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A spectre is haunting America, the spectre of TDS. That is the acronym for the plague that is afflicting half of our adult population, more than half if truth be told, and many youngsters whose parents have exposed them to the disease. According to Bernard Goldberg, writing in his column, some…

I'm just old enough to recall when the Dow hit 1,000. I was in the second grade and our Social Studies teacher devoted the election week to a discussion of politics and business. When the Dow hit 1,000 she asked my father to come in and explain the basics of the stock market to our class.

As doubts have grown over the accuracy of polling, many have argued that there's a better gauge for predicting electoral outcomes: betting markets. The idea is that the wisdom of crowds—especially when those crowds are putting their money where their mouths are—trumps surveys that are hobbled by…

After the Great Depression, Democrats ran against Herbert Hoover for 30 years—and with great success. Even though Hoover’s policies were anything but market-oriented—he greatly raised spending, taxes, and tariffs in response to the 1929 Wall Street crash—Republicans took the fall for Hooverism. It…

Some Republican presidential candidate was sure to come along with a credible tax reform plan to erase tax loopholes, preferences, and special breaks, broaden the tax base, and lower rates. Now Jeb Bush has done it. This marks a departure point in the GOP race.

The economic recovery is barely worthy of the name, and there is evidence that inequality in America is increasing. Ignoring the first rule of statistics—correlation is not causation—progressives see this as a new reason to expand government. Reduce inequality and the growth rate will increase. 

There are new reports of a hostage situation in Paris at a Kosher market. The Associated Press reports:

The ZeroHedge headline nails it:

A fascinating interview on CNBC with Alibaba chair Jack Ma, whose company will go public today in New York:

At last, some good news about the U.S. economy. Sort of. The government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reckons the economy grew at an annual rate of 4 percent in the second quarter of the year (data subject to revision). If that rate continues, five years of a lackadaisical recovery would be…

And we thought the bad old days of oil shocks were over. Embargoes, price spikes, gasoline lines in America, a sweater-bedecked president ordering the end of hot water in many facilities, collapsing retail sales as high gasoline and energy prices hit stores as much as a big tax increase would,…

Hedge fund manager Barry Rosenstein is not a man to be fazed by the recent rise in mortgage interest rates. Nor is he one to worry that the housing market might be softening, loping the odd million off the $147 million he shelled out for an 18-acre beachfront home in the Hamptons, on New York’s…

Humana joined the ranks of insurers warning about the potential for large premium increases on next year's Obamacare exchanges. In a conference call discussing its first quarter earning results, Bruce D. Broussard, CEO of Humana, said: "we can see pricing levels anywhere in the single digits to the…

The monthly jobs numbers will be released tomorrow and they are even more eagerly anticipated than usual now that the Obamacare deadline (using the term loosely) has passed and attention is being increasingly paid to the next elections in which jobs will likely be the prime issue.

The housing market and house prices are the economy’s gift to journalists. For one thing, almost everybody either owns a house, is looking to buy one, or to sell one – and all want to know whether prices are going up, down, or sideways, whether buyers are in the saddle and ride sellers, or vice…

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) employees aren't necessarily better at investing in stocks than everyone else, but they are much better at getting out of bad investments before the "bad news" hits. That's according to a new paper by Shivaram Rajgopal and Roger M. White, called, "Stock…

When economic forecasts prove wrong, it is customary to blame the weather. So cold that consumers stayed home, or so hot that consumers, well, stayed home. So cold that outdoor construction was unexpectedly low, unless of course unusually high temperatures made such work impossible lest heat stroke…

Herewith some thoughts about the outlook for this year. Thoughts, not forecasts, for which I have neither the skill nor the courage. I offer these thoughts in deference to the understandable demand for look-aheads. Human beings are always hunting for certainty, attempting to reduce randomness,…

Last week one of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s major shareholders proposed dismantling the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and replacing them with two new private-sector entities that would offer the same services, namely buying and guaranteeing home mortgages. Perhaps more interesting than…

Monday will be an important day here in America. It is Labor Day, the day on which many of us say goodbye to summer – the last holiday from work until we carve our turkeys on Thanksgiving Day at the end of November. Barbeques will be fired up, beer kegs tapped, the all-too-short leases on beach…

Spare a bit of sympathy for the Federal Reserve Board’s monetary policy gurus. They have said they will begin to “taper” their purchases of bonds and mortgages when the unemployment rate falls to 6.5 percent. So July’s dip from 7.5 to 7.4 percent, the lowest rate since December 2008, should edge…

Another presidential “pivot.” Having “pivoted” from Europe to Asia, Barack Obama’s White House has announced another pivot. This one, according to Politico, “to re-focus his oft-meandering message back on the economy.” It seems that voters are less interested in Obama’s drive for gun control (he…

Here’s a TTIP for you. No, that’s not a typo missed by our ever-vigilant editors. It stands for Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, what British prime minister David Cameron calls a “once-in-a-generation prize” that can create two million jobs on both sides of the Atlantic, and Sir…

The weekly news on initial claims – up 16,000 to a two-month high of 360,000 – is one part of the economic picture and may be a short term glitch.  Still, the overall employment picture is not reassuring.  Such jobs as are available tend to be part time.  Far too many people have simply dropped out…

Vicki Needham at the Hill writes that:

Until recently it has been fashionable to denigrate the U.S. economic recovery: “America is the best house in a bad neighborhood,” sniffed many analysts. No longer. America is now a very good house in a terrible neighborhood.

