We all know we’re on an unsustainable course with all of this spending. And this is why I voted for this guy: he’s a realist. We needed a short term shot in the arm when he first got in here, but now we have to worry about the long term consequences.
Politico has more:
On the practical [...]

The New York Times uncovers a rather disturbing oversight that economists are just now focusing on.
Actually, disturbing isn’t the right word. Terrifying is much more of an accurate descriptor.
In any event…
The fundamental shortcoming is in the way imports are accounted for. A carburetor bought for $50 in China as a component of an American-made car, [...]

We’ve crossed the psychological barrier and this spells bad news for Dems unless they can turn it around in the next couple months. Because this is the highest rate since 1983 and you’ll be hearing that time and time again in the next month.
Here’s more about those numbers:
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates [...]

As I’ve said numerous times before, voters aren’t stupid. They know who piloted our economic collapse last year and it’s going to be extremely hard for Republicans to convince them otherwise.
Still, it is kind of telling that Republicans blame Obama more for the economy than Bush, even though it’s by a very small 6 point [...]

True, it might go right back down tomorrow, but I have to say that this is a nice little psychological boost.
But it’s not just psychological.
Look at the 52 week spread in that picture…at this time last year we were down to 6,469. That’s a pretty significant jump in just one year’s time. Not only that, [...]

Yep. That’s right. A group of economic forecasters are projecting that we’ll see growth in the next quarter, so the recession is technically over. And hey, we can all be thankful for that.
However, the pain will linger for years to come.
The problem is that all of the lagging indicators of true economic health (rising employment, [...]

If you’re not familiar with the word rescission, this is the practice of canceling policies because people didn’t reveal a preexisting condition. And it’s one of the key reasons why the health insurance companies can claim that there’s $100 billion in health care fraud every year.
Here’s one example of what they consider fraud…
“They said I [...]

The rise in unemployment is slowing down and we’re pulling out of this recession sooner than expected.
Why?
The reason is clear to me: we stepped in, took action and did something instead of just allowing the markets determine our fate.
WSJ explains…
The U.S. economy is beginning to show signs of improvement, with many economists asserting the [...]

Per Politico, the White House claims that “more than half of the projected deficits over the next 10 years are directly attributable to the previous Administration’s failure to follow the pay-as-you-go principle.”
But even if that’s true, which is likely given the Medicare drug benefit, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the expansion of the [...]

The company that literally almost brought it all tumbling down about a year ago right around this time is back in the black?
Not so much.
More from Politics Daily…
For the first time since 2007, AIG on Friday claimed a profit. The insurance giant reported second-quarter net income of over $1.8 billion. That’s still just a fraction [...]

And the unemployment rate dropped to 9.4%.
This is pretty significant for a few reasons.
First, there’s just the psychological effect of 10% unemployment. The media had been positioning that as the dreaded magic number and now it appears that we’ll never reach it.
Second, economists projected 325,000 job losses for July, so coming in 80,000 below is [...]

Lots of “clunking” going on this morning at the Donk, but it’s the hot topic and since this criticism comes from a Dem I thought it worthy of pointing out some opposition from my side of the fence.
From her Tumblr blog:
Of course the cash for clunkers program is popular, we’re giving away money.
My concerns [...]

A new website for the controversial, popular program is up and it includes some things you need to know if you’d like to take advantage.

Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date

Only purchase or lease of new vehicles qualify

Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large [...]

I wrote about the problems the Postal Service faced back in January, and today we get word that their financial woes are even more severe than previously thought.
From NBC…

Back to the January post, which was about cutting back on delivery days, I saw two advantages to that model…
First, the fewer the days the mail is [...]

The following story doesn’t say it explicitly, but when both Dems and Repubs are saying yes to this, you know it’s going to pass.
From Politico:
On ABC’s “This Week,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in response to a question by host George Stephanopoulos about extending benefits: “I think that is something that the administration and Congress [...]

The Wall Street Journal uncovers what happened, but we’ve discussed it quite a bit here already. The banks were allowed to over leverage themselves to the point of failure. Sure, relaxed rules on home ownership were a contributing factor to the downfall, but that was a symptom of the disease of easy credit, not the [...]

In my last post I detailed some of the roadblocks that have kept the Democratic leadership in Washington from finding a way to pass a major health care reform bill with a public option. They’ve whittled the cost of the bill down a few hundred billion dollars by negotiating concessions from drug companies and hospitals, [...]

Thanks to Justin and company for welcoming me on here as a regular contributor. I will be posting on a number of issues, but one area you can expect that I will regularly be tracking is technology related developments and how they interact with the political world and policy. I also live less than ten [...]

Some sobering stats when thinking about the fallout from last year. Now entire families, like the one pictured above, are living out of a single hotel. And those are the lucky ones.
From Wash Post:
Although the number of homeless individuals remained relatively stable between 2007 and 2008, the number of homeless families rose 9 percent, and [...]