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LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- The U.S. economy should grow only moderately over the next two years, generating just enough jobs to slowly reduce unemployment, University of Michigan economists said Thursday. [Snip] The annual economic forecast said that economic output growth should be about 2.5 percent in both 2012 and 2013, up from this year's projected rate of 1.8 percent. The national jobless rate should drop from 9 percent now to 8.8 percent in late 2012 and to 8.5 percent in late 2013, forecasters said.

WASHINGTON — The portion of American families living in middle-income neighborhoods has declined significantly since 1970 The findings show a changed map of prosperity in the United States over the past four decades, with larger patches of affluence and poverty and a shrinking middle. In 2007, the last year captured by the data, 44 percent of families lived in neighborhoods the study defined as middle-income, down from 65 percent of families in 1970. At the same time, a third of American families lived in areas of either affluence or poverty, up from just 15 percent of families in 1970. The...

A day after Canadian oil company TransCanada agreed to reroute its proposed Keystone oil pipeline around Nebraska' ecologically sensitive Ogallala Aquifer, the State Department refused to budge on a new environmental review of the project that is not slated for completion until 2013 -- after the presidential election. The State Department on Tuesday denied that the delay is designed to appease environmentalists, a core constituency of the Obama administration. "I can only say, as we've said repeatedly on the record, that the White House had no bearing on the decision-making process," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Tuesday. "The State...

Americans “aren’t feeling real good” about Republicans in Congress who have blocked his $447 billion jobs bill, President Obama said late Sunday night. “The American people, at this point, are wondering about congressional leadership in failing to pass the jobs bill — the components of which the majority of Americans, including many Republicans — think are a good idea,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Hawaii at the conclusion of a Pacific summit. He said Republican lawmakers are likely to pay a price at the polls next November for standing in the way of his proposals, which include...

The decision by the Obama administration to delay any action on the XL Keystone pipeline until after the election is a fitting development for an administration that has pursued a bankrupt energy policy, a bankrupt jobs policy and is quite literally bankrupting the country with politics thinly veiled as policy. And the beauty for Obama in this latest axe he's taken to jobs in the USA is that he doesn't even have consider Congress while he's swinging it. He can kill close to a half-a-million jobs all on his own.    “The State Department said Thursday it would take up to 18...

Obama reads riot act to European leaders in late night phone calls and orders them to take more dramatic action on debt crisisBy Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 12:55 PM on 11th November 2011 Barack Obama has read the riot act to the leaders of several European countries - saying more dramatic action is needed to avert a eurozone meltdown. The U.S. President made telephone calls to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian President Giorgio Napolitano late last night. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the president had demanded faster action from Europe. It came as...

DELONG: It Is 1931. We Are Austria. If The Fed Doesn't Save Us Here Comes Another Great Depression... Henry Blodget Nov. 9, 2011, 5:21 PM How does Berkeley professor Brad Delong feel about what's going on in Europe? He's freaking out: Time to Spread Foam on the Runway: The Federal Reserve Needs to Act Now to Firewall Off the Eurocrisis I have been complaining for some time now that Reinhart and Rogoff think that the time is always 1931 and that we are always Austria--that the great fiscal crisis is about to erupt and send us lurching down toward Great...

Cody Preston, 25, keeps looking for work that will pay what he made installing granite counters. PORTLAND, Ore.—Few groups were hit harder by the recession than young men, like Cody Preston and Justin Randol, 25-year-old high-school buddies who didn't go to college. The unemployment rate for males between 25 and 34 years old with high-school diplomas is 14.4%—up from 6.1% before the downturn four years ago and far above today's 9% national rate. The picture is even more bleak for slightly younger men: 22.4% for high-school graduates 20 to 24 years old. That's up from 10.4% four years ago. In...

A surge in food prices this year is impacting local grocery stores and restaurants, which in turn affects the people buying food from these places. But in many cases, owners of eateries and shopping venues say they have little choice but to raise prices to keep up with costs. “Oh yeah, prices have gone up like crazy,” said Mike Hetelekides, owner of The Villager Restaurant and Diner in Canandaigua. “We can’t keep up.” The U.S. Agriculture Department said last week that it expects retail food prices to increase 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent this year, after climbing just 0.8 percent...

