To double dip or not to double dip. That’s the question flowing from Wall Street to Main Street to the White House and back. But whether you classify what’s happening to our economy as another “dip” or not, the pain of it all won’t be short-lived. That’s the essence of this week’s cover story by [...]
May’s troubling jobs numbers threw the Obama administration under the bus. With unemployment now at 9.1%, the country is antsier about getting solutions to our jobs problem, and getting them fast. 59% of Americans gave the president a thumbs down for his handling of the economy in the latest Washington Post-ABC poll out Wednesday, up [...]
In the past few weeks, with a growing number of bad economic reports – including last month’s disappointing jobs number – there has been increasing talk of the possibility of a so-called double-dip recession. That’s when the economy slips back into a recession while still trying to recover from the last one. Indeed, Ben Bernanke’s [...]
The food crisis rages on. Though prices overall are a bit off their record highs reached earlier this year – the much-watched global food price index calculated by the Food & Agriculture Organisation dipped slightly in May – they are still way above the level a year ago. And with new fears of bad weather [...]
The quip “don’t quit your day job” isn’t the insult it used to be. In this economy, it’s the key to staying afloat. Not only is joblessness on the rise again, according to Friday’s jobs numbers, which showed May unemployment ticked up to 9.1%. But the longer you’re out of work, the harder it is [...]
Surprise, surprise. Fed Chair Ben Bernanke’s much-awaited speech today at the Atlanta conference didn’t really say much. Markets tumbled on fallen hopes that he’d offer the sputtering recovery yet another bond-buying boost. There was no grand announcement of QE3, another round of the monetary stimulus that’s been keeping markets afloat. But given the heat Bernanke’s been getting [...]
It’s hard to argue that the rise of China, taken on the whole, is anything but good for the global economy. New wealth for China’s 1.3 billion people means 1.3 billion more people who can buy stuff from the rest of the world, creating jobs from American research labs to Japanese industrial zones to Brazilian [...]
In discussing our unemployment problem today, WSJ‘s Real Time Economics points to an important issue: worker productivity. The piece explains that, with more productive workers supporting a growing population, the American employment rate and living standards are falling. Indeed, productivity has become a bad word in this economic downturn, but should it be? According to [...]
The economy, it appears, is hurting your child’s ability to do algebra. A study published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that higher rates of unemployment tend to lead to lower student test scores. And it’s not just kids whose parents have lost their jobs, but all kids. The study by [...]
The vibe on Wall Street couldn’t be more at odds with deflated Main Street. Yes, stock prices headed down after today’s disappointing jobs report, which showed unemployment rising to 9.1%. But for anyone who hasn’t noticed, big corporations are still making a killing. What gives? It was only last week that a slew of companies [...]
