Free Republic

When the government jobs and economy report was released last Friday, it wasn’t quite as rosy as we’ve been led to believe: Economist Herbert Stein famously observed, "If something cannot continue, it will stop." Given other readings on the economy, the rapid growth in jobs that was reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for 4Q2015 and 1Q2016 could not continue. So, in April, it stopped. [ed. in other words, we lied about jobs growth,again.] Telling lies with statistics is so easy even a politician can do itFriday's BLS "Employment Situation" report was terrible. FTE* employment fell by 296,000,...

By adding to an already challenging legal environment in North Carolina, HB2 could cost the state almost $5 billion a year, according to a new report by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. "The repeal of HB2 would not only reverse the threat to over $5 billion in economic activity for the state, but would also begin to bring North Carolina some of the economic advantages that come when a state embraces diversity and its LGBT citizens," said Christy Mallory, Senior Counsel at the Williams Institute and co-author of the new report. While prior reports have focused on...

Financial Meltdown: Thanks to the media, many Americans believe that the financial crisis was a result of banking deregulation. A new study delivers a thorough debunking of that idea. A group of respected think tanks — the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute and the Mercatus Center — has issued a 208-page book titled “The Case Against Dodd-Frank: How The ‘Consumer Protection’ Law Endangers Americans.” It’s a devastating indictment of the law. The book crushes the conventional media and liberal political narrative that deregulation was at the heart of the crisis... ...the crisis “was principally the result...

Something isn't clicking in the US labor market. On Tuesday, the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey — or JOLTS — report showed there were 5.757 million jobs available in the US in March, a near record. Additionally, the number of unemployed persons in the US per job open is down to pre-recession levels at about 1.5 workers per job. In 2010, for example, this number was closer to five unemployed workers per job opening. And while the abundance of jobs is often interpreted as a sign of strength in the labor market, there's a persistent and growing gap...

"Donald Trump's Economic Plans Would Destroy the US Economy!" screams the headline in The Atlantic. Of course to go with the headline they find a very unflattering picture.... I do give The Atlantic one bit of credit: They didn't bury the lede. "I've borrowed knowing that you can pay back with discounts," he told CNBC. "I would borrow knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal.” "This policy would be so disastrous that even its suggestion is dangerous." Oh really? The article goes on to say that suggesting that one might haircut the debt would collapse markets...

Trump and the Republican Drama Obscures the Real Crisis The most important issue the new president will face continues to be sidelined. May 10, 2016 Bruce Thornton    Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The Republican caterwauling over Donald Trump reminds me of the lyric from “That’s Entertainment”: “There’s no ordeal/like the end of Camille.” Jeb Bush, Lyndsey Graham, and Mitt Romney have announced that they will snub the GOP convention. GOP big donors are closing their wallets. Some pundits and politicians are contemplating a third-party candidate to prove the purity of...

New York Magazine's Annie Lowrey excitedly writes "that there's a welfare-policy idea that is very in vogue. That idea is just giving everybody enough money to live on, rich or poor, old or young, working or not working. It is called a universal basic income." She adds that the idea has captured the imagination of Silicon Valley technologists, European socialists, U.S. policymakers on the left and right, and seemingly everyone in between. And while Lowrey is hedging herself as to whether a universal basic income or guaranteed income will succeed, it doesn't take much casual analysis to see that what...

Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed paying for his proposals to transform large sectors of the government and the economy mainly through increased taxes on wealthy Americans. A pair of new studies published Monday suggests Sanders would not come up with enough money using this approach, and that the poor and the middle class would have to pay more than Sanders has projected in order to fund his ideas. The studies, published jointly by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center and the Urban Institute in Washington, concludes that Sanders's plans are short a total of more than $18 trillion over a decade....

Employment: April’s job growth was below expectations, which after seven years of missed targets shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. But doesn’t slow and steady win the race? The short answer is, no. Any way you look at it, April’s report was mediocre. At 160,000 new jobs, April’s number came in well below expectations — which ranged up to 240,000. The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised its job growth number down by 19,000... ...the number of people employed dropped by 316,000 last month, while 562,000 dropped out of the labor force. As a result, the labor-force participation rate dropped...

Should we be alarmed that the number of job cuts announced by large U.S. companies was 35 percent higher in April than it was in March? This is definitely a case where the trend is not our friend. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. firms announced 65,141 job cuts during April, which represented a massive 35 percent increase over the previous month. And so far this year overall, job cut announcements are running 24 percent higher than for the exact same period in 2015. Meanwhile, on Thursday we learned that initial claims for unemployment benefits shot up dramatically...

