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Billionaires are holding mountains of cash, offering the latest sign that the ultra-wealthy are nervous about putting more money into today's markets. According to the new Billionaire Census from Wealth-X and UBS, the world's billionaires are holding an average of $600 million in cash each—greater than the gross domestic product of Dominica. That marks a jump of $60 million from a year ago and translates into billionaires' holding an average of 19 percent of their net worth in cash. "This increased liquidity signals that many billionaires are keeping their money on the sidelines and waiting for the optimal moment to...

Shockingly enough the numbers are bad and performing below the usual optimistic expectations. Just like every other time.I’ll just give you the headlines for a taste of how frantically the media is spinning the bad news. A Disappointing Jobs Report May Mask Economy’s Strength – NPRJobs Report: Not Good, but Not Terrible Either – New York TimesDon’t freak out about bad jobs report – Washington PostWhy weak August jobs report probably a fluke – MarketWatchThe Awful New Jobs Report Has One Silver Lining – New Republic It’s a fluke! There’s a silver lining! The bad news is really good news!...

One of the great mysteries of the post-financial crisis world is why the U.S. has lacked inflation despite all the money being pumped into the economy. The St. Louis Federal Reserve thinks it has the answer: A paper the central bank branch published this week blames the low level of money movement in large part on consumers and their "willingness to hoard money."  The paper also cites the Fed's own policies as a reason for consumers' unwillingness to spend. Though American consumers might dispute the notion that inflation has been low, the indicators the Fed follows show it to be running well...

US News and World Report Chairman and Editor-in-Chief and publisher of The New York Daily News, Mort Zuckerman argued that President Obama “has lost the confidence of the business community” on Friday’s broadcast of “The McLaughlin Group.” “[The economy] has...grown by about 2%, 2.1%, for the last five years, which is the lowest rate of growth coming out of a recession we have had ever, since the Great Depression. And what’s more, that only took place, not because of the fact that the economic environment was that good, it's because we have a hugely stimulating monetary policy and fiscal policy....

Breakdown by Category 82,679,000 Medicaid51,471,000 Food Stamps22,526,000 Women, Infants and Children Program20,355,000 Supplemental Security Income13,267,000 Public Housing or Housing Subsidies 5,442,000 Temporary Assistance to Needy Families 4,517,000 Other Forms of Federal Cash Assistance Population Estimates (2013 estimates) California 38,332,521Texas 26,448,193New York 19,651,127Florida 19,552,860 Those four states have a population of 103,984,701. Those on welfare nearly totals that amount. Full Time Employment BLS figures show 115.735 million "usually" working full time at the end of 2012. There are currently 118.489 million "usually" working full time. Obamacare Welfare Expansion Inquiring minds may be asking "How did Obamacare effect welfare numbers?" Let's take...

Boca Raton-based Office Depot said Tuesday it would close 165 stores during 2014 — up from the 150 estimated earlier this year — but stuck with a total count of 400 store closures through 2016, the company said. The office-supply retailer, which merged with OfficeMax last year in a $1.2 billion transaction, said it has completed its analysis of which stores will be closed across the U.S. and Canada. Locally, the retailer has closed two OfficeMax stores, in Coral Springs and Deerfield Beach. The company also announced on a conference call following its second-quarter earnings announcement that it has settled...

More than a thousand locals lined up Friday morning for several hours under the scorching sun and heat in Miami for a box full of food. The event located at the Central Shopping Plaza at 3825 NW 7th Street started at 9:00 a.m.

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog, The 30 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a staggering pace. Yes, the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights this year and there are a few isolated areas of the country that are doing rather well for the moment. But overall, the long-term trends that...

Steven Speilberg directed Jurassic Park 21 years ago. Barack Obama is now directing Juristic Park. Hold onto your popcorn. T. Rex is back. The Tyrannosaurus Rex is one of the most dangerous land carnivores in world history. In the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, a genetically engineered T. Rex viciously attacks the park’s tourists after a duplicitous park employee deactivates the park’s electric fences. Fast forward to 2014. A clone of T. Rex is prowling America for red meat. This time, “T. Rex” particularly craves the blood of Americans who are entrepreneurs. Juristic Park is a great metaphor for the state...

More than a third of all respondents said they were worse off financially than five years ago. Another third said that they were doing about the same. Only 10% of respondents felt they were doing much better than they had been in 2008, highlighting the dual nature of the recovery. Twenty percent more said they were somewhat better off. Most households surveyed didn’t complain much about their finances. Sixty percent said they were either “doing okay” or “living comfortably” when asked how they were managing financially. Meanwhile, many respondents said credit was hard to come by. Nearly one-third of those...

