Free Republic

Senate Republicans introduced a bill Wednesday that would overturn the Obama administration’s landmark climate rule for power plants and make it nearly impossible to rewrite them. The legislation represents the GOP’s first major legislative effort in the Senate to confront the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) carbon dioxide limits it proposed last year. It reflects the Republican Party’s broad opposition to the regulations, which they say would cost billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of jobs and have little to no environmental benefit. Republicans in both chambers have largely avoided legislation to stop the rules and instead focused their attention on...

Zero Hedge first brought attention to the Atlanta Fed over two months ago, when the first massive divergence between bullish consensus and objective reality appeared. Since then it has been nothing but a downhill race for reality, with consensus scrambling to catch up. Moments ago, the Atlanta Fed just cut its Q2 GDP forecast once more, this time to 0.7% from 0.8%. This is on the back of a Q1 GDP which as of this moments is around -1.0%. From the Atlanta Fed: The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of...

The U.S. won’t put a dent into poverty and income inequity unless Democrats and Republicans can agree to raise taxes on top earners like hedge-fund and private equity managers, President Barack Obama said Tuesday. Obama, whose longstanding proposal to raise taxes on what is known as carried interest has gained little traction in Congress, said fairness demands that the nation’s wealthiest pitch in as more and more Americans are falling behind. “If I were able to close that loophole, I’d be able to invest in early childhood education,” Obama said at a poverty summit at Georgetown University in Washington. “If...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Los Angeles County's homeless population has grown by 12 percent during the past two years amid a sluggish economic recovery that has left the poorest residents of the second-largest U.S. metropolitan area falling farther behind, a study released on Monday found. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority's report cited stagnant or falling wages among the lowest-income earners, a local jobless rate that remains above state and national averages, and a worsening lack of affordable housing. "The economy has improved, but not for the persons at greatest risk of homelessness," said Peter Lynn, the authority's executive director.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. Patriot Coal Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday for the second time in three years. The company made the filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. It had emerged from an earlier bankruptcy case in December 2013 in Missouri. Patriot said it is involved in active negotiations for the sale of its operating assets to a strategic partner. Patriot said it will continue shipping and mining operations and it has received a commitment for $100 million in debt financing from secured debt holders that it did not identify.

The doomsayers always come out whenever stock markets get more volatile, like they have this month. These gloomy prophets go on and on about how derivatives are going to cause another financial crisis, or how valuations are stretched, or how equities will collapse whenever interest rates rise. Individual investors read the commentary by these experts and wonder if they should adjust their portfolios, or even sell everything and wait out the impending collapse. But before you do that, take a moment to calm down and have another think. In every single one of our 30 years in the business, someone,...

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, the all-but-declared Republican presidential candidate currently leading the polls in Iowa, sounds more like Alabama senator Jeff Sessions when he discusses immigration issues these days. “The next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal-immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages,” Walker told Glenn Beck on April 20. “It is a fundamentally lost issue by many in elected positions today, is what is this doing for American workers looking for jobs, what is this doing to wages, and we need to have that to...

With California’s growing cap-and-trade program expected to yield a budgetary bonanza, lawmakers and interest groups have ample ideas for how to spend the money. Floating proposals ahead of a pivotal period for budget negotiations, they say they want to fund port improvements, pay for heavy-duty trucks and ferries, nurture urban rivers, sponge up carbon in soil and provide discounted bus passes. They are vying for a surge in new revenue that will be available this budget cycle and could continue pouring in for years to come.

Hillary Rodham Clinton calls them “everyday Americans.” Scott Walker prefers “hardworking taxpayers.” Rand Paul says he speaks for “people who work for the people who own businesses.” Bernie Sanders talks about “ordinary Americans.” The once ubiquitous term “middle class” has gone conspicuously missing from the 2016 campaign trail, as candidates and their strategists grasp for new terms for an unsettled economic era. The phrase, long synonymous with the American dream, now evokes anxiety, an uncertain future and a lifestyle that is increasingly out of reach. The move away from “middle class” is the rhetorical result of a critical shift: After...

Historic slowdown looms as GOP fiscal policy lets economy choke Warning bells just keep getting louder and louder as the countdown to the Crash of 2016 keeps ticking. Wall Street’s in denial, but the Washington Post warns: “U.S. economic growth slows to 0.2 percent, grinding nearly to a halt.” USA Today hears “Bubble Talk” at the Vegas “Davos for Geeks.” Earlier the Wall Street Journal warned, “declining population could reduce global economic growth by 40%.” Then recently the “slow-growth Fed” was blamed. Wrong, former Fed chief Ben Bernanke counterattacked: “I’m waiting for the Journal to argue for a well-structured program...

