Since Sec. Snow and Sec. Chao preferred the Household Survey numbers last month, let’s oblige them this month too. This measure has employment rising by only 21,000. President Bush is currently touting the fall in the unemployment rate. But he forget to tell the audience that the reason this rate fell is that the reported […]
From the BLS: Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 144,000 in August, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 5.4 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Over the month, job growth occurred in several service-providing industries. This is a decent employment report, in line with expectations, but […]
Postcards from Old Europe – Out of Balance The economic news flow in the last couple of weeks was dominated by the price of oil. Other data releases were mostly relegated to the minor leagues ore duly reported and then ignored. Take the June trade deficit which was reported at the beginning of August. Jaded […]
Bush’s acceptance speech has for weeks been billed as his time to finally present his agenda for the next four years. Karen Hughes promised that the speech would be “visionary”. I have been particularly interested in his proposals for domestic policy, since the US is currently facing a number of serious economic problems that need […]
Kerry has suffered (though only slightly, according to polls) from the personal attacks the Republicans have made on him over the past month. Now there are some gathering signs that a multi-pronged counterattack is beginning. Over the weekend there was the statement by Ben Barnes, former Speaker of the Texas House, that he was “ashamed” […]
I was jonesing for some internet access, so I bought a WiFi card and now I’m typing from Starbucks. Starbucks uses TMobile, which charges $29.99/month with a 1-year contract. That seems a bit high to me, especially given that I’ve heard that there are free WiFi spots all over the place. So a question to […]
Driving home last night, I listened to NPR covering Dick Cheney’s speech live, and I was going to title this the Dumbest Political Speech ever, but then I later saw the coverage of Zell Miller’s speech (including Kash’s post). On “Give ‘Em Hell Zell”, let me just suggest Wibbly Wobbly applies to him. He used […]
Brad DeLong accused President Bush of saying blatantly false things to the crowd at a Farm Progress Show in Iowa. The chief complaint was the oft heard claim “fastest growth in 20 years”. DeLong does not call the President a liar as he blames Bush’s staff. Readers of the Angrybear know AB and Kash do […]
I didn’t see it last night, but apparently it was quite something. Here are some of the media’s comments about it, as relayed by Howard Kurtz: “I wonder if it was smart to have him out there in such a hot fashion,” said George Stephanopoulos. “He looked angry,” said Mara Liasson. “Miller went over the […]
Tomorrow morning at 8:30 the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its estimates for the number of people working and unemployed in the US in August. There’s some expectation that the report may not be particularly good, which for me would be a number of new jobs below about 100-125 thousand. Any number bigger than […]