The Federal Reserve said the labor market still has plenty of room for improvement, even after a surprising drop in unemployment, bolstering the case for keeping interest rates low. “A range of labor-market indicators suggests that there remains significant underutilization of labor resources,” the Federal Open Market Committee said today in a statement in Washington, […] Continue reading → 
Iraq will be foremost in investors’ minds in the coming week as oil price risk has returned to markets, complicating the task for central banks whose policies are beginning to diverge for the first time since the global financial crisis. Oil prices neared nine-month highs late last week, touching $115 a barrel, and the rapid […] Continue reading → 
Have you noticed that prices are going up rapidly? If so, you are certainly not alone. But Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, the Obama administration and the mainstream media would have us believe that inflation is completely under control and exactly where it should be. Perhaps if the highly manipulated numbers that they quote us […] Continue reading → 
Ramesh Ponnuru My Bloomberg View colleague Francis Wilkinson is the latest in a long line of commentators to urge the Republican Party to get over its nostalgia for President Ronald Reagan. And it’s true that Republicans have tended to cling to an agenda that made sense in Reagan’s time but is no longer compelling. The […] Continue reading → 
The cost of living in the U.S. rose more than forecast in May, reflecting broad-based gains that signal inflation will move closer to the Federal Reserve’s goal. The consumer price index increased 0.4 percent, the biggest advance since February 2013, after climbing 0.3 percent the prior month, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. […] Continue reading → 
John Ransom Democrats hoping for some political relief from the economy had better change their dreams. An astonishing 30% of Americans think the country is on the right track with 62% saying the country is going in the wrong direction, according to an average by RealClearPolitics. I don’t know who that 30% is, but to […] Continue reading → 
Corporate labor unions and Alinsky radicals demand government use monopoly of violence against small business The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a leftist organization that receives funding from activist labor unions, is calling for the government to raise the federal minimum wage. A study produced by the liberal think tank has added emphasis to the “inequality” […] Continue reading → 
Wholesale prices in the U.S. rose in April by the most in more than a year, reflecting broad-based gains that signal the threat of deflation is ebbing as the economy improves. The 0.6 percent increase in the producer price index was the biggest since September 2012 and exceeded all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of […] Continue reading → 
Michael SnyderEconomic Collapse Does the economy move in predictable waves, cycles or patterns? There are many economists that believe that it does, and if their projections are correct, the rest of this decade is going to be pure hell for the United States. Many mainstream economists want nothing to do with economic cycle theorists, but […] Continue reading → 
Mike Shedlock, Ukraine and Russia remain in the spotlight this weekend. Here are the top stories. Russia hiked interest rates 50 basis points on Friday accompanied with a warning about inflation and a sluggish economy. Russian Markets Have Worst Week Since Crimea. Ukraine’s acting prime minister accused Russia of wanting to start WWII. Ukraine forces […] Continue reading → 
The Census Bureau’s Philadelphia office wasn’t just corrupting the nation’s unemployment rate by fabricating data. It was also filing false information about inflation in this country. Just how large an effect this fraud was having on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) — and consequently the cost of living adjustments for Social Security recipients and others […] Continue reading → 
Many economists, politicians and pundits assert that median wages have stagnated since the 1970s. That’s a call for government to do something about it. But before we look at the error in their assertion, let’s work through an example that might shed a bit of light on the issue. Suppose that you paid me a […] Continue reading → 
U.S. consumer inflation was muted in February and housing starts fell for a third straight month in February, but the weak data probably will not dissuade the Federal Reserve from dialing back its monetary stimulus. The Labor Department said its Consumer Price Index nudged up 0.1 percent as a decline in gasoline prices offset an […] Continue reading → 
Ripples in ancient light form the first direct evidence of the Big Bang, the original expansion of the universe from a tiny compressed spot that led to its present size, scientists reported today. Waves from the initial expansion still exist in cosmic background microwaves, a form of light that remains from the universe’s earliest days, […] Continue reading → 
By, Luke Hamilton The lull is almost over. Now what? I don’t need to tell the savvy readership of Conservative Read that this economic “recovery” has been a combination of smoke and mirrors, held together with a shoestring and bubble gum. The plummeting economy, triggered by the collapse of our government-inflated housing bubble, was temporarily slowed […] Continue reading →