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For the five year anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis, Ed Lazear and I have released a paper titled “Observations on the Financial Crisis,” published through the Hoover Institution. It’s just over 25 pages and also has a fairly detailed timeline of events as an appendix. Ed was chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers when I was director of the National Economic Council. Here are the 19 observation headlines. I urge you to read our supporting arguments, especially if you’re going to comment on or respond to them. Each argument takes only about a page. “The recession that...

A White House spokesman called July’s 7.4 percent unemployment rate proof that “the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression.” He said it with a straight face. The data tell another story: America remains mired in the Great Obama Depression. The unemployment rate that the administration trumpets is a liar’s number. The formula for the unemployment figure that is released every month is rigged to look favorable to the administration in power. The true numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show a far different picture. They show an America that is in...

ROSENBERG: One Of The Most Reliable Economic Indicators Peaked In July Sam RoDecember 5, 2012When the official headline economic indicators don't work, savvy investors turn to the unconventional economic indicators. In his latest Breakfast With Dave note, David Rosenberg visits a signal being sent by the restaurant sector: EATING OUT IS OUT Our hedge fund desk has always told me that among the most reliable cyclical indicators for the American consumers is the restaurant sector. Traffic is slowing down precipitously and the companies are issuing negative guidance. I took a look at the monthly details from the latest PCE data...

School plans to layoff 25 faculty and staff members The University of the District of Columbia is asking the city for $4 million to pay for the severance packages of dozens of professors and staff members it wants to lay off. UDC plans to lay off 25 faculty and staff members, and eliminate seven departments and two dozen majors. School officials say it's expensive to eliminate positions because of a strong union presence. The school already eliminated 30 positions. A university spokesperson said the school expects the city to pay for the severance packages because the city ordered UDC to...

On one hand it is easy to sympathize with the owners of motor homes who live on the city's streets. "I've got my life savings tied up in it," said Robin Tyree, a 59-year-old woman who parks her motor home near the San Francisco Design Center. "I'm just trying to survive." Unfortunately, RVs line the curb along Oak and Fell streets next to Golden Gate Park and along Great Highway, and in the Bayview a group has set up an outdoor couch, coffee table and TV viewing area. Finding a park for motor home owners might be a good idea...

$56 million suicide prevention programme launched as study reveals more Americans take their own lives than die in car crashes Suicide is a bigger killer than car crashes, according to an alarming new study. The number of people dying from suicide has drastically increased, while car accident deaths haven lessened, making suicide the leading cause of injury death. Suicides via falls or poisoning have risen significantly and experts fear there could be en more going unrecognised, specifically in cases of overdose. 'Suicides are terribly under-counted,' said Ian Rockett, author of the study, published on Thursday in the American Journal of...

Full title: Ground Reports from the “Depression that Shall Not Be Named” — things we notice that the corrupt media won’t report that show this is indeed a Depression On my desk, just under the computer monitor, I have a little box full of slips of scrap paper. I’ve been doing this since I was a kid because the nuns who taught me in Catholic School refused to ever waste paper. Anything that comes into my home that’s blank on one side and has outlived its usefulness is drawn and quartered and spends some time as scrap paper in that...

The U.S. economic recovery hasn't felt much like one even for people who managed to find new jobs after being laid off. Most of them have had to settle for less pay. Only 56 percent of Americans laid off from January 2009 through December 2011 had found jobs by the start of this year, the Labor Department said Friday. More than half of them took jobs with lower pay. One-third took pay cuts of 20 percent or more. … The report provides an illustration of the job market's persistent weakness well after the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009....

Tampa police estimate that 80 to 90 percent of the tax refund fraud they encounter is committed by people on public assistance. "The people who are benefiting most from our taxes are the ones doing it," said police spokeswoman Andrea Davis.

The Congressional Budget Office said failure to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff" of expiring tax cuts and automatic spending reductions would cause U.S. gross domestic product to shrink 0.5 percent in 2013. Previously, the non-partisan CBO forecast full-year GDP growth of 0.5 percent. The first half of 2013 will be particularly difficult, the CBO said in its mid-year forecast update. Tax hikes and spending cuts will cause GDP to shrink 2.9 percent in the first half, compared with a prediction in May for a 1.9 percent contraction. There will still be a slight bounceback in the second half of 2013,...

