Free Republic

Timeline of job losses at link. It's interesting to watch it county by county. http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

Restaurants brace for dreary season as consumers lose appetite for dining out The number of people visiting restaurants has plunged for four quarters in a row, according to NPD Group. Some higher-end establishments are offering discounts for holiday parties. By Jerry Hirsch November 24, 2009 Adele Cabot and her husband used to dine out three to four times a week, regularly spending $75 to $100 at a sushi bar sampling rainbow rolls and yellowtail nigiri sushi. But that changed after Cabot, an adjunct professor of theater at UCLA, had to take a 6% salary cut. The couple now eat out...

Rob Port at Say Anything noticed this story yesterday, which may explain to Barack Obama why his Porkulus bill hasn’t generated new jobs … well, one of the reasons, at least. The Associated Press reports that the increases in unemployment benefits have placed new burdens on businesses in the form of higher unemployment taxes — in Florida, a twelve-fold increase for next year. The result? Capital that may have gone towards hiring new employees will get sucked up by government instead:

It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact. In September of last year, American Thinker published my article, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Part of a series, it connected then presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government. Since then the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US retailers are taking desperate measures to spark holiday sales in the face of what promises to be another troubled year-end shopping season. Merchants are furiously working to ramp up consumer interest ahead of "Black Friday," on November 27, the day after the Thanksgiving Day holiday that marks the traditional kickoff of the holiday gift season. Some are promising price cuts of 50 percent or more on some hot electronics, and planning for big events to bring out shoppers for big sales promotions.

A growing number of states reported rising jobless rates in October, and thirteen states reported unemployment rates above the national average of 10.2%, according to a government report released on Friday

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” said Blanche DuBois, in the final words of the play A Streetcar Named Desire. Well, don’t we all. Many citizens probably still cling to the old saw that public debt doesn’t matter because “we owe it to ourselves.” Wrong. Debt always matters. And as for whom we owe it to, it is a lot of kind (or, at least, not yet unkind) strangers. As recently as 1970, foreign holders of U.S. debt were essentially non-existent. But their slice of our obligation pie has steadily increased, especially over the past two decades,...

Latinos and African-Americans in Massachusetts and across the country are facing high unemployment rates that could spiral to levels not seen in decades as the jobless economic recovery drags on, analysts and urban community advocates say. At the same time, some big-city mayors and community activists complain that the $787 billion federal stimulus package that the Obama administration promised would preserve or create jobs has not put a significant dent in urban unemployment, threatening to leave blacks and Latinos behind when the economy finally turns around. The Congressional Black Caucus and civil rights organizations are calling for a targeted aid...

Washington (CNN) -- Nearly two years into the recession, opinion about which political party is responsible for the severe economic downturn is shifting, according to a new national poll. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Friday morning indicates that 38 percent of the public blames Republicans for the country's current economic problems. In May, 53 percent blamed the GOP. According to the poll, 27 percent now blame the Democrats for the recession, up 6 points from May, and 27 percent now say both parties are responsible. "The bad news for the Democrats is that the number of Americans who hold...

When the U.S. holiday shopping season kicks off on the day after Thanksgiving, retailers can expect to see millions of less frightened but even more bargain hungry customers cross their thresholds. Industry experts expect a strong turnout on Black Friday, which falls on November 27 this year, as deep discounts lure shoppers after more than a year of subdued spending. But they caution it will not mean a bumper holiday season in the weeks leading up to Christmas since consumers still remain cautious. "Given what we know about consumer shopping patterns, even this month, I would suspect it will turn...

What was expected to be a boring congressional hearing erupted into high drama yesterday as an unnerved Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner sparred with frustrated lawmakers calling for his head over his handling of the economy. Clearly rattled by a fusillade of attacks from Republican members of the Joint Economic Committee, the usually reserved Geithner lashed out, laying blame for the current economic mess at the feet of the GOP and rejecting suggestions that he resign. Republicans "gave this president an economy falling off the cliff," Geithner fired back at Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), one of the Treasury secretary's harshest critics...

