Free Republic

DETROIT (AP) — A 46% pay raise. A 32-hour week with 40 hours of pay. A restoration of traditional pensions.The demands that a more combative United Auto Workers union has pressed on General Motors, Stellantis and Ford — demands that even the UAW’s own president calls “audacious” — are edging it closer to a strike when its contract ends Sept. 14.

Reacting to the disclosure that Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email account during her tenure as secretary of state, a federal judge agreed Friday to reopen a conservative group's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking details about the employment arrangements of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. However, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan declined — for now — to address claims from Judicial Watch that Clinton's use of the private account and server led State Department officials to commit a fraud on the court by certifying they had turned over all responsive records.

Corzine off the crook - No criminal charges It’s official. Jon Corzine will not be cuffed over MF Global’s improper handling of customers’ funds leading up to the commodity brokerage firm’s spectacular collapse in late 2011, The Post has learned. Federal investigators have found no evidence that the disgraced Wall Street titan broke the law. “After 18 months of investigation, the criminal probe into Jon Corzine is now being dropped,” a person with knowledge of the probe told The Post. “There is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing,” this person said. The Justice Department’s decision to drop the case is sure...

Perot is famous (among other things) for his statement during the 1992 presidential campaign that if NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was not a two way street would create a “giant sucking sound” of jobs going south to the cheap labor markets of Mexico. Both of Perot’s opponents (George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton) argued that NAFTA would create jobs in the U.S. because of business expansion. However, the goods balance of trade for the U.S. with Mexico has been negative and steadily growing over the years. In 2010 it amounted to $61.6 billion, which was 9.5% of the...

IN ECONOMICS as in apparel, most fashions come and go. But like the navy blazer or the little black dress, bewailing the decline of American manufacturing never seems to go out of style.

Some time ago, there was a lengthy debate as to why anyone even cares about the manufacturing ISM number. After all America is now by and far a service economy. Obviously, that debate ended in a stalemate. Nonetheless, the sad truth is that with each passing year America is losing ever more of its once dominant industrial advantage, and with the chief export being "financial innovation", should the world experience another risk flare up it is very likely that the world will enforce an embargo on any future US "imports" and the country's current account deficit will drop to a...

BEIJING (AP) — Expansion of Chinese manufacturing activity slowed for the third month in July, as production, new orders and purchasing prices all declined, a survey showed Sunday. The state-affiliated China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said its purchasing managers index, or PMI, fell to 51.2 in July from 52.1 in June. Numbers above 50 show manufacturing activity expanding. The index, an indicator of future manufacturing trends, has remained above 50 for 17 straight months after slowing in late 2008 and early 2009. It was 53.9 in May and 55.7 in April. Areas such as production, new orders and purchasing...