On Monday, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas released its latest manufacturing survey. This wasn’t old, stale data; the survey was conducted in mid-July. And the results were awful, with the headline index plunging to -21 from -4 a month earlier. That was the worst showing in a year.

Yet the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 101 points.

The New York company is telling employees that they will no longer be able to get away with profanity in electronic messages.

Most focus from the latest Bureau of Economic Analysis GDP data will be on the current slowed GDP number of 2.4%, but what is of further significance is that the BEA revised downward data for 2007, 2008 and 2009.

"It's not about these obvious snowflake gifts that you'll usually see for Holiday," explained Robinson at a preview for the collection on Thursday, July 15. "You have to get into people's minds a different way."

Foreclosures rose in 3 of every four large U.S. metro areas in this year's first half, likely ruling out sustained home price gains until 2013, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Thursday.

Housing demand has fallen off a cliff in spite of the historic low rates. Purchases of new and existing homes are roughly 25 per cent of what they were at peak in 2006. Case/Schiller reported on Monday that June new homes sales were the "worst on record", but the media twisted the story to create the impression that sales were actually improving! Here are a few of Monday's misleading headlines: "New Home Sales Bounce Back in June"--Los Angeles Times. "Builders Lifted by June New-home Sales", Marketwatch. "New Home Sales Rebound 24 per cent", CNN. "June Sales of New Homes Climb more than Forecast", Bloomberg.

'A lot of good people are going to be losing their jobs,' worker says

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday brought back furloughs for thousands of state workers until California passes a budget.

But while most economists expected this morning’s report on durable goods orders to show a healthy increase, they posted their largest decline since August of 2009!

We can argue all we like about the practicality of regular citizens making national policy, but one thing can’t be disputed: If regular citizens had been running the show, they never would have abandoned our manufacturing base. They never would have agreed to enrich international oligarchies at the expense of the American economy.

Taking the greatest manufacturing power in the history of the world and dismantling it—relegating it to the role of industrial “spectator”—is something that working people would never allow to happen. Never. Only the U.S. Congress would see the wisdom in pissing away something that took 150 years to build.

The White House is screaming like a stuck pig. WikiLeaks’ release of the Afghan War Documents “puts the lives of our soldiers and our coalition partners at risk.”

What nonsense. Obama’s war puts the lives of American soldiers at risk, and the craven puppet state behavior of “our partners” in serving as US mercenaries is what puts their troops at risk.

Keep in mind that it was someone in the US military that leaked the documents to WikiLeaks. This means that there is a spark of rebellion within the Empire itself.

Americans' confidence in the economy faded further in July, according to a monthly survey released Tuesday, amid job worries and skimpy wage growth. That's at odds with Wall Street's recent rally fueled by upbeat earnings reports from big businesses such as chemical maker DuPont Co. and equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. That's because the pumped-up profits are being fueled by cost cuts like layoffs and overseas sales. In fact, big companies have shown few signs they're ready to hire.

Jubilee is an ancient Hebrew tradition in which every fifty years society is "reset." Debts were forgiven, slaves were freed, property restored to those it was taken from. It's even in the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our debts..." Rome adopted this tradition, as long experience had shown them that the practice of lending money at interest inherently destabilized society. Rome instituted numerous limits and occasional outright bans on the practice of usury out of fear that soaring debt would drive their people to rebellion. When Christianity became Rome's official religion, many Hebrew practices were abandoned, including the Jubilee. Without that occasional push of the reset button, Rome's debts piled up until Rome fell.

A significant feature of fiat money systems is the privilege for the custodian of the reserve currency to engage in regular practices of ham-fisted monetary management, even permission for fraudulent centers to flourish, surely developing a debt monster that an economy grows dependent upon. Fannie Mae might be the most offensive blight on such privilege. Unfortunately, many shenanigans have matured into grand fraud. They are smoking guns of USTreasury fraud and counterfeit, with strong whiffs of monetization. Much more monetization is to come, fully endorsed and sanctioned. Other clever techniques are being used, given the Quantitative Easing has officially been halted.

