Big Lots said Monday the retail discount chain is filing for bankruptcy, citing such factors as high inflation and interest rates.
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Friday’s jobs report reveals accelerating weakness in the American economy. Only 142,000 jobs were created last month, below expectations. Half of new positions were created in the unproductive government or quasi-government healthcare and social services sectors.
A record 8.2 million Americans have second jobs. So far this year, the number of unemployed Americans has increased by one million.
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Economists anticipated that the country would add 161,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in August compared to the 114,000 added in initial estimates for July, and that the unemployment rate would fall to 4.2%, according to MarketWatch. The job gains follow a disappointing July report and a downward revision of over 800,000 jobs that the Biden administration had claimed to create between April 2023 and March 2024.
Meanwhile, previously reported job gains for July were revised down from 114,000 to 89,000 while gains for June were lowered from 179,000 too 118,000.
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With inflation remaining stubbornly high, many Americans have been forced to choose whether to pay for more groceries to feed their families, or to pay their energy bills to keep their families cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
According to CBS News, this new trend has been referred to as “energy poverty,” when Americans are unable to pay their energy bills or otherwise afford utilities. On average, households that spend 6 percent of their income or more on energy bills alone are considered to be in “energy poverty.” Currently, 1 in 7 American households spend approximately 14 percent of their income on energy.
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U.S. labor markets continued showing signs of weakening as job openings fell to 7.6 million in July, the lowest level since Feb. 2021. Job openings are now 4.6 million below their March 2022 high of 12.2 million, a more than 37 percent drop.
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Swedish automaker Volvo Cars said on Wednesday that it is scrapping its goal of going fully electric by 2030 as the electric vehicle (EV) market continues to struggle.
The company announced it now aims for between 90 percent and 100 percent of its cars to be fully electric or plug-in hybrids by the end of the decade, with the remainder being “mild,” non-plug-in hybrids, a company press release stated. Volvo’s backpedaling comes amid lower-than-expected consumer demand for EVs and a recent industry shift away from electrification.
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August ended on a high note for a free market conservative think tank that helps public employees opt out of their unions.
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Only 10 percent of those surveyed in a new poll said the “American dream” of homeownership is affordable, with others citing 40-year high inflationary costs, 23-year-high interest rates, limited supply of affordable housing and earnings that have eroded because of inflation.
According to a Wall Street Journal/NORC poll of 1,502 U.S. adults, the sentiment was consistent across gender and party lines, with young Americans expressing the greatest despair, saying they’ve “been priced out of homeownership.”
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The Biden administration granted over $60 million to Amtrak for a stalling Texas high-speed rail project that has been failing to acquire private investment, according to grant records.
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) granted $63.9 million on August 2 to Amtrak for the Texas High-Speed Rail Corridor project, which has been mired by delays since 2022 under private railroad company Texas Central, with top executives resigning as the initial private funding ran dry. The grant comes after a long line of funding from the federal government to Amtrak in pursuit of high-speed rail, with the FRA last granting $500,000 for the Texas project in December 2023 to study a Dallas-Houston high-speed rail connection.
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The U.S. employment level in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ household survey has barely grown the past year, only increasing at 0.03 percent since July 2023, from 161.2 million to 161.26 million, with just 57,000 more people saying they’re employed today than a year ago.
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Vice President Kamala Harris’s tax proposal plan is getting significant pushback from Congress members and others as the costs of tax hikes on the American people across the political spectrum are being examined.
Upon a closer look at Harris’s tax proposals, an economist, a New York Times reporter, a small business owner advocate, and members of Congress all voiced their concerns over what the plan entails. Most of them note how the economy will be negatively impacted by her plan and the real-world implications for everyday Americans.
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China is planning to restrict exports of a key mineral needed to make weapons while a U.S. company that could be reducing America’s reliance on foreign suppliers is languishing in red tape, energy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Chinese government announced on August 15 that it will restrict exports of antimony, a critical mineral that dominates the production of weapons globally and is essential for producing equipment like munitions, night vision goggles and bullets that are essential to national security, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Perpetua Resources, an American mining company, has been navigating red tape for years to develop a mine in Valley County, Idaho, that could decrease reliance on the Chinese supply of antimony, but the slow permitting process is getting in the way, energy experts told the DCNF.
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More Americans are struggling financially as savings are significantly down and debt and delinquencies are up compared to four years ago.
Savings and disposable income are significantly down when comparing federal data under the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations.
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Over a third of the more than 3 million jobs the Biden administration announced were added in initial reports between April 2023 and March 2024 did not actually exist, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Including monthly revisions, the Biden administration overstated the number of jobs in the U.S. economy by 1.18 million in the year through March, accounting for approximately 36% of the 3.24 million jobs initially claimed, according to data from the BLS calculated by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The massive revision, along with a disappointing July jobs report that showed the U.S. economy adding 61,000 fewer nonfarm payroll jobs than economists anticipated, has heightened fears of a recession.
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A far-left organization that has received funding from taxpayer dollars is offering up to $30,000 to illegal aliens so that they can purchase homes in the United States.
