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... In a desperate effort to head off inflation (which in March alone was over 3%) and protect the value of the Hryvnia, the Ukrainian central bank hiked its main interest rate from 6.5 to 9.5%. ... The central bank was forced to take such desperate measures because the currency has been in free fall, losing more than 35% of its value against the dollar this year. ... Ukraine also faces enormous problems re-paying its debts, a substantial portion of which are denominated in dollars and other foreign currencies. Although it attracted little attention at the time, when it bought...

A man who faced a $525 fine for refilling an 89-cent drink at a Veterans Affairs hospital apparently will get off with a warning. When Christopher Lewis of North Charleston, S.C., refilled his drink without paying Wednesday, a federal police officer gave him a ticket.

San Lorenzo man serves in military, works a lifetime -- "illegally."It took Lee Smith quite some time to find out that he wasn't a U.S. citizen. During which time he served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam and lived and worked in the Bay Area for nearly 44 years. Smith, 65, a retired sheet metal fabricator, discovered he wasn't a citizen upon turning 65 and trying -- and failing -- to collect his Social Security benefits, according to The Daily Review. He joined the Army in 1969 and took the oath of citizenship -- a requirement for him to be...

Washington, D.C. – Nevada Senator Harry Reid released the following statement today on Nevada’s March employment report. According to the Nevada Department of Employment, Training, and Rehabilitation, the Nevada economy added 5,100 of jobs.“Each and every month we continue to see encouraging job growth in Nevada and across the nation. Over 5,000  jobs were added to the Nevada economy in March, and this is encouraging news.  Despite the improvement, too many in the Silver State continue to suffer. But Democrats are passing solutions and we hope Republicans will join us.“The Senate recently passed a bipartisan bill to renew unemployment benefits,...

Here's why you should worry about living in a country where increasing numbers of people can live without working. Filing our tax returns last week, I deplored government having confiscated 29.7% (effective rate) of my and my wife's joint 2013 income (Federal, 21.7%; state and local, 8%). That seemed scarcely worse than medieval lords confiscating one-third of peasants' crops. Speaking of lords, both the President of the United States and the Mayor of New York (et uxores) paid 2013 income taxes at lower effective rates than mine and my wife's (20.4% for the President and a measly 8.3% for the...

The Obama administration has extended a key review period for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, Fox News has learned, potentially pushing off a decision until after the midterm elections.

A citrus disease spread by a tiny insect has devastated Florida's orange crop, which is expected to be the worst in nearly 30 years, and sent juice prices soaring on New York markets. The culprit? The gnat-sized Asian citrus psyllid, which is infecting citrus trees across the Sunshine State with huanglongbing, or citrus greening disease, which causes fruit to taste bitter and fall from trees too soon.

The Department of Health and Human Services is proposing a rule that would, if implemented, guarantee that even more Americans who like their health insurance plans cannot keep them. Fixed indemnity plans, which pay insured customers a set amount towards medical expenses and are often cost-effective relative to more comprehensive health insurance, are popular forms of coverage, and potentially becoming more popular in the wake of Obamacare. Health insurance industry representatives say that fixed indemnity plans have been attracting more interest as many Americans look for a way to mitigate against the high deductibles applicable to many insurance policies available...

COLCHESTER, Vt. (AP) -- A bunch of kids in a minivan are solving twin challenges in northern Vermont: refugees struggling to find the food of their homelands and farmers looking to offload unwanted livestock. The half dozen kids - that is, baby goats - that arrived last week at Pine Island Farm were the latest additions to the Vermont Goat Collaborative, a project that brings together new Americans hungry for goat meat with dairy goat farmers who have no need for young male animals. Some dairy farmers who otherwise would discard bucklings at birth or spend valuable time finding homes...

More than two-thirds of the states reported job gains in March, as hiring has improved for much of the country during what has been a sluggish but sustained 4 1/2-year recovery. The Labor Department said Friday that unemployment rates dropped in 21 states, rose in 17 and were unchanged in the remaining 12. Meanwhile, hiring increased in 34 states and fell in 16. The unemployment rate varies from as low as 2.6 percent in North Dakota to as much as 8.7 percent in Rhode Island. South Carolina has experienced the sharpest rate decline over 12 months to 5.5 percent from...