The Illinois Student Assistance Commission, which manages $1 billion invested for the college educations of Illinois students, has written off all but $2 million of a $12.7-million investment it made in ShoreBank two years ago, just before the South Side community lender hit the skids. That stake, which made the prepaid tuition program ShoreBank's largest shareholder, was the agency's first and only direct investment in a privately held company.

A U.S. audit has found that the Defense Department can't properly account for how it spent about 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil money earmarked for rebuilding the war-ravaged country.

The White House is screaming like a stuck pig. WikiLeaks’ release of the Afghan War Documents "puts the lives of our soldiers and our coalition partners at risk."

What nonsense. Obama’s war puts the lives of American soldiers at risk, and the craven puppet state behavior of "our partners" in serving as US mercenaries is what puts their troops at risk.

Keep in mind that it was someone in the US military that leaked the documents to WikiLeaks. This means that there is a spark of rebellion within the Empire itself.

Last week we looked at the Huntington Beach house owned by Robert Rizzo, who just resigned from his nearly $800,000-a-year Bell city manager job after public outcry over his paycheck.

Today, we’re peeking at the Surf City home of yet another controversial ex-L.A.-area official — Bruce Malkenhorst Sr.

In just six months, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011:

)President Obama's finance team is recommending a transaction tax. His plan is

to sneak it in after the November election to keep it under the radar. This is a 1% tax on all transaction at any financial institution i. e. Banks, Credit Unions, extra. Any deposit you make, or move around within your account, i. e. transfer to, will have a 1% tax charged. If your pay check or your social Security or whatever is direct deposit, 1% tax charged. If you hand carry a check in to deposit, 1% tax charged, If you take cash in to deposit, 1% tax charged.This is from the man who promised that if you make under $250,000 per year, you will not see one penny of new tax.

Goldman Sachs sent $4.3 billion in federal tax money to 32 entities, including many overseas banks, hedge funds and pensions, according to information made public Friday night.

First check out the sign.

How 1,200 investors were conned out of more than $190 million by two Minnesota money men and Christian radio.

"I talked to businesses across the country, and I would say that is the general view, an economy that's gradually getting better," Geithner said in excerpts of the interview released in advance of its broadcast.

Seven more local and regional banks have closed their doors in the United States, bringing the total number of US bank failures to 103 this year, federal bank regulators announced.

New estimates from the White House on Friday predict the budget deficit will reach a record $1.47 trillion this year. The government is borrowing 41 cents of every dollar it spends.

The new estimates paint a grim unemployment picture as the economy experiences a relatively jobless recovery. The unemployment rate, presently averaging 9.5 percent, would average 9 percent next year under the new estimates.

The number of bankruptcy filings in Massachusetts surged by 25 percent in the first six months of the year, as many consumers struggled with job losses, changing credit card terms and foreclosures.

Last month, Finland was issued with a warning by the European Union commission over the size of its budget deficit, which is expected to rise above 4 percent of GDP this year. Finland, Cyprus and Denmark were censured for breaching the limit for budget deficits of 3 percent of GDP which the EU stability pact imposes on member states.

- New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli sued Merrill Lynch and Bank of America on Thursday, claiming that both companies knew that Merrill Lynch had tens of billions of dollars in unreported losses from the subprime mortgage meltdown. BofA shareholders, ignorant of the financial morass, authorized the $29.1 billion acquisition of Merrill Lynch, which quickly torpedoed profits, according to the federal complaints.

"BOA shareholders were deprived of information that was material to their vote, and an overwhelming 82 percent of votes, including those based upon all of plaintiff's approximately 18 million BOA shares, were cast in favor of the merger on December 5, 2008," DiNapoli wrote in one of two complaints - one against BofA and the other against Merrill Lynch.

The Federal Reserve Act (Otherwise known as the currency act) was voted into law December 23, 1913. The people who voted in that law are all dead.

No taxpayer alive today had anything to say about repaying any money the government borrowed to keep it's promises. We did not have any choice in the matter. We did not choose to accept this obligation. It has been forced on us. It was manufactured for us by a government that spends the peoples' money not on the people,. but on wars of conquest, gifts to Israel, and endless bailouts for Wall Street and European bank ers.

The US Government is dying. Its ultimate fate was sealed the moment the Federal Reserve Fiat money system was put into place. Like a recreational drug user enjoying that first chemical rush, those who created the federal Reserve luxuriated in the seemingly endless flow of money pouring forth from the Federal Reserve, money used to prolong and consolidate power, money spent without worry in the full knowledge that it was going to be someone else's problem to pay it all back.

The following article was first written in 1998. I am relinking it here not so much as to say "I told you so", but to point out that the long term economic future of the United States was obvious, or should have been obvious, to the people who are awarded lofty degrees and paid huge salaries to comprehend such things. Instead, the economists persisted in explaining away the visible signs of gathering troubles and earned their salaries by justifying why the policies that robbed the poor to give to the rich should continue unabated.

Reports issued Thursday on initial claims for unemployment benefits and sales of previously owned homes confirm that the US economy is slowing dramatically.

The Labor Department reported that initial jobless claims for the week ended July 17 rose by 37,000 to 464,000. The number was far higher than the consensus forecast of economists. It underscored the bleak prospects for any significant reduction in the unemployment rate, now officially at 9.5 percent.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testified today that the outlook for the economy is "unusually uncertain".

That's not surprising.

Nothing has changed since I made the following points last December.

The common thought amongst even reasonably educated and economically literate Americans is that China is 'stuck with US Treasuries' and has no choice, so it must perform within the status quo and do as the US wishes, or face a ruinous decline in their reserve holdings of US Treasuries.

...

I think China is already diversifying their reserve portfolio, and more stealthily and effectively than one would imagine.

With expensive accounting rules, an increased threat of litigation and hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for some firms, the once prestigious New York Stock Exchange and other American markets have become unattractive to Germany's biggest companies. Daimler and Deutsche Telekom have fled this year and the few remaining are likely to follow.

A new study released Wednesday estimates that 20% of Americans suffered a significant economic loss last year - the highest level in the past 25 years.

"Environmental laws, state and federal, are extreme in their detail," Higgins said. "It results in a lot of oversight, a lot of review and a lot of delay."

The current war in Afghanistan costs in excess of $48,000 a minute.

Meanwhile, a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is talking about cuts to Social Security, Medicare and the home mortgage deduction to address the nation's growing budget deficit.

Merck (NYSE: MRK) has agreed to purchase bankrupt Hawaii Biotech's dengue fever vaccine unit for an undisclosed sum. It's a critical move for Hawaii, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year and will deplete a $2 million credit line by the end of this month. The sale leaves Hawaii with a West Nile virus vaccine in development.

Non-profit Blue Cross and Blue Shield health plans stockpiled billions of dollars during the past decade, yet continued to hit consumers with double-digit premium increases, Consumers Union found in an analysis of 10 of the plans' finances.

The number of Americans filing jobless claims jumped higher than expected last week, underscoring worries about the economic recovery in the second half of the year.

Ben Stein says that the unemployed are people with unpleasant personalities. He didn’t say anything about how Zionist Bankers are responsible for the majority of the unemployed. He sees no irony in the fact that he himself is one of the most unpleasant people in an unpleasant system that survives by military adventures abroad and cannibalism at home. It can’t be mere accident or coincidence that the authors of all recent assaults on foreign nations have been engineered by Zionists in critical positions in the American government; media, war profiteering corporations and well funded lobby groups.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday the U.S. economy faces "unusually uncertain" prospects, and that the central bank was ready to take further steps to bolster growth if needed.

Writing at the American Spectator yesterday, former Nixon speechwriter and TV personality Ben Stein downplayed the suffering unemployed Americans are experiencing by writing that the people who are unemployed right now are “generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities.” He claims the unemployed are Americans with “unpleasant personalities…who do not know how to do a day’s work“:

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) says it's been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury and is cooperating in an investigation into the series of high-profile recalls of its consumer drugs. And it's facing other legal actions stemming from those recalls, including lawsuits against its McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit and ongoing government probes, CNN Money reports.

