RT @John_Hudson The 4 key points of Barack Obama's counterterrorism speech http://t.co/ETSgmSjdsM
11 minutes ago
United States Channel: Latest Posts
-
United States
The Stealth Sequester
So far, the much-dreaded “sequester” – some $85 billion in federal spending cuts between March and September 30 – hasn’t been evident to most Americans. The dire warnings that had issued from the White House beforehand – threatening that Social Security checks would be delayed, airport security checks would be clogged, and other federal facilities [...]
-
United States
Shouldn’t We Drug Test CEOs of Banks Receiving Federal Aid?
Conservative politicians, including Mitt Romney during his presidential campaign, supported legislation mandating drug testing for recipients of federal aid, such as: the unemployed, families in assistance programs — in general, citizens down on their luck or in trouble. Interestingly, none of these politicians has suggested drug tests for executives whose banks benefit from billions in federal aid [...]
-
United States
Should Reagan Get Credit for Bill Clinton’s Budget Surplus?
A friend recently wrote to suggest that Bill Clinton has gotten far too much credit for his budget surpluses. All he did, my friend told me, was to cut Reagan’s defense spending. Reagan’s massive expansion of the Department of Defense, he suggested, had succeeded in destroying the Soviet Union. By the time Clinton was elected, [...]
-
Ed Dolan's Econ Blog
US Payroll Job Growth Slows; Unemployment Rate Drops as Labor Force Shrinks
The U.S. economy created a disappointing 88,000 payroll jobs in March, according to today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was down sharply from the 268,000 gain in February. The unemployment rate fell to 7.6 percent, a new low for the recovery, but even that was largely due to a drop in labor [...]
-
United States
Pause Coming?
Initial jobless claims spiked last week: As Calculated Risk notes, this could reflect the impact of the sequester. We might also be repeating the pattern of the last two years in which claims decline and then disappoint by plateauing for six months. If that is the case, then we should expect to see less improvement [...]
-
United States
Jobless Claims Take Another Turn For The Worse
Today’s jobless claims update looks troubling. It’s premature to make definitive claims about what comes next, but the number du jour doesn’t make it easier to maintain the rosy glow that’s defined the macro outlook of late. Here’s the problem: Last week’s sharp rise in new filings for unemployment benefits is the third increase in a row, [...]
-
Ed Dolan's Econ Blog
Why Hasn’t the US become another Greece?
How many times have we heard the warning that if the government in Washington doesn’t change its ways, the United States could become another Greece? Three years ago, when the crisis in Greece was just getting underway, I wrote a post making some comparisons between Greek and U.S. fiscal performance, along with a separate slideshow [...]
-
United States
Memo to Employers: Stop Wasting Your Employees’ Money
Now that I’m a law professor, people expect me to write law review articles. There are some problems with the genre—not least its absurd citation formatting system and all the fetishism surrounding it—but it’s not a bad way to make arguments about how and why the law should change in ways that might actually help people. That [...]
-
United States
Wisconsin, and Her Neighbors: Philadelphia Fed Coincident Indices
From the MacIver Institute, “The Free Market Voice of Wisconsin”: Secretary Reggie Newson, Department of Workforce Development, and John Koskinen, Chief Economist for the Department of Revenue, both gave testimony that Wisconsin is heading in the right direction. This is in contrast to two years ago where Wisconsin had lost over 150,000 jobs, Newson explained. “Based [...]
-
United States
What Immigration Reform Could Mean for American Workers, and Why the AFL-CIO Is Embracing It
Their agreement on is very preliminary and hasn’t yet even been blessed by the so-called Gang of Eight Senators working on immigration reform, but the mere fact that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J. Donohue agreed on anything is remarkable. The question is whether it’s a good deal for American [...]
