And the June unemployment rates are IN!

The US economy lost 125,000 jobs in June, more than economists had forecast, as thousands of temporary census jobs ended and private hiring grew less than expected.

And though the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 9.5% from 9.7%, the lowest in a year, it was largely due to more people dropping out of the labor force.

SO going back to school perhaps? Leaving the country? I dont know but a little more info would be nice?

The report was the latest sign that the economic recovery may be “changing” faltering.

“Overall what this does is it reinforces the market’s view that the U.S. recovery is losing steam,” said Greg Salvaggio, vice president of trading at Tempus Consulting in Washington.

Obama plays Golf during the Gulf Oil Spill oh and a Baseball Game as well

WASHINGTON – A White House spokesman says the whole country benefits when President Barack Obama takes time to go golfing and “clear his mind.”
Obama spokesman Bill Burton on Monday defended Obama’s leisure activities amid some Republican criticism that Obama should not be scheduling fun time during the Gulf oil spill crisis. The president went golfing on Saturday afternoon after attending a baseball game Friday night.

Burton said the people of the country stand by the notion that “their president ought to have a little time to clear his mind.” He said Obama relaxed after a week in which he got help for victims of the oil spill and traveled to Ohio to speak on the economy, among other work. Burton said that having time to himself “probably does us all good.”

Im sure it does do us all good, but I’m not the commander in chief nor did I decide to run for the President of the United States
Afterall, I was not the one that told voters in November 2007 that in the wake of President Bush’s “catastrophic failure of leadership” the nation needs a candid leader like himself (Obama)

President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, speaks out about growing debt

The only Fed member to speak up and say the US must fix its growing debt problems or risk a new financial crisis was Thomas Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

Mr Hoenig said that rising debt was infringing on the central bank’s ability to fulfil its goals of maintaining price stability and long-term economic growth. “Stunning” deficit projections were putting political pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates low, infringing on its independence at the risk of inflation, he said.

The US budget deficit is projected to be $8,000bn in the next decade. Barack Obama, US president, recently lifted the government’s borrowing authority to $14,300bn.

Thats alot to swallow

Anyone else notice Hillary was M.I.A last night…

….Nope. neither did I.

but before we get to where Mrs Ballbreaker Clinton was, lets fact check Obama last night, according to the A.P.

OBAMA: “Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t.”
THE FACTS: The anticipated savings from this proposal would amount to less than 1 percent of the deficit – and that’s if the president can persuade Congress to go along.

Obama is a convert to the cause of broad spending freezes. In the presidential campaign, he criticized Republican opponent John McCain for suggesting one. “The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel,” he said a month before the election. Now, Obama wants domestic spending held steady in most areas where the government can control year-to-year costs. The proposal is similar to McCain’s.

—

OBAMA: “I’ve called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. This can’t be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem. The commission will have to provide a specific set of solutions by a certain deadline. Yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans.”

THE FACTS: Any commission that Obama creates would be a weak substitute for what he really wanted – a commission created by Congress that could force lawmakers to consider unpopular remedies to reduce the debt, including curbing politically sensitive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. That idea crashed in the Senate this week, defeated by equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. Any commission set up by Obama alone would lack authority to force its recommendations before Congress, and would stand almost no chance of success.

—

OBAMA: Discussing his health care initiative, he said, “Our approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan.”

THE FACTS: The Democratic legislation now hanging in limbo on Capitol Hill aims to keep people with employer-sponsored coverage – the majority of Americans under age 65 – in the plans they already have. But Obama can’t guarantee people won’t see higher rates or fewer benefits in their existing plans. Because of elements such as new taxes on insurance companies, insurers could change what they offer or how much it costs. Moreover, Democrats have proposed a series of changes to the Medicare program for people 65 and older that would certainly pinch benefits enjoyed by some seniors. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted cuts for those enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans.

—

OBAMA: The president issued a populist broadside against lobbyists, saying they have “outsized influence” over the government. He said his administration has “excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs.” He also said it’s time to “require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress” and “to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office.”

THE FACTS: Obama has limited the hiring of lobbyists for administration jobs, but the ban isn’t absolute; seven waivers from the ban have been granted to White House officials alone. Getting lobbyists to report every contact they make with the federal government would be difficult at best; Congress would have to change the law, and that’s unlikely to happen. And lobbyists already are subject to strict limits on political giving. Just like every other American, they’re limited to giving $2,400 per election to federal candidates, with an overall ceiling of $115,500 every two years.

—

OBAMA: “Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. … And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.”

