economy

Great news: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the U.S. economy added 146,000 jobs in November, nearly double the projections. What's more, the overall unemployment rate dropped to 7.7 percent, its lowest point in four years.

In the recently convened “lame-duck” session of Congress, senators and representatives will take on a number of issues that could have major consequences for working families and retirees. Congress is considering benefit cuts for Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare and members are looking at cutting taxes for the wealthy even further.

As President Obama gets closer to making his deal with the Republicans on the budget, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the fiscal cliff is an artificially contrived trap. Were it not for the two Bush wars and the two Bush tax cuts and the House Republican games of brinkmanship with the routine extension of the debt ceiling, there would be no “fiscal cliff.”

Paul Ryan might be gone from the national stage for now, but the controversy over the "Ryan Plan" budget remains front and center as Congress returns to work today.
On the one hand, the media is heavily playing up the present narrative of the country teetering at the edge of a "fiscal cliff" as negotiations over a budget deal before the end of the year begin. That deal is needed to head off severe and automatic cuts required by the Budget Control Act of 2011, scheduled to go into effect if Congress can't work ou...

It's been months and months since Elizabeth Warren made her now-famous remarks on the rich, the social contract, and the role of government. Still, her brief remarks remain the absolute best articulation I've seen of the liberal perspective on the role of government in our economy.

Junk bonds, also called high-yield bonds, tend to offer higher yields when they pay off but carry significantly higher risk of default. The problem is not the bonds themselves, but the way they tend to be used -- to financed forced takeovers that strip value from the company taken over, to fund the collateralized-debt obligations at the center of the 2008 crash and, as they are being used now, to pay off investors without thought to what they will do to the long-term health of the company.

Our Quote of the Day today is via Steve Sweeney:
"If you live in New Jersey, you recognize that $7.25 isn't getting it done. It's basically keeping people in poverty."
Coming up this afternoon in the Senate Budget Committee is a discussion of Sweeney's plan to pass the question of raising the minimum wage to the voters as a constitutional amendment, then continuing on a schedule of raises. Christie, who's spent a year pinning the Jersey Comeback mantle o...

Once again, queue the conspiracy theorists! First unemployment drops to 7.8% and the right freaks out, then jobless claims drop and the right freaks out, now we have consumer sentiment reaching a five year high.
"The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's preliminary October reading on the overall index on consumer sentiment came in at 83.1, up from 78.3 the month before, marking the highest level since September 2007." CNBC is reporting.

This week, John T. Montford, the spokesperson for Let Texans Decide, published an op-ed in the Austin-American Statesman calling for Texans to demand the right to vote on legalized expanded gambling in the state.
Each year our fellow Texans spend more than $2.5 billion in strategically placed, just-across-the-border gaming facilities in Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico. The potential benefits to our economy are huge. Depending on the specifics, expanded gaming could create 75,000 permanent jobs in 40 different sectors of the economy, and it would bring several billion dollars in economic development to Texas.