At the time I said: "This homeland security boondoggle is the biggest reorganization of the U.S. government in 50 years. It might even bankrupt the country and, perhaps intentionally, throw it into a Depression. That remains to be seen. What is certain is that at a cost of $50 billion in taxpayer's money, the homeland security infrastructure will provide Bush with 170,000 political cadres, and the internal security he needs to assure the continuity of his political power indefinitely. Except for providing Bush with political internal security, there is no need for the Department of Homeland Security; it is a Trojan Horse through which Bush will unleash his ideological storm troopers and exploit his ill-gotten power to achieve permanent political dominance."

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Congress Wednesday that the economic outlook remains "unusually uncertain."

In his prepared testimony for the Fed's semi-annual report to Congress, Bernanke offered the most extensive look yet at the Fed's plans for pulling money out of the system and raising short term rates, as the economy improves. But his outlook did not call for a quick recovery from the Great Recession.

HOLLINGS: Well, the truth is...ah, shoot, well, we all know there's Washington's math problem. Alan Sloan in this past week's Newsweek says he spends 150%. What we've been doing, Mr. Chairman, in all reality, is taken a hundred billion out of the Social Security Trust Fund, transferring it over to the spending column, and spending it. Our friends to the left here are getting their tax cuts, we getting our spending increases, and hollering surplus, surplus, and balanced budget, and balanced budget plans when we continue to spend a hundred billion more than we take in.

The Obama administration's effort to help those at risk of losing their homes is failing to aid many and could spur a rise in foreclosures that would further depress the housing industry.

More foreclosures would force down home prices and that would deter already-ailing homebuilders from starting new projects.

As a result, the economic rebound could suffer. Each new home built creates, on average, the equivalent of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes paid to local and federal authorities, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Remember when the bailout was going to cost $700 million?

Yeah, not so much.

The United States has spent more than $1 trillion on wars since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, a recently released Congressional report says.

The trustee for convicted Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff's firm sued more than two dozen affiliates of Fairfield Greenwich Group and its founding partners late Tuesday, saying they wrongly enriched themselves from the fraud.

An April 2010 Pew Research Center (PRC) for the People & Press study and others report growing public anger, distrust, and hostility toward business and government because of a "perfect storm of conditions" - wrecked economies, fueling "epic discontent" toward responsible officials.

PRC found nearly 80% of Americans don't trust government to do the right thing, the highest distrust level in half a century.

Those already outraged by the president's health care legislation now have a new bone of contention -- a scarcely noticed tack-on provision to the law that puts gold coin buyers and sellers under closer government scrutiny.

It takes a lot to spook the solid old gold market. But when it emerged last week that one or more banks had lent 380 tonnes of gold to the Bank of International Settlements in return for foreign currencies, there was widespread surprise and confusion

Central Banks are owned and controlled by private interests. The interest they charge governments needs to be paid with new money that is created into existence by an accounting entry, again at additional interest. It is a mathematical impossibility to pay off all the debt under this malevolent system. Government has added to this duplicity by enacting laws that force every citizen and even the State itself to honor fiat currency as the only legal tender acceptable for transactions and debt repayment. Is it any wonder that the economic world is ready to collapse under a mountain of counterfeit debt?

Hundreds of residents of one of the poorest municipalities in Los Angeles County shouted in protest last night as tensions rose over a report that the city’s manager earns an annual salary of almost $800,000.

That is how the largest theft in the history of the world was carried out. 300M people worked and saved their whole lives to set aside $2.5Tn into a retirement system that, if it were paying a fair compounding rate of 5% interest over 40 years of labor (assuming an even $62Bn a year was contributed), would be worth $8.4Tn today - enough money to give 100M workers $84,000 each in cash! The looting of FICA hid the massive deficits of the last 30 years in the Unified Budget. Presidents and Congresses were able to reduce taxes on the wealthiest Americans without complaint from the deficit hawks, because they benefited. The money went directly from the pockets of average Americans into the pockets of the rich.

The number of people dropping out of the Obama administration's program main program to help those at risk of losing their homes outstripped those who received aid for the second-straight month.

