Free Republic

But to hear President Joe Biden and his team tell it, he was dealt an unusually bad hand back in January 2021 when he took the oath of office — one far worse than his predecessors. Although the COVID-19 economy had already begun to turn around in the last months of the Trump administration, to listen to Biden, the challenges he faced dwarfed those of other administrations. He couldn’t be more wrong. Reagan and Obama came into the White House in the midst of major economic problems. When Reagan took office, the country was reeling from 11.8 percent inflation and...

... In return for more spending, Mrs. Clinton could have offered serious structural reforms: repeal of Davis-Bacon, time limits on environmental reviews, serious cost-benefit analysis, and so forth. Such a package would have been irresistible. Instead her plan simply asserts that Mrs. Clinton will “break through Washington gridlock” and “cut red tape”—promises made and forgotten by every presidential candidate in living memory. If the Sierra Club sues to block her worthy commitment to “upgrade our dams and levees,” will she really short-circuit the legal process, and how? The rest of Mrs. Clinton’s economic agenda is a thousand-course smorgasbord of government...

WASHINGTON — Hank Ronan knew he would get the job. He had sailed through three rounds of interviews and hit it off with the doctors at the diagnostic center in Annandale, Va., where he had applied to be a driver for $11 an hour. Shuttling patients to appointments was a world away from his 20 years as a software engineer, but it was the best that Ronan could find after being laid off in 2011. He was eager to get back to work and granted the doctor’s office permission to run a credit check. Ronan never heard back, he said...

<p>An economy still stumbling toward recovery was not enough to sway the Federal Reserve, which defied market expectations Wednesday and said it will not begin pulling back on its monthly asset-purchasing program. Stocks surged on the news but bond yields were flat.</p>

During his one-hour, six-minute snoozer of a speech supposedly about the economy in Galesburg, Illinois, on Wednesday, President Barack Obama denounced Washington’s “endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals.” “Phony”? The rest of the president’s speech was so utterly devoid of new ideas that even ordinarily reliable apparatchik Chuck Todd at MSNBC couldn’t handle it, aptly observing of Obama and his administration: “They have nothing new to say.” Obama, whose flunkies presented his speech as yet another “pivot” back to jobs and the economy, didn’t even identify employment growth as his top priority. Instead, he said that...

Last week was a bleak one at Thomson Reuters, the financial news and wire service giant. According to sources, as many as 3,000 people were let go, out of approximately 50,000 employees around the globe. Most of the layoffs came from the financial sector—the sales, training and analysts’ divisions—but some were on the editorial side. “Yes, I can confirm there have been layoffs across Thomson Reuters today, including editorial,” Barb Burg, vice president and global head of communications at Reuters, told Talking Biz News last week. “Similar to efforts across the company, the Reuters organization is focusing attention on our...

WASHINGTON — On Dec. 31, just hours before a New Year's Eve celebration, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. Section 1245 of the law contains language providing authority to impose economic sanctions on Iran in order to deter the ayatollahs from acquiring nuclear weapons. White House efforts to have the sanctions provision stripped from the bill failed, and the measure became law with a quiet flourish of the presidential pen. Ever since, Washington and Tehran have been waging a war of words. None of this works to the advantage of the American...

Yahoo!Finance reports Most of the unemployed no longer receive benefits Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent -- a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America's 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more. Congress is expected to decide by year's end whether to continue providing emergency unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states. If the emergency benefits expire, the proportion of the unemployed receiving aid would fall further. Congress has extended the program nine times. But it...

"There are always going to be bumps on the road to recovery,'' President Obama said at a Jeep plant in Toledo the other day. "We're going to pass through some rough terrain that even a Wrangler would have a tough time with.'' His audience booed. They're un-fire-able union members with lavish benefits, and even they weary of the glib lines from his 12-year-old speechwriters. We're not on the road to recovery. You can't get there from here, as they say. Obama was in Toledo to "celebrate" the sale of the government's remaining stake in Chrysler to Fiat. That's "Fiat" as...

I think this is an excellent idea. When I first heard of this it was misunderstood as a NO MORTGAGE for a year.It is not. It reduces the mortgage payment and would be LIKE refinancing for free. Alot of people said WHO WILL PAY FOR THIS? It is like forbearance for all. No cost really to the banks or anyone. The banks would win in the end with alot less foreclosures as more people are losing jobs. The banks WILL BE FINE off of all of the stimulus money they are sitting on. Click Here: Save Our Economy-A One Year...

NEW YORK: Michelle Obama left many admiring her 540-dollar fancy footwear as she recently stepped out to volunteer at a Washington D.C. food bank. The US First Lady was spotted sporting renowned French design house Lanvin's trendy trainers, suede, with grosgrain ribbon laces and metallic pink toe caps. The mum-of-two, who has top labels in the line desperate to dress her in their wraps, completed the remaining look with her J.Crew cardigan and a pair of utilitarian capri pants, reports the New York Daily News. Michelle has sparked many shopping frenzies amongst women looking to ape her sense of clothing.

Watching the flow of financial news has become like watching a magic show at the circus. In the center ring we see an impressive daily slight of hand trick. It turns our attention from the truth to only what Obama wants us to see. Although this changes regularly it never focuses on hard data. The schizophrenic Democrats can’t decide if they hate Wall Street ( while they are beating it up for their own purposes) or they love Wall Street - when the Dow goes up. Lately the Dow has been going up and of course the media and the...

Stocks remained sharply lower Monday afternoon as Pfizer's (PFE:NYSE - news - commentary - research - analysis) takeover of Pharmacia (PHA:NYSE - news - commentary - research - analysis) wasn't enough to quell investor paranoia about corporate accounting. A statement from President Bush that the economy was fundamentally strong wasn't helping either. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was recently down 296 points, or 3.4%, to 8389, while the Nasdaq was falling 25 points, or 1.8%, to 1349. The S&P 500 was behind by 30 points, or 3.3%, to 891, a level it hasn't seen since July 1997.Worries about the financial...