Free Republic

The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly floated a rule claiming authority to bypass the courts and unilaterally garnish paychecks of those accused of violating its rules, a power currently used by agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service..... ....Critics said the threat of garnishing wages would be a powerful incentive for people to agree to expensive settlements rather than fight EPA charges. EPA officials did not respond to repeated questions by The Washington Times about why they thought it was necessary to garnish people’s wages. The EPA announced the plan last week in a notice in the Federal Register, saying...

Since 1994 there has been no official measure than includes discouraged people who have not looked for a job for more than a year. Including all discouraged workers produces an unemployment rate that currently stands at 23.1%, almost four times the rate that the financial press reports.

1. Historically, when Capacity Utilization is as high as its now (suggesting not much industrial slack) the inflation rate has been much higher. 2. According to survey data from the National Federation of Independent Businesses, more and more companies are saying they can't find qualified applicants for job openings. 3. Survey data shows a big increase in the number of businesses who say they plan to raise wages in the future.

The economy took a bad hit during the first quarter this year. It shrunk at an annual rate of 2.96 percent. Since the beginning of 1947, there are only 16 of the 268 quarters experienced worse growth. The Obama administration blames the slow growth on the “historically severe winter weather, which temporarily lowered growth.” Jason Furman, the chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, made this assertion again on July 3rd and President Obama has made this claim several times. But that doesn’t square with the historic data. The five worst winter storms or winters with the coldest temperatures do...

And well they might. Insurers got a close look at the profiles of the enrollees in the individual health-insurance market this spring, and they turned out to be sicker than projected, as the “young invincibles” took a pass on ObamaCare in 2014. That means that premiums will go up in the fall in order to cover the added expense of the higher-risk enrollments — and that has the Obama administration spin team working extra hard this summer to cover their rear ends just before the midterms: Most state health insurance rates for 2015 are scheduled to be approved by early...

"The reason the stock market is high, in part, is that interest rates are low, wages are low and the emerging markets are still growing much faster than the U.S. economy, let alone Europe," Stiglitz said. He pointed to the fact that many U.S.-listed multinationals are increasingly getting a large chunk of their profits from emerging markets. "These very strong stock market prices are in a sense a symptom of the weak economy, not a symptom that we are about to have a strong recovery to our real economy," he said. Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia University, said...

Tyler Durden 07/06/2014 Submitted by Adam Taggart via Peak Prosperity, This week's podcast sees the return of Mike Maloney, monetary historian and founder of precious metals broker GoldSilver.com. Based on historical patterns and the alarming state of our current monetary system, Mike believes the fiat US dollar is in its last years as a viable currency. He sees its replacement as inevitable in the near term -- as in by or before the end of the decade: All of this is converging with the crazy experiments the Federal Reserve has done. I absolutely believe that there are economic consequences to...

  Huh.  While coming into the second half of 2014 we just had the GDP and employment rpts, and what happened is we got what seemed to be contradictory -2.7% and +6.3 bombshells.    On the other hand (Truman hated economists saying that) a look at the year over year GDP return along with the employment/population ratio puts the two together.[click to enlarge]The reason GDP growth looks solid is because that -2.7% was just one Qtr to the next, so last week's rpt tells us more about how good Q4 was than it does about how bad Q1 turned out. ...

How does the U.S. economy do it? Europe is floundering. China faces slower growth. Japan is struggling to sustain tentative gains. Yet the U.S. job market is humming, and the pace of economic growth is steadily rising. Five full years after a devastating recession officially ended, the economy is finally showing the vigor that Americans have long awaited. Last month, employers added 288,000 jobs and helped reduce the unemployment rate to 6.1 percent, the lowest since September 2008. June capped a five-month stretch of 200,000-plus job gains - the first in nearly 15 years. After having shrunk at a 2.9...

July 04, 2014DailyWealth Dr. Steve Sjuggerud writes: So... if the dollar "dies"... what do you do with your money? In yesterday's DailyWealth, we looked at "The Coming Death of the Dollar." But we didn't cover what you should do with your money to protect yourself. In Jim Rickards' book, The Death of Money, he has five recommendations. More specifically, he has an asset allocation of five different investments that have stood the test of time in previous inflations and deflations. Jim says this portfolio should offer "an optimal combination of wealth preservation under conditions of inflation, deflation, and social unrest......

