Economy

June 17, 2010

• Economic Myths, Fallacies and Stupidity

  Walter Williams explains: Wal-Mart owns 8,300 stores, of which 4,000 are in 44 different countries. Its 2010 revenues are expected to top $500 billion. Putting Wal-Mart’s revenues in perspective, they exceed the 2009 GDP of all but 18 of the world’s 181 countries. Why is Wal-Mart so successful? Millions of people voluntarily enter their stores [...]

April 16, 2010

• California’s Unemployment Rate Hits High Of 12.6%

  From the LA Times: California’s unemployment rate reached a new high in March, hitting 12.6%, bolstering fears that unemployment will remain a persistent problem through at least the end of the year. The unemployment rate in February was 12.5%. California was tied with Rhode Island for the third-highest unemployment rate in the nation, after Michigan [...]

April 14, 2010

• Another Obama Favor To Labor Unions

  The Washington Examiner reports: Barely 15 percent of all construction-industry workers in the United States are union members, while the remaining 85 percent are nonunion, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. So why has President Obama signed Executive Order 13502 directing federal agencies taking bids for government construction projects to [...]

March 16, 2010

• This Business Owner Leads His Own Recovery

  Dismayed to find his company’s cash flow looking like last year’s, Gene Marks continues to delay hiring and is taking on jobs he wouldn’t have considered before. The overall environment is not conducive for investments. In the current cycle (and these things are cyclical), greed is bad. Poverty is good. Wall Street financiers are criticized [...]

• Pushing for More High-Growth Startups

  As the American economy continues to send out mixed signals about recovery, job creation has emerged as the country’s most pressing economic issue. Not only important for employment itself, job growth also drives recovery in other sectors, including housing. But, while hope for spurring the U.S. economy toward recovery focuses squarely on job creation, policy [...]

• ADP: Small Employers May Be Signaling Recovery

  Automatic Data Processing’s (ADP’s ) sales of services to companies with 50 employees or fewer have increased since September, ADP Chief Executive Officer Gary Butler told Bloomberg BusinessWeek in an interview on Mar. 15. “It’s a clear indication that small business is coming back” and will help lead the recovery, Butler said. “You don’t put in [...]

• Fed Keeps Interest Rates Low For Extended Period

  The Fed announced that it would maintain its target rate for the federal funds rate at 0%-0.25%. The Fed added that it continues to anticipate that economic conditions are likely to warrant “exceptionally low” interest rates “for an extended period.”

  The central bank’s Open Market Committee voted 9-1 in favor of today’s statement, as Thomas Hoenig again dissented from the statement. Hoenig, who also dissented at the Fed’s last meeting in January, believes that continuing to say that rates will remain low for an extended period will lead to financial imbalances and increases risks to financial stability.

February 15, 2010

• Don't These Kind Of Things Only Happen In Third World Countries?

  MORE GANGSTER GOVERNMENT – Crony capitalism is now the order of the day in the United States. The government and the United Auto Workers own General Motors and Chrysler, which aren’t likely to pay back their billions in TARP money any time soon, if ever. Meanwhile the government tells Americans to stop driving Toyotas.  The [...]

• Public Employee Unions – An Anchor As We Sink

  NO WONDER WE’RE IN TROUBLE – While the rest of the economy is reeling, government just keeps expanding. Why? A major factor is the power of public-sector unions. New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that, for the first time in history, a majority of American union members — 52 percent — now work [...]

February 11, 2010

• Dems Are Going To Try And Ram Healthcare Through

  Roll Call reports:   House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is pinning the blame on Republicans for a lack of bipartisanship in Congress and plans to bypass them if they continue to oppose efforts to enact near-universal health care. This is the clearest indication yet that Democrats are gearing up to jam the Senate version of [...]

• Jobs Bill Won't Actually Create Many Jobs!

  THIS DOES NOT SEEM UNUSUAL COMING FROM THIS CONGRESS – It’s a bipartisan jobs bill that would hand President Barack Obama a badly needed political victory and placate Republicans with tax cuts at the same time. But it has a problem: It won’t create many jobs. Even the Obama administration acknowledges the legislation’s centerpiece — [...]

February 10, 2010

• The Eternal Stimulus

  WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED – President Obama sold the $862 billion in stimulus spending as “targeted, timely and temporary.” Critics said that was highly unlikely, and now the 2011 Obama budget has proven them right. To wit, the White House is proposing to convert spending sold as a one-time economic boost into a permanent [...]

• Increasing Government Power Threatens Freedom

  NOVEMBER CAN’T COME SOON ENOUGH – Government is taking us a long way down the Road to Serfdom. That doesn’t just mean that more of us must work for the government. It means that we are changing from independent, self-responsible people into a submissive flock. The welfare state kills the creative spirit. F.A. Hayek, an [...]

• Can You Trust The Unemployment Numbers?

  JOB LOSSES LIKELY TO BE WORSE THAN REPORTED – Last week’s new unemployment numbers were bittersweet. At the same time the Bureau of Labor Statistics was declaring that the unemployment rate had declined slightly, to 9.7 percent, the government also was announcing that the economy had lost about 824,000 more jobs during the recession from [...]

January 29, 2010

• Economy Grows At Fastest Rate Since 2003

  THIS IS GOOD NEWS IF THE NUMBERS HOLD UP – The 5.7 percent annual growth rate in the fourth quarter was the fastest pace since 2003. The Commerce Department report Friday is the strongest evidence to date that the recession ended last year. The White House immediately reacted with cautious praise.  Still, economists expect growth to [...]

January 28, 2010

• What Obama Said About Small Business In The State of The Union Address

  So tonight, I’m proposing that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat. I’m also proposing a new small business tax credit -– one that will go to over one million small businesses who hire [...]

• Bernanke Wins New Term

  NOT SURE IF THIS IS GOOD OR BAD - Ben Bernanke won the backing of the Senate for a second four-year term as chairman of the Federal Reserve by a comfortable margin Thursday. Even with that storm behind him, Mr. Bernanke faces formidable political and economic challenges made tougher by the bruising confirmation fight. Weeks of [...]

January 21, 2010

• Healthcare Talks Collapse

  THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS – Health care reform teetered on the brink of collapse Thursday as House and Senate leaders struggled to coalesce around a strategy to rescue the plan, in the face of growing pessimism among lawmakers that the president’s top priority can survive.  The legislative landscape was filled with obstacles: House Democrats won’t [...]

• Putting Limited Back In To Government

  YOU’D BE BANKRUPT – If your finances looked like the federal budget, you wouldn’t get elected. You’d get arrested. Under the Democrats’ iron-fisted, one-party rule of Washington, family budgets shrink and the federal budget bloats: The deficit, the debt and spending are at record levels; massive tax increases impend in the days ahead; and widespread [...]

• Remember When Everyone Hated The Dollar? Now Look How Popular It Is

  From Clusterstock: