Record-Smashing Quarter: S&P 500 Ends Above 2007’s Record Close, Dow Posts Best Q1 Since 1998
[CNBC.com]
Published: Thursday, 28 Mar 2013 | h/t Drudge
By: JeeYeon Park
Stocks closed out the first quarter on a high note with the S&P 500 piercing through levels last seen in 2007 to end at a record high near 1,570 and the Dow logging its strongest quarter in 15 years.
(Read More: After April Showers, Market Could Spring Higher by Year End)
The S&P finally surpassed its closing high level of 1,565.15 shortly after the market open after flirting with the milestone for weeks, recovering all its losses from the financial crisis. The next milestone for the index is its all-time intraday high of 1,576.09, set on October 11, 2007.
The Jobs Report Is Wrong
[BuzzFeed.com]
A BuzzFeed original analysis. posted on March 8, 2013 at 12:37pm EST
What headlines say about the monthly jobs numbers is actually no more accurate than chance.
Months in red are months where initial headlines said the jobs numbers fell short of economists’ expectations, but then the revised numbers actually exceeded expectations (or vice versa).
Economists’ expectations were drawn from a Bloomberg survey of economists, and jobs figures were gathered from BLS.gov. Final benchmark revisions for the previous March are released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in February of the following year.
President Obama’s Deficit Problem
[Townhall.com]
Kevin Glass
Managing Editor, Townhall.com
Jan 20, 2013 03:38 PM EST
Republicans are reportedly ready to vote to hike the debt ceiling without any of the major deficit-related concessions they’ve been pushing for from Democrats, and budget-watchers will soon turn their attention to the looming sequestration spending cuts (from the Budget Control Act, or BCA) scheculed to take place on March 1 and the expiration of the continuing resolution budget that the federal government has been operating on, scheduled to take place March 28.Progressives, however, have been declaring the deficit problem “mostly solved.” A report from the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that, including all BCA cuts and the additional tax revenues from the January 1 fiscal cliff legislation, the U.S. is close to being on a stable ten-year budget path.
How’s That Obamacare Waiver Workin’ Out for Ya?
[MichelleMalkin.com]
Copyright 2012
How’s That Obamacare Waiver Workin’ Out for Ya?
Exactly two years ago this week, the Obama administration announced it had issued more than 100 waivers en masse to a select group of companies, unions and other health insurance providers seeking relief from the onerous federal health care law. The Obamacare waiver winner’s club now totals 2,000. Where are they now?
Answer: In the same miserable boat as every other unlucky business struggling with the crushing costs and burdens of the mandate.
Among the first and most prominent recipients of the Obamacare waivers for favors were large restaurant chains that provide low-wage, seasonal and part-time workers with low-cost health insurance plans called “mini-med” plans. An estimated 1.7 million workers benefit from such plans. Obamacare forced companies carrying such coverage to raise their minimum limits on coverage to no less than $750,000 annually. Another Obamacare provision forces all employers to spend at least 80 percent to 85 percent of their premium revenue on medical care.
Time to Investigate the Bureau of Labor Statistics
American [Spectator.org]
By Peter Ferrara on 10.10.12 @ 6:10AM
What’s with the Household Survey’s miraculous spurt of 873,000 new jobs?
Who needs the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), when you have Rush Limbaugh? Limbaugh predicted almost a year ago that the unemployment rate reported last Friday would fall below 8% for the first time since Obama entered office. Limbaugh by his own admission is no economist. So how did he know? Maybe because we are in the realm of politics now, rather than economics.
How Stupid Do They Think We Are?
The BLS reported last Friday that the economy in September created all of 114,000 net new jobs, just 104,000 in the private sector. To give you some context for how great that is, the working age population increased by 206,000 in September. With a labor force participation rate normal for the fourth year of a recovery (where we are right now), just keeping pace with that population growth would require 138,000 new jobs, before we can even start to reduce the unemployment rate.
