Free Republic

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on Friday filed to sell up to $24.3 billion in stock, making it the biggest U.S. initial public offering ever. Alibaba is selling 123 million of the 320 million American Depositary Shares slated for the IPO at between $60 and $66 per share, according to a filing. Shareholders including Yahoo, Ma and executive vice chairman Joe Tsai are offering the remainder. Yahoo cut its stake in the company to 16.3 percent from 22.4 percent and SoftBank cut its stake to 32.4 percent from 34.1 percent earlier, Dow Jones reported....

Back in May 2013 the Dow was out of its recession doldrums and hitting new highs. I asked readers if Obama could, economically, be the best modern President? The #1 issue raised by readers was whether the stock market was a good economic barometer for judging “best.” Many complained that the measure they were watching was jobs – and that too many people were still looking for work. To put this week’s jobs report in economic perspective I reached out to Bob Deitrick, CEO of Polaris Financial Partners and author of “Bulls, Bears and the Ballot Box” for some explanation....

Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute looks at the topic of infrastructure spending and I’m left with mixed feelings. Some of what he writes is very good. Yes, the claims of an “infrastructure crisis” by President Obama, many liberals…are exaggerated. …yes, existing laws and regulations turn infrastructure projects into boondoggles that take an order of magnitude longer to complete than necessary and cost more than they should. Amen, particularly with regard to the absurd notion that America is suffering some sort of crisis. The International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland, publisher of the World Competitiveness Yearbook, puts the...

Day before yesterday we were checking out this BEA map of the U.S. that was colored/labled by GDP and it got us on to the redstate/bluestate divide.   Naturally (as expected) small gov't low tax policies generally flowed with growing economies but what snagged us were the anomalies --Alaska did so poorly yet West Virginia soared.   Seems we can overcome that by ourselves and get all the state numbers for GDP from the BEA along w/ employment states by state from the BLS --and then toss them into online mapping websites (I used iMapBuilder Online). Got to just love this info...

"MCDonalds Mcdonalds, can't you see...Seven-forty is not for me..." The chant, recited through a megaphone, was being led by a man identifed as a Christian Pastor ("Reverend Charles" we'll call him), near a McDonalds restaurant in Detroit last week. Dozens of people in the parking lot uttered the chant with him, as the crowd sought to malign McDonalds restaurants while at the same time demanding a $15.00 per hour wage. "They want fifteen, they want a union, they want to be organized" Pastor Charles told the tv news crews. "The McDonalds corporation should allow that to happen immediately." The illogic...

Sitting at her street vending booth with products arrayed neatly on a sequined purple tablecloth, Jackie Lloyd reflects nostalgically on the days when she had a steady salary and regular hours.. That was four years ago, before the 39-year-old was laid off from her job as an elementary school cafeteria worker and mounting bills forced her to venture into self-employment. Now the Pico-Union resident hops from location to location, selling body oils, shea butter, soap and incense. She moves when nearby businesses complain or she feels unsafe. Some days, her sales bring in $150. Others, they don't break $20....

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Obama economic recovery is a complete sham! Barack the Barista, aided by his media muppets and trusty teleprompter, continues to tout the “common core” 6.1% unemployment rate while shouting “America is back” from the top of Mount Hypocrisy amidst adoring crowds of mindless Kool-Aid drinkers. As expected, our so-called President is excluding one teensy-weensy, minor detail: Over 92 MILLION Americans, more than a third of the country, are not working! Workforce participation is at an atrocious 62.8%, the lowest rate since Carter’s implosion in 1978, and food stamp recipients have...

new report shows some 53 million Americans—or 34 percent of the U.S. workforce—are now working as freelancers in some capacity. "This is more than an economic change," asserts the report, a joint effort from the Freelancer's Union and freelance markeplaces oDesk and eLance. It's also "a cultural and social shift" that will "have major impacts on how Americans conceive of and organize their lives, their communities, and their economic power." The first and last time anyone looked at the freelance worker population in the U.S. was 2004, in a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Back then the GAO...

CNSNews.com) - A record 92,269,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in August, as the labor force participation rate matched a 36-year low of 62.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The labor force participation rate has been as low as 62.8 percent in six of the last twelve months, but prior to last October had not fallen that low since 1978. BLS employment statistics are based on the civilian noninstitutional population, which consists of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution such as a prison,...

Complete headline: Labor Participation Rate Drops To Lowest Since 1978; People Not In Labor Force Rise To Record 92.3 Million It is almost as if the Fed warned us this would happen. In a note released yesterday, a Fed working paper titled "Labor Force Participation: Recent Developments and Future Prospects", looked at the US labor force and concluded that "while we see some of the current low level of the participation rate as indicative of labor market slack, we do not expect the participation rate to show a substantial increase from current levels as labor market conditions continue to improve."...

