Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category

The hazards of having a parliamentary system in a bitterly divided country (from Reuters):

Greece abandoned a nine-day hunt for a government on Tuesday and called a new election that may hand victory to leftists who might cut the nation’s financial lifeline, pushing it closer to bankruptcy and out of the euro zone.

After six rounds of fruitless wrangling, party leaders emerged from a final session at the presidential mansion to gloomily declare that deep divisions over a 130-billion-euro foreign bailout package had killed any hope of a coalition deal.

“We shouldn’t have reached this point,” said Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos, who personally negotiated the rescue package from the European Union and IMF which the hard left says has imposed too harsh an austerity regime. “For God’s sake, let’s move towards something better and not something worse.”

The last elections were held just nine days ago.

In case you’re wondering what’s the difference between the “leftists” …

Continue reading Beware of Greeks who can’t bear to govern themselves »

If you don’t think these statistics will have more of a bearing on this November’s election results than President Obama’s stances on gay marriage, free contraception, etc., then you’re fooling yourself. From a USA Today story:

• “One out of five families owes more on credit cards, medical bills, student loans and other unsecured debt than they have in savings … “
• “[T]he number of families surveyed at the end of 2011 that have no savings at all increased to 23.4 percent, compared with 18.5 percent in 2009.”
• “Among homeowners, 1.7 percent said that they expect to fall behind on their mortgage payments in the near future … slightly less than in 2009, when 1.9 percent expected to run into mortgage problems.”
• “Sixty percent of workers say that the value of their savings and investments is less than $25,000 … retirement confidence is at historically low levels.”
• “[N]early half of families say they have no debt at all from credit cards and other unsecured loans, the same percentage …

Continue reading Economic security still non-existent for many Americans »

The austerity debate is back, with American liberals pointing to shrinking European economies as evidence against the wisdom of cutting government spending here.

Typical is this argument from a column by the New York Times’ Paul Krugman last month: “Europe has had several years of experience with harsh austerity programs, and the results are exactly what students of history told you would happen: such programs push depressed economies even deeper into depression.”

Indeed, nine of the European Union’s 27 member-countries were in technical recession by the end of 2011 or the first quarter of 2012 (not all countries report first-quarter data at the same time).

There’s just one problem: There have been no such austerity programs, at least not of the type Krugman and other liberals warn against.

In five of the nine recessionary countries, governments cut spending in 2011. In four, they didn’t. There were another three European countries in which public spending fell …

Continue reading There’s austerity in Europe, all right — of the taxing sort »

WARM SPRINGS — Georgians who ponder the jobs of the future should see what’s bubbling up now in a place best known for its past.

It was here that Franklin D. Roosevelt died at his Little White House, having visited Warm Springs for two decades in the hopes of regaining the use of his legs. Today, this town of 425 souls, about two-thirds of the way from Atlanta to Columbus as the crow flies, is still host to a rehabilitation center that is under-used but first-rate. The aspiration is to build it into an invaluable resource for wounded soldiers — and a centerpiece of Georgia’s prowess and promise in bio-science.

The Georgia Warrior Alliance, a joint project of businesses and philanthropies focused on health care and veterans, brings wounded soldiers to the facilities at Warm Springs. Here, they can heal their bodies and, soon, learn work skills — from manufacturing and construction to golf course maintenance.

This is “the right thing to do” for our veterans, says an …

Continue reading How to help wounded soldiers and make our economy healthy »

Today’s jobs report was not good. From December to February, net job creation surpassed 200,000 per month — and while estimates vary about how many new jobs are needed each month simply to keep pace with population growth, pretty much everyone agrees anything north of 200,000 is good news. But in March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ initial estimate is a disappointing 120,000. That was the worst monthly showing since October, and the worst figure for March since 2009. It doesn’t represent the kind of growth that heralds a reinvigorated labor market.

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The unemployment rate fell to 8.2 percent from 8.3 percent, but that had a lot to do with people giving up on finding jobs and exiting the labor force. At this stage of an economic recovery, people ought to be rejoining the labor force as they see an uptick in hiring.

Now, the dip in March could …

Continue reading Poll Position: Is the economy gaining or just breaking even? »

A GOP “war on women” concerning contraception. A bloody Republican primary that keeps dragging on. Improving jobs numbers. A sharp drop in President Obama’s approval ratings.

Wait, what?

