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March 1 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Transportation Department will lay off 2,000 employees today, halting construction projects, reimbursements to state governments and highway safety programs, according to a statement. Employees will be furloughed without pay because a funding measure stalled in Congress, the department said in a statement today. The affected workers are in the Federal [...] Here are the latest bank failures from the FDIC: Centennial Bank, Ogden, UT This brings us up to 25 for the year. UPDATE: GDP rises to 5.9% in Q4 from 5.7%! That makes me an economist. Today there was a lot of unexpected news. Unemployment claims increased by 22,000 last week and the culprit is … global warming. This was unexpected. Orders for durable goods fell 0.6%, the biggest drop since August. This was unexpected. Here is the report [...]
I read where the government claims that because Washington D.C. was practically shut down by Snowmageddon we taxpayers were losing $100 million per day from lost productivity of federal employees. Then in an unrelated matter I see where Evan Bayh announced he will not run for re-election as senator from Indiana because the [...] This is Part III of my three part series on the state of the economy going into 2010. Part II appeared yesterday, and Part I appeared on Tuesday. This weekend I will combine the three parts into one downloadable PDF. The Consequences The Impact of Deleveraging The economy is still a mess [...] This is Part II of my three part series on the state of the economy going into 2010. Part I appeared yesterday, and Part III will appear tomorrow. This weekend I will combine the three parts into one downloadable PDF. The Importance of Debt The Fed, the Obama Administration, and a [...] This is the first report of a series of 3 reports on the state of the economy as we enter 2010. Part II will appear Wednesday, and Part III will be posted on Thursday. I have been poring over current economic data, year-end reports from various sources, and current or proposed legislation. [...] It all depends on how you wish to spin the numbers. Q4 2009 GDP increased 5.7% of which 3.4% was inventory reduction. Overall for 2009 GDP went down 2.4%. My guess is that the 5.7% number will be readjusted downward when the revised numbers come out in late March (26th). What does this mean? Inventory reduction is [...] I predicted that we would have a Q4 09 “bump.” But so did everyone else. I think we’ll have a positive Q1 10 also. The latest report from Goldman Sachs reveals that they have upped their Q4 estimate to 5.8%: We have boosted our estimate for fourth quarter growth to 5.8% from 4.0% (annual rate). However, [...] Comments on President Obama’s State of the Union Speech
I will say that President Obama is pretty good at this speech stuff. Remember last year when Professor Obama said that the adults are now in charge and we’re going to clean up the mess the kids made? This year had a much different tone. At [...] More from Cato’s Dan Mitchell on Keynesian stimulus. It is an excellent recap of the promises and failures of the current economy. I disagree with his conclusion that we are almost certain to recover in 2010. I have previously written about the phenomenon that regardless of what the Obama Administration does, economies tend to repair themselves. Evidence [...] By Jeff Harding. This video was sent to me by Dan Mitchell at Cato. Dan presents an excellent summary of why government spending is harmful to the economy and prosperity. Whether or not it results in deficits, the greater the spending by government as a percentage of GDP, the greater is the negative impact on the economy. One [...] By Jeff Harding.
I’ve been thinking a lot about gold lately. Especially now that Nouriel Roubini has come out and trashed the noble metal (see Tyler Durden’s article). Anyone who tells you they know what’s going to happen with gold is guessing. Roubini is guessing. Roubini also makes some fundamental errors in his analysis, and [...] By Jeff Harding. Bank failures are shown on a map, month by month from 2008 to 2009. Like the unemployment map I posted. I “borrowed” this from Mish. From Visualizing Bank Failures (2008-2009) By Jeff Harding. The new jobs bill negotiations are apparently getting under the skin of our politicians. As reported in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, the Republicans and Democrats were rather testy with each other during a meeting with the President. Here’s part of their exchange: Republicans pushed Mr. Obama to freeze federal spending, a plea the [...] By Jeff Harding. As my readers know, every so often I get fed up with what comes out of Washington (Our Nation’s Capital) and feel the need to vent. My recent irritation is a letter Christina Romer, the president of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, published in the Wall Street Journal. The letter is an apologia for the economic policies [...] By Jeff Harding. This is an animated color map showing unemployment by county as it grows from January 2007 to October 2009. It’s fascinating to see the map get darker and darker as the colors change–the dark colors are areas of 10%+ unemployment. By Jeff Harding. Since the biggest financial collapse in world history was built on credit related to housing, it is pretty obvious that we should be paying very close attention to that market. The reasons are complex, but a recovery must be based on the liquidation of bad debt. The sooner that happens the quicker a recovery [...] By Jeff Harding. I have all this vitriol stored up from not being able to publish for two weeks and it needs to be spewed. I just read Foreign Policy magazine’s “The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers,” and it is worthy of my bile. Of all the crap I have to read every day to get [...] |
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