Economy

The final government unemployment report before the midterm election was released Oct. 8 showing a loss of 95,000 jobs in September, and an additional 15,000 losses in July and August and an unemployment rate still at 9.6 percent. But Gallup warned on Oct. 7 that the BLS report was "likely to understate" the job losses in September. By its calculations the unemployment rate is actually…

With congressional Democrats divided on how to approach the soon-expiring Bush tax cuts, reliably liberal Newsweek has taken upon itself the task of defending tax hikes, particularly those on the "rich." In back-to-back posts today, Ben Adler sought to dismiss the stimulative effect of tax cuts while Nancy Cook profiled some rich liberals who are allegedly looking forward to their taxes going up…

In the course of preparing a post earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) dealing with a glaring error in a New York Times story on planned Christmas/holiday/fourth quarter hiring, I came across this search result at Google news on "holiday retail sales" (not entered in quotes) at about 11 a.m.: With all due respect to WHIO in Dayton and reporter John Bedell, I don't understand how your…

Two New York Times reporters were out to lunch, while the Old Gray Lady's layers of fact-checkers were apparently asleep at the switch. In an item which contained a number of oddities, Times reporters Stephanie Clifford and Catherine Rampell wrote the following: Over all, full-time work in retail is slightly down. The number of people employed in the retail sector in August fell 4.9 percent, to…

CNN's new host Eliot Spitzer slammed the Tea Party movement on Tuesday's Parker-Spitzer: "I think that that piece of the Republican Party is vapid. It has no ideas....They're going to destroy our country." Spitzer also accused Tea Party members of forwarding a "Herbert Hoover vision of government...saying, we want to take away the very pieces of government that created the middle class."The…

Appearing on Wednesday's CBS Early Show, business correspondent Rebecca Jarvis expressed disappointment in the lack of a new stimulus package, but hoped for other government action: "...while the government doesn't necessarily have the political will or the motivation to put a new stimulus into effect here in the United States, the Federal Reserve is prepared to step in and do that."Co-host…

One of the most embattled commodities over the last few years as the economy has struggled has been one of the most precious of all metals – gold. Over the last 12 months, the price of gold has appreciated considerably. But CNBC host Jim Cramer contends it is going higher – much higher. In an Oct. 5 interview for with Alix Steel, a reporter from Cramer’s website TheStreet.com, Cramer explained…

So more government isn’t the answer to all of our problems? For a brief moment, that seemed to be the message Huffington Post editor-in-chief and co-founder Arianna Huffington was conveying.  On CNBC’s Oct. 5 broadcast of “Squawk Box,” Huffington, author of “Third World America” explained what she thought the role of government should be in an American economic system. Now whether she was…

Government/General Motors saw its total vehicle sales fall in September to 173,031 from 185,105 in August. At the same time, Ford's sales increased from to 157,327 to 160,375. Thus, what was an almost 28,000-vehicle lead for GM in August shrank by more than half to less than 13,000 in September. No one has a crystal ball, of course, but if GM falls and Ford surges by similar amounts in October,…

On Thursday's Larry King Live, future anchor Kathleen Parker verified her tenuous conservative credentials, as she identified herself as a "conservative," but added, "a pox on everybody's house, as far as I'm concerned." She later confessed that she "would put myself...slightly to the right of center," and that she was "a big fan of Barack Obama as he came into office...I didn't want him to fail…

With what appears to be a devastating election looming for his party, is President Obama attempting to follow in the footsteps of one of his predecessors and moderate toward the center? Not if choosing Pete Rouse to replace chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is any indication,  according to CNBC’s Larry Kudlow. On the Oct. 1 broadcast of “The Call,” CNBC Washington correspondent John Harwood…

Ed Schultz must have had the shock of his life Thursday when a jobless advocate told him, "It was the Democrats that caused us to be in the situation that we're in."Mignon Veasley-Fields is a 61-year-old Los Angeles grandmother who has been out of work since June 2008. Her unemployment benefits ran out over three months ago.Since then, she has been bringing attention to the long-term unemployed…

Oliver Stone is discovering one of the many joys of capitalism: without it, he would never be able to make such flashy, well-produced films bashing capitalism!Stone's latest film, "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps", may have replaced Charlie Sheen, star of the original, with a younger Shia LaBeouf, but it's still as hypocritically anti-capitalist as the original.According to the Hollywood Reporter…

After nearly two years in office, the "first rate" economic team that President Obama assembled to turn things around - Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, Larry Summers and Timothy Giethner - has itself nearly turned over. His E-team of "brainy" economists, as ABC's Claire Shipman called one of them, went to work even before Obama took office, ultimately crafting a massive stimulus plan…