As the Daily Caller reports, the Hacienda Community Development Corp. (Hacienda CDC) is participating in a down payment assistance program in Oregon called “Camino a Casa.” The initiative is explicitly only available for non-citizens, while American citizens are ineligible. The $30,000 handouts are branded as down payment assistance for illegals who are attempting to purchase new homes.
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Vice President Kamala Harris was “proud to cast the tie-breaking vote” for the Inflation Reduction Act. Would she be proud if her administration’s solar subsidies fund supported forced labor in China?
That may be the case with Hanwha Qcells, a South Korean solar company operating in Georgia. Bloomberg recently reported that two Chinese suppliers of the company obtained polysilicon for solar panel components from companies sanctioned by the U.S. government for employing forced Uyghur labor. Hanwha and their Qcells plant leadership deny these allegations, but Bloomberg reports “that the company offers assurances but no public details of its polysilicon sourcing.”
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Rising grocery store prices over the last few years aren’t the fault of farmers or “greedy” corporations, a conservative North Carolina research organization concludes in a new documentary series and report.
Instead, higher energy prices and more regulations are the culprit, according to the John Locke Foundation documentary series Sowing Resilience.
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Democrat-turned-Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy announced Friday that he suspending his 2024 presidential campaign.
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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Friday indicated the bank is prepared to start cutting its key interest rate from its 23-year high, as inflation falls to more historic rates and the job market cools.
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The federal government overestimated the number of jobs in the U.S. economy by 818,000 between April 2023 and March 2024, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Wednesday, stoking fears of a slowdown in the U.S. economy.
Economists at Goldman Sachs (GS) and Wells Fargo anticipated the government had overestimated job growth by at least 600,000 in that span, while economists at JPMorgan Chase had predicted a lesser decline of 360,000, according to Bloomberg. The downward revision follows a trend of the BLS overestimating the number of nonfarm payroll jobs added, with the cumulative number of new jobs reported in 2023 roughly 1.3 million less than previously thought as of February 2024.
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Ford said Wednesday that it is canceling its plans to build a three-row electric SUV as the wider U.S. electric vehicle (EV) market continues to struggle.
The company announced that it expects to take up to $1.9 billion in write downs and other special charges related to its decision after losing billions of dollars on its EV product line in 2023. In addition to canceling its three-row electric SUV, Ford is also pushing back its plans to roll out an electric pickup truck model until 2027, a one-year setback.
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In a recent interview, World Energy Council Secretary General Angela Wilkinson told me that one of the main impediments to the energy transition today is a lack of what she calls “systems thinking.”
“Energy transitions are a change in the organization of society,” she pointed out. “They’re not a simple case of swapping out one technology for another and everything else stays the same. Yet, we have this very simplistic narrative that we can take the oil system, we can put renewables in, it’s going to happen immediately, and nothing else will change. It’s like saying we’re going to take your thighbone out, but we’d like you to run a marathon.”
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Even the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post could not stomach the new proposal from Kamala Harris to place price controls on food. The headline of the opinion piece from Catherine Rampell read:
“When your opponent calls you a ‘communist,’ maybe don’t try price controls?”
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The cost of food assistance in the U.S. has dropped from its peak during the pandemic, but is still 23% higher than it was during pre-pandemic times, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, what used to be called food stamps, peaked in costs December 2022 at $11.07 billion that month. That monthly cost dropped to $7.51 billion as of April 2024. There were about 41.6 million people collecting SNAP benefits as of April 2024.
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Presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz directed almost $100,000 in COVID-19 relief funds to an organization specializing in “abortion doula” services, state contracts show.
Walz, the governor of Minnesota, spent almost $2 billion in federal coronavirus relief funds without the approval of the state Legislature, using his emergency powers, according to the Minnesota-based outlet Alpha News.
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As President Joe Biden’s presidential term comes to a close, the administration is bearing down on its goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy and 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind by 2035.
As of 2021, the administration had approved two commercial-scale offshore wind projects, and seven have been approved within the past year.
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The cost of housing surged in July, accounting for nearly 90 percent of total inflation, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released Wednesday.
Shelter costs rose 5.1 percent year-over-year and 0.4 percent month-over-month, after rising 0.2 percent in June, the BLS showed. The 0.4 percent monthly increase was greater than Bank of America economists’ expectations of 0.3 percent, according to investment research firm Morningstar.
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Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to roll out a proposal to impose a federal ban on supposed corporate “price-gouging” on food and groceries, according to The Hill.
Harris will announce the plan during a Friday speech detailing her economic agenda in North Carolina, where she will blame corporate consolidation and greed for the increased prices Americans are paying for their food and groceries, according to The Hill. The proposal to attribute inflation to corporate greed echoes a common refrain from the Biden administration, which has consistently tried to pin responsibility for inflation on price gouging instead of its massive spending agenda.
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Consumer prices rose again last month after dipping in June, according to newly released federal inflation data.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday released its Consumer Price Index, a key marker of inflation, which showed that consumer prices rose 0.2% in July, part of a 2.9% increase over the past 12 months.
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Newly released federal inflation data shows that the Producer Price Index, a leading marker of inflation, rose last month.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the data, which showed a 0.1 percent increase in July, part of a 2.2 percent increase in the previous 12 months.