China designated a clearing bank in Seoul for yuan transactions in South Korea on Friday, coinciding with a visit by President Xi Jinping, as Beijing promotes greater use of its currency overseas, AFP reports. Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_07_04/Beijing-Seoul-agree-to-direct-trade-in-national-currencies-4477/ China's central bank has authorised the Bank of Communications, the country's fifth largest lender, to undertake yuan clearing business in the South Korean capital, the People's Bank of China (PBoC) said in a statement. The announcement came as Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up a state visit to South Korea on Friday. China is seeking to make the yuan - also known...

The headline of today’s jobs report, that 288,000 jobs were created in the last month, is positive. At least, it is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. However, as with most economic reports these days, there is a veneer of good news — but when you look closer, the White House is using the positive headlines to hide the growing deterioration of the American workforce. Last month, 523,000 full-time jobs were lost, while 799,000 part-time jobs were added. Another way of looking at these numbers is that almost all of the 288,000 jobs created last...

Economists and lawmakers view the jobs report as good news. The US economy gained 288,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate dropped to 6.1%. One economist even said the report is "as good an excuse as any to enjoy the weekend's fireworks." Yet as Americans struggle to make do with their stagnant wages and the bills that never seem to stop piling up, one thing has to go: vacations. So as businesses anticipate a slower summer, thousands of restaurant and hotel workers are left without work.

Is this the reason for the blowout, on the surface, payroll number? In June the BLS reports that the number of full-time jobs tumbled by 523K to 118.2 million while part-time jobs soared by 799K to over 28 million!

Believe it or not, it was 10 years ago this month that Barack Obama, then a candidate for the U.S. Senate, introduced himself to America with a speech that shook the Fleet Center in Boston. The main theme of that Democratic convention was the litany of George W. Bush's failures — an unpopular and unending war in Iraq, a faltering image abroad, a stagnating middle class. Obama gave eloquent voice to those frustrations, arguing that all of them could be addressed if only we reunited the electorate. Probably Obama himself would not have guessed then that he would ascend to...

IF ANYONE ought to appreciate the power of immigration to stimulate employment, it is America's energetic anti-immigration advocates, whose jobs wouldn't exist if it weren't for the influx of immigrants they spend their days seeking to curtail. Then again, appreciating anything about immigration — least of all the ironies of our endless debate on the subject — goes against the restrictionists' grain. Fulminating about immigrants is one of America's enduring pastimes, and it doesn't leave a lot of room for wry humor. Or for logical consistency. Which helps explain why immigrants can be depicted on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as...

Why do bad things always happen to him? Last week, the establishment press largely shrugged off the awful and ominous news that the economy shrank at an annual rate of 2.9 percent [1] during this year’s first quarter. When they deigned to notice it, they usually told their readers, listeners and viewers that happy days have now returned.Unfortunately, the reported contraction is historically foreboding: The 5.5-point downward swing from the fourth quarter’s 2.6 percent annualized growth to the first quarter’s 2.9 percent contraction was the largest such move from expansion to decline since the fourth quarter of 1981 [2].Since...

Is this the reason for the blowout, on the surface, payroll number? In June the BLS reports that the number of full-time jobs tumbled by 523K to 118.2 million while part-time jobs soared by 799K to over 28 million! Looking at the breakdown of full and part-time jobs so far in 2014, we find that 926K full-time jobs were added to the US economy. The offset: 646K part-time jobs. Something tells us that the fact that the BLS just reported June part-time jobs rose by just shy of 800,000 the biggest monthly jump since 1993, will hardly get much airplay...

Hiring over the past five months has been the strongest since the late 1990s tech boom as the economy added 288,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent from 6.3 percent. The Labor Department says those gains follow additions of 217,000 jobs in May and 304,000 in April, figures that were both revised upward.

This is the third part of the article by Italian journalist Alessandra Nucci. Here are the first two parts: The Looting of ItalyHow the EU and the Left Ruined Italy ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A Never-ending Flow of Illegal Immigrants Overburdens Italian WelfareVery little is ever said about the immigration load, which together with bureaucracy is largely responsible for the burgeoning debt. It is routinely downplayed, while Italy gets lectured to for supposedly not living up to impossible standards that are provably not expected of any other country. The Italian Coastguard and Carabinieri have saved countless lives and generous Italian welfare, including...