U.S. Department of Education: 79% of Chicago 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading
[CNSNews.com]
By Terence P. Jeffrey
September 10, 2012
Chicago Public Schools – [Editor: Here's a statistic I just heard from Rush. The average salary for a teacher in Chicago is $76, 000 Per Year excluding bennies. The average citizen in Chicago makes $48,000 Per Year. AND THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH A WHOPPING 16% RAISE! Also, 71 cents out of every new dollar taxes goes towards Public Union Pensions. Is that fair? Is it "social justice" when all this money produces results indicated in this story?]
(AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – Seventy-nine percent of the 8th graders in the Chicago Public Schools are not grade-level proficient in reading, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and 80 percent are not grade-level proficient in math.
Chicago public school teachers went on strike on Monday and one of the major issues behind the strike is a new system Chicago plans to use for evaluating public school teachers in which student improvement on standardized tests will count for 40 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. Until now, the evaluations of Chicago public school teachers have been based on what a Chicago Sun Times editorial called a “meaningless checklist.”
In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education administered National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests in reading and math to students around the country, including in the Chicago Public Schools. The tests were scored on a scale of 0 to 500, with 500 being the best possible score. Based on their scores, the U.S. Department of Education rated students’ skills in reading and math as either “below basic,” “basic,” “proficient” or “advanced.”
Owner of Liberal Website That Attacked Romney’s Cayman Island ‘Schemes’, Located in The Cayman Islands
[Newsbusters.org]
By Rusty Weiss | August 23, 2012
Earlier today, the liberal website Gawker did a document dump including 950 pages worth of confidential documents affiliated with Bain Capital.
The idea was to expose Mitt Romney’s alleged tax-dodging schemes with offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands. Problem being, the parent corporation known as the Gawker Media Group has a little secret of their own.
Today, we are publishing more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested—at minimum—more than $10 million as of 2011 (that number is based on the low end of ranges he has disclosed—the true number is almost certainly significantly higher). Almost all of them are affiliated with Bain Capital, the secretive private equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984 and ran until his departure in 1999 (or 2002, depending on whom you ask).
Wash Post Poll: Large Majorities Want Smaller Federal Gov’t, Say Gov’t Controls Too Much
[CNSNews.com]
U.S. Treasury Building (AP Story)(CNSNews.com) – A survey of 3,130 American adults conducted by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation between July 25 and August 5 discovered that large majorities of Americans favor a smaller federal government and believe the government controls too much of our daily lives.
The survey discovered these results even though only 25 percent of the people it polled were Republicans, while another 34 percent were Democrats and another 34 percent were Independents.
Norquist: A Vote for Obama is a Vote for $500 B Tax Increase
[Newsmax.com]
Monday, 23 Jul 2012 07:37 PM
Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist fired back against criticism that his anti-tax pledge is getting in the way of a tax compromise by Congress, arguing in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV that his pledge makes possible real tax reform and that contained in any compromise is a hidden tax increase.
Norquist’s group organizes the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which asks all candidates for federal and state office to commit themselves in writing to oppose all tax increases. The pledge, which Norquist says he dreamed up when he was 12 years old, was endorsed by Ronald Reagan upon its inception in 1986, and has been signed by more than 1,100 state office holders as well as 238 current House members and 41 current Senators.
Norquist has come under fire from the first President George Bush and others about the rigidity of the pledge and Senate Democrats believe they have come up with a plan to get around the anti-tax pledge by letting all tax cuts lapse Jan. 1 and then reinstating most of them days later, an idea which Norquist has said “doesn’t pass the laugh test.”
The plan shows efforts by lawmakers to include new federal revenues in an attempt to avoid the “fiscal cliff” in January. All Bush-era tax cuts expire at that time and automatic spending cuts to the military kick in.
Norquist told Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview that the pledge “stops a tax increase, so if somebody tells you the pledge is getting in the way of getting something done what they mean is it’s getting in the way of a tax increase.”
‘We Don’t Have Capitalism’: Glenn Beck, Richard Duncan and Art Laffer Break Down The Economic Crisis
[TheBlaze.com]
- Posted on July 17, 2012 at 9:28pm by
Mytheos Holt
Glenn Beck hosted an unusual show on Tuesday night, devoting large segments of the program not to personal sermonizing, but instead to hearing from two different experts with very different takes on the economy. Those two experts were economists Art Laffer and Richard Duncan, who managed to both take a very pessimistic view of where the economy currently is, while also offering diametrically opposed suggestions for how to improve it.
