Despite the steadily decreasing unemployment rate, a majority of voters describe the employment situation in the state as very serious. Sixty-four percent say jobs are difficult to find in their communities, while just 21 percent have the impression they’re widely abundant.
The U.S. economy contracted at a much steeper pace than previously estimated in the first quarter, but there are indications that growth has since rebounded strongly.
In a new step to expose hidden debt, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board last week proposed that retiree health care debt or “unfunded liability” be reported on the face of government financial statements, not buried inside.
A Fed following the Taylor Rule would have raised rates by now, and it would not have exposed the nation to inflation risks by buying so many trillions of dollars of bonds and mortgage-backed securities over the past few years, several of the economists at the podium said. One paper presented at the conference, by University of Houston economist David Papell, found that the economy does better when the Fed sticks close to the Taylor Rule or something like it.
It’s fine to talk about government programs to help the poor, but wouldn’t it be better to alleviate the high living costs they face every day, and to create an economic climate that would give them more opportunities to climb the ladder through better jobs?
Consumer spending was down $8.1 billion, or 0.1%, last month, the Commerce Department said Friday.
“Trillions of dollars in liabilities — reflecting amounts promised to state and local government workers — are not appropriately reflected on government books, thereby seriously misleading investors about the riskiness of their investments in municipal securities,” said Daniel Gallagher, one of the five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates U.S. financial markets.
“In the private sector, the SEC would quickly bring fraud charges against any corporate issuer and its officers for playing such numbers games,” he also said in a presentation to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, which writes the rules for public sector debt that the SEC enforces.
A contraction in the nation’s economic output in the first quarter again deferred hopes for a sustained pickup in growth, another stumble for a lackluster recovery approaching the end of its fifth year.
The U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter of 2014, the latest stumble for a recovery that has struggled to find its footing since the recession ended almost five years ago.
Thomas Piketty has recently attracted widespread attention for his claim that capitalism will now lead inexorably to an increasing inequality of income and wealth unless there are radical changes in taxation. Although his book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” has been praised by those who advocate income redistribution, his thesis rests on a false theory of how wealth evolves in a market economy, a flawed interpretation of U.S. income-tax data, and a misunderstanding of the current nature of household wealth.
An analysis released this week by real estate site Trulia defines “middle class” in the San Jose metro area as a household earning $94,077 annually — more than double the median income in Miami and $10,000 higher than the San Francisco metro area.
Low-wage and mid-wage workers still earned signifi cantly less in 2013 than before the Great Recession began, after adjusting for infl ation. This wage erosion continues a decades-long trend of widening wage inequality.
California has the nation’s highest rate of poverty — nearly a quarter of its 38 million residents — under an alternative calculation devised by the Census Bureau that takes the cost of living into account.
The U.S. economy slowed in the first quarter to one of the weakest paces of the five-year recovery as the frigid winter appeared to curtailed business investment and weakness overseas hurt exports.
Today, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released real, price-adjusted estimates of personal income for states and metropolitan areas for 2008-2012.