More and more Americans are worried that life will worsen for the next generation, so a central issue in the 2016 presidential election will be “reigniting the promise of America,” according to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. And to win the White House, Republicans need to mobilize conservatives who have not voted in recent elections, Cruz told the Tribune-Review. People who were “uninspired or unmotivated to show up for either party” across the Midwest and New England — including evangelical Christians, Reagan Democrats, independents and women — are important for the party to court, he said. Pittsburgh could be considered “ground...

The drop in oil prices was supposed to help the economy this year. So far, it seems to have mostly hurt. The theory of why lower oil costs should boost U.S. growth is simple. Despite gains in domestic production from the shale boom, the country is a still a net importer of crude. So when oil prices fall, American consumers and businesses spend less money on stuff produced abroad, leaving them with more to spend on stuff produced at home. And gross domestic product goes up. Yet GDP expanded at an annual rate of just 0.2% in the first quarter-a...

3-D printing, or additive manufacturing, is likely to revolutionize business in the next several years. Often dismissed in the popular mindset as a tool for home-based “makers” of toys and trinkets, the technology is gaining momentum in large-scale industry. Already it has moved well beyond prototyping and, as I explain in a new HBR article, it will increasingly be used to produce high-volume parts and products in several industries. Since I prepared that article, new developments have only strengthened the case for a 3-D future – and heightened the urgency for management teams to adjust their strategies. Impressive next-generation technologies...

BARACK OBAMA: This this morning we learned our economy created 223,000 new jobs last month. The unemployment rate ticked down again to 5.4%, lowest it's been in almost seven years. That's 3 million new jobs in past 12 months, nearly the fastest pace in over a decade. All told in 62 months in a row, America's businesses created 12.3 million new jobs. .......... Since there are a lot of predictions of doom and gloom, I suggest those making those predictions go back and check the statistics. Just saying.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The Washington Post, however, has a story with the headline: "Whole Foods is Learning that Millennials Aren't Who it Thought They Are." I think a lot of people are starting to figure this out. "For years, Whole Foods has thrived by selling pricey food with a promise that it is better for you, better for the planet, and better overall. The mantra has proved so successful that it has helped the high-end supermarket chain to expand from its flagship store in Austin, Texas, to more than 400 locations. But lately, Whole Foods' model hasn't looked quite as...

What was impressive about this sentiment is that it doesn’t even focus on a trade deficit. No, just the brute fact of buying imports per se is (apparently) enough to doom our children. Before unpacking the specific problems with it, let’s warm up by listing some equally plausible questions: ==> If we continue to buy groceries, where will our children garden? ==> If we continue to buy oranges from Florida, where will New Yorkers work? ==> If we continue to buy from people outside the family, where will our cousins work? ==> If we continue to buy from stores where...

Earlier we reported that all the jobs added in April were part-time, or over 400,000, while full-time jobs decreased by over 200,000 pushing them further under the pre-recession peak. Here is another stunning data point: while it has been no secret that ever since the quote-unquote recovery virtually all job gains have gone to older workers, those 55 and over and ever closer to retirement, April merely confirmed this demographically disastrous trend, and of the 255K workers added in the household survey when broken down by age group, more than all, or 266K went to workers aged 55 and older...

America can breathe a sigh of relief. The economy is improving with the spring weather. The U.S. added 223,000 jobs in April, a healthy pick up after a disappointing March and about in line with what economists surveyed by CNN Money projected. April's strong job gains reflect a trend the country saw last year: job growth cooling in the winter months, then gaining momentum into the spring. "They are good numbers," says Kate Warne, investment strategist at Edward Jones. "It's reassuring that we saw job growth rebound to above 200,000." The good news doesn't stop there. The unemployment rate dropped to 5.4%,...

U.S. job growth likely rebounded last month and the unemployment rate probably dropped to a near seven-year low, signs of a pick up in economic momentum that could keep the Federal Reserve on track to hike interest rates this year. Nonfarm payrolls likely jumped by 224,000 after increasing by 126,000 in March, according to a Reuters survey of economists. The jobless rate is seen dropping one-tenth of a percentage point to 5.4 percent, which would be the lowest since May 2008. The Labor Department will release its closely followed employment report at 8:30 a.m. (1230 GMT) on Friday. "Our view...

You’ll never hear the Obama administration pass on an opportunity to gloat about the miracles they think they’ve managed to pull off over the past seven years to get America’s economy back on track. The only problem with that is, it’s not remotely true. Somehow, the spin doctors at the White House always manage to cherry pick rare instances of economic improvement and turn them into something much bigger. If you want a real indication of how President Barack Obama’s economy is fairing, just look to a recent report that shows a coming “retail apocalypse,” with major retailers across the...