The President opened his press conference by designating the top two priorities as jobs and growth, and then spent the next 60 minutes answering questions about David Petraeus and Susan Rice and tax rates and Benghazi and deficit reduction. And Obama didn’t seek to break out of that constraint and suggest actual near-term job creation [...]

Liberals are working hard to more accurately name the fiscal cliff. They want to remove the sense of immediacy, the idea that the world would end on January 1 if Congress takes no action on expiring tax and spending policies. Democrats would benefit from a strategic standpoint from “going over the cliff” in many cases, [...]

Throughout this election cycle, we’ve heard a good deal of happy talk regarding the state of the economy. Bloomberg comes out and says it today – the economy will improve, regardless of the occupant of the White House. No matter who wins the election tomorrow, the economy is on course to enjoy faster growth in [...]

David Callahan had a smart column in The American Prospect about natural and economic disasters, and why they must be met with the same level of urgency. If most of us take for granted that we should be there for our fellow citizens during natural disasters, using the tool of government, why is it so [...]

The US economy continues to add jobs, and October’s establishment survey showed a solid increase of 171,000, with upward revisions to August (to +192,000 from +142,000) and September (to +148,000 from +114,000). The unemployment rate in the household survey, however, which went down markedly to 7.8% in September, ticked up to 7.9% in October. The [...]

I’m skeptical that monthly job reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics move voters in any way. People live in the real economy, and they’ve already made up their minds about it. Nevertheless, tomorrow’s jobs report, which despite Hurricane Sandy will arrive on schedule, will no doubt get hyped as TEH MOST IMPORTANT JOBS REPORT [...]

It wasn’t so long ago that Narayana Kocherlakota, the President of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, was the leader of the coalition arguing for tighter monetary policy, even in the middle of mass unemployment. He claimed that unemployment was structural in nature, and that we risked runaway inflation with ultra-low interest rates. Just a year or [...]

Unemployment in the Eurozone rose to a new high in September, with nearly 18 1/2 Europeans out of work, a rate of 11.6%. The austerity measures meant to stop a debt crisis caused an economic crisis, in other words. The jobless rate in the 17-nation currency union ticked up to 11.6 percent from the 11.5 [...]

Consumer confidence numbers have picked up steadily over the past three months, and Americans now feel better about the economy as a whole and their personal economic conditions. Further evidence for this can be seen in the rise in consumer spending in September, at twice the rate of the rise in personal income. Whether it’s [...]

The Bureau of Economic Analysis rates 3rd quarter GDP with a preliminary estimate of 2.0%, an increase from the previous quarter but not the kind of economic growth normally associated with reducing the unemployment rate in rapid fashion. GDP in the second quarter increased 1.3%, so this represents an acceleration on growth, albeit a modest [...]

Gallup has a critical poll out today that makes no mention of Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, but tells us something about the economy. For the first time in more than five years, slightly more Americans are feeling financially better off than they were a year ago, rather than worse off, by 38% to 34%. [...]