Free Republic

Picture of graph only.

A shocking new report from the Center for Immigration Studies claims to prove that every single new job created in America for the last fourteen years has gone to immigrants, legal and illegal. This would fly in the face of those who claim that immigration is an economic boon to native born Americans: The CIS report found that over the last 14 years, people who were born in the United States held 114.8 million jobs in 2000, and held 114.7 million jobs in 2014, a drop of 127,000. But it’s an entirely different picture for immigrants — 5.7 million more...

June 27, 2014 Raul Meijer Oh Japan, what are you doing, where are you going? As Japanese consumer prices rose 3.4% in May (and I do wish people would stop calling this inflation, it is not and never will be), consumer spending was down -8.9% That is from a year earlier, so it has nothing to do with the April 1 tax hike! It’s an insane number when you think about it, and it’s the direct result of Abenomics tightening the thumb screws. With the population having seen their savings collapse, their wages move way down, and now rising prices...

Memo: From Nick Hanauer To: My Fellow Zillionaires You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries—from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first nonfamily investor. Then I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank. I tell you all this to demonstrate...

I warned about this in part two of my 2.5 hour Economics Video Presentation back in November of ARSH 2012, and, sure enough, it has now happened. Because, as I have been saying all along, for anyone who knows ANYTHING about ANYTHING having to do with economics, finance and/or banking, and who does not have their brain bucket completely and firmly inserted up their rectal vault, it is obvious what is happening and how the chain of events will unfold. If a mouthy broad with a mere bachelor’s degree in animal husbandry from a land-grant university can see this stuff...

How in the world does the government expect us to trust the economic numbers that they give us anymore? For a long time, many have suspected that they were being manipulated, and as you will see below we now have stone cold proof that this is indeed the case. But first, let's talk about the revised GDP number for the first quarter of 2014 that was just released. Initially, they told us that the U.S. economy only shrank by 0.1 percent in Q1. Then that was revised down to a 1.0 percent contraction, and now we are being informed that...

If you’re a typical family, you’re considerably poorer than you used to be. No wonder the “recovery” feels like a recession. ... The median household in 2013 had a net worth of just $56,335 -- 43% lower than the median wealth level right before the recession began in 2007, and 36% lower than a decade ago.

Shrinkage: Economists are writing off the sharp 2.9% drop in first-quarter GDP as a temporary contraction. Maybe. What isn't temporary is President Obama's massively subpar growth record over the past five years. [snip] In the nearly five years since the Obama recovery started — just months into Obama's first term — real gross domestic product has increased only 10.2%. That's less than half the average growth rate for every other economic recovery since World War II, and almost a third less than the pace set during the Reagan recovery. Looked at in dollar terms, if the Obama recovery had merely...

In the first quarter of 2014, GDP shrunk 2.9 percent and most of the reason is because health-care spending declined. That doesn’t mean we’re in for a recession though. Obamacare did help crash the economy. Only not in the way its critics thought it would. The Commerce Department on Wednesday revised the growth figures for the first quarter of 2014, and concluded that the economy shrunk at a 2.9 percent annual rate. This comes a month after the government slashed its initial estimate from an annual growth rate of .1 percent to a decline of 1.0 percent. At the time,...

This country is a bunch of lions led by donkeys, as the Germans said about the English Army in the first war. The latest Obama-related bray is the revised GDP numbers for the first quarter. Economists expected the economy to grow by 1.9% even after a discount for the cold weather. Instead the initial estimate saw a contraction of 1%. As we approached the revision to the initial estimate, we began hearing that perhaps things would be even worse in the next estimate. They were. The revision came in at a contraction of 2.9% for the first quarter. But...

New York, June 24 – The American economy could face significant and widespread disruptions from climate change unless U.S. businesses and policymakers take immediate action to reduce climate risk, according to a new report released today. The report, “Risky Business: The Economic Risks of Climate Change in the United States,” summarizes findings of an independent assessment of the impact of climate change at the county, state, and regional level, and shows that communities, industries, and properties across the U.S. face profound risks from climate change. The findings also show that the most severe risks can still be avoided through early...

President Obama is now reaching terminal velocity, like a skydiver plunging toward earth. Except he doesn’t have a parachute. There’s a mighty splat coming soon. With his approval rating at 40 percent, down 6 points from early June, and just 29 percent of Americans convinced the country is on the “right track,” the president is doubling down on his strategy of blaming Republicans for his failures. And he’s shifting into hyperpartisan drive, traveling the country to campaign for Democrats, many of whom wish he’d just stay away. Worse, the news just keeps getting well, worse: The Veterans Affairs scandal is...

For months the administration, financial pundits and Wall Street analysts made it a point to inform Americans about the healthy state of our economy. One of the key metrics they’ve used as proof of recovery was the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which measures the productive output of the U.S. economy as a whole. Earlier this year the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis noted that this measure was showing positive growth. But now, after a second official revision, all of that purported growth used to goad consumers into spending more money on homes, cars and other goods has been revealed to...

The US GDP fell at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the first quarter, its slowest rate of growth since 2009, in the middle of the recession. And yet no one seems to mind. Stock markets didn't plummet, and no one is forecasting yet another recession. A shrinking GDP is never great news, of course, but here are a few reasons why economists and markets are shaking off the biggest economic contraction in more than five years.

The US economy shrunk at a much larger rate than previously estimated in the first quarter.The GDP fell by 2.9%, the economy’s worst performance since the Great Recession. (Trading Economics)But it wasn’t that long ago that the White HOuse bragged that Obamacare saved the first quarter GDP from shrinking. The NRCC reported: By now many of you have seen the news that our GDP declined steeply in the 1st quarter.A drop of 2.9 percent is the type of precipitous fall we haven’t seen since the first months of 2009.But it was less than 2 months ago that the White House...

The U.S. economy contracted at a much steeper pace than previously estimated in the first quarter, but there are indications that growth has since rebounded strongly. The Commerce Department said on Wednesday gross domestic product fell at a 2.9 percent annual rate, the economy's worst performance in five years, instead of the 1.0 percent pace it had reported last month. While the economy's woes have been largely blamed on an unusually cold winter, the magnitude of the revisions suggest other factors at play beyond the weather. Growth has now been revised down by a total of 3.0 percentage points since...

Hooray! The Gross Domestic Product shrank by 2.9% in the first quarter of the year. "This recovery is underway." Your humble correspondent was very careful to put the previous sentence in quotes because I don't want you to think I've taken leave of my senses. This amazing conclusion comes to us courtesy of CNN Money spinmeister Annalyn Kurtz who starts out on a rather gloomy note but manages to spin her way into economic joy:

The U.S. economy shrank at a steep annual rate of 2.9 percent in the January-March quarter as a harsh winter contributed to the biggest contraction since the depths of the recession five years ago.

YIKES! We just got the third revision to Q1 GDP, and it was horrible. After an initial estimate showing a mere 0.1% gain in growth in the first quarter, the government now says the economy shrunk at a staggering 2.9% pace, making it the worst quarter Q1 2009, at the pit of the financial crisis. So should you worry? Absolutely not.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When the government updates its estimate Wednesday of how the U.S. economy fared last quarter, the number is pretty sure to be ugly. Horrible even. The economy likely shrank at an annual rate of nearly 2 percent in the January-March quarter, economists estimate. That would be its bleakest performance since early 2009 in the depths of the Great Recession. So why aren't economists, businesses or investors likely to panic? Because most agree that the economy last quarter was depressed by temporary factors - particularly the blast of Arctic chill and snow that shuttered factories, disrupted shipping and...