SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Looking for a promising career in a lousy economy? A new study suggests you’re apt to find it in apps — the services and tools built to run on smartphones, computer tablets and Facebook’s online social network. (more)
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a long-awaited surge of hiring, companies added 243,000 jobs in January — across the economy, up and down the pay scale and far more than just about anyone expected. Unemployment fell to 8.3 percent, the lowest in three years. (more)
WASHINGTON (AP) — It could be quite a while yet before the Federal Reserve starts raising the interest rates it’s kept at record lows for three years. (more)
On Tuesday, President Obama met with his so-called Council on Jobs and Competitiveness to discuss its recommendations for the U.S. economy. Despite the panel being stacked with cronies and rent-seekers, its recommendations were mostly sensible. The council recommended aggressively pushing to develop U.S. energy resources, streamlining federal regulations and reforming the corporate tax code to reduce the rate and spur international competitiveness. (more)
Message to my fellow conservatives: Please don’t blame the mainstream media for the improvement in jobs, unemployment and economic growth. Reporters are not making this up. The economy is better. It’s going to give President Obama a leg up on the election. GOP beware, and come to your senses. (more)
Campaigning in liberal San Francisco in 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama was caught ridiculing those “who cling to their guns and religion.” The president’s cavalier attitude toward gun owners could undermine his re-election effort, especially in New Hampshire, where guns mean jobs. (more)
It didn’t take very long for Jimmy Moncrief to put together his new 200-page book, “Everything Obama Knows About The Economy.” (more)
Facebook’s Ken Patchett showed up in Prineville, Oregon to run the company’s new-age data center, and Steve Forrester recognized him right away. (more)
Last Thursday, families gathered all over America for their Thanksgiving meals. As they sat around tables enjoying their turkeys, many families recounted the story of the Mayflower passengers who bid farewell forever to their loved ones and set sail across a forbidding ocean, of pilgrims and merchants who found a New World and found a way to talk with people of different cultures and backgrounds. It is the story of the conquering of distance and the barriers to communication. (more)
The world economy has once again dodged Armageddon. The European Union finally forged a Greek bond deal and established a rescue fund big enough to ring-fence banks and sovereign debt, in order to avoid a catastrophic, Lehman-like contagion event. At the same time, the U.S. economy moved away from the threat of recession with a third-quarter real GDP report of 2.5 percent. In response, stocks are soaring. We’ll live to see another day. (more)
During a speech Tuesday in Las Vegas, President Obama said that the U.S. economy is in trouble, and that “we can’t wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job. Where they won’t act, I will.” The president pushed hard against what he sees as a do-nothing Congress, explaining what he planned to do about mortgages and student loans without the legislative branch’s say-so. On “The Laura Ingraham Show” Thursday, Speaker of the House John Boehner pushed back. (more)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy grew modestly over the summer after nearly stalling in the first six months of the year, lifted by stronger consumer spending and greater business investment. (more)
Sparked by increasing concerns about the burdens of excessive regulation, regulatory policy has joined tax policy as a central element in discussions about how to energize the struggling U.S. economy. While there is some bipartisan support for reforms that would reduce regulatory burdens, for the most part, the two political parties blame each other for our economic woes, claiming the other party regulated too much or not enough. (more)
For a sitting congressman, there are few things worse than being advised what to do by a “former.” So, it is in this spirit that I tread cautiously on the most important issues now in front of the House and Senate. (more)
Team Obama is out and about mourning a “double-dip recession,” while Fed head Ben Bernanke is warning of a faltering economy. I have described the current economic environment as the front end of a recession. (more)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The jobs crisis isn’t getting worse. But it isn’t getting much better, either. (more)
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Starbucks hopes customers will be willing to pay at least $5 more when they stop in for their morning cup of Joe. (more)
The golden goodbye has not gone away.
Just last week, Léo Apotheker was shown the door after a tumultuous 11-month run atop Hewlett-Packard . His reward? $13.2 million in cash and stock severance, in addition to a sign-on package worth about $10 million, according to a corporate filing on Thursday. At the end of August, Robert P. Kelly was handed severance worth $17.2 million in cash and stock when he was ousted as chief executive of Bank of New York Mellon after clashing with board members and senior managers. A few days later, Carol A. Bartz took home nearly $10 million from Yahoo after being fired from the troubled search giant.
A hallmark of the gilded era of just a few short years ago, the eye-popping severance package continues to thrive in spite of the measures put in place in the wake of the financial crisis to crack down on excessive pay.
Full story: Outsize Severance Continues for Executives Despite Failed Tenures(more)
Have the chances of a compromise on a potential jobs bill in the spirit of bipartisanship greatly diminished after President Barack Obama went on the offensive promoting his jobs bill? According Pat Buchanan they have. (more)
Operation Twist doesn’t give consumers much to shout about. (more)