California's economy added 11,800 net new jobs in March, a meager showing after robust gains the month before, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Although the Golden State gained some jobs, the unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 8.1% from 8% a month earlier, according to the data.

SUMMARY POINTS ----- ... (5) The implementation of economic adjustment programs will improve growth prospects over the medium term, but will have short term costs. Following zero growth in 2013, real GDP is forecast to decline by about 4% yoy in 2014 (excluding Crimea, which represents 3% of GDP) due to the fiscal austerity measures that will affect domestic demand, Russia’s trade restrictions, and higher imported energy prices. (6) The new government has already announced strong fiscal austerity measures to reduce Ukraine’s public sector fiscal deficits, which had widened to about 6-7% of GDP in 2013. The fiscal consolidation plan...

Pensioners will be given estimates of how long they have left to live to help them manage their savings, a minister has disclosed. Steve Webb said that the Government wants to provide pensioners with a rough life expectancy when they reach retirement to allow them to make better financial decisions. Experts will take into account factors including gender, where a pensioner lives or whether they smoke, the pensions minister said. Life expectancy should be part of “guidance” given to help people decide how much to save. In last month’s Budget, George Osborne announced the scrapping of rules that force most...

So many businesses are just someone’s dream—to make an honest living, to serve the community something it’s missing, to use talents to their greatest potential. Every roadblock the government erects makes those dreams slightly less possible. And, those roadblocks aren’t tripping up the lavishly rich. In this case, an unnecessary regulation in Mississippi was keeping hundreds of working- and middle-class black women from making a living doing something their community wanted to pay them for— hairbraiding. One woman fought for seven years to change that. The result is pretty much the whole reason I believe what I believe.I’ve known this...

One for the hypocrisy hall of fame: Media Matters for America is apparently resisting an effort by Service Employees International Union Local 500 to unionize its staff.Last week, the union filed a representation petition with the National Labor Relations Board, indicating that the nonprofit media watchdog organization rejected an effort by the union to organize MMFA’s staff through a Card Check election.A filing with the NLRB does not necessarily mean that the union and management are in direct confrontation. For example, although Volkswagen tacitly backed the United Auto Workers’ recent effort to organize its Chattanooga, Tenn., plant, the company still...

As the labor movement tells the story, two months ago, the silly, ungrateful Volkswagen factory workers in Tennessee foolishly rejected the generous invitation of the company and the United Auto Workers to welcome the Detroit-killing union with open arms. In an election supervised by the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the workers in VW's Chattanooga plant rejected UAW representation by a vote of 712 to 626. Amazingly, the UAW and the automaker both refuse to take the workers' "no" for an answer. The two sides are acting in unison to overturn the democratically expressed will of the workers. Nullifying...

Remember President Obama's vow that, if re-elected, he'd pursue "balanced" deficit reduction? Either he forgot, or he hopes voters have, because a new report shows his latest budget is entirely unbalanced. When Obama released his budget this March, he said it included "smart spending cuts" and closed "tax loopholes" that benefit only "the wealthiest Americans." Obama added that his budget would put "our debt on a downward path as a share of our total economy, which independent experts have set as a critical target for fiscal responsibility." As with just about everything Obama says, none of these claims turns out...

The hypocrisy could not be more evident as reports indicate Media Matters for America is resisting efforts by Service Employees International Union Local 500 to unionize its employees. Heck, next thing you know, they'll be asking them for a higher minimum wage. "...Last week, the union filed a representation petition with the National Labor Relations Board, indicating that the nonprofit media watchdog organization rejected an effort by the union to organize MMFA's staff through a Card Check election..."

Well I can say this much for Janet Yellen, she sure learned how to jawbone the market, a skill that was notably lacking in her predecessor Ben Bernancke. On Wednesday the market gapped open, only to follow a recent pattern of the gap gains eroding. But then Janet stepped in. In a speech to the Economic club of New York, Yellen acknowledged that while the economy has made some strides towards recovery the jobs market is at least, if not more than, two years away from healing. That means that stock market types, whatever else may be happening on...

