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Joe Weisenthal June 9, 2014 Goldman's top economist, Jan Hatzius, just said the words we've been wanting to hear for five years. He believes the economy is now growing at an above-trend pace. Goldman's own proprietary current activity indicator (CAI) is showing its fastest growth since the crisis, and though he acknowledges that some of the strong May activity is the result of a snapback from a tough winter, he says that even without that snapback we're still growing at a strong rate. Here's his statement: Despite the 1% drop in real GDP in the first quarter, we believe that...

Joe Weisenthal June 8, 2014 The evidence is piling up that the economy is bursting out of the winter doldrums, as basically all of the May economic data has been hot. The latest evidence comes from what may be the most important source of all: The credit markets. Specifically, credit expansion is accelerating. On Friday we got fresh data on bank lending and consumer credit. The below chart shows the year-over-year change in loans and leases from commercial banks (red line) and revolving consumer credit, AKA credit card usage, in the blue line. What's clear is that both are on...

Joe Weisenthal Jun. 6, 2014 We just hit a big milestone with today's jobs report. We've finally recovered all of the jobs lost during the recession. We needed 113,000 jobs today to do it and easily cleared that bar with a gain of 217,000 jobs in May. Of course because of population growth, we're still "behind" in terms of total jobs, but at least this is one benchmark that's been cleared. For a long time we've been running this chart from Calculated Risk, showing how deep this jobs recession has been compared to past ones, and our nickname for it...

At West Point last week [1], President Barack Obama went to a variant of an economic theme he’ll probably reprise until the day he leaves the Oval Office once and for all (we hope) 31-plus months from now.Obama told the assembled graduating Army cadets and their families: When I first spoke at West Point in (December) 2009 … our nation was just beginning a long climb out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. What if I told you that nearly five years into the nation’s “long climb” out of the recession, the relative size of the...

Joe Weisenthal June 3, 2014 12:51PM 2014 was supposed to be the year that the economy finally broke out of its subpar, post-crisis pace of growth. But the first few months of the year were a big disappointment, and in fact Q1 GDP was decidedly negative. Of course, the economic bulls had an excuse for this: Weather. It was well known that there was an unusual amount of cold and snow at the start of the year, and that kind of weather keeps people home. So this spring became a moment of truth for the economy. If the data stayed...

Recovery: The economy "unexpectedly" contracted at an annual rate of 1% in the first three months of the year. But fear not! The prosperity that President Obama has promised for five years will be here tomorrow! Obama's top economic adviser, Jason Furman, dismissed the news that the 1% drop was twice as big as economists had predicted just a few weeks ago. This was, he said, almost entirely due to a downward revision in the "highly volatile inventories category" and some bad winter weather in some parts of the country. "More up-to-date data," Furman says, show that the economy "continues...

... Personal income tax collections plunged last month from a year earlier in 27 of 32 states for which Reuters was able to collect data. That's most of the 43 states that levy income taxes, and drops were as high as 50 percent. While many states predicted tough times this year, a handful including New Jersey and Pennsylvania is set to face hard decisions on either cutting spending or raising taxes. By the end of last year, 26 states had still not seen overall tax revenue return to pre-recession levels, according to recent data from Pew Charitable Trusts.

U.S. retail sales growth slowed in April, with consumers shopping less online and cutting back on purchases of furniture and electronics. The Commerce Department says retail sales rose just 0.1 percent last month, after surging 1.5 percent in March following a harsh winter that had curtailed shopping. The modest sales suggest that consumers continue to be cautious during the still-slow, nearly 5-year recovery.

What would you say about an economy where businesses are shutting down faster than they are opening? Well, a shocking new study released by the Brookings Institution indicates that this is exactly what is happening in the United States. We are absolutely killing small businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit in this country, and as you will see below, the number of self-employed Americans has been on a downward trend for a decade even though our population has been steadily growing. Traditionally, small businesses have been the primary engine of job growth in this nation, so the fact that study after...

The economy created 288,000 jobs in April, up from 203,000 in March. That’s the second best showing of the Obama recovery but still less than what is needed each month to raise employment to prerecession levels. Those results are consistent with an economy recovering from its winter slump but performing well below full potential—4 to 5 percent GDP growth and 400,000 to 500,000 jobs a month. Construction, manufacturing, retail and wholesale trade, business and professional services, finance, health care, leisure and hospitality, and government employment were all up. Information technology registered a small loss. Hourly earnings made no gain, indicating...

