our flourishing economy
Have you been laboring under the delusion that you’re still part of the tiny, rapidly vanishing Middle Class? Happy April Fools Day! A new study proves that a family of four needs $67,920 a year (pre-tax) to survive in America. And that’s basic: no vacations, no fancy dinners, no wine tastings, no fun-box deliveries from [...]
Bad news, we guess: Americans have just quit having babies. Why? Oh, no reason at all, everything’s fine, la la la. The birth rate for the main procreating age range of wommens, 20-24, dropped by a shocking 9% in just two years (2007-2009). In the doomed American Southwest, the birth rate plunged by 10%. Overall, [...]
The U.S. economy will continue to be terrible, as far as jobs and housing and state tax revenues, as long as the Housing Crisis continues. And, based on today’s news and basically all housing news for several years now, the collapse of the Housing Bubble is an ongoing catastrophe — with prices still falling, terrible [...]
America’s last half-assed attempt at a serious newspaper, the New York Times, is rapidly losing the last of its serious op-ed writers. Bob Herbert is the latest to say goodbye, and his final column is devastating. It starts like this: “So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in [...]
This is going to get repetitive, we’re afraid, but every aspect of the “financial crisis” in the United States is due to corporations not paying taxes and the very richest .01% individuals not paying taxes. That’s it, that’s the whole thing — your crumbling schools, your sinkhole highways, your abandoned state parks, the laid-off city [...]
Did everybody enjoy the “jobless recovery” of the past two years? Because, uhh …. The American stock markets plunged more than 2% today as everybody freaks out about the dismal housing numbers, the continuing craziness in oil-producing Middle East/North African nations, another round of the European debt crisis and (of course) the nuclear horror show [...]
The last time so few new permits were issued for housing construction, it was 1961 — when American economists first began keeping records of the numbers of housing permits as an economic indicator. There are millions of unwanted, unsold and unfinished new housing units in this country. Who would buy these things, right? There are [...]
Here he is, America’s Queen of Hearts! Larry Kudlow is the foulest talking head on any news channel. But how can he prove this, to people who don’t watch business news? By delighting in the death of so many in Japan, because this nightmare had not yet hurt his precious stock market. (Well, and how [...]
Florida has 11.9% unemployment and a statehouse full of wingnuts. What to do? Slash unemployment benefits to a maximum of 20 weeks and cap them at $275 per week. Bloomberg reports: Florida’s Republican-controlled House passed a bill curbing unemployment benefits as the state announced its jobless rate remained above 11 percent for the 15th consecutive [...]
What’s behind today’s 220-point drop off the cliff for the Dow Jones index, and the nearly 2% collapse in the other big indices? Experts say it’s because the big institutional investors may finally be putting it together that a jobless “recovery” where wages are flat or shrinking for more than 80% of the population is [...]
Would you look at that, the sun has decided to come out in D.C. in February, the most miserable and pointless of all months. Nothing good ever happens in February. Maybe it’s out because now that CPAC is over there are less wingnuts in town so the Sun can resume doing elite activities like shining. [...]
There is literally nothing more important on Earth than America Online’s purchase of Arianna Huffington’s celebriporn blog. Nothing. This is why Canadian agents provocateurs are leaving comments on the NYT calling for insurrection. Insurrection! This particular Canadian (we hide his assumed name to protect ourselves from the tanks of oppression) wants HuffPo bloggers to quit [...]
Here is an example of Joe Biden saying something that’s basically common sense advice, but it still sounds kind of jackass-y because, well, Joe Biden is saying it about the nation’s desperate jobless people. Asked what the nation’s 25 million unemployed and underemployed people should do, what with the jobless rate basically unchanged (and terrible) [...]
Republican time travelers have a very strong argument against Barack Obama’s state of the union speech — the speech he will give tonight — and it basically goes like this: “Oh yeah, well then why doesn’t everyone have a job?” If, by chance, he announces that everyone as of this moment has a steady job, [...]
