Free Republic

That America created only 88,000 jobs in March, less than half the number anticipated, was jolting news, indicating the recovery that the White House has boasted about may not be at hand. But in that March jobs report, there was more disturbing news. While unemployment fell to 7.6 percent, the reason it fell is alarming. Half a million U.S. workers (495,000) disappeared from the labor force. They dropped out. They are no longer even looking for a job. Worse, this appears to be an inexorable trend. The participation rate of eligible workers in the United States has fallen to 63.3...

December 6 , 2012 Tireman Auto Service Centers Leaving Woodville Mall Ohio Location The Lost Rivers Medical Center in Arco is eliminating its long-term care center - up to 30 Jobs Lost Skelly and the Bean Capital Hill Seattle WA - Closing, Hopefully Opening New Location Blockbuster Crestwood Location in AL? Family Dollar in Fayetteville NC JCIM at the National Turnpike location KY? British supermarket chain Tesco is considering closing down its 200 American Fresh & Easy grocery stores The Tacoma Chevy’s Restaurant WA The Philips Lighting plant in Bath NY to Close by End of 2013 - 280 Jobs...

Wealth implosion: It's not just housing By Tami Luhby @CNNMoney June 19, 2012: 2:32 PM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Americans' net worth collapsed in recent years, but don't blame the housing market for it all. A CNNMoney analysis of new Census Bureau data shows that if you strip out the effects of the housing collapse, median household net worth still fell by 25% between 2005 and 2010. The decline was driven largely by the plummeting stock market, which devastated Americans' portfolios and retirement accounts. Overall, median household net worth declined 35% to $66,740 in 2010. The median worth of...

If President Obama loses in November, the new numbers out showing a calamitous drop in Americans' median net worth--we lost 20 years' worth of prosperity in the Great Recession, folks--will tell a good part of the story why. Bottom line: he lost the middle class. According to the Federal Reserve, a broad group of Americans loosely defined as the middle class saw its net worth plummet from a median of $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010. It's hardly fair to blame Obama for what began in 2007, but there's no reason why he shouldn't also be saddled with some of the...

You would think $1 trillion in spending stimulus and $2.5 trillion of Fed pump-priming would produce an economy a whole lot stronger than 1.9 percent GDP, which was the revised first-quarter number. And you’d think all that government spending would deliver a whole lot more jobs than 69,000 in May. But it hasn’t happened. The Keynesian government-spending model has proven a complete failure. It’s the Obama model. And it has produced such an anemic recovery that frankly, at 2 percent growth, we’re back on the front end of a potential recession. If anything goes wrong -- like another blow-up in...

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes monthly tallies for the employment-population ratio. That stat shows something rather straightforward: Among those who are living in America and are free to pursue employment, what percentage are employed? (The bureau excludes those who are under 16 years old, are active-duty military, or are — in the bureau’s own words — “inmates of institutions (for example, penal and mental facilities, homes for the aged),” from its tallies.) Over the past quarter of a century (a total of 300 months), dating back to May 1987 and the Reagan administration, here are the 30...

Vice President Joe Biden admitted to a group of supporters in New Hampshire this afternoon that the President would have been able help the economy "much, more" if the Tea Party hadn't taken the House. Biden showed the audience the Obama campaigns chart of job growth during the President's first term in office and accused the Tea Party for stalling the recovery, because of the debt limit fight. "Imagine where we'd be if the Tea Party hadn't taken control of the House of Representatives," Biden said adding that they were "a group set on obstructionism."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy added 115,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate declined to 8.1 percent from 8.2 percent. However, further declines in the percentage of Americans in the labor force explain this slightly lower unemployment rate. Indeed, the labor force participation rate dipped to a 30-year low as many unemployed workers simply left the labor force. The April report is further evidence that the job market has cooled from its more rapid growth in the first quarter. This slowdown will likely spur calls for more stimulus spending. However, government spending comes at the...

Durable goods orders tumbled 4.2 percent, the largest decline since January 2009, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday after a downwardly revised 1.9 percent increase in February. Economists had forecast orders for durable goods, which range from toasters to aircraft, falling 1.7 percent after a previously reported 2.4 percent rise in February. Orders were dragged down by a 12.5 percent plunge in bookings for transportation equipment - the most since November 2010. Excluding transportation, orders fell 1.1 percent after a 1.9 percent rise in February. Economists had forecast this category rising 0.5 percent. The report added to signs that manufacturing...

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families. "Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses,...

You have to wonder which hole in the sand Harry Reid has his head buried in.  Yesterday, in comments on the floor of the Senate, the Democrat Leader said the following: "While it's proper to guard against and remove onerous regulations, and we need to do that, my Republican friends have yet to produce a single shred of evidence that the regulations they hate so much do the broad economic harms they claim.  That's because there aren't any."Reid's denial is in large part his poor explanation for denying the Senate even one vote on any of the "Forgotten Fifteen" regulation...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Buffeted by high taxes, strict regulations and uncertain state budgets, a growing number of California companies are seeking friendlier business environments outside of the Golden State. And governors around the country, smelling blood in the water, have stepped up their courtship of California companies. Officials in states like Florida, Texas, Arizona and Utah are telling California firms how business-friendly they are in comparison. Companies are "disinvesting" in California at a rate five times greater than just two years ago, said Joseph Vranich, a business relocation expert based in Irvine. This includes leaving altogether, establishing divisions elsewhere...

In an interview with CNBC, Representative Barney Frank says he wants to push for prosecution of the people who caused the country's financial meltdown. The Massachusetts Democrat says he has no specific targets in mind, but says the most significant thing lawmakers can do is make past bad practices illegal.

6,796.99 Down -265.94 -3.77%

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. will fire at least 1,500 workers to cope with a crumbling economy that dented its third-quarter profit and turned up the heat on the Internet company's management as investors stew over a missed opportunity to sell to Microsoft Corp. for $47.5 billion. The purge outlined Tuesday represents a 10 percent reduction in Yahoo's payroll of about 15,000 employees. It's the second time in nine months that Yahoo has resorted to mass layoffs in what so far has been an ineffectual effort to rebound from a financial funk that has left its stock price near a...

Given last week's dramatic events — the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the end of Merrill Lynch's independence, and an $85 billion US-government bailout of insurer AIG — most financial institutions are likely to become more sensitive to the state of their net worth. For instance, all it takes for a financial institution that has a net worth of $30 billion and assets of $600 billion to go under is for the value of assets to fall by 5%. In the current financial climate, it can easily happen; hence, most financial institutions are not immune from the potential threat of going...

Yesterday, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the Democrats' vice-presidential nominee, told those gathered to hear him in St. Clair Shores, Mich., "I could walk from here to Lansing, and I wouldn't run into a single person who thought our economy was doing well, unless I ran into John McCain." The Obama campaign announced: "Sen. Obama did a call this morning with some of his key economic advisors including Paul Volcker, Bob Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Laura D'Andrea Tyson about the state of the financial markets ... and what steps should be taken to address the problems in our financial markets and...