Having a high school diploma isn’t good enough to make it anymore, first lady Michelle Obama warned high school and college students at Howard University. “No longer is high school the bar. That is not enough in today’s globalizing economy. You have got to go to college, or get some kind of professional training beyond college,” she said Thursday. It was the first of what is likely to be many more speeches on education as the first family readies for retirement and takes up helping younger Americans, especially blacks get a leg up. “One of the things that Barack and...

The man who was almost president graced Honolulu with his presence Tuesday and walked us through a "seminar of sustainability." By turns a university professor, a wry observer, a recovering politician, a joke teller and a Southern preacher, Al Gore fired up an audience of thousands at the Stan Sheriff Center to believe that global warming can be stopped. But it's possible only if each of us does our part. "Ultimately, we are going to win this thing," he said, one of many statements met with hearty applause. He also managed to repeatedly gush over fellow Democrats Neil Abercrombie and...

Senator Graham aggressively fought President Obama's union appointees at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) when they filed a frivolous complaint against Boeing's decision to build a production facility in South Carolina. The labor unions were so upset about Lindsey's efforts they retaliated by filing a baseless ethics charge. Lindsey's response: "I will not be intimidated." He refused to back down, the ethics charge was dismissed, and Boeing prevailed - saving thousands of South Carolina jobs. Lindsey has introduced legislation to restrict the NLRB's authority and prohibit the NLRB from having a say in where American companies can do business....

Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI) says her constituents are "frustrated and embarrassed" by Hawaii's failed Obamacare exchange, which cost taxpayers $204 million and signed up only 8,000 people. On Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced it will launch an investigation into Hawaii's busted Obamacare program. "This is not a partisan issue, this is an economic issue," said state Sen. Sam Slom. Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie previously predicted "hundreds of thousand of people" would sign up for Obamacare in the President's home state. On Thursday, President Barack Obama tried to rally Democrats to support his unpopular Obamacare program. "I think Democrats...

The Internal Revenue Service audits fewer than 1 percent of large business partnerships, according to a government report released Tuesday. That means some of Wall Street’s largest hedge funds and private equity firms are largely escaping close scrutiny by the IRS, said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. The Government Accountability Office says the number of large businesses organized as partnerships has more than tripled since 2002, yet hardly any get audited. In 2012, only 0.8 percent were subjected to field exams in which agents do a thorough review of books and records. …

The 60 Plus Association today released TV and radio advertisements in seven states targeting Senate Banking Committee Members who are sponsoring recently introduced legislation that will allow the government to take over the mortgage industry in an action 'disturbingly similar' to Obamacare. 60 Plus targeted three Democrat and four Republican U.S. Senators supporting this government take-over, including Joe Manchin (D-WV), Mark Warner (D-VA), Kay Hagan (D-NC), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Dean Heller (R-NV), Mark Kirk (R-IL), and Jerry Moran (R-KS).

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) - A security breach at Michaels Stores lasted eight months and affected about 3 million customers, the company said Thursday. The news comes three months after the nation's largest crafts chain told customers it learned of a possible hack. It's been investigating since then. Some customers' credit and debit card numbers as well as expiration dates were compromised, but the company said there is no evidence that information such as a customers' names or PINs were stolen.

Cramer discusses companies involved in Permian basin oil output whose numbers came in today at 2.75 million barrels a day

Is This Oil Field the Next Bakken? By Robert Baillieul - April 17, 2014 Over the past few years a handful of energy companies have been silently buying massive tracts of land in a little known area of Louisiana. Early estimates suggest that this oil rich region could contain 7 billion barrels of recoverable oil… putting it on par with other prolific shale fields like the North Dakota Bakken and the Texas Eagle Ford. And their bets are starting to pay off. Many of the area’s big oil producers have reported spectacular numbers from their drilling operations. And this could...

EL Pais reports Spanish Public Debt Threatens to Exceed 100% of GDP in 2014 Via translation General government debt accumulated through February was 987.945 billion euros, an amount that represents 96.5% of gross domestic product (GDP). This represents a new record in the amount of money the state, communities, and the municipalities have to return to financial institutions and investment funds. In February alone, the government liabilities increased by 8.130 billion, up 8% from the previous month. The debt problem is not just that you have to pay, but the difficulty to stop the frenzied pace to growing-has risen from...

