lost during the 2008-2009 financial crisis were in middle income occupations, the vast majority – 58 percent – of jobs created under President Obama are low-wage. Those jobs include “retail sales, food preparation, home health and customer service.” “The recovery continues to be skewed toward low-wage jobs, reinforcing the rise in inequality and America’s deficit of good jobs,” said the author of the study, Annette Bernhardt. “While there’s understandably a lot of focus on getting employment back to pre-recession levels, the...

The U.S. has fallen for the fourth straight year, by two spots, to the seventh most competitive country, according to The Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013 by the World Economic Forum. It is now led by Switzerland, Singapore, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany.

* GM losing as much as $49,000 per Volt sold * Cheap leases likely only exacerbate the losses * GM still years away from break even on the car * New plug-in competitors soon from Ford, Honda Sept 10 (Reuters) - General Motors Co sold a record number of Chevrolet Volt sedans in August - but that probably isn't a good thing for the automaker's bottom line. Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts...

President Obama, ever-comfortable on the campaign trail, responded to audience cheers saying they would “love him even more” when he finished reciting his plans for his second term. An exuberant Iowa crowd kept interrupting Obama today. ” I love you back,” he said at one point, as he went through a list of goals for his second term.  “But let me tell you the fourth thing — you’ll love me even more.” ‘The fourth thing” he mentioned was  his “plan [to] reduce our deficit without sticking it to the middle class.” Obama said that he will “cut deficits by $4...

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers added 96,000 jobs in August, a tepid figure that points to the economy's persistent weakness and slowing prospects for the unemployed. The unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent in July. But that was only because more people gave up looking for jobs. People out of work are counted as unemployed only if they're looking for a job. The sluggish job growth could slow the momentum President Barack Obama hoped to gain from his speech Thursday night to the Democratic National Convention.

"Please don't feed the animals." That phrase makes sense when talking about bears and deer, turkeys and elk in the Great Smoky Mountains. It's quite another matter when discussing whether to give food to human beings who need help because circumstances have left them wanting for one the most basic of aspects of life. That is unless you are David Fowler, president of the Family Action Council of Tennessee — ironic, that name. Fowler, a former Tennessee state legislator, posted on his personal Facebook page recently that the National Park Service's "stated reason for the policy is because the animals...

Stephanie Cutter, President Obama's deputy campaign manager, recently boasted to Willie Geist of MSNBC that, from an employment perspective, the recovery of the economy under President Obama compares favorably with the Reagan recovery. Her claim seemed adequately outlandish to warrant comparing the two recoveries based on two criteria of central importance to the American people: "the net number of new jobs created and the change in the number of people of working age who are either unemployed or not in the workforce (and therefore not counted as unemployed)." In each case I used unadjusted data from the Bureau of Labor...

Unemployment remains above 8.0%. Lowest unemployment rate during Obama term was his first month in office.Unemployment rate drops ONLY because more people quit looking for work. 368,000 Americans left the labor force. This is devastating news for the Obama White House. The AP reported: U.S. employers added 96,000 jobs last month, a weak figure that could slow any momentum President Barack Obama hoped to gain from his speech to the Democratic National Convention. The unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent in July, the Labor Department said Friday. But that was only because more people gave up looking...

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- AUGUST 2012 Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 96,000 in August, and the unemployment rate edged down to 8.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in food services and drinking places, in professional and technical services, and in health care. Household Survey Data The unemployment rate edged down in August to 8.1 percent. Since the beginning of this year, the rate has held in a narrow range of 8.1 to 8.3 percent. The number of unemployed persons, at 12.5 million, was little changed in August. (See table A-1.) Among the major...

Otter Tail Corp. said Thursday that it has sold its wind tower manufacturing business, DMI Industries, to Trinity Industries of Dallas for $20 million. The Fergus Falls, Minn.-based conglomerate, which also owns Otter Tail Power Co., said it closed on the sale of the property, plant and equipment at its Fort Erie, Ontario, plant on Thursday, Sept.6. The sale of its DMI plants in West Fargo, N.D. and Tulsa, Okla., plants will close in November and December respectively. Trinity Industries makes wind towers, rail cars and other products that require heavy metal fabrication, Otter Tail spokesman Michael Olsen said. Otter...