Contrary to myth, the USA is still a major manufacturing power. But the factory has changed radically.

Pepsi’s profits and revenues are up. Naturally, it’s time to fire 3 percent of its global workforce.

Scotch consumption is a leading economic indicator.

Was Clint Eastwood’s Chrysler ad a political message, or just a well done commercial?

Trying to open a new business can be a massive and costly headache.

“Economic conditions are entirely different today than they were in Reagan’s era, and different conditions demand different policies. Those who say otherwise are simply engaging in cookie-cutter economics — proposing whatever was popular and seemed to work once, without regard to changing circumstances”—Bruce Barlett in a WaPo piece entitled “Why the GOP should stop invoking [...]

The January jobs report was the best we’ve seen in more than three years.

In the 1980s, Americans were bowling alone. Now, we’re living that way.

The latest projections from Congressional Budget Office are sobering to say the least.

Employees of the US Federal Government earn substantially more in salary and benefits than their private sector comparables.

Lucy Kellaway figures the best thing we middle agers can do for the young is to get the hell out of their way.

The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman explains why: Billionaire Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett is once again thrilling the political class by volunteering other people to pay higher taxes. Long-time observers recall his opposition to former President George W. Bush’s efforts to reduce the tax rate on dividends. Since Berkshire pays no dividends, Mr. Buffett [...]

Censorship or sound business practice?

On it’s own, the so-called “Buffett Rule” is unlikely to do much to reduce the deficit.

Another weak GDP report that portends stagnation ahead.

Have Americans divided themselves into what are becoming increasingly different cultures?

The reaction to the release of Mitt Romney’s tax returns is about what you’d expect.

It’s not just low wages that have kept technology manufacturing jobs out of the United States.

The combined value of Apple’s stock is more than the GDP of some countries.

The Obama Administration has halted, for the moment, a pipeline project that has become a political football.

Wikipedia’s English language site will be offline for 24 hours tomorrow to protest two controversial online piracy bills.

Are their cultural reasons for America’s obesity problem?

Higher gas prices in the spring could have an impact on the economy, and the election.

In addition to last week’s encouraging unemployment report, another set of data that has been sending out positive signals for several weeks now has been the weekly initial jobless claims report from the Department of Labor. Several weeks ago, that number fell below 400,000 claims, a level it had stayed above for the better part [...]

A Washington Post fact check calls this “true but false.”

A testament to the state of the banking industry in Italy and the resilience of a criminal network declared dead many times over the years (Reuters) – Organized crime has tightened its grip on the Italian economy during the economic crisis, making the Mafia the country’s biggest “bank” and squeezing the life out of thousands [...]

Mitt Romney is taking heat for his role at Bain Capital. He shouldn’t.

Some initial data released today points to the possibility of a very position jobs report tomorrow, but don’t hold your breath.

Congress eliminates a bad subsidy, but it’s only because there’s a worse one on the books.

Earlier this week, Verizon Wireless announced that it would begin charging customers a $2.00 “convenience fee” for using the company website to make one-time payments of cell phone bills via credit or debit card. At the time, the company justified the charge by saying it was an attempt to cover the costs incurred from these [...]

Why does government regulate how long some people work and not others?

From China Daily by way of  Zerohedge comes word that some of China’s biggest borrowers may be approaching insolvency: BEIJING – China’s biggest provincial borrowers are deferring payment on their loans just two months after the country’s regulator said some local government companies would be allowed to do so. Hunan Provincial Expressway Construction Group is [...]

Could traders soon be betting on the outcome of the Presidential elections? Should they be?

The United States tops the world in giving money, volunteering time, and helping strangers.

Where is the economy headed? The signals are mixed at best.

People who make a lot of money should whine less. But many of them are actually do create jobs.

Welcome technological change, or crony capitalism?

The trade association representing companies that process payrolls for American businesses are telling Congress that the Senate’s two-month payroll tax cut extension may be impossible for them to implement correctly: Officials from the policy-neutral National Payroll Reporting Consortium, Inc. have expressed concern to members of Congress that the two-month payroll tax holiday passed by the [...]

Via Ed Driscoll, here’s a fascinating piece from Australian television earlier this year about what is apparently a huge phenomenon in China right now, entire cities devoid of people: There’s been talk for several years now that China was a bubble that was about to pop. When I see things like this, I’ve got to [...]

Do American courts throw people in jail for failing to pay their debts? No, they don’t.

Matthew Lyons draws a rather sobering historical parallel in his latest Marketwatch column: In retrospect, it wasn’t hard to see that the markets were becoming dangerously unstable. Germany had just adopted a new monetary system, and Europe was being flooded with cheap German money. Greece had just signed up to a monetary union with Italy [...]

Once again, the U.S. Mint’s experiment with a Dollar Coin is ending in failure: The U.S. government, its vaults stuffed with 1.4 billion one-dollar coins bearing the likenesses of dead presidents, has had enough of them. It is going to curtail production. “Nobody wants them,” Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday. That is for sure: [...]

CNBC is reporting this morning that the National Association of Realtors will be revising housing data for the past five years because they were overcounting the number of homes sold: Data on sales of previously owned U.S. homes from 2007 through October this year will be revised down next week because of double counting, indicating [...]

An outsider auditor is apparently telling Senate investigators a different story about what Jon Corzine knew than the former Governor did: The regulatory arm of CME Group has turned over interviews to the Justice Department that allege former MF Global chief Jon Corzine knew that the now-bankrupt brokerage firm used customer money to lend to [...]

A new set of proposed Constitutional Amendments reveals that many people still don’t understand what Citizens United was about.

Yesterday in The Financial Times, Ed Luce hits on a point that I made when the most recent unemployment figures were released two weeks ago, namely that the unemployment figures that are shared publicly are vastly understating the real unemployment rate: America is employing a decreasing proportion of its people. At the start of the [...]

Conservative groups are upset because a new reality show depicts Muslim-Americans as, well, normal Americans.

Glenn Reynolds points to Andrew Malcolm‘s IBD column titled “As Americans struggle, the Obamas make do with 37 Christmas trees.” The economy may be weak, unemployment strong and the first family soon to vacate the White House for another half-month of vacation in Hawaii. But the Obamas have gone all out in decorating their house [...]

Paul Krugman’s latest column, “Depression and Democracy,” is simply bizarre.

Apparently, Jon Cozrine’s primary response to questions regarding the downfall MF Global and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in client funds will be roughly similar to the problem Americans have with their car keys on a daily basis: Jon S. Corzine, the former U.S. senator and New Jersey governor who presided over [...]