Free Republic

Summary: Seven years after the financial crisis, check out these five charts to see how President Obama's policy decisions helped America narrowly avoid another Great Depression.

WASHINGTON: The US Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged on Thursday in a nod to concerns about a weak world economy, but left open the possibility of a modest policy tightening later this year. In what amounted to a tactical retreat, the US central bank said an array of global risks and other factors had convinced it to delay what would have been the first rate hike in nearly a decade. "Recent global economic and financial developments may restrain economic activity somewhat and are likely to put further downward pressure on inflation in the near term," the Fed said in...

Since the end of the Great Recession, nearly every sector of Michigan’s economy has seen significant growth, with a total of 360,500 more private sector jobs in 2014 than in 2009, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Michigan went from having 3.87 million jobs in 2009 to 4.18 million jobs in 2014. In 2005 the state was on a transition from a gradual economic decline into what became a very steep one. Since 2010, both employment and the Michigan economy have been on an upswing. The strongest employment growth has been in the professional and business sector (+117,500...

Economic issues will be the focus of the next televised GOP presidential debate, which will be held Oct. 28 at the University of Colorado in Boulder and broadcast on CNBC. CNBC's debate titled "Your Money, Your Vote: The Presidential Debate on the Economy" will address jobs, taxes, the deficit and the national economy. The network will moderate the debate. "Presidential elections are often won or lost based on core economic positions, understandings and values," said Mark Hoffman, CNBC chairman, in a statement. "Our nation's economy and place in the world, job growth, entrepreneurship and the pursuit of the American dream...

In one of the most widely anticipated Federal Reserve decisions in decades, the U.S. central bank left interest rates unchanged Thursday. The Fed's pronouncement to leave rates at historic lows—where they’ve been since roughly the start of the Great Recession in 2008—signals that the U.S. economy has yet to fully recover from the near collapse. Market professionals are now looking ahead to a press conference from Fed Chair Janet Yellen at 2:30 p.m. EDT, searching for further hints as to the timing of the Fed’s future course of rate hikes. “Uncertainty from the Fed has been the biggest issue,” Stephen...

Fed decision day: The event traders across the globe have anticipated for months has finally arrived. As of 8:00 a.m. ET, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were 43 points lower, or 0.26% to 16621. S&P 500 futures shed 6 points, or 0.31% to 1982, while Nasdaq 100 futures slid 10 points, or 0.24% to 4370. Today’s Markets Months of speculation about whether September was the month in which the Federal Reserve would begin to lift short-term interest rates is finally coming to a close. The Federal Open Market Committee meets for the final day of its two-day policy-setting meeting, which...

Economy: After six-plus years of President Obama's big-spending, tax-raising policies, middle-class families have seen their incomes decline and more families have fallen into poverty, Census data show. The Census Bureau's latest annual report on income and poverty in America shows that there was little to cheer about in 2014. Median family income dropped slightly to $53,657, down from the year before. Every income group suffered losses, with the lowest fifth of households dropping close to 1%. The overall poverty number barely budged. But it climbed by almost 600,000 among blacks in 2014, more than half of whom were under age...

FRED = Federal Reserve Economic Data This is the perfect handout for just about discussion of the Democrats' libtard agenda!

Urging business leaders to lobby Republican lawmakers for higher spending, President Obama said Wednesday that partisan gridlock in Washington is a bigger threat to the U.S. than Chinese cyberattacks or Russian military aggression. “Our problem is not that China’s going to out-negotiate us, or that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is sort of out-strategizing us,” Mr. Obama said. “Has anybody taken a look at the Russian economy lately? That’s not our problem. Our problem’s us, typically. We engage in self-inflicted wounds, like this potential government shutdown. It’s unnecessary.” The president spoke to the Business Roundtable in Washington as the Oct. 1...

It's been a while since I've written about the idea of a universal basic income. So I figure an update is in order. The typical UBI proposal you see picks a certain dollar amount and then declares that it should go equally to all adults. I disagree with this in two ways. First, I think that children should also receive a basic income (paid to their parents). Second, I think that UBI payments should vary based on age. Neither of these additions negates the chief administrative advantages of the UBI because they don't introduce means-testing. It's trivially easy to vary...

