Amidst Obama’s inexorable war on American energy, consumers, jobs, and prosperity, his EPA is in the process of promulgating 4 new pollution rules that will bury the coal industry and “necessarily” raise the price of electricity on American households. They are the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for Utilities (MACT), the Cooling Water Intake Structures regulation, and the Disposal of | Read More »
The June jobs report from the BLS is out this morning, and the findings are not pretty. The headline number of the establishment survey is that only 80,000 net jobs were created last month, about 100k under the requisite amount to accommodate the population increase. The working-age population grew by 189k in June, according to the household survey. As such, there are now 29 thousand | Read More »
When observing the chaos that big union bosses have interleaved into the labor market, you instinctively think of the above-market wages that are forced upon employers (and taxpayers, in the case of public-sector unions) as a result of the monopolistic collective bargaining contracts. However, what is even more deleterious is the limitation on paying individual workers more than their contract dictates. Believe it or not, | Read More »
The headline number from the BLS’s Establishment Survey was an addition of 115,000 jobs for the month of April. That is a terrible number for this far into the recovery, as it fails to keep up with population growth. At this time in the Reagan recovery, the economy added a population-adjusted 480,000 jobs. So why did the unemployment rate (U3 number) drop another 0.1% to | Read More »
Last week, the House passed a slam-dunk jobs bill (H.R. 3606) 390-23. The bill reduces red tape, securities regulations, and reporting requirements on small companies that desire to go public. It also eliminated some of the new regulations implemented under Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley on companies that generate less than $1 billion in annual revenue. With all the unctuous complaints about partisanship, one would expect the Senate | Read More »
Earlier today, the Senate began voting on a series of 30 amendments to the highway bill (S.1813). The three important amendments regarding energy subsidies that we referenced earlier (2 bad, 1 good) were postponed until next week. However, here is a list of other commonsense amendments that were voted down by Democrats. It is truly sad that at a time when gas prices are at | Read More »
Almost two and a half years since the recession officially ended, we are finally observing a modest recovery in the job market. Even if we discount the 42,000 new holiday season jobs for “couriers and messengers,” there is clearly some jobs growth in key sectors of the economy. Unfortunately, aside for the fact that the recovery is languid and underwhelming by historical standards, it is | Read More »
The much anticipated November jobs number have been posted. Here is a rundown of some of the highlights: Jobs created in November: The net increase in new jobs this month was 120,000. There were 140,000 jobs added to the private sector, while the public sector shed 20,000. The U3 unemployment number dropped from 9.0% to 8.6%. In more good news, September’s numbers were revised up | Read More »
Let’s forget the fact that Obama’s entire Stimulus 10.0 is a counterintuitive proposal that doubles down on the very failures that precipitated this speech. Let’s also disregard the fact that enshrining unemployment insurance as a permanent handout will perpetuate unemployment. And more union-induced, short-term money drops on infrastructure will do nothing but stimulate traffic jams. Let’s focus purely on the very numbers that the administration | Read More »
Throughout the entire debt ceiling imbroglio, Democrats incessantly regurgitated the talking point about the need for “a balanced approach.” They were so uniform and synchronized that they sounded like the sheep in Animal Farm. Ironically, their idea of a balanced approach was singularly focused upon Oil Company and corporate tax deductions, which are negligible compared to the crushing debt. The targeted oil tax deductions would | Read More »
The loss of jobs is only half of the result of the government interventionist equation. The other casualty of an economy driven by taxation, regulation, litigation, subsidization, monetary intervention, and debt is the crippling cost of living for all Americans. [Yes, I was about to say middle class, but we would be wise to eradicate that sort of socialist innuendo from our vernacular.] Earlier today, the | Read More »
As Obama travels through America’s heartland on his teleprompter tours bus, he is touting a new plan to create jobs. While he has offered few specifics thus far, Obama is calling for the ratification of the free trade agreements (FTAs) with Columbia, Panama, and South Korea as vehicles for job creation. The rest of his jobs (killing) plan will be released at some later date, | Read More »
What to expect from Obama and Reid after the summer recess. Consider this your summer of recovery 2.0 open thread.
For those who are interested in the wonky numbers of the unemployment report, here is a brief presentation of some of the more ominous figures. The latest unemployment report shows that we are living through the quintessential Keynesian economic recovery. We are not shedding more jobs at a terribly fast pace, but, instead of adding jobs by a pace of 500-800,000, we are stagnating at | Read More »
Despite being dispirited by the one-sided nature of the debt ceiling deal, most of us were looking forward to reaping the rewards from its only ancillary benefit; the impending stock market rally. Much to our chagrin, the Dow dropped precipitously, losing over 800 points since the opening bell on Monday. After the initial euphoria from the debt ceiling hangover began to subside, people have been | Read More »
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