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U.S. economic growth was a bit slower than initially thought in the first quarter as businesses restocked shelves at a moderate pace and government spending declined sharply.

A former child actor, who enjoyed fleeting fame on the 1980s comedy “Small Wonder,” is reportedly broke and homeless —and blames a stripper for his troubles. Down-on-his-luck actor Jerry Supiran, 39, also claimed a crooked money man contributed to his current situation, living under a bridge in central California, according to The National Enquirer. The former child actor played adorable preteen Jamie Lawson, who was the brother of his adopted sister, Vicki, a robot made by their dad. “When I was 18, I dated a stripper and she took what was left of my trust fund —then one of my...

Contracts to purchase previously owned homes unexpectedly fell in April to a four-month low, undermining some of the recent optimism that the housing sector was touching bottom. The National Association of Realtors said on Wednesday its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in April, fell 5.5 percent to 95.5, its lowest level since December. Economists polled by Reuters had expected signed contracts, which lead existing home sales by a month or two, to rise 0.1 percent after a previously reported 4.1 percent gain. The housing market has been one of the U.S. economy's weakest links as it recovers...

49.1%: Percent of the population that lives in a household where at least one member received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2011. Cutting government spending is no easy task, and it’s made more complicated by recent Census Bureau data showing that nearly half of the people in the U.S. live in a household that receives at least one government benefit, and many likely received more than one. The 49.1% of the population in a household that gets benefits is up from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as recently as the third quarter of...

<p>A Collier County man accused of shooting two doe deer says he needed to feed his family.</p> <p>The Naples Daily News reports Castillo told deputies he shot the deer because he was unemployed and needed food to feed his family. He said he was on his way home from dog hunting with his son when he spotted two deer running across the road. Castillo said he got out of his car and shot them.</p>

Yes, U.S. GDP is still rising, according to the latest reports. But that doesn't mean we've dodged a new recession. Sound surprising? What most people don't understand is that recessions often begin when gross domestic product is still showing positive growth. Four of the past six recessions started during a quarter when GDP was growing, as did 72% of all recessions in the past 94 years . How can that be? The answer is that expansions end -- and recessions begin -- at the peak of the business cycle, after which the economy begins to contract. _________________________________________________ One reason we...

Ron Johnson's plan to transform JCPenney continues to roll along, and many of its workers on the frontlines aren't happy about the changes. JCPenney cut a bunch of middle managers across the country on Monday, according to multiple former managers we spoke with. We've withheld their names for their protection. This appears to be part of the layoffs announced back in January, but it's unclear how exactly how many have been let go. One source says that the number may now be in the thousands. JCPenney didn't immediately answer requests for comment, but a spokesperson did mention yesterday that the...

Blue collar Democratic voters, stuck taking depressing “staycations” because they can’t afford gas and hotels, are resentful of the first family’s 17 lavish vacations around the world and don’t want their tax dollars paying for the Obamas’ holidays, according to a new analysis of swing voters. “They view everything through their own personal situation and if they can’t afford to do it, they can’t enjoy it, they don’t like Obama using their tax dollars to benefit himself,” said pollster John McLaughlin. “In this case, they see him as out of touch. While they are struggling he’s not sharing in that...

Analysts with Great American Group, a leading provider of asset disposition, valuation and appraisal services, believe that continued increases in raw material costs will result in overall higher food prices in the coming months. Retail food prices remained above average in 2011, with the largest increases occurring in the meat and dairy industries. Higher prices were driven by increased export demand, adverse weather conditions and high fuel and feed costs. While record plantings for corn and wheat may help lower costs for feedstocks in the coming months, ongoing weather-related issues and global export demand may result in continued volatility. Great...

The problems Obama will face are growing not subsiding. In just the last month the pump price of gasoline has risen .20 a gallon. ……..higher than it has been in February since 1981. The reason for the rise totally out of Obama’s control; he can’t lie his way out of it. The Iranians want to squeeze the Europeans who are already looking at $8.00 a gallon gas so they are denying France and England oil. The Europeans will come here to buy their gasoline because our $3.52 per gallon looks great! When they do our price will go up whether...

