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Our weak economy is stumbling yet again. America’s GDP actually shrank during the last three months of 2012, after three years of Obama’s “recovery.” Jobless claims jumped last week “unexpectedly.” And a new report says our national debt will soon be 200 percent of our entire national output — or twice as high as that of Greece. Since the inauguration, what have President Obama and the White House been talking about? Jobs, the economy and debt? Nope. It’s been gun control, same-sex marriage, women in combat and illegal immigration. I’m so old I remember when campaigning on divisive wedge issues...

Video at the linkee: Ron Paul describes the upcoming bedlam and some things to possibly prevent it. It's The End Of The World As We Know It and I have gas!

NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous is known for making headlines, and he’s at it again. In an interview with David Gregory on Meet The Press, Jealous said that African Americans are doing worse under President Obama than under President Bush. “When you look at joblessness in this country, the country’s back to pretty much where it was when this president started,” he said. “White people in this country are doing a bit better. Black people are doing far worse.” Now that election season is over, it’s clear that the honeymoon between the Obama administration and the NAACP is over....

Another 'who woulda thunk it' moment: The U.S. economy posted a stunning drop of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, defying expectations for slow growth and possibly providing incentive for more Federal Reserve stimulus. The economy shrank from October through December for the first time since the recession ended, hurt by the biggest cut in defense spending in 40 years, fewer exports and sluggish growth in company stockpiles. Get outta here! You mean with businesses fretting over the unknown cost of ObamaCare, with taxes being raised for almost every American, and government spending continuing to spiral out of control that...

I have been observing over the past months that various indices have been nosing down. Now we have confirmation from the BEA that GDP fell by -0.1% in Q4 of 2012. Here is CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s take on the numbers. This is a big swing and a miss to expectations of +1.1% and a BIG drop from Q3′s print of +3.1%. At least Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) added 1.52% before the Fiscal Cliff surrender. Notes that PCE has been consistently lower after 2007 than before. This isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile … or recovery. On the other hand, defense spending fell...

(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve on Wednesday left in place its monthly $85 billion bond-buying stimulus plan, saying economic growth had stalled but indicating the pullback was likely temporary.

Why There's No Real Inflation - Yet Economics / InflationJan 30, 2013 - 01:16 PM GMT By: Money Morning Martin Hutchinson writes: According to Milton Friedman, "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." If that is true, then you have to wonder where the heck all of the inflation is. Every central bank in the Western world is holding interest rates down, and almost all of them are printing money like it's going out of style. Five years ago, nearly every economist in the world would have told you this would cause inflation to skyrocket, and the big deficits...

The U.S. economy posted a stunning drop of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, defying expectations for slow growth and possibly providing incentive for more Federal Reserve stimulus.

Rush To Safety: Americans Buy Nearly Half a Billion Dollars Of Gold and Silver In January Mac Slavo January 30th, 2013 While public officials may be ignoring the continued deterioration of our economy, job losses to the tune of hundreds of thousands of people weekly, and the unprecedented demand for government emergency support services like unemployment insurance and food assistance, Americans who sense uncertainty in the air are flocking to the safety of physical resources. Our first point of interest is a recent report from the Federal Reserve that indicates some $114 billion dollars in cash was withdrawn from the...

The economy "UNEXPECTEDLY" contracted .1% in the fourth quarter of 2012.Unexpectedly? Really? How was this unexpected?

Apparently, the shrikage is largely the result of a big hit in defense spending. Other one time factors also played a role. From Associated Press: _____________________ The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter. That's a sharp slowdown from the 3.1 percent growth rate in the July-September quarter and the first contraction since the second quarter of 2009. Economists said the surprise decrease in the nation's gross domestic product wasn't as bad as it looked. The weakness was primarily the result of one-time factors. Government spending cuts and...

CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST: Spending Cuts Are Pushing Us Towards A Recession Brett LoGiuratoJanuary 30, 2013 Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin has joined the voice of many conservatives lamenting the surprising drop in GDP last quarter. In her post, Rubin argues that spending cuts and Obama's regulations are pushing us toward a recession. The big reason for the surprise drop in fourth-quarter GDP was because of a drop in government spending, particularly a stunning fall in defense and military spending. Rubin writes: "I don’t know why they say the drop is unexpected. We are preparing to decimate national security, at a...

