Employment rises by 248,000 That is the Establishment Survey figure. The unemployment rate stayed at 5.6% as the increase in the Household Survey figure rose by 196,000 while this survey reports a 233,000 increase in the civilian force. The employment to population ratio remains at 62.2%.

Postcards from Old Europe – Are you better off now than you were four years ago? You might have noticed that there have been no postcards in the past couple of weeks. The reason is quite simple – your author was off enjoying one of the perks of working in Europe (30 days paid vacation […]

PlameGate: Did Bush know? Capitol Hill Blue reports: Witnesses told a federal grand jury President George W. Bush knew about, and took no action to stop, the release of a covert CIA operative’s name to a journalist in an attempt to discredit her husband, a critic of administration policy in Iraq. Their damning testimony has […]

Stiglitz on employment during recoveries The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release employment figures for May 2004 tomorrow. If we get good news, expect the White House and many in the press to tout how strong the economy is. The following passage from page 121 of Joseph Stiglitz’s Globalization and its Discontents may be on […]

Oil Prices: give Stephen Moore some credit Moore rightfully criticized a USA Today headline “Oil Prices Hit Highest Since Sept. 1990” and has been saying that we should look at oil and gasoline prices in inflation adjusted terms. Now I’m not one to praise NRO writers especially when they point out what is often taught […]

Low & middle income groups bear burden of the tax cuts William G. Gale, Peter R. Orszag, and Isaac Shapiro have provided an analysis of who gains from the recent tax cuts and who loses in an analysis that respects the long-run government budget constraint. Households with incomes over $1 million have current tax cuts […]

Capitalists of America Unite! Via Brad DeLong, Josh Bivens of EPI notes that most of the “tepid” economic growth over the last couple of years has gone to capital income and not labor income (tepid as in James Carville’s reaction to his wife’s euphoria over this anemic recovery).

Plame Investigation Update Robert Novak tells the world Valerie Plame is a CIA operative 10.5 months ago and George W. Bush finally takes action: consults with his own attorney. Had this occurred under the watch of George H. W. Bush, the informers would have been fired before Labor Day 2003. But George W. Bush lets […]

Cato Institute proposes fiscal responsibity Well – sort of. Chris Edwards has put forth “Downsizing the Federal Government” with $300 billion in proposed spending cuts by 2009. Highlights: Eliminating the Dept. of Education and its $62.8 billion budget. Eliminating HUD and its $46.2 billion budget. Reducing the USDA by 38% saving $29.7 billion. Cutting HHS […]

OPEC at 91% capacity MSNBC is running a story on the current oil price with a table of the production v. production capacity of the OPEC-11 (including Iraq). Total productive capacity per day = 30.77 million barrels with current production at 28.1 million barrels. Eight of the nations are at full capacity according to their […]