Free Republic

<p>The Obama administration is highly exercised about “inversion,” the practice by which an American corporation acquires a foreign company and moves its headquarters out of the U.S. to benefit from lower tax rates abroad.</p> <p>Not fair, says President Barack Obama. It’s taking advantage of an “unpatriotic tax loophole” that hardworking American families have to make up for by the sweat of their brow. His treasury secretary calls such behavior a violation of “economic patriotism.”</p>

US News and World Report Chairman and Editor-in-Chief and publisher of The New York Daily News, Mort Zuckerman argued that President Obama “has lost the confidence of the business community” on Friday’s broadcast of “The McLaughlin Group.” “[The economy] has...grown by about 2%, 2.1%, for the last five years, which is the lowest rate of growth coming out of a recession we have had ever, since the Great Depression. And what’s more, that only took place, not because of the fact that the economic environment was that good, it's because we have a hugely stimulating monetary policy and fiscal policy....

California’s economic recovery has featured a growing share of lower-wage jobs, raising concerns about the opportunities for middle-class workers hit hard by the Great Recession, a new analysis finds. The California Budget Project, a nonprofit economic research group, analyzed decades of state labor data to find that low- and middle-wage workers have seen significant pay declines over the last decade. Local and state government jobs -- traditionally a reliable source of middle-class employment -- have been particularly slow to recover. -snip- Looking ahead, low-wage jobs are forecast to be one of the fastest-growing segments of the workforce. The state expects...

This morning looking in today's Real Clear MarketsGet I got a real kick out of this link that appeared :  Kick Off Labor Day Weekend With Some Depressing Charts - Quartz.   What the Quartz guys were wetting their pants over was how employee pay % total Gross Domestic Income was falling.  Here's a plot of the numbers they stole from the American Tax Payer supported BEA.gov: (Note: Freepers can't post Quartz articles because of an alleged copyright complaint)      Apparently what's really got them upset is that the evil capitalist is exploiting the American Worker and the the share for evil...

Progress in robotics, from drones to medical applications, is starting to come at a fast clip. Do you want your robot to cook your food, or just deliver it?The days of drones filling the sky and robots roaming in our streets are not far removed from reality anymore, and scenes from movies like Star Wars, Minority Report and I, Robot will be common soon. Just consider some of the ways that robots have started to permeate our lives. Start with Amazon, which is taking to drones in a big way. The online shopping giant started a new phase in high-tech...

The winner of the U. S. Minority Business Development Agency's (MBDA) Lifetime Achievement Award says the economic fate of America's Black community "hangs in the balance" because "we are a fourth quarter people". Michael Grant, president of the National Bankers Association and its foundation, says, "Unlike our Hispanic and Asian brothers and sisters, we had to spend the first three quarters just getting in the game...So you see, all things being equal, our ethnic counterparts came to the game with a different mindset, a different set of circumstances, a different self-image, and already with some capital from back home." Grant...

Consumer spending fell in July for the first time in six months, as Americans cut back on purchases of new cars and other retail goods, the government reported Friday. The drop in spending was a bit of a surprise: economists polled by MarketWatch had predicted a seasonally adjusted 0.1% increase. The growth in incomes, meanwhile, slowed to 0.2% pace in July from 0.5% in each of the prior two months. It was the smallest gain since December and also below Wall Street expectations.

New Security Breach at Metcalf Substation, Site of 2013 Sniper Attack By Scott Pham and Cheryl Hurd More than a year after a major sniper attack at an electrical substation near San Jose, a new security breach has PG&E asking the public for help. Cheryl Hurd reports. Thursday, Aug 28, 2014 • Updated at 7:27 AM PDT More than a year after a major sniper attack at an electrical substation near San Jose, a new security breach has PG&E asking the public for help. PG&E officials said burglars stole construction equipment from the Metcalf Substation. The security breach happened at...

Fifty years after the “war on poverty” was first waged, there are signs a new offensive is needed. Newly released Census data reveals nearly 110 million Americans – more than one-third of the country – are receiving government assistance of some kind. The number counts people receiving what are known as “means-tested” federal benefits, or subsidies based on income. This includes welfare programs ranging from food stamps to subsidized housing to the program most commonly referred to as “welfare,” Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. At the end of 2012, according to the stats, 51.5 million were on food stamps, while...

On Thursday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its second estimate of real gross domestic product for the second quarter of 2014 — covering April, May and June of this year. The release showed output in the U.S. increasing at an annual rate of 4.2%. This is relative to the first quarter when real GDP declined a sharp 2.1%. The revision is up marginally from BEA’s 4% advance estimate released last month. The revision, BEA said in a release, was largely due to a larger than previously estimated increase in nonresidential fixed investment. However, the increase in private inventory investment...