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The dollar held on to its gains against the euro and other higher-yielding currencies Friday morning as revived concerns about how fast the global economy will rebound prompted investors to shun riskier assets. Declines in stocks, gold and oil that began earlier in Asian and European trading continued early in New York as demand for growth-sensitive and riskier assets evaporated. That pushed the greenback to intraday highs against its major rivals. Adding to the overall negative sentiment were comments by the head of the European Central Bank, hinting on removal of credit support lines, as well as...

Hope and change hits 29 states, the sad thing is, Obama is just getting started...Chart from CNN..

Ten months to the day after Barack Obama took office and three years since Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress, the American public has begun to get the impression that Democrats are responsible for the economic mess that continues to unfold. A new CNN poll shows that those blaming Republicans has dropped fifteen points in the last six months, while those blaming Democrats have risen 21 points in the same period (via Yid with Lid): Nearly two years into the recession, opinion about which political party is responsible for the severe economic downturn is shifting, according to a...

President Obama and his flacks constantly have claimed that the government's $787 billion stimulus package has created or saved hundreds of thousands of jobs. The numbers don't back up the claim. In fact, the numbers don't clarify anything. For example, on Oct. 30, Mr. Obama claimed the massive government spending program had already created or saved 640,239 jobs. California supposedly saved the most jobs, with 110,185 rescued workers. But this job "creation" involves some very creative accounting. The 110,185 number does not reflect new jobs or even jobs that likely would have been lost, according to the Sacramento Bee. About...

The long-feared financial disaster is still looming. Bad court decisions could set it off. The commercial real estate market is on its last legs and unless drastic actions are taken, the effects on the broader economy will be catastrophic. The obvious problem is the excessive amount of debt placed on the properties and the amount of debt that has to be refinanced during a relatively short period of time. Between now and 2013, at least $1.3 trillion of financing comes due, of which $160 billion was the result of securitizations. Unfortunately, as a result of the virtual disappearance of the...

Peter Schiff is a Republican genius when it comes to the economy. He singlehandedly destroys Obama'a plan to save the economy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46ItttTID3k&feature=subtivity

TAMPA - Business owners in Florida are about to get hit with a big tax hike: starting January 1st, all Florida businesses will have to pay skyrocketing unemployment compensation taxes to replenish the unemployment compensation trust fund.

Even though some homes in Detroit literally sell for $1, we're still surprised to see how little an entire stadium fetches. In this case it's the famous Pontiac Silverdome Detroit News: Nearly 25 years after taxpayers spent $55.7 million building the Pontiac Silverdome and a year after a $20 million sale fell through, city officials have sold the arena once called the most desirable property in Oakland County. The price: $583,000. The broker, David J. Leitch, is quite upset about the final selling price. And hey, can you blame him? "The property alone, at $10,000 an acre, should have gone...

"The Illusion of Prosperity": U.S. Destined to Lag Rest of the World, Peter Boockvar Says Posted Nov 19, 2009 09:00am EST by Aaron Task in Investing "It's dangerous to be short this market," says Peter Boockvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak. Despite a penchant for bearishness, Boockvar says the rally can continue as long as the Fed keeps rates at zero. "When you cut rates to nothing you're encouraging people to take risk," Boockvar says. "As long as asset inflation is [the Fed's] goal, the market could go higher but there are obvious consequences," including inflation. The Fed is trying...

The Great Credit Crunch Is Deepening Minyanville Staff Nov 19, 2009 9:20 am Consumers will feel the effects in the form of tighter credit standards. Editor's Note: This article was written by Richard Suttmeier, chief market strategist at ValuEngine.com, which is a fundamentally-based quant research firm in Princeton, New Jersey, that covers more than 5,000 stocks every day. Within the proposed banking reform bill, the House Financial Services Committee wants banks and funds to make payments in advance for companies deemed “too-big-to-fail”. This fund will be capped at $200 billion, insuring that taxpayers won't wind up paying for a bailout...

