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Yesterday, Obama made a rare campaign trail appearance in Maryland where he spoke in support of Democratic candidate for governor, Anthony Brown, proceeded with his usual bulletin of reading fabricated economic data off the teleprompter in which he highlighted improvements in US unemployment (if not the 46.5 million people on foodstamps or the 93 million Americans out of the labor force), a rebounding housing market (just as the bouncing dead cat is once again dead), the benefits of health insurance (if no mention of the disaster for small businesses that Obamacare now definitively is) a resurgent manufacturing sector (just...

Tail-wagging love really does conquer all: James Wathen, a terminally-ill patient at Baptist Health Corbin in Corbin, Kentucky, had stopped eating and had become weak and frail. His condition kept deteriorating, and he was barely able to talk. Wathen managed to whisper to a nurse his wish to see his dog, Bubba, just one more time. The 73-year-old hadn’t seen his one-eyed Chihuahua with no bottom teeth since he arrived by ambulance at the Whitley County hospital six weeks earlier. “One of our social workers realized it was mourning the loss of the dog that was making our patient even...

Steep stock market corrections often create shrouds of pessimism that do bad things to people’s brainpower. And one of the absolutely stupidest things I have heard in recent weeks is that the recent drop in oil prices is bad. You heard me right. Serious people on financial television are saying lower oil prices are a signal of worldwide economic collapse. Here at home that translates to recession, deflation, a profits collapse and rising unemployment. I’ve been around for a while, and I’ve seldom heard such gibberish. The latest stock market scare stems from a bunch of fears — such as...

Something peculiar is happening to our nation's food assistance program. The recently renamed food stamp program - now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP - is supposed to respond to difficult economic conditions by providing financial assistance to purchase food to poor Americans. As bad times hit and more people need assistance, SNAP caseloads should go up. And as the economy strengthens, the number of SNAP recipients should decline - at least in theory.For most of the history of the program, that is what happened. As the accompanying chart shows, from 1969 until 2003, SNAP has been very...

So President Obama gives a major economics speech toward the end of last week, and the next week stocks get clobbered. It was the worst correction in many months. There's probably no direct cause and effect here. But it's worth noting that the president has been speaking out of all sides of his mouth during the market volatility. In that speech a week ago he swore that he's not anti-business. He said, "I actually believe that capitalism is the greatest force for prosperity and opportunity the world has ever known." You know, that sounds a lot like my opening line...

Tyler Durden 09/21/2014 Just two short months ago, Goldman Sachs was exuberant over the 'expansion' signals that the firm's Global Leading Indicator Swirlogram was exhibiting as it confirmed their 'economists' expectations that the Keynesian hockey-stick of hope would once again re-appear majestically in H2 2014 and lift America (and the world) to escape velocity. That dream is over. Confirming the collapse of world GDP expectations, Goldman's GLI has plunged into 'slowdown' with momentum starting to slow. Perhaps, just perhaps, as we noted previously, this time is not different and the annual cycle of extrapolating early-year hope is rapidly turning to...

Every three years the Federal Reserve releases a survey of consumer finances that is a stockpile of data on everything from household net worth to incomes. The 2013 survey confirms statements I have made previously regarding the Fed's monetary interventions leaving the majority of Americans behind: "While the ongoing interventions by the Federal Reserve have certainly boosted asset prices higher, the only real accomplishment has been a widening of the wealth gap between the top 10% of individuals that have dollars invested in the financial markets and everyone else. What monetary interventions have failed to accomplish is an increase in production...

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 Deloitte University Press has a very interesting, and comprehensive study on job gains and losses, by type of job, and state by state. The biggest winners are states involved in energy production, finance, or healthcare. The biggest losers are states that did not recover from the real estate bust, or lost population due to emigration. With that overview, let's dive deeper into the Geography of Jobs. Only now, as we reach the fifth anniversary of the end of the recession, has employment in the United States finally regained its pre-recession peak. The national story of slow recovery obscures the...

In an interview on CNBC this past week President Barack Obama boasted that his programs “have made America better off on practically every economic measure.” He contended that “the seemingly negative outcomes cited by my critics stem from false consciousness.” “From a broad perspective let’s consider the declining participation in the workforce that many in the GOP harp on,” Obama suggested. “Work, as any economist will tell you, is a disutility. People don’t work because they want to. They work because they have to. The fact that a growing number of Americans can live their lives without having to work...

I received a note the other day from a social Democrat, who wrote: “When Obama came to power the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 7,900, today it is over 17,000. When he came to power, the Federal Budget deficit was 11% of gross domestic product (GDP), today it is 2.8%. When he came to power, the economy was in a free fall and losing 8 million jobs, today it is growing and all the lost jobs have been recovered. We are poised today to become the greatest energy producer in the world and North America will produce more oil and...

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...