by Doc Hastings

With 9.5 percent of Americans out of work and rumors of yet another costly stimulus, President Obama and White House officials regularly say that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to getting our economy back on track.

But after six months in office, President Obama should revise his statement to reflect his Administration’s unspoken policy that “nothing is off the table – except for the creation of many types of energy jobs.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Stephen Gandel

The $787 billion stimulus plan is turning out to be far less stimulating than its architects expected.

Back in early January, when Barack Obama was still President-elect, two of his chief economic advisers — leading proponents of a stimulus bill — predicted that the passage of a large economic-aid package would boost the economy and keep the unemployment rate below 8%. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Last month, the jobless rate in the U.S. hit 9.5%, the highest level it has reached since 1983. Read the rest of this entry »

By Ryan J. Donmoyer and Kristin Jensen

July 15 (Bloomberg) — House Democrats plan to fund the broadest U.S. health-care expansion in four decades by increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans, imposing a surtax of 5.4 percent on couples with more than $1 million in income.

The legislation unveiled yesterday would place additional taxes on households with more than $350,000 a year in income and calls for further increases if the measure doesn’t hit a target for cost savings. The provisions are intended to raise $544 billion over 10 years. Read the rest of this entry »

By William Tate

Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street leviathan that is heavily invested in the cap-and-trade carbon market scam, has admitted it has developed and used software that can manipulate such financial markets.

The revelation came during proceedings in a legal case with enough plot twists to make even John Grisham proud; it was made, not by Goldman, but by an assistant U.S. Attorney.

“(B)ecause of the way this software interfaces with the various markets and exchanges, the bank has raised a possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways,” Joseph Facciponti told a federal magistrate in an unusual Saturday afternoon bail hearing — and not just any Saturday afternoon, but the Fourth of July. Read the rest of this entry »

Annual Budget Gap Passed Benchmark in June, Dimming Outlook for Economic Recovery and Appetite for Big-Ticket Policies

By JOHN D. MCKINNON

WASHINGTON — The U.S. federal budget deficit broke through the $1 trillion mark in June, potentially complicating the Obama administration’s efforts to revive the economy and enact its longer-term policy agenda.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday said the government’s annual deficit reached almost $1.1 trillion by the end of June, a once-unthinkable level that could threaten any nascent economic recovery by undermining the dollar and driving up interest rates. Read the rest of this entry »

By Howard Richman, Raymond Richman, and Jesse Richman

There are two types of news: the news that fits and the news that would cause fits if it were printed. A responsible press would cover both. Unfortunately, economic reporting in the United States doesn’t always do this. If news of an economic bombshell gets suppressed… did it really explode?

The graph below shows the United States net foreign debt. It hit an unprecedented $3.5 trillion, 24.3% of our GDP, at the end of 2008, according to a report issued on June 26 by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. When foreign debt rises as a percentage of GDP, a country becomes less and less able to pay off debt from its income stream. Read the rest of this entry »

By Robert Samuelson

WASHINGTON — The question that President Obama ought to be asking — that we all should be asking — is this: How big a government do we want? Without anyone much noticing, our national government is on the verge of a permanent expansion that would endure long after the present economic crisis has (presumably) passed and that would exceed anything ever experienced in peacetime. This expansion may not be good for us, but we are not contemplating the adverse consequences or how we might minimize them.

We face an unprecedented collision between Americans’ desire for more government services and their almost-equal unwillingness to be taxed. The conflict is obscured and deferred by today’s depressed economy, which has given license to all manner of emergency programs, but its dimensions cannot be doubted. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office (“The Long-Term Budget Outlook”) makes that crystal clear. The easiest way to measure the size of government is to compare the federal budget to the overall economy, or gross domestic product (GDP). The CBO’s estimates are daunting. Read the rest of this entry »

By Tom Blumer July 11, 2009 – 11:10 ET
Government Motors 06/09

If you listened to any top-of-the-hour radio newscast yesterday, you probably heard that General Motors has exited from bankruptcy, with the company promising to really, really do better this time around.

You more than likely didn’t hear anything about how much government money it has taken to enable GM to survive and reemerge. That’s because original story sources like the Associated Press put off such troublesome disclosures until later in their reports. Read the rest of this entry »