There are, in public policies, these inconvenient things called the “secondary effects.” These are the unintended consequences of even the best intended laws. Critics of Obama’s national health care program have questioned its intentions from day one. Few doubt the program will lead to a serious rationing of health care (adding 40 million on the system and allegedly lowering spending will have that impact) and will lead to increase taxes for millions of Americans. According to public opinion surveys, the number one issue of most voters is unemployment. This sentiment is backed up by the hard fact that unemployment recently...

The one highly visible success of the stimulus bill has been the cash-for-clunkers program. It induced a boom in vehicle sales this summer that clearly would not have happened otherwise. The rest of the stimulus bill has created a lot of jobs — 700,000 to 1.5 million, according to economists’ estimates. But it has done so in thousands of little ways: scattered construction projects, plugged-up school budgets and the like. Politically, these measures are not popular enough to create a groundswell for more of them. And the economy still needs help. So White House officials are now looking at creating...

Payroll employment among for-hire trucking companies in October dropped 0.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from September levels – slightly more than the decline the month before. Employment is down 9.3 percent from October 2008, according to preliminary figures released Friday, Nov. 6, by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%. While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession. Also, remember: The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until...

Unemployment is foremost on everyone's mind today. Yet jobs can continue to leave the U.S. because of the threat of new taxes, the convergence of technology, the ease of digital collaboration and ready access to abundant foreign engineering talent. Multinational corporate executives may have to move R&D, product development, management and manufacturing overseas when there is no longer a comparative advantage to staying in the United States. A shocking thought for sure, but it's the new reality. After Japan, the U.S. has the world's highest corporate tax rate, and there is seemingly no willingness by Washington to bring rates down....

The Obama administration, under fire for inflating job growth from the $787 billion stimulus plan, slashed over 60,000 jobs from its most recent report on the program because the reporting outlets had submitted "unrealistic data," according to a document obtained by ABC News. The Office of Management and Budget document shows that before an Oct. 30 progress report on the program the administration asked the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to remove information from 12 stimulus recipients that contained "unrealistic data," including "unrealistic job data." One recipient, Talladega County of Alabama, claimed that 5,000 jobs had been saved or created...

U.S. stocks rose broadly on Monday, sending indexes to fresh 13-month closing highs, after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke reinforced expectations that interest rates would stay low to spur growth. Bernanke repeated that the Fed was likely to keep interest rates exceptionally low for "an extended period," a pledge that weighed on the U.S. dollar and drove investors to snap up shares of natural resource companies as prices of global commodities -- from gold to wheat -- shot higher. In a speech before the Economic Club of New York, Bernanke said the recovery would not be as robust as previously...

Roubini: The Worst Is Yet To Come! Joe WeisenthalNov. 15, 2009, 6:47 PM Roubini is back! After a summer of mixed messages, he's now firmly back to stark warnings, most recently sounding the alarm about a massive bubble due to the dollar carry trade. And today in the Daily News he has some bad news for the unemployed: the worst is yet to come. Also, remember: The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession. So we can expect that job losses...

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 9th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the website set up by the Obama Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says. There's one problem, though: There is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts. There's no 86th Congressional District in Arizona either, but the government's recovery.gov Web site says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent there.

Warming: After stifling a report questioning the science behind climate change, the EPA is censoring two of its lawyers for saying the proposed solutions are also problematical. The debate isn't over. It's being suppressed. In the proud tradition of EPA whistle-blower Alan Carlin, whose leaked study blew the lid off the EPA's hyped and flawed science behind climate change, two EPA lawyers, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, have produced a Web video titled "A Huge Mistake." In it they say cap-and-trade in general and the Waxman-Markey bill in particular are the wrong answers anyway. Williams and Zabel do not deny...

Barack Obama rode an economic crisis into the White House in November 2008. Now he’ll have to ride out the last of that economic storm if he’s to keep his own job in three years. But with unemployment surging and the President’s poll ratings sinking, there’s growing debate about what—if anything—the President can do about the situation. cnbc.com President Obama announcing jobs summit on Thursday “There's nothing new here," says crisis management expert and former senate aide Larry L. Smith. “We have become a very impatient people. When things don’t turn around overnight, we get impatient.” The President took his...

