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We have not seen global economic activity fall off this rapidly since the great recession of 2008. Manufacturing activity is imploding all over the planet, global trade is slowing down at a pace that is extremely alarming, and the Baltic Dry Index just hit another brand new all-time record low. If the "real economy" consists of people making, selling and shipping stuff, then it is in incredibly bad shape. Here in the United States, the dismal economic numbers continue to stun all of the experts. For example, on Monday we learned that the Texas general business activity index just...

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The Department of Health and Human Services attempted to reassure private insurers on Thursday that they'll be able to recover losses from participating in Obamacare by claiming it was an "obligation" of the U.S. government to bail them out. At issue is a provision within the law known as the risk corridors program. Under the program, which runs from 2014 through 2016, the federal government is to collect money from health insurers doing better than expected and use those funds to provide a federal backstop to other insurers who incur larger than expected losses from rising medical claims. The idea...

A threat by the nation's largest health insurer to pull out of ObamaCare is a sign of the industry's growing angst about the viability of the federal exchanges, sources close to the industry say. UnitedHealthcare's warning sent new shockwaves across the healthcare sector after weeks of mounting anxiety among private insurers whose participation in the exchanges is critical to the viability of the president's signature law. In the last month alone, insurers have learned that the Obama administration has significantly lowered its expectations for new customers and will have far fewer federal dollars to help cushion insurer losses. "We've been...

October exports fell 6.9 percent from a year ago, dropping for a fourth month, while imports slipped 18.8 percent, leaving the country with a record high trade surplus of $61.64 billion, the General Administration of Customs said on Sunday.

When the global economy is doing well, the amount of stuff that is imported and exported around the world goes up, and when the global economy is in recession, the amount of stuff that is imported and exported around the world goes down. It is just basic economics. Governments around the world have become very adept at manipulating other measures of economic activity such as GDP, but the trade numbers are more difficult to fudge. Today, China accounts for more global trade than anyone else on the entire planet, and we have just learned that Chinese exports and Chinese imports...

Elections are not mysterious events subject to the whimsy of unpredictable candidates and voters. They’re actually highly predictable, with a set of variables that influence outcomes in familiar ways. Because of that, we can say, with reasonable confidence, that a Republican will be moving into the White House in 2017.

German exports for the month of February have plummeted to their lowest level since 1950, following a similar decline in January. The drop means Europe's largest economy will contract more than expected. According to the latest figures published on Wednesday by the Federal Statistics Office, exports fell 23.1 percent to just under 65 billion euros in February, compared to the same period last year. This follows a similarly precipitous drop of 23.2 percent in January. The two-month decline is the worst since World War II. Imports also dropped 16.4 percent to 56.2 billion euros compared to a year ago. The...

On Sunday, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, arrived in Iran for talks on the nuclear agreement, as part of what appears to be an attempt by the UN nuclear watchdog to evaluate whether Iran ran a military nuclear program in the past.

There has been a spike in the number of people illegally crossing the Southwestern US border in August, including a significant uptick in unaccompanied children, ABC News has learned. ... “We have seen...in the month of August, a surprising uptick, and it still is below -- far below the levels that we saw at the peak last year," White House Press secretary Josh Earnest said. "In August, the numbers decline because of the weather patterns. Instead, we saw a -- an increase. So that is something that is concerning.”

WASHINGTON --The pace of home sales slowed sharply last month, a possible sign that rising prices are causing homebuyers to pull back. The pace of existing home sales fell 4.8% last month from July to a seasonally adjusted rate of 5.31 million, the National Association of Realtors said Monday. That was the largest month-to-month decline since January, when sales fell 4.9%. Sales for July were revised down slightly to 5.58 million from 5.59 million. ... On Thursday, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen noted the improvements in the housing market although she added the market is nowhere near its pre-recession levels....

Some readers will remember the disputes during the last decade when the journalists were hauled before the farcical "Human Rights Commissions" of Canada and asked to explain why they had ever said anything that the state commissars did not agree with. Best of all is that the members of the Commission do not have to wait for anybody to complain to them before they act. The Commission is allowed to head out all by itself and search for things that are offensive. One must wonder whether it may just – wholly unforeseeably – be a government department which continuously...

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran has discovered an unexpectedly high reserve of uranium and will soon begin extracting the radioactive element at a new mine, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said on Saturday.

U.S. jobless claims rose again for a third straight week but the numbers still indicated that the labor market was still strengthening. The amount of Americans filing for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose again from the predicted 270,000 last week, but the numbers are still indicative of a strengthening labor market, the government said Thursday. Initial jobless claims, cited when assessing the pace of layoffs, increased by 5,000 to 274,000 for the week ended Aug. 8, the Labor Department revealed Thursday, reported Reuters. Claims for the previous week were adjusted to show 1,000 fewer applications than previously reported. Even though claims...

China stunned the world’s financial markets on Wednesday by devaluing the yuan for the second day running, sparking fears that the world’s second largest economy is in worse shape than investors believed. The currency hit a four-year low on Wednesday after the People’s Bank of China set the yuan’s daily midpoint even weaker than in Tuesday’s devaluation. With the bank having said that Tuesday’s move was a “one-off depreciation”, the rapid drop in the value of China’s currency – around 4% in the last two days – dealt a blow to appetite for risky assets, and markets across the region...

The Institute for Supply Management said its national factory activity index fell to 52.7 last month from a reading of 53.5 in June. A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the manufacturing sector. A gauge of new orders received by factories rose to a seven-month high, while inventories continued to decline. There was growth in 11 of the 18 manufacturing industries, including furniture, fabricated metal products, electrical equipment, appliances and components, and transportation equipment. Five industries including machinery reported that production had contracted in July. Manufacturing has been hobbled by a strong dollar, which has pressured the profits of multinational...

The index of pending home sales unexpectedly fell 1.8 percent, the first drop this year, after a revised 0.6 percent increase in May that was smaller than initially reported, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed Wednesday in Washington. The median forecast of 37 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a 0.9 percent gain. The data are consistent with the slow improvement in housing, restrained by still-tight lending standards and a limited selection of available properties. An easing of those conditions, along with an acceleration in wage growth, would allow more Americans to take advantage of cheap borrowing costs...

More than a dozen states that opted to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act have seen enrollments surge way beyond projections, raising concerns that the added costs will strain their budgets when federal aid is scaled back starting in two years. Some lawmakers warn the price of expanding the health care program for poor and lower-income Americans could mean less money available for other state services, including education. In Kentucky, for example, enrollments during the 2014 fiscal year were more than double the number projected, with almost 311,000 newly eligible residents signing up. That's greater than what was initially...

June 05--Minnesotans got a shock Thursday when the state's health insurers proposed "eye-popping" rate increases for people who buy health insurance on the individual market -- premium increases as high as 70 percent. Democratic-Farmer-Labor Gov. Mark Dayton condemned the increases as "outrageous" and suggested they should be scaled back. Republicans saw them as reason to criticize the state-run portion of that market, MNsure. Here's the background about these premium increases, why they're happening and what they mean: What's proposed? Federal law requires health insurers to disclose any premium increases above 10 percent. Those were released Wednesday, and in Minnesota, there...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. economy went into reverse in the first three months of this year as a severe winter and a widening trade deficit took a harsher toll than initially estimated. The Commerce Department says the overall economy as measured by the gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in the January-March period. The revised figure, even weaker than the government's initial estimate of a 0.2 percent growth rate, reflects a bigger trade gap and slower consumer spending. It marked the first decline since a 2.1 percent contraction in the first three months of...