Unemployment rates rose in July from June in almost all states, including those where the presidential election fight is expected to be fiercest, according to data released on Friday by the Labor Department. Altogether, jobless rates rose in 44 states. Rates dropped in Idaho, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia, and were unchanged in four states. As the country moves closer to November's election day, voters' attention is squarely focused on the economy and a national jobless rate hovering above 8 percent. Because of the unique U.S. political system in which states cast electoral votes for president, the contest...

Americans cut their spending at retail businesses for a third straight month, as a weak job market has made consumers more cautious. Retail sales fell 0.5 percent in June from May, the Commerce Department said Monday. Consumers spent less on autos, furniture, appliances, on building and garden supplies and at department stores. The drop in sales followed declines in the previous two months. Retail sales haven't fallen for three straight months since the fall of 2008, at the height of the financial crisis. Some of the weakness in recent months reflects falling gas prices. But even excluding sales at gas...

Michelle Amaral wanted to be a brain scientist to help cure diseases. She planned a traditional academic science career: PhD, university professorship and, eventually, her own lab. But three years after earning a doctorate in neuroscience, she gave up trying to find a permanent job...she took an administrative position at her university, experiencing firsthand an economic reality that, at first look, is counterintuitive: There are too many laboratory scientists for too few jobs. That reality runs counter to messages sent by President Obama and the National Science Foundation and other influential groups, who in recent years have called for U.S....

My first thread on Free Republic I asked if Mitt Romney would balance the budget, and the consensus was that he would not. That we should expect more of the same. So for this next one, I will ask more stuff which is important to me a fiscal free market conservative: Will Mitt Romney expand the role, size, and cost of government? I’m asking these questions about the deficit, and size of government because I don’t understand what the difference is so far between Obama and Romney, and not sure what the point is in replacing Obama with Romney if...

The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits dipped last week but not by enough to indicate hiring will pick up. Weekly applications for unemployment aid declined by 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 387,000, the Labor Department said. That’s down from an upwardly revised 389,000.

Underpaid, Underemployed And Barely Making Ends Meet Many Americans are stuck in jobs with low wages and lousy benefits By Michael Cooper 6/19/2012 Throughout the Great Recession and the not-so-great recovery, the most commonly discussed measure of misery has been unemployment. But many middle-class and working-class people who are fortunate enough to have work are struggling as well, which is why Sherry Woods, a 59-year-old van driver from Atlanta, found herself standing in line at a jobs fair this month, with her résumé tucked inside a Bible. (snip) Ms. Woods’s current job has not been meeting her needs. When she...

The only thing more amusing than the weekly upward revisions in the initial weekly jobless claims are the media reports of significant drops afterward. Today's case in point is the "drop" to 377,000 from last week's 383,000, which got revised upward to 389,000 ... the 64th upward revision in 65 weeks: In the week ending June 2, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 377,000, a decrease of 12,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 389,000. The 4-week moving average was 377,750, an increase of 1,750 from the previous week's revised average of 376,000.The advance seasonally adjusted...

ORIGINAL POST: Last economic datapoint of the day: April factory orders come out at 10:00 AM ET. Analysts expect an increase of 0.2%. That compares to a decline of 1.9% in the previous month. Given all the bad news in econ data-world these days, this one will be closely watched for confirmation or negation of the trend. UPDATE: The numbers are out and bad. Factory orders fell 0.6% in April, which is way worse than the 0.2% growth anticipated. Last month was revised to a decline of 2.1% from a decline of -1.5%. And ext-transport, the decline was a solid...

NEW YORK (AP) — Business has picked up. Yet American companies are too nervous to step up hiring. The economy seems so gripped by uncertainties that many employers have decided to manage with the staff they have. They aren't convinced their customer demand will keep growing. Or they worry that Europe's festering debt crisis could infect the global economy. Or they aren't sure what Congress will do, if anything, about taxes and spending in coming months. All that helps explain why U.S. employers added just 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year and the third straight month of...