Free Republic

Almost half the residents of Florida, including much of the state’s glitzy southern half, are barely getting by, living below the federal poverty level or struggling to pay for food, housing, childcare and other basic needs, according to a United Way study released Tuesday.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Jo White said the agency will be focused on implementing rules on executive compensation. “We have three or four [rules] yet to finish, including the clawbacks,” she said in an interview with CNBC at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. The agency has already adopted six rules regarding executive compensation. Under the Dodd-Frank law, the SEC is required to create rules to return compensation that was improperly received, called “clawbacks,” and create a rule to prevent securities exchanges from listing securities of companies that have not implemented such a policy. White said among...

The unemployment rate no longer seems to reflect America’s mood. Friday’s strong jobs report showed that the jobless rate—the most closely watched gauge of the economy’s health—is down to 5.8 percent. A year ago, the rate was 7.2 percent. Five years ago, it was 10 percent. It’s the kind of sustained decline that would normally suggest a satisfied public. Not so much anymore. […] Many Americans don’t feel they've benefited from falling unemployment any more than they have from a sustained rise in the stock market or from solid U.S. economic growth. Some hints of their discontent can be found...

The topline of this morning’s jobs report shows nonfarm payrolls expanding by 214,000 jobs in October. It’s the sort of number that suggests a narrative of a continuing, albeit disappointing, economic recovery. But dig a little deeper and you find a much sunnier story. When read carefully, today’s report provides more evidence that the labor market is improving quite rapidly, and that the recovery has gained momentum over the past year. The old saying is that the devil is in the details. Today’s report suggests just the opposite — dig into the details, and you’ll find a much sunnier story...

Speaking to a mostly white college audience: "“This progress has been hard but it has been steady and it has been real,” Obama said at Northwestern University on Oct. 2. “And it’s the direct result of the American people’s drive and their determination and their resilience, and it’s also the result of sound decisions made by my administration. So it is indisputable that our economy is stronger today than when I took office.” Obama griped to party donors several days later that his accomplishments are a mystery even to his most loyal supporters. “Most of you don’t know the statistics...

WASHINGTON -- The number of people who applied for U.S. jobless benefits fell 23,000 to 264,000 in the week that ended Oct. 11, hitting the lowest level since April 2000, showing that employers are laying off few workers, according to government data released Thursday.

Just weeks after President Obama's approval rating hit record lows in the liberal bastion of California, a new survey shows the president in trouble in another deep blue state: New York. Only 39 percent of registered New York voters surveyed in a Marist College poll said Obama is doing an "excellent" or "good" job, the lowest level for Obama in the poll since the beginning of his presidency. Sixty-one percent of survey respondents judged Obama as doing a "fair" or "poor" job in office.

June 2009 to June 2014.” This report found, depressingly, that five years into an “economic recovery,” real median household income “is now 3.1 percent below that of June 2009 when the ‘great recession’ officially ended.” In dollar terms, real median household income fell by $1,698. So much for the Obama claim on Labor Day that “by nearly any measure, the economy is doing better.” Well, actually, for more than half of Americans, their personal financial situation is worse. ... the poor and unskilled that Mr. Obama says he cares so much about saw their incomes fall by 7.4 percent for...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, but that probably does not signal a material shift in labor market conditions as claims remain near their pre-recession levels. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 315,000 for the week ended Sept. 6, the highest level since late June, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Claims for the prior week were revised to show 2,000 more applications received than previously reported.

Milk futures rose to a record high price Monday as exports by the U.S. climbed amid shrinking inventories of cheese and butter, signaling higher costs for pizza and pastries. The U.S. shipped a record 17 percent of milk production in the first half, according to Alan Levitt, a spokesman at the U.S. Dairy Export Council. Cheese stockpiles in July dropped 8 percent from a year earlier, and butter supplies tumbled 42 percent, the Department of Agriculture said last month. U.S. dairy costs are higher than world prices, signaling imports will increase, said Jon Spainhour, a partner at Rice Dairy LLC.

Detroit's Under-Funded Fire Departments Use a Soda Can For a Fire Alarm Where absent money leaves gaps, ingenuity fills in. Nowhere is that more true than in Detroit's fire departments, where, as Detroit Free Press reporter Tresa Baldas shows us, a soda can full of jangling coins and screws alerts the Motor City's long-suffering heroes when there's an emergency. The system is brilliantly simple: A soda can full of rattling metal is balanced on top of the fire department's printer at the end of the tray. When the printer spits out an emergency alert, the paper knocks over the can....

American employers hired at a surprisingly weak pace in August, even as the unemployment rate fell slightly, the Labor Department said Friday. Economists, along with politicians, have been hoping to see a significant rebound in the participation rate as unemployment drops and hiring picks up, but progress on this front has failed to materialize.

The U.S. economy added 142,000 jobs in August, well below expectations and breaking a six-month streak of gains above 200,000...

The number of new applications for jobless benefits rose last week but stayed near 2014 lows, a new indication of an improving labor market. Initial claims for unemployment benefits increased by 4,000.... ... four-week moving average of claims, which smooths out weekly volatility, rose 3,000 to 302,750.....

Electricity prices are on the rise across the country, according to federal government data. The average price has risen more than 3 percent since the same time last year — the highest year-over-year growth for the first half of the year since 2009. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential electricity prices — what households pay to keep the lights on — averaged 12.3 cents per kilowatt hour for the first half of this year. This is 3.2 percent above the average price this time last year. New England, however, saw prices rise significantly more than the national average....

Consumer spending fell in July for the first time in six months, as Americans cut back on purchases of new cars and other retail goods, the government reported Friday. The drop in spending was a bit of a surprise: economists polled by MarketWatch had predicted a seasonally adjusted 0.1% increase. The growth in incomes, meanwhile, slowed to 0.2% pace in July from 0.5% in each of the prior two months. It was the smallest gain since December and also below Wall Street expectations.

The Congressional Budget Office released a bit of a good news/bad news report on Wednesday regarding the state of the U.S. economy and federal budget. In the bad news column, CBO projected 2014’s GDP growth at just 1.5 percent. The report blamed this revision on “the surprising economic weakness in the first half of the year.” In early June, the International Monetary Fund projected the United States to grow by just 2 percent this year, revising its own estimate down from a previously anticipated 2.7 percent GDP expansion. This report is not likely to be warmly greeted by the...

The Fed's low interest rates could bring a "scary" 50-60 percent market correction, technical analyst Abigail Doolittle told CNBC on Wednesday. "Unfortunately, I think it could come on a crash similar to what happened in 2007," the founder of Peak Theories Research said on " Squawk Box " a day after the S&P 500 closed above the 2,000 level for the first time ever. "It's tough to know what the exact catalyst will be. But that's the very nature of that kind of selloff. They start slowly and then happen very suddenly." Doolittle pointed to a 20-year chart of the...

The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday raised its estimate of the federal government’s budget deficit for the current fiscal year as it slashed its growth forecast, and warned red ink was due to rise in coming years if Washington doesn’t change current laws. In an update of budget and economic projections for 2014 to 2024, the nonpartisan CBO said the U.S. government’s deficit for fiscal 2014 will be $506 billion, or 2.9% of gross domestic product. The new estimate is $14 billion more than the agency’s prior estimate for the year, issued in April. The agency lowered its projection of...

Food prices continue to go up and consumers are feeling the pinch. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the price of food has spiked to its highest rate since September 2011. Consumers are now paying more for such staples as ground beef, chicken and turkey, eggs, bacon, citrus fruit, coffee, peanut butter, and margarine. Normally, politicians would try to alleviate this financial strain on American families. Yet, this administration seems to want to make food more expensive.