Free Republic

PARIS (AP) -- French President Francois Hollande pledged Monday to redefine France's business model and declared what he called "a state of economic and social emergency," unveiling a 2-billion-euro ($2.2 billion) plan to revive hiring and catch up with a fast-moving world economy. The measures he proposed, however, are relatively modest, and he said they would not "put into question" the 35-hour workweek. With his country under a state of emergency since extremist attacks in November, Hollande did not seek to assume any new emergency powers over the economy. In an annual speech to business leaders, Hollande laid out plans...

The United States, ranked second in worldwide economic freedom as recently as 2000, has plummeted to 16th, according to the a new report of world economies. The Fraser Institute's annual report, Economic Freedom of the World, showed that the country's drop started in 2010, the second year of the Obama administration. The world-recognized report showed that the U.S. fell in several areas, including legal and property rights and regulation. "The United States, once considered a bastion of economic freedom, now ranks 16th in the world after being as high as second in 2000," said the report issued Monday morning. The...

Foreign companies around Tianjin blast suspend operationsSHANGHAI (AP) — Foreign companies have suspended operations around the Tianjin port as officials scramble to contain the toxic fallout of last week's deadly chemical explosions, which dealt a blow to northern China's emerging economic hub. Toyota said over half its China production capacity would be offline at least through Wednesday. The company has operations near the blast evacuation zone and said Monday that it had suspended three production lines, which can produce 530,000 vehicles a year. Thousands of Volkswagen, Toyota, Hyundai and Renault cars, mostly pricey imports, parked on lots near the...

In the past decade, Beijing and Moscow have been more competitors than partners. But that relationship may now be changing as Russian and Chinese leaders are considering combining their two countries’ regional economic projects — the Eurasian Economic Union and the Silk Road Economic Belt, respectively. While meeting at a two-day summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Ufa, Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are reportedly discussing a framework that would merge China’s multi-billion dollar network of roads, railways, and pipelines through Central Asia with the Eurasian Union, the post-Soviet economic bloc that includes Armenia,...

It’s been a little more than six months since the full brunt of Western sanctions took force against Russia. The punishment, while slow in coming, has proven devastatingly effective—especially when paired with the crash in oil prices.

The city known as America’s story factory is making up Census data. In the latest allegation of The Post’s exclusive probe into fishy goings-on at the Census Bureau, a new whistleblower says workers in the Los Angeles region have been manipulating economic data. Contact information for the veteran Census worker — who reached out to me by e-mail recently and whom I interviewed by phone — has been turned over to congressional investigators who are looking into data falsification in other parts of the country. “Everybody knows falsification is going on,” the whistleblower told me, adding the malfeasance in the

Senator Elizabeth Warren, always outspoken on the tension between Main Street and Wall Street, took shots Sunday at a system she said is "rigged" against the little guy. In an interview in Salon, Warren, who has said she doesn't plan to seek the 2016 presidential nomination, said fellow Democrats including President Obama have not done enough to help consumers. On President Obama: Warren praised Obama for the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency aimed at enforcing consumer protection laws. But she told Salon that "there has not been nearly enough change" in the wake of the...

A new report of "economic freedom" around the world finds the US ranked 12th among 152 countries, tied with the United Kingdom, and lower than neighbor Canada or Australia. The index, published by the Cato Institute and Canada's Fraser Institute, has been published since 1996. As recently as 2000, the US ranked 2nd in the world, in terms of boasting a free economy. The US's declining ranking will lower future economic growth.

President Obama put his rosy glasses on for an interview with CNBC on Thursday, claiming “It’s pretty hard to find an economic measure where we’re not significantly better off.” Obama spoke with CNBC’s Steve Liesman about the economic policies pushed by the White House and what the federal government expects going forward. “What can you tell average Americans about the outlook of the economy?” Liesman asked, noting that even Obama’s own former economic advisor Larry Summers is forecasting lower growth over the next few years. Obama dismissed that notion. “If you think about where we were, Steve, when I came

President Obama made an unscheduled trip to a D.C.-based tech start-up to cheer about the rosy jobs numbers released this morning and promote his economic strategy. “We have made enormous strides, thanks to the incredible hard work of the American people and American businesses that have been out there competing, getting smarter, getting more effective. And it’s making a difference all across the country,” Obama told workers at “1776,” which the White House describes as a “global hub” to help start-up companies. The government reported today that 288,000 jobs were created last month and that the unemployment rate dropped to...