THE FACTS: The success of the Obama-pushed economic stimulus that Congress approved early last year has been an ongoing point of contention. In December, the administration reported that recipients of direct assistance from the government created or saved about 650,000 jobs. The number was based on self-reporting by recipients and some of the calculations were shown to be in error.

The Congressional Budget Office has been much more guarded than Obama in characterizing the success of the stimulus plan. In November, it reported that the stimulus increased the number of people employed by between 600,000 and 1.6 million “compared with what those values would have been otherwise.” It said the ranges “reflect the uncertainty of such estimates.” And it added, “It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.”

—

OBAMA: He called for action by the White House and Congress “to do our work openly, and to give our people the government they deserve.”

THE FACTS: Obama skipped past a broken promise from his campaign – to have the negotiations for health care legislation broadcast on C-SPAN “so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.” Instead, Democrats in the White House and Congress have conducted the usual private negotiations, making multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders behind closed doors. Nor has Obama lived up consistently to his pledge to ensure that legislation is posted online for five days before it’s acted upon.

—

OBAMA: “The United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades.”

THE FACTS: Despite insisting early last year that they would complete the negotiations in time to avoid expiration of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in early December, the U.S. and Russia failed to do so. And while officials say they think a deal on a new treaty is within reach, there has been no breakthrough. A new round of talks is set to start Monday. One important sticking point: disagreement over including missile defense issues in a new accord. If completed, the new deal may arguably be the farthest-reaching arms control treaty since the original 1991 agreement. An interim deal reached in 2002 did not include its own rules on verifying nuclear reductions.

—

OBAMA: Drawing on classified information, he claimed more success than his predecessor at killing terrorists: “And in the last year, hundreds of al-Qaida’s fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed – far more than in 2008.”

THE FACTS: It is an impossible claim to verify. Neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has published enemy body counts, particularly those targeted by armed drones in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The pace of drone attacks has increased dramatically in the last 18 months, according to congressional officials briefed on the secret program.

Okay, so the question you want answered is:
A) she saw a sale on Monica Lewinski’s handbags and snapped them all up and burnt them
B) At the drycleaners
C) In Haiti with her hubby
D) In London at a conference

The answer was D…London at a conference.

She asked O-man if that was okay and he said yes…you would only take away my time from the cameras anyway.

SEC approve Suspending Money Markets in a Panic

Zero Hedge discussed a month ago the disastrous prospects of what would happen if the new proposal contemplated by the SEC, which would allow the suspension of redemptions from Money Market Funds, were to pass. Well, in a nearly unanimous vote, Money Market Funds now have the ability to suspend redemptions, courtesy of the SEC’s just passed 4-1 vote. This explains the negative rate on bills: at this point, should there be another meltdown, money market investors will not, repeat not, be able to withdraw their money purely on the whim of Mary Schapiro. As the SEC noted: “We understand that suspending redemptions may impose hardships on investors who rely on their ability to redeem shares.” Too bad investors’ hardships considerations ended up being completely irrelevant.

Click HERE to read the documents

Senate likely to reject new deficit cutting task force

The Senate on Tuesday rejected a plan backed by President Barack Obama to create a bipartisan task force to tackle the federal deficit this year, despite glaring new figures showing the enormity of the red-ink threat.

The special deficit panel would have attempted to produce a plan combining tax increases and spending curbs to be voted on after the November elections. The measure went down because anti-tax Republicans joined in opposition with Democrats wary of being railroaded into cutting Social Security and Medicare.

With Congress unwilling to go along, Obama will announce during Wednesday’s State of the Union address that he is establishing a similar panel by executive order, The New York Times reported late Tuesday on its Web site.

They need to start somewhere. This one, albeit too little too late, I’m on O-mans side.

Obama critizied McCain about freeze on govt spending, now he says ‘Thanks for the idea!’

The freeze would take effect in October and limit the overall budget for agencies other than the military, veterans affairs, homeland security and certain international programs to $447 billion a year for the remainder of Obama’s first term, senior administration officials said Monday, imposing sharp limits on his ability to begin initiatives in education, the environment and other areas of domestic policy.

Although the freeze would shave no more than $15 billion off next year’s budget — barely denting a deficit projected to exceed $1 trillion for the third year in a row — White House officials said it could save significantly more during the next decade. They described the freeze as a critical component of a broader deficit-reduction campaign intended to restore confidence in Obama’s ability to control the excesses of Washington and the most lavish aspirations of his own administration

It is also unlikely to affect the approximately $900 billion health-care bill, which has been on life-support since the Massachusetts vote. In an interview with ABC News on Monday, Obama vowed to press ahead with health care and other first-year agenda items, even it means jeopardizing his reelection chances in 2012.