I heard a rumor that some sensitive folks on the religious right are concerned about the possibility of the GOP 2016 convention being held in my beloved hometown, that den of iniquity known as Las Vegas. I have to admit, I’m puzzled. Sure, there’s sin in Vegas, but last time I checked, there was sin in Dallas, Cleveland and even (gasp) River City. Believe it or not, there are hundreds of churches and hundreds of thousands of Christians in Vegas. We can and DO live the same lives people live anywhere. We work, go to school and church, take...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says President Barack Obama's budget request would mean significantly larger budget deficits than the White House claims. CBO says the budget plan proposed last month by Obama would produce deficits of $6.6 trillion over the next 10 years — $1.6 trillion more than the White House estimates. The main reason is that the White House has a rosier estimate of the economy's performance over the decade than CBO. That means the administration predicts higher tax revenues. The president's budget is just a proposal; it has gained little...

Let’s do a thought experiment. If Charles or David Koch got invited onto NBC’s Today show to talk about their efforts to advance their political agenda, would either or both get partnered with Savannah Guthrie for a softball interview? Would their interview include suggestions that one of them should run for President? Kyle Drennen at Newsbusters notes that two weeks prior to Michael Bloomberg’s appearance on Today, the network took a much different approach to money in politics: (VIDEO-AT-LINK)The clip just provides the highlights. Newsbusters has the whole transcript up, but let me just note the tough questions asked by...

I was listening to a financial guru/talking head of one of the local radio money shows recently. He was pontificating about the opportunities that were being presented in the stock market if only you knew where to look. What caught my attention, however, was his pronouncement about the problem with recent IPO offerings, most notably Ally (formerly the bankrupt GMAC). He kept warning people away from this stock which put him in my camp. However, when a caller asked him if they should short the stock he immediately went to my “Are you kidding me?” list. It wasn’t whether...

As a supporter of genuine capitalism, which means the right of contract and the absence of coercion, I don’t think there should be any policies that help or hinder unions. The government should simply be a neutral referee that enforces contracts and upholds the rule of law. Similarly, I also don’t have any philosophical objection to employers and employees agreeing to “defined benefit” pension plans, which basically promise workers a pre-determined amount of money after they retire based on factors such as average pay and years in the workforce. After all, my money and property aren’t involved, so it’s not...

On the first part of the journey I was looking at all the life There were plants and birds and rocks and things There was sand and hills and rings The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz And the sky with no clouds The heat was hot and the ground was dry But the air was full of sound.-America The year 1985 saw the beginning of a new dawn in technology, which would see the exploitation and evolution of a defense department project, develop into the worldwide web - the Internet. Building out the pipes and...

Media Matters for America is apparently resisting an effort by Service Employees International Union Local 500 to unionize its staff. Last week, the union filed a representation petition with the National Labor Relations Board, indicating that the nonprofit media watchdog organization rejected an effort by the union to organize MMFA’s staff through a Card Check election. […] MMFA has regularly presented itself as a supporter of organized labor. It has argued that “economists point to declining union participation as one cause of the growing economic rift in America” and claimed it was a fact that “unions increase productivity [and] do...

Food prices at the grocery store are up, following an increase in production costs and wholesale prices. In March, retail food prices rose 0.4% from the preceding month, matching February’s increase. These marked the largest monthly gains in food prices since September 2011, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Food prices are often volatile and are affected by a number of factors. While certain factors reflect human decision — such as the changing tastes of consumers and farmers’ planting choices — others are forces over which farmers have very little control. Issues such as weather conditions and...

The man who oversaw an energy crisis has come out strongly against the Keystone XL pipeline. In a letter with other Nobel laureates, former President Jimmy Carter urged President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to reject the pipeline, claiming that allowing the project to move forward would worsen climate change.

The rich are not the problem, the greedy are not the problem, the crooked are not the problem - the problem is the system that brings them about. If the system is ours, the system means by the people, of the people, for the people, then now it is time to take it back. Now it is time to demand that it would be changed.

Net oil imports to the United States could plummet to zero by 2037 because of booming production in South Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale and North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, a branch of the Energy Department projected in a new report.

