MOsanthrope

The administration’s Middle East policies have been a great success:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Oil prices surged to a record above $78 a barrel Thursday in a market agitated by escalating violence in the Middle East and the threat of supply disruptions there and beyond.
* * *
The latest fear being priced into the market is that the […]

Filed under: Politics, Business, U.S., World, Economy

Good news:

Bush heralds improved deficit figures
Annual deficit to come in at $296 billion, below original estimates
Tuesday, July 11, 2006; Posted: 11:45 a.m. EDT (15:45 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush touted new deficit figures Tuesday showing considerable improvement upon earlier administration predictions, saying it shows the wisdom of his tax cuts.

That’s great, right?

Filed under: Politics, U.S., Economy

Those of you with money in the stock market may want to take a looksee.

Filed under: Finance, U.S., Economy

From the notoriously anticapitalist left-wing nut jobs at the St. Louis Business Journal comes this shocking story:

A study focused on the effects of Wal-Mart stores on poverty rates found that an estimated 20,000 families nationwide have fallen below the official poverty line as a result of the chain’s expansion.
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Authors, Goetz and […]

Filed under: Business, U.S., Economy

I’ve said it before: Those intricate and complex global supply and demand forces that somehow ultimately translate to higher prices at the pump really are difficult to wrap ones head around:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A Chevron memo is raising suspicion that oil executives intentionally reduced refining capacity in an effort to boost profits. The 1995 […]

Filed under: Politics, Business, U.S., Economy

Billmon can make a good read of even a desiccated subject like skyrocketing gold prices as an economic indicator.

Filed under: Finance, U.S., Economy

Arianna Huffington has a good post up. You might drop by if you haven’t yet read it. Here’s the teaser:

Our oil-man president may want us to think that he’s shocked, shocked by the “large cash flows” of the oil companies, and the sticker shock drivers are experiencing at the pump, but even […]

Filed under: Politics, Business, U.S., Economy

Compare and contrast:

WALLACE: Question, isn’t the president now playing politics with the strategic reserve?
BOLTEN: No, no. All that we’re doing with the strategic reserve right now is we’re deferring some deposits that were planned to be made in the summer. We were planning to end the deposits in any event this fall, so we’re just […]

Filed under: Politics, U.S., Environment, Economy

Why it’s called a dream:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - America may still think of itself as the land of opportunity, but the chances of living a rags-to-riches life are a lot lower than elsewhere in the world, according to a new study published on Wednesday.
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He also found the United States had one of the lowest […]

Filed under: Politics, Culture, U.S., Economy

You know, those intricate and complex global supply and demand forces that somehow ultimately translate to higher prices at the pump really are difficult to wrap one’s head around.

Filed under: Politics, Business, U.S., Economy

It’s a good day, if you’re one of the wealthiest Americans:

Example: let’s say your wealth puts you in the top 1/100th of 1 percent of all Americans. That’s about 28,000 people in the U.S. These people, on average, make around $2 million every five days, which is what the average American earns over the course […]

Filed under: Politics, Finance, Business, U.S., Economy

No More Mr. Nice Blog has a good post up about middle class America’s love affair with the new trickle down economics.

Here we are, according to a recent report:
The real income of the typical household [fell] five years in a row, despite the fact that the last three of those years — 2002, 2003, and […]

Filed under: Politics, U.S., Economy

(AFP/Yahoo! News)
 
The thirteen digits available on Times Square’s famous national debt clock will soon be inadequate to tally our rapidly increasing national debt:

So rapid is the rise of the US national debt, that the last four digits of a giant digital signboard counting the moving total near New York’s Times Square move in seemingly random […]

Filed under: Politics, U.S., Economy

Republican small business owners from Texas:

WASHINGTON, March 12 - Pharmacists say they have been losing money under Medicare’s new prescription drug benefit, and they have taken their concerns to the White House, forcing the administration to confront political problems caused by the rocky start of the program.
In a meeting last week with Karl Rove, the […]

Filed under: Politics, Business, U.S., Economy

Our family took advantage of yesterday’s spring-like weather by attending a dinner party hosted by some close friends. It was a good time.
When their number reaches a certain critical mass, children who otherwise demand their parents’ unwavering attention permit the adults to relax and have conversations involving subjects other than SpongeBob, preferring […]

Filed under: Politics, U.S., Economy

Late last week, the administration trotted out the Vice President to, as rorschach put it, “call upon the proletariat to give up their caviar and start behaving responsibly“:

“The American dream begins with saving money and that should begin on the very first day of work,” Cheney told a conference here exploring how to encourage […]

Filed under: Politics, Finance, U.S., Economy

Paul Krugman, via Infoshop News:

The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but by less than 1 percent per year.
[…]

Filed under: Politics, U.S., Economy

Please stop spamming me.

Subject: Republican? Take your Valentine
to THE BIG PARTY WEEKEND!
From: “Missouri Young Republicans”
Date: Tue, February 14, 2006 […]

Filed under: Politics, U.S., Missouri, Economy

While listening to wealth management advisor David Simons on KMOX this afternoon, I learned of a scary economic development:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The first auction of 30-year U.S. Treasury debt in more than four years this week saw high demand from pension funds, pushing down longer-maturity bond yields and reviving questions about what the yield […]

Filed under: Finance, U.S., Economy

While over reading Wolcott, I was shocked to learn of the continued existence of at least one intellectually honest conservative.
In his upcoming book, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, supply-side economist and Reagan domestic policy advisor, Bruce Bartlett, commits the ultimate sin against neoconservative dogma:

I think it is […]

Filed under: Politics, Literature, U.S., Economy

After about a week of news isolation brought about by intensive deck-building, football viewing and turkey consumption, I caught the lead stories this morning.
Yesterday’s resignation of Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA) led several newscasts. The story did not strike me as particularly newsworthy. Perhaps because recent sniping between Nick and Jessica and […]

Filed under: Politics, News, U.S., Economy