Legislators moved Thursday to further hike the state’s minimum wage and to guarantee workers three paid sick days a year, despite opposition from the California Chamber of Commerce, which labeled both proposals “job killers.”
Demand for the state’s first round of business tax credits under the new California Competes program far exceeds supply, with applications totaling $559 million for only $30 million in credits available this year.
“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.
One of the core barriers to economic prosperity in California is the price of housing. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Policies designed to stifle the ability to develop land are based on flawed premises. These policies prevail because they are backed by environmentalists, and, most importantly, because they have played into the agenda of crony capitalists, Wall Street financiers, and public sector unions. But while the elites have benefit, ordinary working families have been condemned to pay extreme prices in mortgages, property taxes, or rents, to live in confined, unhealthy, ultra high-density neighborhoods. . . Earlier this month an economist writing for the American Enterprise Institute, Mark J. Perry, published a chart proving that over the past four years, more new homes were built in one city, Houston Texas, than in the entire state of California.
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.
The Ohio bill freezes mandates that require utilities to gradually phase in the purchase of 25 percent of their power from alternative sources, including wind, solar and emerging technologies like clean coal production, by 2025. While the freeze is in effect for two years, a commission would study the issue.
In all, some 66 industrial projects—worth some $90 billion—will be breaking ground over the next five years in Louisiana, according to the Greater Baton Rouge Industry Alliance. Tens of billions of other new investments could be coming, says Louisiana’s economic development secretary, Stephen Moret. How many projects will actually get built remains to be seen.
Lawmakers in the state Senate will decide this week on a law that would halt fracking in California until state government officials deem it safe – a move that could prevent the creation of some 195,000 jobs, according to figures provided by the oil industry.
San Francisco often comes up short when major companies decide where to locate their headquarters and it’s happened again: Union Bank’s parent is moving its headquarters to New York from San Francisco as it pursues its national banking ambitions.
California’s overall clean economy continues to create new jobs and business opportunities across diverse sectors, ranging from water efficiency and recycling to energy and battery technologies. Between January 2002 and January 2012, employment in California’s Core Clean Economy jumped 20 percent to reach nearly 196,000. During the same time period, jobs in the larger overall state economy grew by two percent
With regard to the 2014-15 budget, we project that if the Legislature adopts the Governor’s May Revision, the state would end 2014-15 with $3 billion in the state’s two budget reserves: the Budget Stabilization Account (BSA) established by Proposition 58 (2004) and the state’s traditional reserve, the Special Fund for Economic Uncertainties (SFEU). This total is roughly $850 million higher than the administration’s estimate for these reserves ($2.1 billion).
In addition to getting rid of outdated laws, the project made taxes simpler, cut bureaucratic red tape, speeded up business permits and required state agencies to communicate in plain language.
Economists, real-estate agents and many home builders expected first-time and entry-level buyers to begin returning to the market this year, jump-starting the sputtering housing recovery. So far, that hasn’t happened.
Hewlett-Packard Co. will cut an additional 11,000 to 16,000 jobs as the company pursues its restructuring under CEO Meg Whitman. That brings the total planned cuts to almost 50,000, which would equal roughly 15 percent of its global workforce.