Obama "Part-Time" Recovery Still Last After September Jobs R...
Today, the BLS released its Employment Situation report for September 2012. The report showed a seasonally adjusted increase in nonfarm payrolls of 114,000. Private sector payrolls increased by 104,000, while government payrolls grew by 10,000. Yet, the "official" unemployment rate (U-3) declined to...
Jobs Report: "A Part-Time Recovery," Brady Says
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), Vice Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, today called the Bureau of Labor Statistics' report that the economy added only 104,000 new private sector jobs in September, "another reminder of the failure of President Obama's economic policies. It cements this recovery as t...
Report Confirms Economy’s Lack of Growth
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) today revised downwards its estimate of 2nd Quarter gross domestic product (GDP). BEA estimates that real GDP increased at an annual rate of 1.3% during the 2nd quarter, down 0.4 percentage points from its previous estimate.
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), Vice Chair...
Weekly Economic Update: October 1-5, 2012
The economy added 114,000 jobs in September as the unemployment rate fell to 7.8%. Consumer credit increased by $18.1 billion to $2.726 trillion in August. The ISM index rose 1.9 points to 51.5 in September as the ISM services index increased 1.4 points to 55.1. Factory orders fell 5.2% in August. A...
Weekly Economic Update: September 17-21, 2012
Existing home sales increased 7.8% in August while housing starts rose 2.3% and building permits declined 1.0%. Initial jobless claims declined 3,000 to 382,000 for the week ended 9/15.
Weekly Economic Update: September 10-14, 2012
The Fed announced QE3, a program of open-ended, $40 billion per month mortgage backed securities purchases. Industrial production dropped 1.2% in August. Consumer credit declined $3.3 billion to $2.705 trillion in July. The topline CPI rose 0.6% in August while the core CPI increased 0.1%. The topli...
The Pending State Pensions Crisis
By all measures, state and local government employee pension funds are significantly underfunded. By standard accounting methods, some state pension funds will run out of assets within as little as five years. When this happens, states will have to use general government tax revenue to pay their pen...
More Fed Easing: High Risk, Low Reward
Although the Fed has taken several extraordinary actions
since the crisis, the Fed has fallen short in its quest for more jobs. The Fed’s actions will likely prove ineffective because monetary policy cannot solve the problems facing our economy—it is the uncertainty over budget, regulatory, and tax...
The LIBOR Scandal
On June 27, 2012, representatives of the British bank Barclays agreed to pay a $453 million fine to U.S. and U.K. regulators to settle allegations that Barclays manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). LIBOR is a set of indices that represent the prevailing interest rates in London mon...
