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Sales growth during the fourth quarter is shaping up to be the weakest since 2008, according to predictions from Morgan Stanley. Same-store sales, a key metric that measures sales at store locations open at least a year, are expected to grow a mere 1.6% from a year ago during the fourth quarter, Morgan Stanley estimates. Last year's holiday sales were up 3.5% from the fourth quarter of 2011. The 1.6% figure excludes sales at troubled J.C. Penney (JCP, Fortune 500). That's because J.C. Penney is expected to offer deep discounts to try and get back on track after a disastrous...

One in two adults has received financial support from their parents, a new study shows.A report by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) has found that the "bank of mum and dad" is an essential source of welfare for people, particularly those on low incomes. Of 2,565 people of all ages polled, 55% (1,400) said they had received money, of whom almost half that number (52% or 628) earn less than £20,000. Almost one in four low earners (23%) said that without the money they would not have been able to survive. The 25-34 age group across all income levels had...

Cessna CEO Scott Ernest told aviation media at NBAA 2013 in Las Vegas the company's made-in-China S-LSA Skycatcher has "no future" but he didn't have much to say about it other than that.

This week we explore sales at casual restaurants, what people think of Congress, where business people really eat and more. Malcolm Knapp reported that September sales were down 1.9 percent over sales of last year for the 50-plus casual restaurant chains that participate in the Knapp-Track program. Same-store guest counts dropped 3.6 percent while check averages were up 1.7 percent on a year-to-year basis. This was the fourth consecutive month that companies included in the Knapp-Track report posted negative same-store sales. In a bit of better news, family dining and upscale steak houses Malcolm Knapp also tracks are trending positive...

President Barack Obama is demanding a $1.1 trillion "ransom"--or else he will not allow the debt ceiling to be raised. That's the effective offer on the table from the president and Senate Democrats. They have now refused to pass a "clean" short-term debt ceiling hike unless Republicans agree to reverse the "sequester" spending cuts in the 2011 Budget Control Act that were enacted--at Obama's suggestion--to end the last debt ceiling crisis. The president, who has invited congressional leaders to conduct talks at the White House Monday afternoon, still continues to insist that he "will not pay a ransom for Congress...

It’s become common over the past year or two to note how well Wall Street is doing while Main Street is still struggling. Sadly, that tale of two economies has resulted from a conscious choice by those at the very top levels of our nation’s financial and political elites. The choice was inadvertently highlighted in a recent USA Today column by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In that column, Pelosi describes some of the political dynamics surrounding the beginning of the bailout era five years ago. In Pelosi’s telling of the story, public opinion was never mentioned once. That’s significant...

College graduates are tending bar and driving taxis, pushing people without degrees out of those jobs.

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage said Wednesday it will cut 332 more jobs at its offices in the Twin Cities. The cuts follow a decline in mortgage refinancing activity throughout 2012 and in early 2013, Peggy Gunn, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman, said in an email Wednesday. The cuts will take place over the next 60 days. The layoffs at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage follow an announcement of 350 job cuts in the same division July 18.

A recent negative jobs report for African Americans could provide an opening for Republicans. After five years of nonstop bad news regarding black unemployment, the Obama administration was finally able to celebrate some good news last month, or so it seemed. In July African-American unemployment dipped to 12.6 percent, a small but significant change from June's 13.7 percent unemployment rate -- and substantially lower than the high of 16.5 percent that it reached in January 2010. But any celebration was likely short-lived. While the national unemployment rate decreased slightly in August, to 7.3 percent, reaching a five-year low, that same...

With the latest numbers out this week from the Bureau of Labor Statistics stating that over 90 million people are out of the work force, I would say that the White House is well on its way to fulfilling its Cloward and Piven dream. One of the main objectives to lead us down the path to a “socialist utopia” is to collapse the welfare system, cause a crisis and then have the government come in and change us into a communist republic.  Yes, I said it. Over the past five years, Barak Obama has “fundamentally transformed America” and we have...

As a former fast-food worker, I can attest to the crazy hours, poor working conditions and rotten pay. I boiled chicken — and repeatedly burned my forearms — in hot pressure cookers in high school for Colonel Sanders’s KFC (now owned by YUM Brands) until I could get a higher-paying job in a department store. The unionized retail clerk’s job wasn’t glamorous, either, but it was a big step up: I sold sporting goods, rang a register (calculating change in my head) and hand-drilled bowling balls. Although the pioneering retail chain (E.J. Korvette’s) at the time was dying a slow...

