Free Republic

If discount every-day necessities can’t tempt shoppers into stores, it’s a clear signal that consumers feel stifled by a tough economy at home and overseas. That’s the picture provided this morning by Wal-Mart’s latest quarterly report. The world’s largest retailer cut its annual profit and revenue outlook and reported second-quarter figures that missed expectations. Wal-Mart, operating 10,800 stores across 27 countries, is seen as an economic bellwether because it’s a go-to spot for so many households, where they shop for groceries, home supplies and gasoline. Nonexistent wage gains and a sluggish recovery are hampering spending in America and Europe, while...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Gallup. Now, the headline to this story: "Obama's Economic Approval Slips to 35%." That's not the way to look at this, because they have a chart here. Let me read to you the lead from the story. "Despite President Barack Obama's renewed focus on the nation's economy this summer, he scores worse with Americans on the economy than he did in June. His approval rating on the issue, now 35%, is down seven percentage points, and his ratings on taxes and the federal budget deficit are each down five points. During the same period, his overall approval...

Walmart (WMT) reported earnings of $1.24 a share this morning on revenues of $116.2 billion. Analysts had been expecting $1.25 on $118.5 billion. Sales in stores open more than a year declined 0.3%. Walmart also guided lower for the full year citing a "challenging sales and operating environment." The stock is off sharply and at risk of going negative for the last 52 weeks. Those are the numbers, but not the whole story. Walmart is the thermometer of the American economy. Disregard the government data. Jobs and GDP and all the rest are at best inaccurate measures of the economy...

Cisco's chief executive John Chambers said that "the economic recovery is slower and more inconsistent". The cuts come as the company looks to reduce costs as it sees demand for its networking equipment remain uncertain. Cisco also predicted that its revenues in the current quarter would be at the lower end of analysts' forecasts. Its shares fell more than 9% in after-hours trading. ... Mr Chambers said the job cuts were due to weaker sales in Japan, China and Europe, which had weighed on revenue growth. "The environment in terms of our business is improving slightly but nowhere near the...

The percentage of Americans that are economically independent has dropped to a stunningly low level. In order to be economically independent, you have got to be able to take care of yourself without any assistance from anyone else. Unless you are independently wealthy, that means that you either have your own business or you have a full-time job. Unfortunately, as you will see below, the percentage of Americans that are self-employed is at an all-time record low and the percentage of Americans with a full-time job has declined to a level not seen in about 30 years. As a result,...

Pratt & Whitney officials said the company is cutting 400 positions company-wide, with about half of them coming from the Connecticut workforce. Officials at Pratt & Whitney said it was a tough decision to make, but was necessary to remain competitive. According to Pratt & Whitney officials, those affected will receive severance pay, outplacement help, continuation of group insurance and employee scholar program benefits and other services. The job cuts are effective immediately.

According to Nick Colas, the chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group, recent graduates under 25 years-old are in a particularly bad spot right now. "It's usually college grads that do well," Colas says in the attached video."They get the first time jobs, they're pretty cheap to employ, and generally have pretty high job satisfaction." But, he says since the recession new government data shows that this unlucky group stands out in three key ways like never before. Overqualified: 52% of recent grads are in jobs where a college degree is not required. Colas calls this the "most startling" new problem,...

Have you seen the latest economic indicators? I mean the ones not manipulated by the Obama administration or the mainstream media. Wall Street may be flying high, but on Main Street it looks more like Detroit every day. If you think Obama has solutions to turn it around, I've got a bridge to sell you...in Detroit. The biggest city to ever go bankrupt, Detroit, has been run by Democrats since 1962. That's over half a century of 100% Democrat rule, using the exact same policies as Obama. The city is now in ruins. Detroit leads the nation in illiteracy, welfare,...

Source: Thinkstock As the nation continues to recover from the recession, not only is the unemployment rate down, but the underemployment rate — an important measure of the health of the job market — has been slowly declining as well.In 2012, 14.7% of all people in the workforce either had no job, were too discouraged to go looking, or were not working as much as they wanted. Through the 12 months ending mid-2013, this figure had fallen slightly to 14.3%. But in many states, underemployment remains persistently high. These are the states where it is hardest to find full-time work.Click...

Americans are keeping their cars and trucks longer than ever, and even with new car sales increasing, the average age will continue to rise, an industry research firm says. The average age of the 247 million cars and trucks on U.S. roads hit a record of 11.4 years in January, the latest figures available from state registration data gathered by the Polk research firm. That's up from 11.2 years in 2012, and nearly two full years older than in 2007, before the start of the Great Recession, Polk said Tuesday....

