Everett Dirksen (late Senator from Illinois) used to think $1 billion was a lot of money. "A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money" he said in a famous hearing in the 1950's. It now seems a drop in the bucket when you think about a $787 billion stimulus package and a $1.8 trillion budget deficit.   Read More

The progression of the economy has moved from a recession to a credit crisis to a financial panic back to a recession.  The GDP numbers of last week encapsulate exactly where we're at:  Q1 -6.4% and Q2 -1.0%.  Due to the incredible sharp reduction in costs and inventories in Q1, earnings beat expectations by a historical amount and generated a massive up move in equities.  It is truly a case of falling so far that everything looks up from here.   Read More

Congress has increased the cost of unskilled labor by 10.7%  in the middle of the worst recession since the early 1980s...It is unclear how this is supposed to help the economy – unless you are Labor Secretary Solis or the Economic Policy Institute, writes William Dunkelberg, Economics Professor at Temple University.   Read More

You know the sound that a large truck makes when it backs up? Beep-beep-beep. Well that sounds like what's coming out of Congress since the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said it didn't see any savings in the health care proposals but rather an increase in the deficit of a potential $230 billion.    Read More

Despite Dennis Kneale calling the end of the recession, we may be getting ahead of ourselves with talk of "recovery". It's possible we're finding a bottom, but no one knows whether growth will return this quarter or next.    Read More

Yesterday the Conference Board reported that its Leading Economic Index (LEI) increased for a third straight month in June. In the report’s wake you could hear the clarion call… the recession has ended, the recession has ended… increase by a few decibels writes Stephen Schork.   Read More