News Alert: Economy Shrinks in the Fourth Quarter, 2012 – unexpectedly, of course. Big Guy, Te’oing the Recovery What? I thought we would be in the middle of a massive Keynesian recovery by now; that’s what swept Big Guy to reelection, right? I guess the the economy in retrograde is good news for Senator Mary “I am not going to keep cutting the discretionary budget, which by the way is not out of control, despite what you hear on Fox News”  Landrieu, however. Although it looks like we may have a bigger problem than Fox News, this latest economic report...

The U.S. economy unexpectedly shrank from October through December for the first time since 2009, hurt by the biggest cut in defense spending in 40 years, fewer exports and sluggish growth in company stockpiles. The drop occurred despite stronger consumer spending and business investment. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter. That was a sharp slowdown from the 3.1 percent growth rate in the July-September quarter. Economists said the drop in gross domestic product wasn't as bleak as it looked. The weakness was mainly the result of...

Suresh Sambandam of OrangeScape, Krishna Mehra of Capillary Technologies, Jaspreet Singh of Druva, Balaji Sreenivasan of Aurigo, Vivek Ravisankar of InterviewStreet - all have something in common, other than that they have been featured here for their accomplishments. They are all technology entrepreneurs who started their ventures in India over the past few years, built them to a significant level of success, and now they have all relocated to the US, or are in the process of relocating (themselves, not the companies). We have mentioned just five names. But there are more. And the one common reason for the move...

US economy actually SHRUNK in the 4th Quarter... Remember back in the closing weeks of the 2012 campaign... when Jack Welch questioned Labor Dept jobs stats that seemed to be cooked to prop-up Dear Leader on the eve of the election? If you'll recall, he stated (and was pilloried by the Left for it) that 'The economy would have to be growing at a breakneck speed' to make such numbers possible... and just as Welch had suspected- it ain't. But it's even worse than any of us thought: now you know what politicized federal agencies, the MSM, and the Obama campaign...

The House, under the leadership of Speaker John Boehner, has precipitated a postponement in the debt ceiling fight until May. This represents a strategic choice by Boehner to make the Sequester fight, not the debt ceiling fight, the next major engagement. Much of the mainstream media now is accusing Congress of “kicking the can down the road.” They are missing the strategic implications. In retrospect, at the Battle at Fiscal Cliff, Boehner took President Obama to the cleaners. He did it suavely, without histrionics. While Obama churlishly, and in a politically amateurish manner, publicly strutted about having forced the Republicans...

Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report that said that the labor force participation rate (LFPR) dropped to 63.6%, the lowest rate since Jimmy Carter was in office. Essentially that means that of the population of 16 year and older, 37.4% of them decided not to work or not to seek work. That’s 88.8 million people! To put that in perspective, when George Bush took office the LFPR was 67.2% and eight years later it was 1.5% lower at 65.7%. It has dropped 2.1% in Barack Obama’s first four years, the most precipitous drop in workforce participation...

HARARE (AFP) After paying public workers’ salaries last week, the balance in cash-strapped Zimbabwe’s government public account stood at just $217, Finance Minister Tendai Biti said Tuesday. “Last week when we paid civil servants there was $217 (left) in government coffers,” Biti told journalists in the capital Harare, claiming some of them had healthier bank balances than the state. “The government finances are in paralysis state at the present moment. We are failing to meet our targets.” Zimbabwe’s economy went into free-fall at the turn of the millennium, after President Robert Mugabe began seizing white-owned farms. The move demolished investor...

Gary Shilling Expects Great Disconnect to Cause Stock Market Crash 2013 Stock-Markets / Financial CrashJanuary 28, 2013 - 06:20 PM By: DailyWealth Steve Sjuggerud writes: Gary Shilling might have the best track record of any investor over the last 30 years... If you had invested $100,000 in Shilling's "big idea" 30 years ago, it would be worth over $6 million today. While most investors didn't pay attention to his big idea, Shilling was right. And he never gave up on his big idea. Here in 2013, Shilling has some new big ideas... and some bold predictions... particularly about what he...