Broadly speaking, Duncan approached the issue from the Left, while Laffer approached it from the Right. However, those two descriptions don’t actually do the full clash of ideologies justice. Duncan argued that the choice of options for the United States government was threefold, and that policymakers could either 1) Revert to a balanced budget, which would contract the economy all the way into a depression, 2) Keep spending at the current rates and go bankrupt and hit a recession in 5-10 years, or 3) Keep spending at current rates, but use the money to invest in up-and-coming technology, rather than to pay off cronies or create shovel-ready jobs. Duncan favored the third approach, as you’ll see in the following video:
{http://web.gbtv.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=23101059&source=GBTV}
This Graph Says an Awful Lot About the So-Called ‘Recovery’
[TheBlaze.com]
- Posted on July 9, 2012 at 10:29pm by
Becket Adams
Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot about “the recovery” and lot of arguing over who’s to blame for its supposed slowdown. But before we got too bogged down in who’s responsible for retarding economic growth, maybe we should first look at the data.
Without one word of explanation, Harvard University econ professor Greg Mankiw posted the following graph to his blog:
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
As you can see, the shaded area indicates the recession and everything to the right of that is the so-called “recovery.”
Huh.
So, was this what the White House meant when it said we’re moving in the right direction or should we just not read too much into the data?
(H/T: Hot Air)
McConnell Ready to Cut-and-Run from Repeal?
[Breitbart.com]
Posted: July 3, 2012 by Joel B. Pollak
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appears to be waving the white flag on repealing Obamacare. The Tea Party is ready to fight. The Republican National Committee appears to be ready to fight. But the day after the Romney campaign backed away from the argument that Obamacare is now a tax, the GOP’s leadership in the Senate is sending signals that it may be willing to give up before the battle over Obamacare truly begins.
Local ABC affiliate WHAS-TV in Louisville, KY reports that McConnell told constituents he would work to repeal Obamacare, and thought he would have the votes in the Senate to repeal it–but that he did not expect to succeed: “If you thought it was a good idea for the federal government to go in this direction, I’d say the odds are still on your side, because it’s a lot harder to undo something than it is to stop it in the first place.”
However difficult repeal might be from a procedural point of view, it can be done–and the odds are definitely in favor, if polls reflect probabilities. The country is split evenly on the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling, yet the majority still wants the law repealed. That is the majority for which Republicans, and the Republican nominee, ought to speak. Yet for some reason, Republican leaders refuse to lead. What are they afraid of?
Exclusive – The Vetting – Obama Praised Private Equity When He Needed Cash
[Breitbart.com]
Posted: July 2, 2012 – Written by John Sexton
Obama’s campaign ads dismissively compare Romney’s work at Bain to that of a “vampire” draining jobs and money from vulnerable companies and workers. After pushback from a handful of pro-free market Democrats in late May, the President himself publicly defended his campaign’s attacks on private equity firms like Bain.
But records from Obama’s time as a state senator in Illinois, along with recollections of those who worked with him, present a very different stance. They indicate that Obama worked hard to position himself as a strong supporter of the venture capital industry. Obama attended industry social functions and used his position in the state senate to propose bills consistent with the legislative goals of the venture capital industry in the state.
“The Barack Obama I knew in Springfield was very pro-private equity, private capital, and high technology” Republican State Senator Kirk Dillard, who served with Obama in the Illinois State Senate, said in a telephone interview with Breitbart News about Obama’s record last week. “Mr. Obama clearly had many friends in the private equity business when he was a legislator,” Dillard added.
Obama’s early Chicago rise brought African-Americans foreclosures, bankruptcies
[DailyCaller.com]
Published: 12:09 AM 06/11/2012 – By Neil Munro
Get Neil Munro Feed 
CHICAGO, IL – MAY 16: A Chicago police officer guards a Citibank branch from protestors demonstrating against home foreclosures May 16, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois. This was the third day of protests in what is expected to be a full week of demonstrations as the city prepares to host the NATO Summit May 20-21. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
President Barack Obama wants his 2012 re-election campaign to focus on Gov. Mitt Romney’s private-sector record, but his own private-sector history shows that he promoted and profited from the nation’s disastrous real-estate bubble.