It is now beyond question that not only Bernanke, but now Obama, will do anything and everything they can to accelerate the disembowelment of the US currency (Tiny Tim in the bathroom withnose-hair trimmers) and America's middle class, for the benefit of the 2 or 3 Wall Street banks that have over $10 trillion in roll risk in the next 5 years, and the 5 algos which are still trading the occasional oddlot of SPY here and there, thus creating the perception that America still has a functioning capital market (another one for Tim Geithner's Sesame Street media whirlwind tour)....

All we need is for The Fed to encourage and promote the dollar carry trade, and we can pump the stock market to the moon - even though unemployment continues to skyrocket and consumer confidence, a leading indicator of consumer spending and activity, was in the tank this morning. You need no further proof that the stock market has exactly nothing to do with the consumer or the broader economy - that it has become nothing more or less than a raw casino that responds to one and only one thing - the Federal Reserve and Federal Government's encouragement of...

WASHINGTON — Fewer people are claiming unemployment benefits — but still too many to signal that the economy is close to gaining jobs. First-time claims for jobless benefits dropped last week to a seasonally adjusted 502,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's the fewest claims since the week ending Jan. 3, and below economists' estimates. Claims would have to fall to the high 400s to indicate the economy could soon produce even a slight gain in jobs, estimates Abiel Reinhart, an economist at JPMorgan Chase. That level of claims could be reached by January, he said, and the economy should...

Advocates of overhauling California's troubled pension system for public employees couldn't have chosen a more providential moment to launch their reform campaign. The huge California Public Employees' Retirement System is in deep financial doo-doo, having lost tens of billions of dollars in often-speculative investments, and is telling state and local officials it will need more "contributions." Meanwhile, investigations are under way into multimillion-dollar payments to placement agents who arranged some investments. With a public pension scandal simmering and their private pension benefits shrinking, voters will resent a CalPERS bailout. Indeed, a recent Field Poll indicates that voters are inclined to...

-snip- “Washington is doing everything in their manpower, capability, to destroy U.S. manufacturing,” Farr said at a Baird Industrial Outlook conference in Chicago, Bloomberg News reported. “Cap and trade, medical reform, labor rules … I’m not going to hire anybody in the United States. I’m moving. They are doing everything possible to destroy jobs.” -snip-

It's not just California that's dragging the country down. Did you know Wisconsin was in trouble? A new report by the Pew Center on the States, called Beyond California: States In Trouble, shows us the 10 that are weighing the country down. The ranking looks at budget gaps, foreclosure rates, lost state revenues, unemployment, money-management practices, and where "super-majority" requirements are killing efforts to fix the financial mess. Scores for each category are tallied for an overall ranking. We bring you the top 10, counting down from bad to worst. The higher score, the bigger the crisis. California gets a...

Earlier today, Goldman came out with a harbinger piece on why a second stimulus announcement is essentially a formality. The administration has already promptly forgotten the lessons from the recent elections which were a failure for the Democrats, and a resounding vote against incremental deficit spending. The people spoke, and they will have no more of it. Alas, Obama is now stuck: any action he does to create jobs and to rope consumers back into the clearance sale stores, will be met with increased political disapproval and risk of a major failure at both the mid-term and next presidential elections....

Looking at Unemployment Another Way Still Says 13% by Mid-2010 Andrew Butter November 13, 2009 In response to an article I wrote a month ago plus an update I put out on my Instablog, I got this from Jérôme Fabre: By that logic, perhaps the peak in unemployment might be somewhere around March 2010. Eyeballing that chart, “traditionally”, unemployment seems to go down in a bad recession to reach a point where 56% of the population is employed (i.e. down from about 59%). If that’s right then by the bottom there might be another eight million unemployed, which could bring...

As the fallout continues to settle from the 2009 elections, among the more overlooked results was a ballot issue in Boulder County, Colorado that would have extended an existing sales tax to fund the acquisition of additional “open space.” Obviously, this regional issue didn’t garner as much national interest as the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, or the mayoral races in New York, Atlanta and Houston, or a surprising near-win by an unknown third party challenger in a hotly-contested New York Congressional race. Nonetheless, it stands out as another compelling affirmation of the new direction America is taking...

