In other words, after more than a year of obstruction by a Republican-controlled US House that has refused to act to address unemployment and underemployment, and that has rejected sound proposals for addressing the mortgage crisis, Ryan and his allies are attacking the Obama administration, Bernanke and the Fed for trying to do something. That’s…
Category: Economy
All measures of unemployment are falling
Mitt Romney is in a tough political spot: He can’t seem unhappy about a falling unemployment rate. But he can’t be too laudatory about an economic recovery that appears to be strengthening on President Obama’s watch. And so he’s embraced a third option: arguing that “if you take into account all the people who are…
White House To GOP: Only One Way Around Defense Cuts — And You’re Not Gonna Like It
In light of Congressional Republicans’ abandonment of a key part of the debt limit agreement, two senior administration officials briefing reporters at the White House Monday said automatic, across the board cuts to defense programs will happen as scheduled unless Republicans relent on their refusal to raise revenues. The officials conducted the briefing under the…
The GOP’s Economic Sabotage – Disinformation and Deliberate Destruction.
It was somewhere between hilarious and pathetic to watch Republicans respond to the positive jobs report last Friday. Some friends and I were counting the minutes until some Republican started casting aspersions on the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which compiles and releases the data. Sure enough, by early Friday afternoon, Tea Party Congressman Allen…
Right-Wing Media Rely On Discredited Evidence To Dismiss Positive Jobs Report
Right-wing media are rushing to put a negative spin on newly released jobs numbers showing a drop in the unemployment rate and a net increase in jobs by parroting the discredited claim that government data show that “1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force” last month. In fact, as economic experts have explained,…
Did Obama make the economy worse? Not according to most statistics
For example, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that the economic stimulus Obama signed into law added — in the 4th quarter of 2009 — between 1 million and 2 million employed workers and boosted the GDP between 1.5% to 3.5% higher than it would have been without the stimulus. In addition, a more recent…
Unemployment rate hits 8.3%
The unemployment rate fell for the fifth straight month after a surge of January hiring, a promising shift in the nation’s outlook for job growth. The Labor Department says employers added 243,000 jobs in January, the most in nine months. The unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent from 8.5 percent in December. That’s the lowest…
The Hannity Challenge: How To Make The Case That The Economy Is Improving
Sean Hannity pushed the myth that President Obama has made the economy worse, arguing that you could not “make the case” that it has improved during Obama’s watch. In fact, when Obama took office, he inherited an economy that was shrinking faster than it had in 50 years and that had lost 2 million jobs…
“8%” in Sight : Jobless Claims Fell By 12,000 Last Week
The number of Americans filing first-time claims for jobless benefits fell by 12,000 last week, to 367,000 from 379,000 the week before, the Employment and Training Administration just reported. The agency also said that “the 4-week moving average was 375,750, a decrease of 2,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 377,750.” READ MORE: via…
By the Numbers: 3.2 Million
In 2011, American businesses created the most jobs in any year since 2005. In fact, the private sector has added nearly 3.2 million jobs in the last 22 months. These numbers are proof that we are steadily climbing out of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. But we can’t stop now. We must…
Oil and Gas Jobs Increase by 75,000 Under Obama — 69,000 More Than Would Be Created By Keystone XL
Approximately 75,000 jobs were created in the oil and gas sector under the Obama Administration between 2009 to 2011, according to analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s roughly 69,000 more jobs than would be created by construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The figures, reviewed by the Center for…
GOP Candidate Passed Off ‘Home Economics’ Degree As ‘Economics’ Degree
Missouri gubernatorial candidate Dave Spence liked to tout his “economics” degree on his website and at campaign events — but in reality his degree was less about bookkeeping and more about housekeeping. Until Thursday, Spence (R) had claimed on his campaign website that he “earned a degree in Economics” from the University of Missouri (screenshot…
Obama Seeks Power To Merge Agencies
A senior administration official says President Barack Obama will ask Congress for more power to streamline the government by merging agencies. And if Obama gets the fast-track power he wants, his first proposal would be to combine trade and commerce operations into one. The official says Obama is seeking what the White House is calling…
Germany Installed 3 GW of Solar PV in December — The U.S. Installed 1.7 GW in All of 2011
In the lead up to another 15% reduction in Germany’s feed-in tariff (the price paid for solar electricity fed into the grid), the German solar industry finished 2011 off with a bang — installing 3,000 megawatts of solar photovoltaic systems in December. Let’s put those figures in perspective: In just one month, Germany installed almost…
10 Technologies That Congress Tried to Kill
10 Technologies That Congress Tried to KillNext week, the Senate could be meeting to vote on the Protect IP Act PIPA, the bill that many people are warning could damage the Internet. Its a horrible prospect — but this isnt the first time that Congress has tried to sacrifice a technology at the behest of…
Verizon’s Deal With Big Cable Spells the Demise of the Telecom Act
Just last month Verizon announced it had signed a $3.6 billion deal with its erstwhile competitors Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. In many ways, this announcement placed a capstone on the grave of the 1996 Telecom Act’s biggest promise to America: genuine competition in communications service offerings. The telco-cable deal comes in…
ADP: U.S. Companies Added 325,000 Private-Sector Jobs In December
Private-sector hiring surged in December as employers added 325,000 new workers while claims for jobless benefits fell, raising hope that recent labor market improvement would continue in 2012. The ADP National Employment Report’s December job tally surprised economists who had expected a 178,000 gain. It was also well above the 204,000 private jobs added in…
The biggest driver of income inequality: capital gains
A new report from the Congressional Research Service — the nonpartisan public policy branch of Congress — takes a closer look at the drivers of income inequality between 1996 and 2006, the last period of moderate economic growth before the latest boom-bust cycle. The report explains that the Bush tax cuts contributed significantly to growing…
ObamaCare Is Winning the Fight on Fraud and Abuse
Thanks to provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA/ObamaCare) and to an unprecedented effort by the Obama Administration, more progress has been made in the past three years to combat health care fraud and abuse than ever before. There was a 68.9 percent increase in criminal health care fraud prosecutions from 2010 to 2011, and…
Michigan Tea Party Mayor Says No To Fed Funds, Sends Business Packing
In what could be a new high water mark of anti-Washington sentiment, the city of Troy, Mich., is rejecting a long-planned transportation center whose construction would have been fully financed with federal stimulus money. The terminal, which would help Troy become a transportation node on an upgraded Detroit-to-Chicago Amtrak line, was hailed by supporters as…