One striking example comes from the president’s 1995 housing-discrimination class action lawsuit: It provided him with legal fees, greased his political donations and boosted his role in Chicago politics.
While he made personal gains, his lead African-American client, Selma Buycks-Roberson, declared bankruptcy in 2001 — and again in 2008 as she received a home foreclosure notice, according to unpublicized federal and city records obtained by The Daily Caller.
Man visited by armed EPA agents not satisfied with answers, wants agency changes
[FoxNews.com]
Published June 09, 2012
This undated handout photo provided by the EPA shows Al Armendariz. Armendariz resigned from the agency in April. (AP)
The North Carolina man visited by armed EPA agents after sending an email to a controversial agency official says he not satisfied with the explanations about what he considers an excessive response and that he wants changes to agency policies and procedures.
“This isn’t over,” Keller said. He told Fox News.com that Environmental Protection Agency officials have said the agency followed procedures and that the agents acted appropriately during their visit last month. However, Keller is still invited to come to EPA headquarters to discuss the situation.
Recovery? Half of American Households Living on Government Benefits
[Townhall.com]
Kate Hicks – Web Editor, Townhall.com
May 26, 2012 12:43 PM EST
Some astoundingly grim news on the “economic recovery” front: half of American households are receiving government funds to support themselves. No matter which way you slice it, this number isn’t good news for the Obama administration — they can spin the jobs numbers by ignoring the number of people who dropped out of the workforce, but this statistic is pretty straightforward.
The 49.1% of the population in a household that gets benefits is up from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as recently as the third quarter of 2008.
The increase in recent years is likely due in large part to the lingering effects of the recession. As of early 2011, 15% of people lived in a household that received food stamps, 26% had someone enrolled in Medicaid and 2% had a member receiving unemployment benefits. Families doubling up to save money or pool expenses also is likely leading to more multigenerational households. But even without the effects of the recession, there would be a larger reliance on government.
Postal Service offers buyouts, with $15K incentive in latest cost-cutting plan
[FoxNews.com]
Published May 26, 2012
The U.S. Postal Service announced late Friday it would offer thousands of mail-handlers a $15,000 incentive to retire early, the most recent attempt by the financially-strapped agency to cut costs and stay open for business.
The voluntary offer was extended to roughly 45,000 full-time union employees. It is part of the agency’s larger plan to cut its workforce by 150,000 over the next three years and close hundreds of mail-procession centers.
Postal officials said such changes are necessary as a result of the recession and because Americans continue to pay bills and perform other, similar tasks online, instead of doing them through the mail.
Officials said 60 percent of Americans now pay their bills online, compared to just 5 percent in 2000. They also said mail volume peaked at 213 billion in 2006, but has since plummeted by more than 25 percent.
Official also have said the congressional mandate to pre-fund retirement health care benefits has contributed to financial problems.
The agency reportedly lost more than $6 billion in the first two quarters of fiscal 2012.
(more…)
CBO warns of US falling off ‘fiscal cliff’
[Townhall.com]
APNews, Tuesday, May 22, 2012
A new government study released Tuesday says that allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire and a scheduled round of automatic spending cuts to take effect would probably throw the economy into a recession.
The Congressional Budget Office report says that the economy would shrink by 1.3 percent in the first half of next year if the government is allowed to fall off this so-called “fiscal cliff” on Jan. 1 _ and that the higher tax rates and more than $100 billion in automatic cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies are kept in place.
There’s common agreement that lawmakers will act either late this year or early next year to head off the dramatic shift in the government’s financial situation. But if they were left in place, CBO says it would wring hundreds of billions of dollars from the budget deficit that would “represent an additional drag on the weak economic expansion.”
CBO projected that the economy would contract by 1.3 percent in the first half of 2013, which would meet the traditional definition of a recession, which is when the economy shrinks for two consecutive quarters. “Such a contraction in output in the first half of 2013 would probably be judged to be a recession,” CBO said.