... The reasoning was very simple: in a country (and world) drowning with debt, there are only two options to extinguish said debt: inflate it away or default. Anything else is kicking the can while making the problem even worse. ... Moments ago a stunning article appearing in the "Foreign Affairs" publication of the influential and policy-setting Council of Foreign Relations, titled "Print Less but Transfer More: Why Central Banks Should Give Money Directly to the People." ... In it we read the now conventional admission of failure by Keynesians, who however, unwilling to actually admit they have been wrong,...

On Saturday August 9, 2014, 18 year-old Michael Brown was shot to death by a Ferguson police officer after he had earlier robbed a local convenience store. As a result of his death protesters in Ferguson have caused mass destruction in the community. Several dozen businesses were damaged in the looting and violence. Here is an interactive map of the attacks, shootings, lootings, and destruction. Many of the local businesses were looted not just once, but twice. Now this… St. Louis County officials are discussing disbursement of federal aid to the more than 100 businesses that suffered financial losses during...

At the height of the financial crisis in 2008 the U.S. government forced some of the countries largest banks to take “bailout” funds amounting to billions of dollars in order to keep them from going bankrupt. It was a move designed to not only keep too-big-to-fail financial institutions afloat, but one that would inspire confidence and keep American consumers spending. As a result, the last several years have seen stock markets reach record highs with Americans continuing to rack up personal debt for real estate, vehicles, education, and consumer goods as if the financial crisis never happened.

<p>Markets could soon face a fall of up to 60 percent, two experts told CNBC on Wednesday.</p> <p>A jolt to international confidence in central banks will lead to a 30 to 60 percent market decline, David Tice, president of Tice Capital and founder of the Prudent Bear Fund, told CNBC's "Power Lunch." When this happens, he said, markets will face a "period of extreme turmoil."</p>

The Congressional Budget Office released a bit of a good news/bad news report on Wednesday regarding the state of the U.S. economy and federal budget. In the bad news column, CBO projected 2014’s GDP growth at just 1.5 percent. The report blamed this revision on “the surprising economic weakness in the first half of the year.” In early June, the International Monetary Fund projected the United States to grow by just 2 percent this year, revising its own estimate down from a previously anticipated 2.7 percent GDP expansion. This report is not likely to be warmly greeted by the...

WASHINGTON - A bunch of economic numbers from the government this week, which should be taken with a large grain of salt, were expected to show the economy was doing much better in the past three months. Well, we've seen these periodic, fragmentary numbers many times before, only to see the economy continue to slowly slog along at its painfully lackluster, jobs-challenged pace for the past six and a half years now. President Obama will recite the exaggerated economic numbers that his cherry-picking speech writers select to prove that he's brought the economy back from the bring of recession. But...

The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday raised its estimate of the federal government’s budget deficit for the current fiscal year as it slashed its growth forecast, and warned red ink was due to rise in coming years if Washington doesn’t change current laws. In an update of budget and economic projections for 2014 to 2024, the nonpartisan CBO said the U.S. government’s deficit for fiscal 2014 will be $506 billion, or 2.9% of gross domestic product. The new estimate is $14 billion more than the agency’s prior estimate for the year, issued in April. The agency lowered its projection of...

Our current welfare system is clearly a mess. The federal government currently funds 126 separate anti-poverty programs, at least 72 of which provide either cash or in-kind benefits to individuals. For example, there are 33 housing programs, run by four different cabinet departments, including bizarrely the Department of Energy. There are currently 21 different programs providing food or food purchasing assistance. These programs are administered by three different federal departments and one independent agency.  There are eight different health care programs, administered by five separate agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services. And six cabinet departments and five...

There was some glumness in the latest news on housing prices. There shouldn’t be. Slower home price rises — and in some markets, outright declines — are a sign the housing market is starting to move past the boom-and-bust cycle of the last dozen years toward a market where sensible prices driven by local economic conditions prevail. The S.&P./Case-Shiller home price index showed prices rose 8.1 percent in 20 major cities in the 12 months ended in June, the lowest rate of increase since 2012. Compared with May’s prices, national home prices actually declined oh-so-slightly, by 0.1 percent, with six...

Cullen Roche Wednesday, August 27th, 2014 Talk about a flip in perspective. David Rosenberg, who had been bearish for years, has turned into one of the biggest bulls on Wall Street. The Gluskin Sheff analyst now says his recession forecasting model could be pointing to another four years of economic expansion (via a recent note of his): (snip)