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At some point during the first two years of his administration, President Obama stopped receiving the daily economic briefing that he requested when he took office. Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs announced at this own first daily briefing reporters that Obama asked for the daily economic briefing, described then as comparable to the daily intelligence briefing the president gets every morning. “The president asked that this be added every day to his schedule,” Gibbs said at the time. Gibbs added that Obama believed it is “important that each day he receive the most up to date information as...

RUSH: Headline for the Associated Press: "Stocks, Bond Yields Sink After Gloomy US Reports -- Stocks are mostly lower and bond yields are at a new low for the year after two reports dimmed hopes for the job market and the U.S. economy. The government says more people applied for unemployment benefits last week, the first increase in three weeks." By the way, it was unexpected. Ahem. "A separate report says the economy grew at a sluggish 1.8 percent in the January-March quarter. Surging gasoline prices and cutbacks in government spending offset strong corporate earnings." Stocks "unexpectedly" tumble. Unemployment "unexpectedly"...

Key EXCERPT: If one believes as I do that QE II has been negative for the economy it is logical to now anticipate the opposite as we near the end of the program. Just as the effects of QE II were felt before its actual implementation, so too will the effects of its end be anticipated. That appears to be happening now. Commodity prices that started rising before the start of QE are now peaking before the end. Interest rates that rose with QE are now falling. For the economy, the end of QE should be positive as commodity prices...

RUSH: We start in Indianapolis. This is John. Great to have you, sir. You're up first. You set the tone for the day as far as callers are concerned. It's a very important role that has befallen you. CALLER: Hey, Rush. I know it's a heavy responsibility. Hey, the reason I'm calling is there's talk out there now about how the great Clinton tax increase of the early nineties spurred economic growth, and it's a lie that we have to keep combating. I know you do it but what people have to remember is that in the wake of that...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Americans are more pessimistic about the U.S. economic outlook than they have been since the start of the Obama administration and most believe the United States is on the wrong track, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll released on Thursday. The number of Americans who think the economy is getting worse jumped 13 percentage points in just one month, to 39 percent, the poll suggested. Just 23 percent said they thought the economy was improving, down 3 percentage points from the previous month. Seventy percent of respondents said the country was heading in the wrong...

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba's Communist Party approved landmark economic reforms on Monday and voted for new leaders in a key party congress to chart Cuba's future, state-run media reported. The Caribbean island's highest political body was to select new first and second secretaries, its Central Committee and powerful Political Bureau, .. results were not immediately disclosed. The reforms represent the biggest changes to Cuba's Soviet-style economy in decades and are aimed at securing the future of socialism in one of the world's last communist states. The congress' approval had been widely expected because some of the reforms are already in...

The laundry room of Tamara Huffman’s split-level here in the Shenandoah Valley is filling up with cheese powder and freeze-dried ham, at the ready should her husband, Brian, lose his job anytime in the next 25 years. She carves a little bit out of their already tight budget every month to buy some more. This sort of stockpiling was once the purview of survivalists preparing for Armageddon. But Huffman’s fear isn’t the end of the world so much as the $5 basket of grape tomatoes she bypassed the other day at her local supermarket.

While we learned yesterday that the U.S. is preparing its domestic response to a potential economic collapse, the bigger story might be that the U.S. has been playing such “war games” for almost two years. “The Pentagon sponsored a first-of-its-kind war game last month focused not on bullets and bombs — but on how hostile nations might seek to cripple the U.S. economy, a scenario made all the more real by the global financial crisis.” That’s how Politico reporter Eamon Javers (now with CNBC and who brought us Monday’s report) began an article dated April 9, 2009. In that article,...

Economic lunacy abounds, and often the most learned, including Nobel Laureates, are its primary victims. The most recent example of economic lunacy is found in a Huffington Post article titled "The Silver Lining of Japan's Quake" written by Nathan Gardels, editor of New Perspectives Quarterly, who has also written articles for The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post. Mr. Gardels says, "No one -- least of all someone like myself who has experienced the existential terror of California's regular tremors and knows the big one is coming here next -- would minimize the grief,...