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday slashed its forecast for economic growth, raised projections for unemployment, and suggested Europe's debt crisis posed big downside risks to the U.S. economy. [Snip] Policymakers did not see the jobless rate falling to a level they consider consistent with full employment even at the outer edge of their forecasting horizon, the final quarter of 2014. Officials now expect the world's largest economy to expand by a tepid 2.5 percent to 2.9 percent next year, down from the rosier 3.3 percent to 3.7 percent they were expecting in June. They saw the unemployment rate going no...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Well, finally I find some sound bites here that are not about me. Okay. We're gonna start at number 15. Folks, I'm sorry to do this but I just got the sound bite roster and I'm going through here and it's all about me. It's got Sharpton talking about me, Brokaw talking about me, everybody talking about me -- and I don't want to play those. So 15 through 19 is where we'll start, and after that, you know, I gotta play it by ear. How you doing, folks? Great to have you... (interruption) Oh, I'll play...

Can this economy turn without help from Washington, D.C.? Can it turn even with Washington hurting it? Those are the two questions I am asking industrial CEOs, and the answers are a little surprising. First, many of the industrial CEOs I deal with actually see a turn happening in this country's economy. They see it in nonresidential construction, which can be a real driver of the GDP growth. They see it in autos, where a 13 million auto build, once dreamed of, is now a reality. They see it in larger orders for trucks and generators and construction equipment. They...

As Jim Geraghty says, it all depends on your definition of “better.” Do we have more jobs? No. Do we have lower unemployment? No. Do we have a more balanced federal budget? No. Do we have increasing household income? No.Hope and change, baby! CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Well, you know, I think we are better off now than we would have been if I hadn’t taken all the steps that we took. I don’t think the country is stronger yet then it was when the economy was still booming and we didn’t have Wall Street crisis, and we...

Has the country gone mad? No need to answer; the question is rhetorical. (In other words, I know the answer, too.) According to the Bureau of Labor, 14 million Americans together make up our dismal national unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. That figure doesn’t include the 9.3 million who have uncomfortably settled into part-time work, or the million additional folks who have become discouraged and stopped looking for work altogether. This is a depression. No doubt, some agency of government spares no expense cataloguing the psychiatric records needed to substantiate that diagnosis.President Obama campaigns across the country for his jobs bill...

Just finished watching "Special Report" and before I could turn the channel, there was prancing Shep, singing the praises of Hussein over the stock market climb.

A new wrinkle has surfaced in the implementation of the federal health care law that critics argue will impose a significant penalty on women and marriage. The law includes generous subsidies for the uninsured so they can afford to buy coverage in the new insurance exchanges that are part of the legislation. But several analysts told Congress Thursday the nature of the subsidies has an odd effect. "The way this bill is structured, there are disincentives for women to marry and disincentives for women to work," said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. "And...

Fourteen months ago, Aurora resident Prentiss Bailey was going about happily living his life as usual. He was employed at a printing company where he’d worked for 10 years—a job that paid $17 an hour and that with the consistent overtime and $4,000 and $5,000 annual Christmas bonuses he got, enabled him to take care of his family and enjoy what he considered a middle income life. Today, he and his 10-year–old daughter live in a homeless shelter. So does 33-year-old Robert Estes, also of Aurora. They’re among the nearly 193,000 people who’ve been added to the ranks of the...

Most people on Drew’s campus have probably heard the noise being caused by the protesters in New York City concerning the Occupy Wall Street movement, but how many actually know the details of what is going on? The Occupy Wall Street movement, which has inspired dozens of other “Occupy” events not only across the country but also the world, began a little more than a month ago as a protest to the various financial troubles being experienced in the United States today. The most well-known theme of the movement is the “99 percent versus the 1 percent” idea. That is,...

A search of the email cache that BigGovernment released last week reveals that the #Occupy movement is largely driven by socialists and anarchists who realize they need to conceal their actual message and goals in order to appeal to the political mainstream. The goal of #Occupy is to build large enough numbers where a ‘mob mentality’ takes over so they achieve their real aim of overthrow, as evidenced by a statement from one of the #Occupy movement’s earliest and strongest advocates: …when the numbers are big enough, they will feel their oats, get impatient, and start demanding more than you...

Pelosi Statement on Republican Obstruction of Bill to Keep Teachers and First Responders On the Job October 21, 2011 San Francisco – Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today after Senate Republicans unanimously blocked last night the “Teachers, First Responders Back to Work Act,” which would create or save approximately 400,000 jobs for teachers, cops and first responders: “Last night, Senate Republicans voted unanimously against America’s teachers and first responders; they stood in opposition to strengthening American communities; they prevailed on behalf of millionaires and against middle class families; they thwarted job creation and economic growth. “This is...