Economy

Appearing on Monday’s The Colbert Report on Comedy Central to promote his book, "The Promise," MSNBC political analyst Jonathan Alter – also of Newsweek – asserted that President Barack Obama had "prevented another Great Depression," and declared that Obama had it more difficult than Franklin Delano Roosevelt because he had to "sweep up" like a "shovel brigade" after President Bush, as he used a…

Like tar balls on a Pensacola beach, doubts about Pres. Obama's leadership are beginning to accumulate even among his most avid supporters appearing in the MSM.  Today's Morning Joe provided two prime examples of the phenomenon in the persons of Jeffrey Sachs and Donny Deutsch.Both men are self-described Obama supporters.  Yet each expressed disappointment at the lack of leadership the president…

The Associated Press's Karl Ritter clearly doesn't recognize how close to parody his report ("Rightist group jolts Sweden's tolerant self-image") on the mini-rise of the right-leaning Sweden Democrats Party is (I'll use "SD" as an abbreviation in this post). Ritter is not afraid to label the SD, but won't label others. He begins by telling us that the SD is "far-right" because it is "preaching…

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report on June 4, showing only 41,000 new private-sector jobs. But those jobs were overshadowed by the enormous number of temporary census jobs in the May data. According to the report, "employment grew by 431,000 in May, reflecting the hiring of 411,000 temporary employees to work on Census 2010." Those Census jobs made up 95…

Is it the government’s job to spread happiness? A former president of Harvard University, who was profiled on the June 2 PBS “NewsHour,” seems to think so. Derek Bok, author of The Politics of Happiness, believes the government should be in the business of manufacturing happiness.“I think a government that tries, systematically, to relieve what causes lasting misery and emphasize what gives…

The National Center for Atmospheric Research believes that oil from the leaking deep water rig in the Gulf of Mexico could impact much of America's East Coast by summer.As reported by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Thursday, scientists using a detailed computer modeling program have created a video image of what they feel is possible in the coming months."'I've had a lot of…

In a PBS interview June 2, Vice President Joseph Biden predicted 700,000 to 1.4 million jobs would be created by the end of 2010. But at most, that would still be more than 5.2 million jobs shy of matching President Obama's claims about economic stimulus. Biden forecast job creation "between 100,000 and 200,000 jobs on average all the way through this year" in an interview with Charlie…

Yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute's Enterprise Blog, Steven Hayward had a great post about the history of electric cars, and the press's unrequited love affair with electric vehicles (picture at right is of the $108,000 2010 Zedomax). Yum. But first I'll start with a bit of my own research. On May 7, 1994, Paul Feldman at the Los Angeles Times led with the following two paragraphs…

If you think government has all the answers, you'll certainly approve of this call. Former Clinton Secretary of Labor and CNBC contributor Robert Reich has determined it's time for President Barack Obama to seize the reigns of control from BP (NYSE:BP) and put the North American operations of the company into a "temporary receivership." He told host Michelle Caruso-Cabrera on CNBC's June 1…

The federal government saw its tax collections fall by almost 20% in fiscal 2009 compared to fiscal 2008. Through the first seven months of the current fiscal year, year-over-year collections were down by another 4.5%. New York Senator Charles Schumer (pictured at right; obtained from wbng.com) is desperately searching for another way to fleece taxpayers (because cutting spending is of course…

It certainly comes as no surprise that liberal media members hate big business, but the level to which New York Times columnist Bob Herbert attacked some of the nation's largest employers on Saturday should concern everyone interested in preserving what's left of the free market."[T]he biggest, most powerful companies do not have the best interests of the American people in mind when they are…

Editor's Note: The following originally appeared at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood. M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film production, "The Last Airbender," was recently awarded over $35 million in film tax credits from Pennsylvania over two years.  The award is the largest in the history of Pennsylvania’s Film Tax Credit (FTC), breaking the record held by his previous project, "The Happening,"…

Most probably wouldn't think of Rolling Stone magazine as a primary source for information on something like financial regulation reform. However, if you listen to some of the left-wing talking heads like Ezra Klein, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi is in the know on major policy issues. So how do Taibbi and the other folks at Rolling Stone keep their readers interested in a topic that wouldn't…

Update - 5/27, 3:08 PM | Lachlan Markay: A new Harvard study finds that increased government spending actually reduces economic activity, contradicting the basic premise behind CBO's assumptions. Details below. Good economic news is so rare for the current administration, that when some does emerge, many in the media parrot it as fact without really examining the claims that undergird it. New CBO…