Five years of the Obama presidency have produced nothing but economic "roadblocks" that inhibit growth and job creation, Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., charged in the weekly Republican address on Saturday. He accused the Obama administration of "choking the engines of our economy," singling out the health-care reform law, the administration's energy policy and the government's excessive taxing and spending as areas of particular concern. Republicans have a better plan to "simplify the tax code" and "eliminate excessive regulations," Fitzpatrick said, touting a GOP jobs plan that would break down "the government roadblocks that are hurting our economy." "People want Congress...

WASHINGTON—The number of Americans signing contracts to buy previously owned homes fell in July for the second consecutive month, the latest sign that higher mortgage rates are starting to drag down the housing recovery. The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that its seasonally adjusted index for pending sales of existing homes fell to 109.5 in July, 1.3% lower than the June reading and a slightly steeper decline than the 1% drop forecast by economists. The July index was 6.7% higher than its level a year earlier. Because of the way pending home sales are tallied—at the signing of a...

(WASHINGTON) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week after reaching the lowest level in nearly six years. But the broader trend suggests companies are laying off fewer workers and could step up hiring in the months ahead. The Labor Department said Thursday that applications for first-time benefits rose 13,000 in the week ending Aug. 17 to a seasonally adjusted 336,000. The four-week average, which smooths week to week fluctuations, fell to 330,500. That’s the sixth straight decline and the lowest for the average since November 2007. At the depths of the recession in March 2009,...

Gallup tracks daily the percentage of U.S. adults, aged 18 and older, who are underemployed, unemployed, and employed full-time for an employer, without seasonal adjustment. Due to the lack of Arima-X 'magic' the results are specifically not comparable to the BLS data, but, as the chart below suggests, the correlation is high. What is most worrying about the latest data is the rapid rise in both unemployment and underemployment that the Gallup poll finds (to 8.9% unemployment and 17.9% underemployment. Unemployment rates have jumped notably in the last month to their highest in 13 months. Will the Fed 'allow' this...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The number of people who applied for new U.S. unemployment benefits climbed by 13,000 to 336,000 in the week ended Aug. 17 but remained near a post-recession low, according to the latest government data. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected claims to rise to 330,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Wells Fargo & Co, the largest mortgage lender in the United States, will cut 2,300 jobs in its home loan business because fewer customers are refinancing as interest rates rise, according to an internal memo reviewed by Reuters. The cuts would represent around 3.3 percent of the bank's consumer lending employees, the bank said. Although the bank does not disclose how many of its staff work in home loans specifically, Wells Fargo had over 11,000 mortgage loan officers on its payroll at the end of March. Mortgage refinancing made up more than 70 percent of U.S. home lending volume in...

Barack Obama has been running around the country taking credit for an "economic recovery", but the truth is that things have not gotten better under Obama. Compared to when he first took office, a smaller percentage of the working age population is employed, the quality of our jobs has declined substantially and the middle class has been absolutely shredded. If we are really in the middle of an "economic recovery", why is the homeownership rate the lowest that it has been in 18 years? Why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by nearly 50 percent while Obama...

Barack Obama wanted to fundamentally change America. He is. The Obamacare law is already destroying full-time jobs in America. Democrats rammed through a law that will destroy at least 2 percent of all full-time jobs in America. We are already seeing jobs disappear. Even Reuters can’t hide the truth any longer: U.S. businesses are hiring at a robust rate. The only problem is that three out of four of the nearly 1 million hires this year are part-time and many of the jobs are low-paid. Faltering economic growth at home and abroad and concern that President Barack Obama’s signature health...

The numbers reflect frustratingly slow economic growth. Employers have been adding jobs but the pace hasn’t been fast enough for the 11.5 million Americans who want a job but can’t find one. Monday’s figures also highlight the lingering fallout from the financial crisis. The unemployment rate in Nevada, a state hit hard by the housing bust, remained the highest in the nation at 9.5%. The state shed 10,200 jobs last month, the biggest loss since early 2009. ... The country’s energy boom, meanwhile, is helping keep the jobless rate well below the national average in North Dakota, at 3%, and...