Concerned that the City is an inhomogeneous hodgepodge with pockets of great wealth in some neighborhoods and squalor in others, newly appointed Housing Preservation and Development Commissar Vicki Been announced a plan to move 80,000 to 120,000 poorer families into middle class neighborhoods. “This way instead of having blight and filth in every direction they might look poorer families will be within easy walking distance of a better kept neighborhood,” Been boasted. “The crimes that plague poorer sections of our City would be more evenly dispersed throughout the whole City. Victims will come from a more broadly representative subset of...

Submitted by Brendan Brown via the Ludwig von Mises Institute, It is not too early to ask how the present US business cycle expansion, already more than five years old, will end. The history of the last great US monetary experiment in “quantitative easing” (QE) from 1934-7 suggests that the end could be violent. Autumn 1937 featured one of the largest New York stock market crashes ever accompanied by the descent of the US economy into the notorious Roosevelt Recession. Should we take comfort from the fact that Friedman and Schwartz, in their epic monetary history, claim to have discovered...

A month ago we reported that according to much delayed TIC data, China had just dumped the second-largest amount of US Treasurys in history. The problem, of course, with this data is that it is stale and very backward looking. For a much better, and up to date, indicator of what foreigners are doing with US Treasurys in near real time, the bond watchers keep track of a less known data series, called "Treasury Securities Held in Custody for Foreign Official and International Accounts" which as the name implies shows what foreigners are doing with their Treasury securities held...

Ninety-two million Americans are not in the work force—they don’t have jobs and they aren’t looking for jobs. These 92 million Americans aren’t just out of work—they are resigned to being out of work as a way of life. The ballooning numbers of Americans who are resigned to long-term joblessness inspired Roger L. Simon to suggest in a bleakly humorous piece over at PJ Media that Americans are going Galt: Tell all your “Objectivist” friends and the libertarian gang at Reason magazine to break out the champagne. Americans may have skipped the movie of Atlas Shrugged, nor have many read...

The noise in the jobless claims data over the past few months has been unprecedented and yet the impressive jump lower in recent weeks has been trumpeted as the all-clear for Tapering and as a signal that the recovery is 'real' this time. Except, thanks to a huge 'glitch' in Florida's new CONNECT unemployment claims website, the data is completely FUBAR... Via The Miami Herald, The story so far... Florida’s ongoing claims for unemployment benefits plummeted to the lowest level in six years from mid-October to early December. The average of 20,000 fewer weekly claims from the prior nine weeks...

PBS's Tavis Smiley made a comment Thursday that every African-American as well as liberal media member should sit up and take notice. Appearing on Fox News's Hannity, Smiley said, "The data is going to indicate sadly that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

President Barack Obama’s former senior White House adviser and campaign manager David Plouffe accused House Republicans of “committing economic treason” during the partial government shutdown on Thursday. In a snarky tweet about Republicans’ attempts to negotiate an end to the government shutdown, Plouffe dredged up the “birther” issue in order to discredit the GOP: David Plouffe @davidplouffe Maybe throw in a Special Counsel to investigate the President's birthplace and the House GOP will stop committing economic treason. 8:56 AM - 10 Oct 2013

China, Russia and even Al Qaeda, among others, all have one thing in common: They believe that unconventional warfare against America’s economy is the best way to destroy our nation without actually ever having to fire a shot. And our enemies almost made it happen in 2008. Getty Images On Thursday night’s episode of TheBlaze TV’s “For The Record,” “Unrestricted Warfare” (8:30 p.m. ET), former senior U.S. officials disclose what the Pentagon and Washington establishment had been hoping to bury — that the near economic collapse of the United States in 2008 was not due to widespread failures in government...

The president has powers to fight income inequality, President Obama argued in an interview broadcast Sunday, adding that Republicans in Congress have hobbled his efforts to do it. Appearing on ABC´s "This Week" program, Obama acknowledged that the wealthiest Americans have benefited disproportionately from the economic recovery of recent years. But he was quick to add that much of that trend is due to globalization, technology and, not least, the GOP´s opposition to his economic agenda – all factors he suggested are beyond his control. "I think the president can stop it," Obama said, when asked about the growing income

The number of Americans who are 16 years or older and who have decided not to participate in the nation’s labor force has pushed past 90,000,000 for the first time, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS counts a person as participating in the labor force if they are 16 years or older and either have a job or have actively sought a job in the last four weeks. A person is not participating in the labor force if they are 16 or older and have not sought a job in the last four...