The Treasury Department says about 530,000 borrowers have dropped out of the program as of last month. That's more than 40 percent of the nearly 1.3 million enrolled since March 2009. It's a sign that foreclosures could rise and weaken an ailing housing market.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., clobbered by turbulent markets and charges to settle the U.S. government's civil-fraud complaint, posted its lowest earnings since the peak of the financial crisis.

First of all, despite clamping down on immigration, our population grew by 2.6M people last year. Unfortunately, not only did we not create jobs for those 2.6M new people but we lost about 4M jobs so what are these new people going to do? Not only that, but nobody is talking about the another major job issue: People aren’t retiring! They can’t afford to because the economy is bad - that means there are even less job openings… The pimply-faced kid can’t get a job delivering pizza because his grandpa’s doing it.

"It's two different markets," says Brian Sullivan, a broker for Maury People Sothebys. There's Wall Street, and everyone else. You can see that on Yahoo's real estate listing for distressed properties on Nantucket: nearly two-thirds are listed for under $1 million, the price sector dominated by the island's 12,000 year-round residents. But the banks have basically turned their backs on small borrowers, so anyone who does want to buy will have a hard time getting a loan. "They want to lend to people borrowing $1.5 million and up," says Sullivan.

Financial speculators have come under renewed fire from anti-poverty campaigners for their bets on food prices, blamed for raising the costs of goods such as coffee and chocolate and threatening the livelihoods of farmers in developing countries.

Labour has been warned the number of repossessions could spiral to 175,000 in 2012, it can be revealed for the first time today.

The 'worst case scenario' prediction would have meant record-breaking numbers of families, equal to nearly 480 every day, being evicted from their homes.

Just 3.7% of out-of-work managers said they are starting their own businesses rather than look for a job. That compares with 7.6% in the same period a year ago and 9.6% in the second half of 2009. The previous low was 4.4% in the second half of 2008 when the credit crunch led to the financial crisis.

Faced with a $118 million budget deficit, the city of San Jose, Calif., recently decided it could no longer afford its own janitors. So the city's budget called for dropping its custodial staff and hiring outside contractors to clean its city hall and airport, saving about $4 million.

To keep all its swimming pools open and staffed, the city is replacing some city workers with contractors.

Housing starts dropped by 5.0%, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 549,000, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Single-family housing starts slipped 0.7% to an annual rate of 454,000. Apartment construction fell harder.

This year Las Vegas made it illegal to give food to homeless people in parks.

The National Coalition for the Homeless has issued a report detailing laws and ordinances in a couple of dozen localities across the nation that prohibit charities – churches, civic organizations, charities, etc. – from feeding the homeless. Or, at least, inhibit their ability to do so with burdensome regulation.

Even the sober Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says 46 states are facing a Greek-like crisis. These state governments must inaugurate an austerity regime to cut spending by $112 billion for FY2011.

I was in San Diego this weekend and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this temporary tent city to help homeless vets. This place give the homeless vets in Sa Diego a place to saty for 3 nights in tents. They also offer medical help and job placement during this event.

I tried to get into the event but the guards at the entry would not allow me to enter even without a camera. Here are some photos that I was able to get without entering the site.

The White House and congressional Democrats have made several moves to promote the interests of labor unions, but the efforts may result in fewer jobs available to workers, say critics who argue that unions restrict competition by raising wages and expanding government.

The US secret intelligence gathering systems have grown so much since 9/11 that no-one knows their exact cost, nor size, the Washington Post reports.

Hungary's talks with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union broke off Saturday as the government refused to implement fiscal austerity measures to reach this year's budget deficit target, Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy said Sunday.

Rattled by economic conditions and the expiration of a government subsidy for home buyers, U.S. builder confidence in July sank to its lowest level in more than a year, casting doubt on the housing sector's recovery.

“Training was fruitless,” he said. “I’m not seeing the benefits. Training for what? No one’s hiring.”

As Europe’s major economies focus on belt-tightening, they are following the path of Ireland. But the once thriving nation is struggling, with no sign of a rapid turnaround in sight.