Free Republic

Brace yourself… Skepticism, doubt and criticism of Obamanomics (all of which are, undoubtedly, based in racism) will be cast aside. Why? Because, according to the 20-something-year-old White House intern that is in charge of the official White House twitter account, “Our businesses have added nearly 10 million new jobs over the past 52 months.” I know, right? Pretty awesome statistic. (Gloss over the fact that the President is referring to private enterprise as “our businesses”.) But before you rush out to slap an Obama ‘16 sticker on your car (are those stickers available yet?), you may want a little bit...

Detroit neighbourhoods are being relit, its vacant homes are being sold off or torn down, its public transportation is cleaner and more often on schedule and the city has renegotiated some burdensome union contracts. In the little more than a year since the state-appointed emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, made Detroit the largest US city to seek bankruptcy protection, it has experienced a wide range of improvements that will factor into Judge Steven Rhodes's decisions during next month's bankruptcy trial. A major piece of the bankruptcy puzzle could fall into place on Monday, with the expected release of the results of...

<p>For the past few years, it was like clockwork: A disappointing summer of job growth would give way to a much stronger winter. Economists would hesitantly forecast that the economy was about to kick into second gear. Then the summer would come and the disappointing data would return. But finally, looks like we're ready to break that trend: The economy added 288,000 jobs in June, soundly beating economists’ expectations of 211,000, and the unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent.</p>

Shrinkage: Economists are writing off the sharp 2.9% drop in first-quarter GDP as a temporary contraction. Maybe. What isn't temporary is President Obama's massively subpar growth record over the past five years. [snip] In the nearly five years since the Obama recovery started — just months into Obama's first term — real gross domestic product has increased only 10.2%. That's less than half the average growth rate for every other economic recovery since World War II, and almost a third less than the pace set during the Reagan recovery. Looked at in dollar terms, if the Obama recovery had merely...

Hooray! The Gross Domestic Product shrank by 2.9% in the first quarter of the year. "This recovery is underway." Your humble correspondent was very careful to put the previous sentence in quotes because I don't want you to think I've taken leave of my senses. This amazing conclusion comes to us courtesy of CNN Money spinmeister Annalyn Kurtz who starts out on a rather gloomy note but manages to spin her way into economic joy:

In a slow, uneven economic recovery, some cities have managed not only to survive but even to thrive. Their stories, along with those of the not-so-successful, are the subject of this study. Using data since 2009 for the nation’s metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), we identify leaders and laggards as measured by growth in economic output (GDP), personal income, and jobs. Among the 100 largest MSAs—which together make up about two-thirds of the nation’s population—we take a detailed look at the top 20 and bottom 20 economic performers. For each of these metros, we examine a number of factors that may...

The total number of Americans now on the Social Security Disability Insurance program topped 11 million in May, a record high and an increase of 18% since January 2009, according to new data from the Social Security administration, furthering a trend that will have severe economic and budget consequences. More than 5.2 million workers have enrolled in the program since President Obama took office, and enrollment is climbing faster under Obama than at any time in the program's history. An average 81,000 workers joined the Social Security Disability Program each month during Obama's years. Under President Bush, by contrast, monthly...

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...