Economy

In the same month the United States shed 216,000 nonfarm jobs, our neighbor to the north added 27,100.Canada's unemployment rate is also a full percentage point lower than ours.As American media focus on the just-released August employment data, will they point out this gain in Canada and how much better our neighbor's labor markets are doing than ours?Consider that as the Associated Press…

A country boy can survive the Obama administration. Just ask Hank Williams, Jr.The country music artist --  best known to millions of Americans regardless of their musical taste for his "Are You Ready For Some Football?" theme to Monday Night Football -- was profiled yesterday by Bill Lynch of the Charleston [W.V.] Gazette (h/t my NB colleague Tim Graham).Lynch spent a considerable portion of his…

New York State's Off-Track Betting Corp. (OTB) is filing for bankruptcy "as a municipality" under Chapter 9 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code "after four years of losses totaling $38 million." You read that right: A government-run gambling monopoly has gone broke, after losing money for years. How was this seemingly impossible feat accomplished? There are clues in stories at Reuters and Bloomberg…

Correspondent Richard Quest made a frivolous attempt to tie the bad economy to men’s fashion on CNN’s Newsroom program on Tuesday. Quest proclaimed that pinstriped business suits are “old-fashioned...and out of touch with reality....because they are the pinstripe of bankers.” He continued that if you wore such attire, “you may be mistaken for one of those bankers reaping bonuses.”Anchor Kyra…

Ford and the United Auto Workers are set to begin new contract talks under a set of circumstances radically different from any previously faced by either party. There is the "minor" matter of the union's ownership stakes in General Motors and Chrysler that arose in the wake of those two companies' government-engineered bankruptcy filings, accomplished with more than a little rule-bending by the…

Some of us have been wondering how viable the Voluntary Employee Benefit Arrangements (VEBAs) set up by the United Auto Workers for its auto industry employees really are. This is of particular concern at the VEBAs tied in to General Motors and Chrysler. What happens to the employer stock these VEBAs own will heavily influence whether they have the money to pay promised benefits. The answer to…

It's a cute theory and maybe it deserves brief (pardon the pun) coverage in some other section of the paper, but the front page of the Monday Washington Post?Readers of the August 31 edition were greeted by a 17-paragraph below-the-fold front page story by business writer Ylan Q. Mui about "What Underwear Says About the Economy."Mui explains:

On the very day Ted Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery near his two brothers, a Boston Globe editorial argued to undo part of his legacy. The pertinent portion of Mr. Kennedy's legacy has to do with his strident opposition, despite a career of enthusiastically imposing environmental initiatives and costs on others, to the building of a wind farm on Cape Cod (the graphic at top…

NBC's Ann Curry, on Thursday's "Today" show, asked Senator John McCain if "the death of Senator Kennedy" would "be the catalyst" to pass health care reform, but when the Arizona senator responded that it may change the partisan way in which the Democrats have had "no real negotiations" with the GOP to get it passed, Curry demanded that McCain and the Republicans should be the ones to relent as…

Julia Seymour, Kyle Drennen, and several others at NewsBusters have done a great job (here and here, here, and here, just for starters) exposing the establishment media's rush to characterize the government's Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) program, commonly known as "Cash for Clunkers" program, a success. This media meme has persisted despite processing snafus, slow payments to dealers,…

What is it about consequences that the liberal media and government simply cannot grasp? CNN "Newsroom" admitted Aug. 27 that new car prices are "expected" to go up as a result of the government Cash for Clunkers giveaway. Heidi Collins told viewers, "The success of the Cash for Clunkers program may be pushing new car prices higher. Dealerships are expected to have lower inventory over the…

They warned back in 2008 what might happen if Barack Obama was elected president, and according to conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh and Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck, a lot of bad stuff is unfolding right before our eyes. Limbaugh appeared on Beck's Aug. 26 program to discuss the threat of the federal government attempting to regulate the media. He explained the president's policy…

Try to keep a straight face when you hear this: President Barack Obama isn't getting enough media love. That's the world view of MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews - at least when it comes to the economy. According to Matthews, there has been a plethora of positive economic news - from a stock market that has shrugged off the threat of bad liberal policy, i.e. cap-and-trade or ObamaCare, to…

On CNN's American Morning today, business correspondent Christine Romans explained to anchor Kiran Chetry why there are new estimates showing the Federal deficit to be much worse than originally projected by the Obama administration:ROMANS:  Why? OK, this is really -- it's a complicated problem with a very simple analysis. It's how much money the government is taking in and how much money is…