Though I typically resist, my wife often tries to get me to put down the laptop and enjoy the Zen of gardening with her. So you can imagine her surprise when she returned from a trip to find a beautiful clump of nonwild flowers planted in her garden. She loved the welcome-home gift and was ready to bestow upon me many valuable (and increasingly elusive) good-husband points. The thing is, I have no idea how those flowers got there. And like George Washington, I could not tell a lie. But had I in fact been an actual president, I probably...

Worth a watch, especially on this particular network even though Morning Joe offers much more reality than most of the rest of MSNBC’s schedule. Today’s reminder of reality comes from Wall Street Journal’s White House correspondent Carol Lee, who points out that the sunny rhetoric from Barack Obama and his administration has a “total disconnect” to the reality for most Americans, as seen in the latest NBC/WSJ poll. Time for another pivot? CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO “The President was campaigning, raising money in California a few weeks ago,” Lee notes, “and he was saying, ‘People feel better than...

There are many ways to look at the United States government debt, obligations, and assets. Liabilities include Treasury debt held by the public or more broadly total Treasury debt outstanding. ThereÂ’s unfunded liabilities like Medicare and Social Security. And then the assets of all the real estate, all the equities, all the bonds, all the depositsÂ…all at todayÂ’s valuations. But letÂ’s cut straight to the bottom line and add it all upÂ…$89.5 trillion in liabilities and $82 trillion in assets. There. ItÂ’s not a secret anymoreÂ…and although these are all government numbers, for some strange reason the government never adds...

A study released by the Urban Institute on Tuesday found that more than 35 percent of Americans have unpaid bills and debt that has been reported to collection agencies.The debts surveyed include everything from gym memberships to auto loans. The study, which looked at records from September 2013, found that 35.1 percent of people with credit records had been reported to collection agencies. The average debt was $5,178.The Associated Press notes that while America has decreased its credit card debt, the percentage of Americans in collections has remained roughly the same. In 2004, a Federal Reserve study found that 36.5...

NORRISTOWN, Pa. (CBS) — A major pharmaceutical company is planning another round of layoffs that again will hit Montgomery County hard. On the heels of more than 650 job cuts at its West Point manufacturing and research plant in late 2013 and earlier this year, Merck plans to let go another 600 employees by the end of August. The company has already filed notices with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor which says the jobs are being cut in North Wales and Lansdale. County Commissioner Josh Shapiro is disappointed with the news, but says they’re working to help those affected.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sales of new U.S. homes plunged in June, a sign that real estate continues to be a weak spot in the economy. New home sales fell 8.1 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 406,000, the Commerce Department said Thursday. The report also revised down the May sales rate to 442,000 from 504,000. (snip)

Piketon , Ohio - Roughly 1400 people woke up to bad news Thursday morning. It's called a warn notice, and it means their livelihood is on the line. "These are the higher paying jobs in the area," Herman Potter said. But those jobs are now in jeopardy. Herman Potter is president of the Steel Workers Union in Piketon, Ohio. His employer, Fluor B&W issued a warn notice, stating layoffs are possible. Fluor B&W was hired by the Department of Energy to clean the former Portsmouth gaseous diffusion plant and re-industrialize the property three years ago. The way things stand now,...

1853, 1906, 1929, 1969, 1999 Pass the question around your office. Call your money manager and ask him or her, too. Post it on your office notice board. Give up? Those were the peaks of the five massive, generational stock-market bubbles in U.S. history. Investors who bought into stocks around those peaks ended up earning terrible returns over the subsequent 30 years. Forget “stocks for the long run.” They ended up with “stocks for a long face.” The bigger the bubble, the worse returns. And, according to a new research report, we are back there again. U.S. stocks are now...

Today’s jobs report was a very good one: 288,000 new jobs were created in June, and the unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent. So will Barack Obama get the credit? Probably not. First of all, we shouldn’t get too excited; there are still a lot of people looking for work, there are a lot who have gotten discouraged and dropped out of the labor force, and there are a lot working part time when they’d rather have full-time jobs.

This Independence Day weekend, drivers won't see any relief from high gas prices. Although prices retreated by a fraction of a cent at the beginning of the week, AAA predicts holiday travelers will pay the most at the pump since 2008. In its monthly gas price report released June 30, AAA said, "With Independence Day only a few days away, today's national average price of gas is $3.68 per gallon. This average is considerably more expensive than recent years for the holiday. The national average on July 4 in previous years was: $3.48 (2013); $3.34 (2012); $3.57 (2011); $2.74 (2010);...