In the workplace lunchroom, dominated by a Formica table stocked with a condiment cradle that holds four kinds of hot sauce, Nikki furrows her brow as she fishes into her purse and retrieves her driver's license. A resident of Riverside, Nikki is filling out some paperwork for her new job. "There's a lot of stuff they want to know," she says. It's been a busy day for the former administrative assistant. "I flew in and saw the doctor before I even got here," she says. Dressed in "business casual," Nikki is an attractive 24-year-old African-American woman with a retro hairstyle...

After three years with unemployment topping 8 percent, the U.S. has seen the longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression, the Congressional Budget Office noted in a report issued today. And, despite some recent good news on the economic front, the CBO is still predicting that unemployment will remain above 8 percent until 2014. The report also notes that, including those who haven't sought work in the past four weeks and those who are working part-time but seeking full-time employment, the unemployment rate would be 15 percent.

It appears the record surge in people not in the labor force is not the only outlier in today's data. For the other one we go to the Household Data Survey (Table 9), and specifically the breakdown between Full Time and Part Time Workers (defined as those "who usually work less than 35 hours per week"). We won't spend too much time on it, as it is self-explanatory. In January, the number of Part Time workers rose by 699K, the most ever, from 27,040K to 27,739K, the third highest number in the history of this series. How about Full time...

A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that's not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3...

Two weeks ago, we observed that the number of seasonally-adjusted initial unemployment insurance claims being filed each week was still following the same trend it has since 9 April 2011, but that it was becoming increasingly volatile, suggesting that the trend is beginning to break down: Today's number also underscores the increasing level of volatility in the data - when the current trend was establishing itself, it was characterized by relatively small changes in the number of new jobless claims being filed from week to week. Today new data marks the fourth time in the last six weeks in which...

Beware of bubbles of false hope. Right now there is a lot of talk about how the U.S. economy is improving, but it is all a lie. The mainstream media can be very seductive. When you sit down to watch television your brain tends to go into a very relaxed mode. In such a state, it becomes easy to slip thoughts and ideas past your defenses. Sometimes when I am watching television I realize what the media is trying to do and yet I can still feel it happening to me. In this day and age, it is absolutely...

<p>WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - The number of Americans applying for first-time jobless benefits rose last week, a report showed on Thursday, reversing a recent decline and suggesting the labor market remains brittle. Unemployment claims jumped to 399,000 in the first week of 2012, the highest in six weeks, from an upwardly revised 375,000 in the prior week. The four-week average of claims also marched higher to 381,750 from 374,000. The Labor Department report also showed 3.63 million continuing claims, up from 3.61 million. Including the millions of workers receiving benefits under emergency federal programs, some 7.3 million Americans were receiving unemployment benefits as of Dec. 24, the most recent date for which comprehensive figures are available. The U.S. unemployment rate has fallen sharply in recent months and was 8.5 percent December, but some economists worry the drop has been due in part to discouraged workers dropping out of the labor force.</p>

At 15, Jarvis Nelson should be in high school and even thinking about college. Yet Jarvis is in seventh grade, and doesn’t know where he’ll go to high school — or even where he will be living — when he graduates from junior high, hopefully next year. That’s because Jarvis has attended three different schools in the past four months. He’s lived in three different places on the North and South Sides of the city — including his most recent home, a temporary shelter in Lake View. Jarvis, like thousands of other students in Chicago Public Schools, is homeless. He...

Media propagandists continue to advance the Democratic Party line. On December 21, Bloomberg News breathlessly reported, "The leading Republican candidates for president have embraced an explanation of the financial crisis that has been rejected by the chairman of the Federal Reserve, many economists and even three of the four Republicans on the government commission that investigated the meltdown." Reporter David J. Lynch further explained, "Both former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney lay much of the blame on U.S. government housing policies, saying they led to the real estate crash that almost brought down the banking...

Growing numbers of New Yorkers seeking food stamps have created an unwelcome spillover effect at some of New York City's job centers: overcrowding that in some cases has grown so severe, benefits were jeopardized. The crush of people grew so large at one Brooklyn center in November that the Fire Department intervened and prevented anyone from entering the building.