DEMS ANSWER WALKER WITH LABOR LAW BILL: Two days after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker unveiled his plans to eliminate the NLRB and take right-to-work national, congressional Democrats will today propose legislation developed with the AFL-CIO to stiffen penalties for employers who violate the National Labor Relations Act. Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Bobby Scott will introduce a bill that they say would “help ensure workers are able to have a voice in the workplace and would crack down on employers who break the law when workers exercise their right to collective action.” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will stand alongside the...

Just in time for tonight’s GOP presidential debate, a consortium of think tanks from nearly 90 countries has released its annual Economic Freedom of the World Report. The report has some good news for much of mankind — economic liberty increased slightly around the globe — but not such good news for the United States, which continues to tumble in the rankings. As recently as 2000, the United States had the second-freest economy in the world, trailing only Hong Kong. But throughout the Bush and Obama years, we have slipped further and further behind. Last year, we fell out of...

Yellen May Surprise You Futures see 25% chance of ‘liftoff’ on Thursday;2-yr. yield hits 4-yr. high What if they threw an interest-rate hike and no one cooperated? The Federal Reserve has been edging tentatively toward the final step of monetary policy "normalization" for years. But events have conspired against it. In 2013, the mere mention that the Fed might slow additional bond buys sparked a worldwide market "taper tantrum." Ever since, despite broad consensus that the U.S. economy is on firm footing, one "one-time" event after another has cropped up to test that belief: the worst winter in decades, oil...

Governor Scott Walker made his name reforming Wisconsin’s labor laws. Now he proposes to do the same at the federal level. In a speech yesterday, Walker detailed solid labor-policy reforms that conservatives should embrace. His reforms boil down to eliminating union power over the government and focusing private-sector labor law on employee choice. Walker sees creating government unions as a policy mistake that unnecessarily increases government spending. Neutering Wisconsin’s government unions enabled him to eliminate a $3.6 billion budget deficit and cut taxes by $2 billion. Federal unions are not as powerful as state and local government unions — they...

Yes, yes, Scott Walker doesn’t have enough pizazz or excitement for some Republicans. Let’s just toss out this bold agenda while we’re at it. >>>Walker will propose eliminating the National Labor Relations Board, which he will say has “become a one-sided proxy for the big union bosses — often at the expense of taxpayers and workers.” He will also propose eliminating “big-government federal unions,” saying the time members of those unions spend on union efforts takes away from the time they spend doing their jobs serving the American people. Walker’s plan would also make Right to Work nationwide, giving employees...

Job openings soared to a fresh all-time high in July, evidence that the labor market continues to heat up. But employers aren't ready to close the deal to fill those positions with fatter pay packets. The Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey out last week showed that actual hires fell 4% to 5 million — 770,000 lower than openings. That's a notable jolt for the "JOLTS" survey. In the seven years before the recession began in 2007, there were an average of 1.2 million more hires than openings per month. July marked the sixth-straight month in which that...

<p>Chinese shares took another tumble on Tuesday amid persisting worries about the health of the world's second-biggest economy.</p> <p>Other bourses in the region also wobbled as cautious sentiment prevailed ahead of the Federal Reserve's highly-anticipated meeting, alongside other risk events such as a sudden leadership change down under.</p>

[Hillary] used the social media platform to accuse Walker of employing “bullying” tactics when dealing with unions. “Unions help keep working families strong. Scott Walker’s attacks on unions and workers’ rights aren’t leadership—they’re bullying,” Clinton wrote. The tweet was signed with her initial, indicating she personally authored the tweet. A few hours later, Walker responded — and hit back hard. @HillaryClinton Actually, we’re protecting the American worker from being forced to support candidates like you,” [SW]

The minimum wage peaked in 1968 at $8.54 per hour, after adjusting for inflation. The current $7.25 is far too low for the 3 million hourly workers who earn at or below that threshold, and certainly not at par with the wage hikes instituted by other countries with similar economic trajectories. Here’s The Economist on America’s embarrassingly low minimum wage: Given the pattern across the rest of the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries, one would expect America, where GDP per person is $53,000, to pay a minimum wage around $12 an hour. That would mean a raise of...

Colleges give prospective students very little information about how much money they can expect to earn in the job market. In part that’s because colleges may not want people to know, and in part it’s because such information is difficult and expensive to gather. Colleges are good at tracking down rich alumni to hit up for donations, but people who make little or no money are harder and less lucrative to find. On Saturday, the federal government solved that problem by releasing a huge new set of data in a website called College Scorecard, detailing the earnings of people who...