The narrative of February and early March was that Obama baited Republicans into focusing on social wedge issues, even as the economy is foremost on voters’ minds, and then seized on good economic news to begin gaining ground on that top concern as well. The president had returned to the magic 50 percent mark in approval ratings in both the New York Times/CBS national poll and the Washington Post/ABC survey. It seemed that it didn’t matter who the Republicans nominated: His name would simply go down in history as another guy who lost to Obama.

Now, both polls show a significant reversal. The WaPo/ABC poll, released yesterday shows Obama falling from 50 percent approval/46 percent disapproval to the exact opposite: 46/50. Today, the NYT/CBS poll shows an even larger fall: from 50/43 to 41/47. …

Continue reading 2012 Tuesday: About that notion the economy, GOP ‘war on women’ have Obama cruising to re-election »

Of all the external factors that might affect the presidential race, I doubt many people saw President Obama being hurt by an honest-to-goodness European Socialist. But the intention of Francois Hollande, the French Socialist challenger to President Nicolas Sarkozy, to renegotiate the painstakingly struck European bailout could send shivers through economies over there and here.

From an interview Hollande gave German news site Der Spiegel:

I want to renegotiate it. Not all of it — some things seem reasonable to me. I’ve already committed myself to a balanced budget and better economic governance. But what bothers me most is that there is nothing about growth in the fiscal pact. And then there is some uncertainty with regard to the automatic sanctions — that is, what is expected of countries to reduce their deficits.

Hollande is right in a very narrow sense, that growth is key to balancing budgets in Europe (and here as well). But his proposal to attain that growth by issuing …

Continue reading Could a French Socialist throw an economic wrench into Obama’s re-election? »

JFK gave a speech about separation of church and state to allay fears the Vatican would control a Catholic president. Barack Obama gave a speech about race to address radical comments by his longtime pastor and adviser, Jeremiah Wright.

Perhaps the time has come for Mitt Romney, dogged by a louder-than-a-whisper about his core beliefs, to give a speech — not about Mormon, but about mammon.

Oh, there will be innuendo and more about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to which Romney belongs, should he continue on his current trajectory toward the GOP presidential nomination. It will be an outrageously ironic tactic, coming from supporters of a president smeared as a Kenyan Muslim who should have been disqualified from the presidency. But it will come.

The central Democratic attack against Romney, however, will concern his wealth and experience at the private equity firm Bain Capital. Obama and the left have been laying this groundwork for a class-warfare assault on …

Continue reading The speech Mitt Romney needs to give — soon »

Herman Cain shot to the top of the GOP presidential race for a time on the strength of one numeral said thrice: 9-9-9. Now, the man Cain endorsed after leaving the race is trying to grab the lead for a third time with his own triple-digit number: $2.50.

Newt Gingrich is not talking taxes with his number, but rather the price of a gallon of gasoline. If his swing through Georgia this week is any evidence, the former House speaker is staking his candidacy not only on a victory in our delegate-rich state come Tuesday. He’s also betting on the idea that he can win here and beyond by taking an increasingly brutal fact of everyday American life and wrapping around it elements of many national and geopolitical challenges we face.

Thus, Gingrich told crowds in Dalton and Rome on Tuesday that $2.50-a-gallon gas is:

• the result of a goal “to get the United States to a point that we produce enough oil that no American president ever bows to a Saudi king,” as Barack Obama infamously …

Continue reading Gingrich sees gas prices as his ticket to the White House »

Take the news today about gasoline prices locally (from AJC.com) …

The average price for a gallon of unleaded regular stood at $3.55 Monday, up 3 cents from a week ago and 45 cents from this time a year ago, according to AAA.

The price has risen 15 cents a gallon in the past month.

Georgia’s average price is just slightly below the national average of $3.56, which is the highest price ever for this time of year, the Associated Press reported. Since January, a gallon of gas has risen 25 cents per gallon.

… add this prediction nationally from a Friday story in the San Jose Mercury News (note the part I’ve bolded) …

Some oil analysts predict $4.50 a gallon or more by Memorial Day on the West Coast and major cities across the United States such as Chicago, New York and Atlanta.

… and tell me how this news improves the T-SPLOST’s chances of being approved by voters in a referendum scheduled for July.

On one hand, I suppose a project list with half the spending dedicated to mass …

Continue reading Gas prices add to case for delaying T-SPLOST vote »