CNBC's Rick Santelli is encouraged by the latest jobs report:

Michael R. Strain, writing for National Review Online:

For someone who aggressively campaigned on the notion that the Republican party cares disproportionately about the rich, President Obama’s economic scorecard is rather illuminating.  Since March 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average — which tracks the stock prices of 30 large blue-chip companies —…

This is the time that tries economists’ models. It has become the fashion at this time of year for forecasters to opine on the growth of GDP, the level of unemployment, the inflation rate next year—to at least one decimal place. I respect those who consult their models and intuition to come up with…

Markets move even when politicians don’t. Investors and consumers aren’t waiting for America’s politicians to decide whether and, if so, how to put our fiscal house in order. They are acting, now. Good thing, given the increasingly intransigent mood that has the president refusing to put spending…

Until now, most forecasters have been framing the assumptions underlying their projections on what they assume a reelected Barack Obama would do about taxes, appointments to the Federal Reserve Board, spending, the deficit and a host of other policies. Suddenly, they are back to the drawing board.…

Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke now has two reasons to disappoint those who are hoping he will use his speech next week at the conclave of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to launch the good ship QE3. The first is that the economy continues to move ahead, albeit at a slower…

Free advice for the Romney campaign from Luigi Zingales, writing in City Journal:

America is the best house in a run-down neighborhood: The famous BRICs are crumbling.

Rasmussen reports:

A cynic would be tempted to compare the eurozone to Ryou-Un Mara, the rusty Japanese ghost ship that floated across the Pacific after last year’s earthquake. Some wrecks surprise us by staying afloat for a long time, but that does not make them less of a wreck.

Xi Jinping, the heir apparent to the leadership of the Chinese Communist regime, came to America to meet the president, dine with the vice president, visit a farm in Iowa—following in the 1959 footsteps of Nikita Khrushchev—and attend a basketball game in Los Angeles. The Iowa visit was designed to…

Today’s jobs report is all good news for the country, and bad news for Republicans who are hoping that a failing economy is all they need in order to unseat President Obama. The economy added 243,000 jobs in January, 257,000 in the private sector, driving the unemployment rate down to a three-year…

Were you returning from a year off, you might think you hadn’t missed much. Stock markets must have been boring: The S&P index of 500 shares is ending 2011 at about the same level as it ended 2010. As for currency markets, not much action there: At the end of last year it took $1.30 to get you a…

“[A] U.S. recession caused by the fiscal crisis in Europe would be very costly and could throw millions of Americans out of work.” So says the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank that numbers Pulitzer Prize winning, generally liberal economists Joe Stiglitz and Robert Solow among…

The average American family is not going to cancel a trip to Disneyland because of headlines about “something going on in Italy or France,” says James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. So he is guessing “The holiday season will be reasonable.” Pollsters support that view.…

New evidence suggests there’s a reason why this economic “recovery” hasn’t felt much like a recovery. Figures from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the “recovery” has actually been harder on most Americans than the recession from which they’ve…

President Barack Obama has a ten year $447 billion jobs plan, but the Senate isn’t buying it. The Republicans have a jobs plan, but the Democrats aren’t buying it. Keynesian economists have a jobs plan, but economists who don’t believe in borrow-and-spend to stimulate demand aren’t buying it. Obama…

We are all Europeans now. Doubt that—and just try to get news about the American economy on the financial news networks on any morning. No luck. Lots of talk about German chancellor Angela Merkel’s balancing act—trying to keep from being turfed out of office, while still sending Germans’…

None. That’s the total of on-the-other-hand good news I have to report this week. Lest you think I am overlooking the debt deal cut in Washington last week, consider this:

We worry as we prepare to fire up our barbeques, head for the beaches and ballparks, and otherwise celebrate our hard won independence from British despotism. That’s the good news, because it reflects a realization that a policy shift can no longer be postponed. By 44 to 34 percent, we have told…

Preempting President Obama's trip to Pittsburgh last week, Senator Ron Johnson released the following video, where he says that the president has revealed a "depressing display of economic ignorance."

If you are an oil trader, the daily jiggles in the price of oil are of interest: if you guess right, it’s champagne and caviar; if you bet wrong, it’s beer and potato chips. But if you are a policy maker trying to make sense of oil markets so that you can plan your nation’s energy security, or an…

Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport had been planning to provide an initial public offering to investors this week, allowing folks from around the world to buy shares in the currently private company that operates the facility. Suddenly, over Memorial Day weekend and in the middle of the night, Domodedovo…

The black day – with the red ink – arrived this week: America reached the limits of what it can borrow. But the world didn’t end, the economy didn’t grind to a halt, and the dollar didn’t collapse. This non-event is being handled by accounting sleight of hand: some $4 trillion of the $14.3 trillion…

People in nations with economic problems can be permitted to enjoy an occasional pause from contemplating their woes. Once there were circuses for diversion. Yesterday Great Britain chose a royal wedding as its relief from debt, benefits cuts, and taxes. And this week America was diverted by the…

In Obama’s speech on the budget deficit earlier this month, the president went out of his way to praise the free market, but balanced it against the need for collective action sponsored by the government:           

Larry Summers, the just-departed White House economic adviser, says today’s credit crunch has a new culprit. “In the early days of the crisis, there was clearly a problem with lenders being unable to lend even to creditworthy borrowers,” he says in an interview in The International Economy…

Pity the poor economist trying to create a coherent picture of the U.S. economy from the bits and pieces of the data jigsaw puzzle, the most recent piece of which was Friday’s jobs report. Non-farm payrolls were up 192,000 in February, and the estimates of the previous two months’ jobs growth were…

No need to do a careful analysis of the budget President Obama dropped on the desks of the Congress last week – a few broad brushstrokes paint the picture. Debt triples from 2008 levels by 2021; debt as a percent of GDP goes from 41 percent to 77 percent. Not a word about how to reform Medicare,…