Late Monday, Republicans mocked the idea of a Democratic spending freeze. “Given Washington Democrats’ unprecedented spending binge, this is like announcing you’re going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

Democrats, meanwhile, are likely to give the freeze a mixed response. Conservatives, including Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.) and members of the House Blue Dog Coalition, have been calling for a freeze backed by the threat of a presidential veto. But liberals have resisted freezing spending, particularly on social programs, and are likely to call on Obama to extend any freeze to military programs, aides said.

As a candidate, Obama criticized a spending freeze proposed by his GOP opponent, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, comparing it to “using a hatchet to cut the fed budget. I want to use a scalpel.”

I guess that scapel got buried in Wall Street.

3 White House advisors give 3 different answers on the same subject on the same morning

OH No!!! Looks like some people are not getting the same memo in the white house:

3 different white house advisors gave different answers on the same Sunday morning on 3 different shows in regards to how much the stimulus had saved jobs.

Valerie Jarrett had the most conservative count, saying “the Recovery Act saved thousands and thousands of jobs,” while David Axelrod gave the bill the most credit, saying it has “created more than – or saved more than 2 million jobs.” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs came in between them, saying the plan had “saved or created 1.5 million jobs.”
Their remarks in context:

Axelrod, on CNN’s State of the Union: “But understand that, in this recession that began at the beginning of 2007, we’ve lost 7 million jobs. Now, the Recovery Act the president passed has created more than — or saved more than 2 million jobs. But against 7 million, you know, that — that is — it is cold comfort to those who still are looking.”

Jarrett, on NBC’s Meet the Press: “The Recovery Act saved thousands and thousands of jobs. There are schoolteachers and firemen and— and— teachers all across our country, policemen, who have jobs today because of that recovery act. We’re investing in infrastructure. We’re investing in public education so that our kids can compete going forth into the next— generation.”

Gibbs, on “Fox News Sunday”: “Well, Chris, let’s take for instance the example you just used of the stimulus package. We had four quarters of economic regression in terms of growth, right? Just last quarter, we finally saw the first positive economic job growth in more than a year. Largely as a result of the recovery plan that’s put money back into our economy, that saved or created 1.5 million jobs.”

Obama has no business sense?

U.S. investors overwhelmingly see President Barack Obama as anti-business and question his ability to manage a financial crisis, according to a Bloomberg survey.

The global quarterly poll of investors and analysts who are Bloomberg subscribers finds that 77 percent of U.S. respondents believe Obama is too anti-business and four-out-of-five are only somewhat confident or not confident of his ability to handle a financial emergency.

The poll also finds a decline in Obama’s overall favorability rating one year after taking office. He is viewed favorably by 27 percent of U.S. investors. In an October poll, 32 percent in the U.S. held a positive impression.

Well, Im here to tell you, that perhaps you all have no business sense either, if you could not see what was spewing out of his mouth during the election plus what was on his resume, then you are as mush as a bunch of business idiots as he is.

Carlos Vadillo, a fixed-income analyst at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in San Francisco, said Obama has been in a “constant war” with the banking system, using “fat-cat bankers and other misnomers to describe a business model which supports a large portion of America

Special Interest Groups free to throw more $$$ at politicans, Justice System fails

Sigh!

I guess we really do have to leave it up to the people we elect to make sure any money given to them does not influence them…Im sure there is a joke it that line somewhere.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court threw out a 63-year-old law designed to restrain the influence of big business and unions on elections Thursday, ruling that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress. The decision could drastically alter who gives and gets hundreds of millions of dollars in this year’s crucial midterm elections.
By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned two of its own decisions as well as the decades-old law that said companies and labor unions can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads. The decision threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

Well I guess the supreme court and congress are not looking out for anyone but themselves.

Advocates of strong campaign finance regulations have predicted that a court ruling against the limits would lead to a flood of corporate and union money in federal campaigns as early as this year’s congressional elections.

”It’s the Super Bowl of bad decisions,” said Common Cause president Bob Edgar, a former congressman from Pennsylvania.

The opinion goes to the heart of laws dating back to the Gilded Age when Congress passed the Tillman Act in 1907 banning corporations from donating money directly to federal candidates. Though that prohibition still stands, the same can’t be said for much of the century-long effort that followed to separate politics from corporate money.

The decision’s most immediate effect is to permit corporate and union-sponsored political ads to run right up to the moment of an election, and to allow them to call for the election or defeat of a candidate. In presidential elections and in highly contested congressional contests, that could mean a dramatic increase in television advertising competing for time and public attention.

Grab some popcorn and watch that special interest money roll in…does that mean now we get an Obama channell everyday of the year instead of just through the election period?