Obama Pursues Higher Tax Rates, Growth Be Damned
[Townhall.com]
May 21, 2012
In the run-up to this weekend’s G-8 summit at Camp David, journalists have unfavorably compared European “austerity” with Barack Obama’s economic policies.
European spending cuts, the argument goes, have hurt people and are arousing political opposition, while Obama’s proposals to keep federal spending at 24 percent of gross domestic product indefinitely are likely to succeed.
Evil Republican spending cuts, in contrast, would deny the economy needed stimulus and wreak havoc on ordinary people. But the facts undermine the storyline. Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University took a look at what “austerity” in Europe actually means.
At A Loss For Words . . . But Wait . . . There’s MORE!
[KFYI.com]
At A Loss For Words…
Initially we tried to come up with a description of some kind for this image, but it emerged pretty quickly that we had nothing. So we give you the revised version of the most recent Time magazine cover. Wow . . .
JunkMan’s Ham Sandwich Segment For 5-15-12
But Wait… There’s More!
Facebook IPO Promises Needed Revenue for California
[Newsmax.com]
Tuesday, 15 May 2012 04:25 PM
Facebook Inc’s initial public offering, in addition to minting a number of billionaires and millionaires, will offer something of a financial lifeline to cash-strapped California — generating more than $2 billion in revenue for the state. The state’s budget watchdog said on Tuesday it expects the IPO will generate $2.1 billion in revenue for California through the 2013 fiscal year. The outlook comes a day after Gov. Jerry Brown proposed a revised budget plan to address a swelling deficit for the tarnished Golden State.
Facebook, the No. 1 social network, expects to raise $12.1 billion in what would be Silicon Valley’s largest-ever initial public offering, dwarfing Google Inc’s 2004 market debut. Facebook, based in Menlo Park Calif., on Tuesday raised its target price range for the IPO to between $34 and $38 per share. With enthusiasm for the historic offering running high, investors stand to reap capital gains while the company’s 3,500-plus workers could grow wealthy through stock units and options — all of which would translate into tax revenue for the state.
Socialist-NO; Big Obtrusive Government Advocate-YES
[RebelPundit.com]
On Socialism
A friend who most often sees political issues differently than I recently sent me an excerpt from an article in Daily Finance with the subject line “not bad for a socialist.” The article said Fortune 500 companies’ profits increased 16.4% over last year and exceeded “the roaring economy” of 2006. (Interesting the left was not describing it such in that year’s midterm elections.)
I presume he saw the article as evidence that President Obama is not a socialist. To be clear, I believe it is a mistake to allege Obama is a socialist as it is counter productive. The last generation outputted from the state-controlled school system does not know the meaning of the word. Describing the President as an advocate of big, obtrusive government is descriptive with more impact.
Socialism is defined as an economic system in which the state has ownership or control over the means of production. Control can be acquired through regulation, taxation, public ridicule or other bullying tactics (think Boeing) without ownership (think GM). National Socialists (the real name rather than the acronym) found control more effective than ownership. Without outright ownership a scapegoat is available for politicians to lay blame for problems. Government ownership of BP, in which he was the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, would have hampered Obama’s ability to lay blame on the company for the oil spill.
These Are The Countries With The Highest Income Tax Rates
[TheBlaze.com]
- Posted on May 10, 2012 at 2:28pm by
Becket Adams
Unsustainable debt, monetary inflation, uneasy markets, quantitative easing — the health of the global economy is on everyone’s mind.
Why? Because when coupled with massive amounts of public debt, weak economies usually lead to one thing: tax increases.
And it’s happening right now.
Just look at the eurozone where, desperate to address increasing deficits, several countries in the 17-nation union have increased personal income tax rates.
“Spain, for example, raised its personal tax rate by 2 percentage points to 45 percent last year and France’s newly elected Socialist Party is also proposing hiking taxes on the rich,” CNBC reports.
“Hike,” however, may be too kind a word. France’s newly-elected Socialist François Hollande wants to impose a 75 percent income tax on citizens earning more than $1.3 million. That’s a bit more than a “hike.” That’s an “ultra increase.”
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