The June JOLTS report, the job openings measure, was expected to print at 3,895,000. It printed at 3,936,000 after a revised print in May of 3,907,000. We are back to the recession job openings level of 2008, but going up instead of down. jolts0806213 That is the highest level in 5 years! Now for the bad news. Bill Gross at PIMCO thinks that the JOLTS print does not equate to 200,000 jobs. More like 125,000. grossjobstweet From Zero Hedge, we get this charming chart. JOLTS June 3 If we look at The House Ways and Means study on job creation...

A White House spokesman called July’s 7.4 percent unemployment rate proof that “the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression.” He said it with a straight face. The data tell another story: America remains mired in the Great Obama Depression. The unemployment rate that the administration trumpets is a liar’s number. The formula for the unemployment figure that is released every month is rigged to look favorable to the administration in power. The true numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show a far different picture. They show an America that is in...

A (New) Lost Generation: As the media focus on a slight drop in unemployment, an ugly trend gets ignored: the declining participation of young Americans in the job market. We'll pay for this for decades to come. We keep hearing the job market is "improving" or even "solid," with 162,000 new positions created in July and unemployment falling to 7.4%, the lowest since 2008. But one group is sitting it out. And it's the one that most enthusiastically embraced Barack Obama in both of his presidential elections: America's young. Their unemployment rate is a shocking 16.1%. Increasingly, those ages 18...

In 2012, 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31—the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. This is the highest share in at least four decades and represents a slow but steady increase over the 32% of their same-aged counterparts who were living at home prior to the Great Recession in 2007 and the 34% doing so when it officially ended in 2009. A record total of 21.6 million Millennials lived in their parents’ home in 2012, up from 18.5 million of their...

During his one-hour, six-minute snoozer of a speech supposedly about the economy in Galesburg, Illinois, on Wednesday, President Barack Obama denounced Washington’s “endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals.” “Phony”? The rest of the president’s speech was so utterly devoid of new ideas that even ordinarily reliable apparatchik Chuck Todd at MSNBC couldn’t handle it, aptly observing of Obama and his administration: “They have nothing new to say.” Obama, whose flunkies presented his speech as yet another “pivot” back to jobs and the economy, didn’t even identify employment growth as his top priority. Instead, he said that...

President Obama did his best to shift his administration's focus to the economy today during a speech at Illinois' Knox College by blaming the anemic economy on Republicans and "phony scandals."  As predicted, Obama gave America the same speech he's been giving for five years, saying the country needs more infrastructure spending due to crumbling roads and bridges, that we must fight poverty, that CEOs are making too much money while the poor suffer etc. He even went so far as to tout "saving the auto industry" one week after Detroit filed for bankruptcy.  "Today, five years after the start...

House Speaker John Boehner took a preemptive swing at President Barack Obama’s economic speech on Wednesday, jabbing the address as “a hollow shell” and “an Easter Egg with no candy in it.” In a brief speech on the House floor Boehner – like many other fellow Hill Republicans – attempted to get out front of Obama’s highly anticipated remarks at Knox College in Illinois. “The president himself said [the speech] isn’t going to change any minds,” Boehner said. “All right, well. So exactly what will change? What’s the point? What’s it going to accomplish? You probably got the answer: Nothing.”

United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) cut its full-year earnings forecast and said second-quarter profit was below expectations, citing a slowing U.S. economy. The stock dropped 4.3 percent in early trading.

While listening to President Obama’s speech this past week on yet more climate change regulations, I recalled Yogi Berra”s classic remark, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Who else but this president could conclude that even more EPA regulations will do anything but harm economic growth? Rather than work with Congress to find bipartisan compromise on the critical issues, the president prefers to shove another big-government, Washington centric program down our throats. Worse, the policies he is putting in place through new, onerous regulations will cause more harm than good to the average American. There is an increasingly ideological stubbornness...

The number of Americans applying for first-time unemployment benefits rose sharply last week to 360,000, an increase of 16,000 and much higher than the number analysts were expecting, the U.S. Labor Department said Thursday. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S expected, on average, claims for the seven days between June 30 and July 6 to fall to 340,000 below the previous week's revised figure of 344,000. By comparison, there were 363,000 first-time claims filed during the comparable week last year (seasonally adjusted). Although claims spiked, Labor Department officials and economists caution that one should not read too much into any...