First, let’s take a look at the reports, then we will take a look at what this may mean for the economy. Class 8 Truck Orders Plunge 39% The Wall Street Journal reports Truck Orders Fall in April. Last month, trucking fleets ordered just 13,500 Class 8 trucks, the big rigs used on long-haul routes, down 16% from March and 39% from a year earlier. It was the fewest net orders in any April since 2009, FTR said. DAT Solutions, an Oregon-based transportation data firm, reported that loads available for dry vans, the most common type of tractor-trailers used for...

We continue to get more evidence that the U.S. economy has entered a major downturn. Just last week, I wrote about how U.S. GDP growth numbers have been declining for three quarters in a row, and previously I wrote about how corporate defaults have surged to their highest level since the last financial crisis. Well, now we are getting some very depressing numbers from the rail industry. As you will see below, U.S. rail traffic was down more than 11 percent from a year ago in April. That is an absolutely catastrophic number, and the U.S. rail industry is feeling...

Why a conservative economist says Trump could make America ‘the North Korea of economics’ By Jim Tankersley May 6 In his run for the White House, Donald Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on imports from China, in almost-certain violation of international rules. He has threatened to confiscate money that immigrants from Mexico wire home to their families, in order to force the Mexican government to pay for a border wall. This week, he suggested that, in an economic crisis, the government might repay only some of the money it owes to certain holders of its debt. Those threats reflect...

There was no dramatic monologue or carefully written statement needed. Trump Supporters have known all along that Sean Hannity would support Trump when Trump became GOP nominee. This was confirmed with a simple tweet “Yes, I do.” Thank you, Sean, for always being fair and for endorsing Donald J. Trump for President.

292 Union Pacific engines idled in Arizona Desert Total US rail traffic in April plunged 11.8% from a year ago, the Association of American Railroads reported today. Carloads of bulk commodities such as coal, oil, grains, and chemicals plummeted 16.1% to 944,339 units. - snip - Only five of the 20 commodity categories saw gains. Of the decliners, coal was the biggest. But petroleum products also plunged 25%, and grain mill products dropped 7%. Even without coal, carloads were down 3% year-over-year.

Hillary Cinton isn't over the finish line yet, but as she continues to battle Bernie Sanders she's also turning her attention to a general election matchup with Donald Trump. A lot of Democrats say that in order to beat Trump, she needs to be developing a clearer message on the economy. That's not Donald Trump's problem. Not only does he have a simple, clear message — he often says so himself. "Our theme is very simple," Trump reminded voters last week after winning the Indiana primary. "Make America great again. We will make America great again. We will start winning...

On April 12, in one of the easiest financial predictions in history, I challenged the notion that a €5 billion slush fund dubbed “Atlas” could possibly prop up €360 Billion of non-performing loans in Italian banks. Less than a month later, “Atlas” is already a notable failure. I seek no credit for my call, and none is due. Failure was a certainty from the start. Instead, I question the sanity of anyone who thought such a preposterous scheme could work in the first place. Please consider Atlas Strains to Hold up the Sky Over Italy’s Banking Sector. “A government-orchestrated, privately...

Distinguished law scholar Elizabeth Warren teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law at Harvard Law School. She is an outspoken critic of America's credit economy, which she has linked to the continuing rise in bankruptcy among the middle-class. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Council Lectures" [6/2007] [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 12620]

Candidate Ted Cruz and candidate John Kasich have officially “suspended” their campaign efforts to win the republican nomination. However, the campaign effort to deliver a resounding win for Donald Trump continues.Yes, a major hurdle has been crossed – Donald Trump is now the last remaining candidate running for the nomination; but that doesn’t mean the push through the last remaining states should be any less important. Every vote counts. Every delegate matters.Anyone who is inclined toward complacency needs only to look at the reaction yesterday by House Speaker Paul ‘Omnibus‘ Ryan and note why it is vital for the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy added the fewest number of jobs in seven months in April and Americans dropped out of the labor force in droves, signs of weakness that cast doubts on whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates before the end of the year. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 160,000 jobs last month as construction employment barely rose and the retail sector shed jobs, the Labor Department said on Friday. That was the smallest gain since September and below the first-quarter average job growth of 200,000. Employers added 19,000 fewer jobs in February and March than previously...