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Archive for the ‘The Economy’ Category

With the media focused on a presidential election that is now five months away, any jobs data is going to be viewed from the standpoint of its possible impact on the campaigns.  Today’s dismal report that only 69,000 jobs were created last month, with jobs data for the last two months revised downward and the [...]

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The April unemployment rate dropped slightly, to 8.1 percent.  Unfortunately, the decline was due not so much to the creation of new jobs, but to the fact that hundreds of thousands of people just quit looking for work. Under the government’s approach to calculating the unemployment rate, those people just aren’t counted as unemployed any [...]

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On Friday, Canada minted its last penny. The rationale for this move is that it costs more to mint the penny ($.016 each) than the penny is worth.  In addition, Canada’s Finance Minister concluded that people weren’t using the penny for business.  Instead, they were just putting them in jars at home.  So, no more [...]

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Today the April unemployment report is released.  It probably will be read more closely in the lobbying offices on K Street than in the trading pits on Wall Street. Americans vote with their pocketbooks.  For all the recent talk about Mitt Romney’s roof transportation of a family pet years ago, President Obama eating dog meat [...]

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Today Great Britain published statistics indicating that its economy has slid back into recession, making England the victim of a dreaded “double dip” recession.  Economic officials in the United States are holding their breath and hoping that the American economy doesn’t suffer a similar fate. “Double dip” recessions are no laughing matter — but we [...]

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In Ohio we are getting a first-hand look at the ripple effect in the economy when America’s energy resources are tapped — and it has been a real economic boon. As I’ve mentioned before, eastern Ohio is home to the Utica shale formation, an incredibly deep layer of rock that apparently is a rich repository [...]

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The Arnold Sports Festival is back in town this weekend.  Every year, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s favorite event gets bigger, and better, and packs even more people into various Columbus venues. Today the Bus-Riding Conservative and I walked down at lunch to check out the Arnold.  There were lots of people on the streets — many of [...]

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Yesterday’s unemployment report contained some good news, for a change.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics released data stating that 243,000 new jobs were created, and the unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent.  Both results are better than what economists and analysts — who never seem to be right — were expecting. There are some curious [...]

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I didn’t watch the President’s State of the Union speech earlier this week.  It turns out I’m not alone. According to the New York Times, 37.8 million viewers watched the President’s speech.  That’s down from 42.8 million in 2011, 48 million in 2010, and 52.3 million for the President’s 2009 speech to Congress.  In short, [...]

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Last week President Obama went down to Disney World to tout tourism in America and got his picture taken with the Disney castle in the background. The trip was part of the President’s “We Can’t Wait” campaign, in which he does things by himself that are supposed to promote job growth and show that we [...]

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If, like Kish and me, you like to watch The Food Network from time to time, you’ve been exposed to capitalism at its very essence.  Whether it is Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, where great food made from scratch earns raves and steadfast loyalty from customers, or the latest competitive cooking or baking show, or Restaurant [...]

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If Mitt Romney ends up as the Republican nominee, we’ll be hearing a lot more about his stint at Bain Capital.  I think that would be a good thing for a lot of reasons — one being that we would all be better served if our citizenry and our politicians had a clearer understanding of [...]

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Let’s see:  Mitt Romney discusses health insurance and says he likes to being able to fire people who provide services for him . . . and his Republican opponents say that makes him a heartless bastard?  I know that politics involves a lot of silliness, but this latest tempest in a teapot is ridiculous. In [...]

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Although he has a reputation as a fine public speaker, President Obama often struggles to make his point and move on.  At times, he seems to get trapped within expanding metaphors, fighting without success to make his way out. I first noticed this after he was elected, when he sought to explain why he wouldn’t [...]

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Halloween is just around the corner, and a person’s thoughts naturally turn to . . . zombies.  We’ve all seen movies about them.  We know there is a good chance that, any day now, some misguided government program, alien virus, or bacteria from the bottom of the sea could turn our peaceful fellow citizens into [...]

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