March 22nd, 2011 (1 of 5)

Revealed The Left’s Economic Terrorism Playbook: The Chase Campaign for a Coalition of Unions, Community Groups, Lawmakers and Students to Take Down US Capitalism and Redistribute Wealth & Power

At the start of the 112th Congress, my fellow Republicans and I made a commitment to turn the country’s economy around and get Americans back to work. Over the past two years in the minority, we could do little as the Obama Administration’s and Nancy Pelosi’s reckless spending increased our already massive debt by $3.5 trillion and our unemployment rate surged to ten percent. Republicans hit the ground running in January, voting to cut spending by $2.6 trillion by repealing the onerous ObamaCare law. In February, while the Obama administration reported a record-breaking monthly deficit of $223 billion, we simultaneously...

 In Japan today the news is dire on every front. It is important to note that only 15% of Japan’s land is suitable for cultivation, meaning they have to import about 50% of their requirements for grain and fodder crops and rely on imports for most of their supply of meat. Japan is the world’s 2nd largest fishing nation having over 2,000 fishing ports and one of the most advanced aquaculture (sea farming) industries on the planet."For Japan, a nation that lives by the sea, food comes in by the sea, energy comes in by the sea and exports...

Everyone is talking about the Pentagon-sponsored study which concludes that the 2008 economic meltdown may have been deliberately triggered. Oh wait − not everyone is talking about it. In fact, few people have even heard of it. I didn’t learn of the study from ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, or liberal newspapers. I learned of it only by surfing conservative websites that reference the Washington Times. The study was prepared in 2009, but it was just made public. The study does not say that the economic meltdown was the result of deliberate action − that is, economic terrorism − but...

RUSH: By the way, do you remember that big, big report, economic growth, fourth quarter of last year, 3.2%, remember that? What did we tell you? We told you to hang on, sit tight, be patient for the revised number. It won't be that good. And it wasn't. "The U.S. economy grew at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, slower than previously calculated and less than forecast as state and local governments made deeper cuts in spending." Once again, economic growth revised downward, not 3.2%, but rather 2.8% in the fourth quarter. I'd like to hearken back...

Global Economy? 23 Facts Which Prove That Globalism Is Pushing The Standard Of Living Of The Middle Class Down To Third World Levels From now on, whenever you hear the term "the global economy" you should immediately equate it with the destruction of the U.S. middle class. Over the past several decades, the American economy has been slowly but surely merged into the emerging one world economic system. Unfortunately for the middle class, much of the rest of the world does not have the same minimum wage laws and worker protections that we do. Therefore, the massive global corporations that...

In 2006, I examined a series of surveys we conducted nationwide and then predicted a collapse of the housing market. Plenty others followed with similar forecasts and postmortems over the following months and years. But my column was among the first. I've made predictions about other slowdowns in the American economy. I've been mostly correct, although in 2010, I suggested that the stock market ultimately would plunge. Turned out that it climbed instead of descending. The fact is that it's easier to predict the weather next month than to get an accurate read on the future of the stock market....

The Mexican economy recovered from a sharp contraction in 2009 to grow by 5.5% last year, its fastest annual rate in 10 years, official figures show. The National Statistics Institute said that the agriculture, manufacturing and services sectors all made a strong improvement over the year. The manufacturing sector was one of the key drivers with a growth rate of 6.1% in 2010. "Growth is now more balanced," said Finance Minister Ernesto Cordero. "Manufacturing was stronger but most importantly the services sector grew significantly," said Gabriel Casillas at JP Morgan.

"Despite today's nearly double-digit unemployment rate, 4 in 10 unemployed Americans expect to get a job in the next four weeks and one in three underemployed have the same expectations with respect to obtaining a full-time job." That's the finding of a new Gallup poll released yesterday. I guess it's nice that so many Americans remain upbeat in the face of our economic challenges. But this goes beyond upbeat into pure delusion. As Mish points out, there are around 14.5 million unemployed people. In order to employ 40% of them, businesses would have to create 5.95 million jobs. In December...

Good current information for investors and Marc's take on Obama and the near future.