Help The Middle ClassNews and Information For The Heart Of America
When Obama Talks, The Markets Tank (AP/Yahoo! News)
It was the fat cats’ fault before. But now it’s becoming Obama’s.
With the unemployment rate stubbornly high, people were already shifting blame for their economic woes to President Barack Obama one year into his presidency. Last week, investors joined them.
For 10 months, the stock market climbed at breathtaking speed. But the Dow Jones industrial average [...]
White House Officials Contradict Themselves On Success of Stimulus (Politico)
White House advisers appearing on the Sunday talk shows gave three different estimates of how many jobs could be credited to President Obama’s Recovery Act.
The discrepancy was pointed out by a Republican official in an email to reporters noting that “Three presidential advisers on three different programs [gave] three different descriptions of the trillion-dollar stimulus [...]
Walking Away From Your Mortgage (The New York Times)
John Courson, president and C.E.O. of the Mortgage Bankers Association, recently told The Wall Street Journal that homeowners who default on their mortgages should think about the “message” they will send to “their family and their kids and their friends.” Courson was implying that homeowners — record numbers of whom continue to default — have [...]
THE STORY THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: Road Projects Don’t Help Unemployment (Yahoo! Finance/AP)
Ten months into President Barack Obama’s first economic stimulus plan, a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an Associated Press analysis has found.
Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn't matter, the AP analysis showed: Local unemployment [...]
Even In A Recovery, Some Jobs Won’t Return (Wall Street Journal)
Even when the U.S. labor market finally starts adding more workers than it loses, many of the unemployed will find that the types of jobs they once had simply don’t exist anymore.
The downturn that started in December 2007 delivered a body blow to U.S. workers. In two years, the economy shed 7.2 million jobs, pushing [...]
THE STORY THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: Foreclosures Jump in December As Obama Loan Modifications Fail To Work (USA TODAY)
Foreclosure filings increased 14% in December from November, the first monthly increase since foreclosure activity peaked in July, according to a RealtyTrac report out Thursday.
Foreclosure filings were reported on 349,519 properties in December, which were also 15% higher than in December 2008, RealtyTrac said.
“It’s somewhat startling to see these kind of numbers,” says Brian Bethune [...]
4 Things That Will Crush Our Economy (U.S. News)
In the cast of corporate characters, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are A-list villains, thanks to the central role they played in the 2008 financial meltdown. The two mortgage-finance firms failed as spectacularly as AIG, the poster child for finance-gone-wrong, with the combined Fannie-Freddie rescue totaling about $111 billion so far—the biggest bailout of all. [...]
Obama Tells Banks: ‘We Want Our Money Back’ (Atlanta Business News)
President Barack Obama told banks Thursday they should pay a new tax to recoup the cost of bailing out foundering firms at the height of the financial crisis. “We want our money back,” he said.
In a brief appearance with advisers at the White House, Obama branded the latest round of bank bonuses as “obscene.” But [...]
States Ready to ‘Tighten Belts’ In 2010 (USA Today)
States across the nation begin the year facing grim budget shortfalls that could mean a repeat of the service cuts, layoffs or furloughs and higher fees imposed in 2009, a USA TODAY survey shows.
States passed fiscal 2010 general-fund budgets totaling $627.9 billion, 5.4% less than a year earlier, says a study released last month by [...]
Moneynews: Paul Krugman Predicts High Chance Of Double Dip Inflation (Newsmax)
Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman says the economy may suffer another contraction next year.“It’s a reasonably high chance, though it’s less than 50-50 odds,” he told ABC News.
The economy grew 2.2 percent in the third quarter.“What we’ve got right now is a recovery that first of all isn’t showing up very much in jobs yet. [...]