Investing money in or starting small businesses-- Backbone of America In a moment of recent hand-wringing, the Fed examined the question of why inflation has stayed extremely low in the United States despite all the efforts of quantitative easing money pumping. Their answer: American consumers are mainly to blame. Yes indeed. In a paper released this week by the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the Fed cites “low level of money movement in large part on consumers and their “willingness to hoard money.”. To be fair, the paper also criticized its own policies as well, suggesting that the has they have...

Tyler Durden 09/03/2014 "The stock market is at an all-time, but economic activity is not at an all-time," explains billionaire investor Sam Zell to CNBC this morning, adding that, "every company that's missed has missed on the revenue side, which is a reflection that there's a demand issue; and when you got a demand issue it's hard to imagine the stock market at an all-time high." Zell said he is being very cautious adding to stocks and cutting some positions because "I don't remember any time in my career where there have been as many wildcards floating out there that...

One of the great mysteries of the post-financial crisis world is why the U.S. has lacked inflation despite all the money being pumped into the economy. The St. Louis Federal Reserve thinks it has the answer: A paper the central bank branch published this week blames the low level of money movement in large part on consumers and their "willingness to hoard money."  The paper also cites the Fed's own policies as a reason for consumers' unwillingness to spend. Though American consumers might dispute the notion that inflation has been low, the indicators the Fed follows show it to be running well...

When Republicans want to support their position that Americans have become dependent on welfare, they frequently point to the number of workers on food stamps. In 2012, Senator Rand Paul called the program “out of control.” In 2011, Senator Jeff Sessions told the Daily Caller, “There is no doubt, if this country isn’t willing to look under the hood of the food stamp program as we try to bring our surging debt under control, we are obviously not serious about what we are doing.”Paul, Sessions and their Republican colleagues are right that the number of food stamp beneficiaries grew considerably...

President Obama appeared at a Labor Day event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he told a crowd of union supporters that "American workers and the American economy are better off since I became president."Since it is widely acknowledged that Americans have given Obama record setting disapproval numbers relative to his handling of the U.S. economy - we decided to fact check this statement. First let's review how America feels about this statement. According to the latest Gallup poll, a mere 35% of the country approves of Obama's handling of the economy. NBC News/Wall St Journal reported the same 35% (with 71%...

Americans pride themselves on an egalitarian society open to all. But some equality and inequality exist uneasily side by side. And the U.S. has never resolved this contradiction.If the world is lucky enough to produce historians of the early 21st century, one question seems certain to grab their attention. How did so much equality coexist with so much inequality? Economic inequality—the difference between the richest and the poorest, or between the rich and everyone else —has reached some of its highest levels ever, both in the U.S. and at around the world. Yet our time is also marked by a...

Vulnerable Democrats casting about desperately for a boost to their campaigns won't be able to use a slightly improving economy as a lifeline, according to several recent polls.The fact is, voters don't care about the raw economic numbers - not when their personal financial situation is still bad. The Hill: But with just a handful of big economic reports left before Election Day, the economic picture is largely in place. And while the outlook is bright, voters continue to hold a dim view of their own financial prospects.  “There are still a lot of families playing catch-up,” said Jared Bernstein...

President Obama used Labor Day to tout the country’s economic gains under his leadership and make an election-year case that higher wages and other progress for workers can only be achieved through a Democrat-controlled Congress. “American workers and the American economy are better off since I took office,” Obama told a crowd filled with union supporters at the annual Laborfest event in Milwaukee. “I’m not asking for the moon. I’m asking for policies that help folks get ahead. … Republicans running Congress are opposed to them.” At one point in the speech, Obama enthusiastically told the crowd: “If I were...

President Barack Obama renewed his push for Congress to raise the minimum wage Monday in a buoyant accounting of the economy’s “revving” performance, delivered on behalf of Democrats opening their fall campaigns for the midterm congressional elections. “America deserves a raise,” he told a union crowd in Milwaukee, vowing to keep a hard sell on Congress in much the way he once courted his wife. “I just wore her down,” he cracked. Timing his push to Labor Day, the traditional start of the autumn campaign, Obama aggressively drew attention to recent economic gains, setting aside past caution on that subject....

Tyler DurdenSeptember 1, 2014If last week's disappointing global economic data, that saw Brazil added to the list of countries returning to outright recession as Europe Hamletically debates whether to be or not to be in a triple-dip, was enough to push the S&P solidly above 2000, even if on a few hundreds ES contracts (traded almost exclusively between central banks), then the overnight massacre of global manufacturing PMIs - when not one but both Chinese PMIs missed spurring calls for "more easing" and pushing the SHCOMP up 0.83% to 2,235.5 - should see the S&P cross Goldman's revised year end...