Journalism, which was ranked as the worst job in America last year, inched up a notch to finish at number 199, just ahead of lumberjack on CareerCast’s latest list of the top 200 best and worst jobs in the U.S. for 2014. By “worst jobs,” they are referring to employment opportunities. This is a reversal of last year when lumberjack came in at 199, after finishing at number 200 in 2012. Neither job has a very bright future, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimating that logging positions will drop by 9% by 2022, and reporters by 13%. Logging has...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A popular Philadelphia chocolate maker and candy store has been shuttered by the city days before Easter. WPVI-TV (http://bit.ly/1l42Hhe) said Wednesday the Department of Revenue revoked the business license of the Blasius Chocolate Factory in the city's Kensington neighborhood. The small company has been hand-making chocolates since the 1920s. It's noted for its buttercreams and giant Easter eggs. City officials say the business was delinquent in paying taxes. The city says it sent numerous warnings. Owner Phillip Kerwick says he tried to negotiate his $12,000 tax bill but city officials didn't appear for the court hearing. He...

President Obama and the Democrats clearly have had a case of the winter blues that could well carry over into the fall elections. Republican David Jolly’s upset win in a Florida special election in a district that President Obama had carried twice is a warning sign that it will be extremely difficult for Democrats to re-take the House of Representatives – and Democratic control of the US Senate is now in even more jeopardy. Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus is now gleefully predicting a GOP tsunami that will wash over the entire country, Red, Purple and Blue states alike....

[1]Back in 1962, Robert Gover published a novel called the One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding [2] whose premise Amazon describes this way: “A college sophomore spends a weekend with a pretty 14-year-old black prostitute under the manly misapprehension that she has invited him because she finds him irresistible.�I remember reading it as an undergraduate and finding it mildly amusing. Of course, inflation being what it is, it’s hard to write a book about a piddling hundred dollar misunderstanding anymore. But somehow the novel came to mind today when reading one of my favorite websites — The College Fix [3]. The...

Get your popcorn… The SEIU is petitioning the National Labor Relations Board to unionize the employees the employees at Media Matters. In response, Media Matters has hired a high priced law firm to represent the company. And, here we thought they supported unions? Weird, huh?

Paul Krugman is a distinguished economist, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University, a NY Times columnist, and a Nobel Laureate. As a frequent commentator on cable news shows, he speaks passionately about income inequality and politics. From his book, The Conscience of a Liberal, he notes that, “Impersonal forces such as technological change and globalization caused America’s income distribution to become increasingly unequal, with an elite minority pulling away from the rest of the population.�How ironic that Dr. Krugman will provide a first hand as a member of this “elite minority� benefiting from income inequality. The City...

America’s foreclosure crisis has been over for more than a year, if it ever really existed. But the government/activist/media blob is still trying to convince the public that there is an epidemic of bad borrowers who need public relief. At Harvard Law School, a student group called Project No One Leaves recently concluded its fourth annual conference aimed at creating what one attendee called “a multi-faceted, national housing justice alliance.” Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett recently gave $200,000 to a community organization called ACTS Housing to fight the foreclosure crisis by buying up bank-owned properties — even as the number...

Anyone wondering why the U.S. economy can't seem to grow at its usual pace should examine one product category where production is booming: federal regulation. Washington set a new record in 2013 by issuing final rules consuming 26,417 pages in the Federal Register. While plenty of government employees deserve credit for this milestone, leadership matters. And by this measure President Obama has never been surpassed in the Oval Office. The latest rule-making tally comes from the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Wayne Crews, who on April 29 will publish his annual review of federal regulation in "Ten Thousand Commandments." This is important...

We have all been watching a long mystery with no ending: What the Federal Reserve governors are trying to do, how they intend to do it and why they imagine their efforts will work. The key questions boil down to two: (1) What target should the Fed aim at, and (2) what policy instruments should it use to hit that target? The Fed's only explicit target — an unemployment rate of 6.5% — was shrewdly discarded as "outdated" as that target grew near. Actually, the idea of focusing on unemployment is outdated, since it presumes that high unemployment guarantees low...

We previously noted that both beef and pork (courtesy of the affectionately named Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus) prices have been reaching new all time highs on an almost daily basis. It is time to update the chart. Below we show what a world in which the Fed is constantly lamenting the lack of inflation looks like for beef prices...