A majority of the new jobs created in the four years of the recovery have been in low-wage sectors, according to a new report released this week. “Deep into the recovery, job growth is still heavily concentrated in lower-wage industries,” said the National Employment Law Project, a progressive research group which has been pushing for Congress to increase the minimum wage. Lower-wage industries accounted for 22% of job losses during the recession but 44% of employment growth over the past four years.

The One Word Democrats May Not Utter During the Campaign Posted By Rick Moran On April 19, 2014 @ 11:26 am In Politics | And it’s not “Obamacare.”As important as Obamacare is to the Republicans in the midterm elections, the economy still tops everyone’s list as the number one issue facing the country.Some Democratic political consultants are advising candidates to avoid using the term “recovery” when describing the economy — for obvious reasons. This Fox News poll from January shows that 74% of Americans still think we’re in a recession. Any Democrat uttering the word “recovery” is likely to...

Democrats Told "Don't Mention 'Economic Recovery' - It's A Political Loser" Tyler Durden 04/18/2014 19:48 -0400Democratic strategists have made a blunt declaration in an election-year memo, according to AP, "Don't talk about the economic recovery. It's a political loser." Stan Greenberg, James Carville and others wrote that in head-to-head polling tests the mere mention of the word "recovery" is trumped by a Republican assertion that the Obama administration has had six years to get the economy moving and its policies haven't worked. But, but, but... stocks are at all-time highs? As AP reports, Election-year memo to Democratic candidates: Don't talk...

Obamanomics: For five years now, President Obama has been telling Americans that we "have a long way to go" before the country will see a return to prosperity. Just how long does he expect us to wait? Do a search of the White House website for "long way to go" and you come up with hundreds of hits, most of them involving President Obama or someone in his administration counseling patience on economic growth. Now, it might have made sense in mid-2009 to say that recovery from a deep recession will take time. After all, the recovery had just begun....

A new study says governments around the world boosted their debts by more than 40% to over $100 trillion in response to the global financial crisis. Where's the promised recovery from all that spending? From mid-2007 to last summer, the world added $30 trillion in government debt to its balance sheets, the Bank for International Settlements says. By comparison, that's twice the size of the $15 trillion U.S. economy. After the financial crisis, governments around the world, but especially in Europe, the U.S. and Japan, went deeper into debt so that they could spend more. They were following the old...

On Thursday, I posted part of Medea Benjamin's rant about her group's detention at Cairo Airport on its way to Gaza. I posted it together with the picture above rather than the picture below, because I focused on the group, rather than on the rock star. I should have known better. By the way, the caption of that picture says that she is being 'welcomed home by loved ones.' Do you see any? In describing her ordeal, Benjamin claimed: Little did I know I would be stopped at the Cairo airport, detained, held overnight in a cell, then in...

The average annual labor force participation rate hit a 35-year-low of 63.2 percent in the United States in 2013, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The last time the average annual labor force participation rate was that low was in in 1978, when it was also 63.2 percent. Jimmy Carter was president then.

If you spend a lot of time watching government (taxpayer) subsidized media you’ll find they’re working overtime to convince us all the economy is recovering. What they refuse to show is stories like this: Sbarro, the Italian restaurant chain that’s a fixture in mall food courts, is closing 155 of its locations in North America in an attempt to improve the company’s profitability. The move is part of a broader plan to boost financial performance under a new management team, according to a statement yesterday. The closings affect underperforming company-owned stores and not franchise locations, Sbarro said. The chain, based...

Unemployment has surpassed government and politicians as the most important problem facing Americans, according to a new poll. The Gallup survey shows that nearly one in four Americans — 23 percent — say that jobs are the biggest problem, followed by "dissatisfaction" with government, the economy, and healthcare. The concerns over unemployment have increased by a third from Gallup’s last poll in January, when 16 percent of Americans said jobs was their leading issue.

Many groups—including Christians—take the phrase “Let go and let God” to heart. The idea of getting out of the way and letting God take over is appealing and has a spiritual sound to it. Those who seek to overcome compulsive behavior are often exposed to this thinking. For example, imbedded in the 12 steps in the form that most recovery groups follow are the powerful assertions that one who is overcome by sin is “powerless” and needs to “turn their will and lives” over to God. This letting go allows God to “restore their sanity” and “remove their defects in...