President Barack Obama plans to announce in next year's State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay other new domestic spending beyond jobs programs, according to top aides involved in the planning. * * * On the practical side, Obama has spent more money on new programs in nine months than Bill Clinton did in eight years, pushing the annual deficit to $1.4 trillion. This leaves little room for big spending initiatives. On the political side, Obama can help moderate Democrats avoid some tough votes in...

Forget 11,000, Dow Heading For 6000 And GE Still a Short, Charles Ortel Says Posted Nov 12, 2009 02:38pm EST Aaron Task in Investing Coming off its highs of 2009, the Dow is heading for its first down day of November, which is pretty much a non-event and arguably overdue. But there's plenty more down days ahead for the Dow, and big ones, according to Charles Ortel, managing partner of Newport Value Partners. When this current "hope-based" rally ends, Ortel believes the Dow will fall into the 5000-6000 range, based on the following: * Economic fundamentals: In addition to huge...

ATLANTA – Cigarette smoking rose slightly for the first time in almost 15 years, dashing health officials' hopes that the U.S. smoking rate had moved permanently below 20 percent. A little under 21 percent of U.S. adults said they smoked, according to a 2008 national survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's up slightly from the year before, when just 19.8 percent said they were smokers. It also is the first increase in adult smoking since 1994, experts noted. ~snip Between 1997 and 2004, the average retail price of a pack of cigarettes — adjusted for...

Forget the stock market. Sure, the Dow has made a stunning improvement since January 20. But that’s not the place to put your money. Unemployment is outpacing Wall Street just a bit. Joblessness went from 7.6 percent when Obama took office to 10.2 -- whopping a 34 percent increase. If you could invest in job loss, you’d be a big winner under the current president. Clearly the people without jobs might not appreciate that philosophy. Who could blame them? For all that the media maligned the Bush administration over the economy, unemployment was better the entire time we had George...

According to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement, the US economy continues melting away as receipts are nowhere near to funding outlays, meaning more and more debt has to be used (and more and more interest expense has to be paid as a result). The deficit last month of $176 billion was $20 billion worse than a year ago, and is the single worst October reading in US history. The number was a function of $312 billion in outlays and just $135 billion in receipts, an 18% decline YoY, and also the weakest reading for the month of October since 2002....

Obama said the White House forum will gather CEOs, small business owners, economists, financial experts and representatives from labor unions and nonprofit groups "to talk about how we can work together to create jobs and get this economy moving again." "We all know that there are limits to what government can and should do, even during such difficult times. But we have an obligation to consider every additional, responsible step that we can take to encourage and accelerate job creation in this country," he said.

The economy is growing but the crisis is not over, as unemployment is likely to continue rising for the next 10 to 11 months in developed countries and in some of the developing ones, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the IMF, told CNBC Thursday. "I think that recovery is coming back, even so the crisis is not over," Strauss-Kahn told "Worldwide Exchange." "You have to keep in mind that there is always a long delay between growth resuming on one hand and a peak in unemployment on the other hand," he added. "It's difficult to say that the crisis is...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The same economic pressures that pushed California to the brink of insolvency are wreaking havoc on other states, a new report has found. And how state officials deal with their fiscal problems could reverberate across the United States, according to the Pew Center on the States' analysis released Wednesday. The 10 most troubled states are: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. The list is based on several factors, including the loss of state revenue, size of budget gaps, unemployment and foreclosure rates, poor money management practices, and state laws...

Liberals are fond of calling Republicans “the stupid party.” That might need revision. It appears to me that Democrats have checkmated themselves. Here is the logic: If Obamacare makes it through the Senate, American small businesses will continue to shrink their payrolls to avoid the awful choice of paying higher health care insurance premiums or the 8% added payroll tax. Unemployment is sure to rise. The Dems will face the November 2010 elections with 12% unemployment ... closer to Depression levels of 20% by the so-called broader measures. If Obamacare fails to pass, the left-wing base will be so demoralized...