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So far in the fiscal year 2024, the federal government has had to borrow about $5 billion every day.
The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday the federal budget deficit was $1.5 trillion for the first 10 months of fiscal year 2024, which covers October through July.
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With a looming deadline to fund benefits to about 7 million veterans in October, and Congress out until Sept. 9, Maine Sen. Susan Collins and six colleagues have filed legislation to get full funding.
A Republican and independent are among the six. Veterans Affairs is facing a deficit of about $15 billion the remainder of this year and next – a deficit larger than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, says one senator.
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Brittney Pearson was a mother of four and 24 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with breast cancer—a tragic enough situation. To make a bad situation worse, though, the Sacramento native was pregnant as a surrogate mother for a gay couple.
Upon being informed of the cancer diagnosis, the two men demanded that Pearson abort the child.
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Between safety and reliability issues, as well as a dearth of charging stations, electric vehicle owners have been having quite a bit of buyer’s remorse, and now they may have another reason to go back to gas cars — EVs are rapidly depreciating.
Rental company Hertz announced in 2021 it would buy 100,000 EVs from Tesla, only to find lackluster interest from renters. In January, the Hertz announced it was selling off 20,000 of the vehicles, with prices as low as $25,000. Vehicle depreciation cost the company $588 million in the first quarter of this year compared to the last quarter of 2023.
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Former President Donald Trump blamed the Monday stock market dive on Vice President Kamala Harris in a series of Truth Social posts.
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According to the Associated Press, the Nikkei closed down 4,451.28 points at 31,458.42 on Monday after it went down 5.8 percent on Friday, marking the worst two-day decline ever.
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The U.S. unemployment rate once again ticked up in the month of June to 4.3 percent as another 352,000 Americans said they were unemployed, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Markets are crashing in response.
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The executive director of a large LGBT nonprofit allegedly spent the organization’s money on a lavish personal lifestyle, The New York Times reported on Thursday.
Sarah Kate Ellis, chief executive of GLAAD, an LGBT advocacy group, spent large sums of donor’s money on expenses such as remodeling her home office with a chandelier, renting a Cape Cod property, first class flights and luxury hotels, according to the NYT’s review of expense reports from January 2022 to June 2023. The expenses may be in violation of both the organization’s guidelines and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rules, legal experts told the NYT.
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Shoplifting has soared in the U.S. in 2024, forcing many stores to leave cities and continuing a trend in recent years.
Shoplifting has risen 24 percent in the first half of 2024 alone, according to newly released data from the Council on Criminal Justice.
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The House Judiciary Committee has sent letters to over 40 American and foreign companies asking for documents related to what it claims are “collusive” activities as part of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).
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The national debt surpassed $35 trillion on Monday for the first time in U.S. history as exorbitant federal spending continues under President Joe Biden.
Since Biden was inaugurated, the national debt has increased by over $7 trillion, from $27.7 trillion on January 20, 2021 to now over $35 trillion as of July 29, 2024. If the debt were to be divided among the roughly 258.3 million adults in the U.S., each adult would have roughly $135,500.
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The American job market has significantly downshifted as consumers, who drive the economy, are tapped out from the ongoing cost-of-living crisis under the Biden-Harris administration.
According to Friday’s employment report, only 115,000 jobs were created in July (67,000 using the more accurate household survey).
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The U.S. added 114,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in July as the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released Friday.
Economists anticipated that the country would add 175,000 jobs in July compared to the 206,000 added in initial estimates for June, and that the unemployment rate would remain stable at 4.1%, according to U.S. News and World Report. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell noted in a press conference on Wednesday that a continued slowdown in the labor market could be a sign of further softening in the economy and contribute to a possible cut to the federal funds rate and an easing in harsh credit conditions that have weighed on Americans.
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Based on data from a U.S. Treasury report, the federal government has amassed $142 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations. This staggering figure equals 93% of all the wealth Americans have accumulated since the nation’s founding, estimated by the Federal Reserve to be $152 trillion.
Unlike other measures of federal red ink that cover an arbitrary period, extend into the infinite future, or ignore government resources, the figure of $142 trillion applies strictly to Americans who are alive right now and includes the government’s commercial assets. Thus, it quantifies the financial burden that today’s Americans are leaving to their children and future generations.
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The devastation Hurricane Beryl left in its wake is estimated to cost taxpayers nationwide between $28 billion and $32 billion, according to an AccuWeather analysis. The losses to Texas, which was hardest hit, are estimated to be several billion.
Hurricane Beryl made landfall near Matagorda, Texas, on July 8 as a Category 1 storm. It then made its way northeast, fueling tornadoes in eastern Texas and western Louisiana, up into Arkansas and Missouri. The storm turned into a tropical rainstorm moving into the Midwest and New England, causing flooding, localized tornadoes and strong winds.
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If past performance is the best predictor of future performance, President Trump has proved his bona fides when it comes to fortifying American energy dominance.
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The Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it will not yet cut its benchmark federal funds rate in what is predicted to be the last in a streak of pauses as inflation and debt continues to cripple Americans.
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The Federal Reserve is expected to hold the bank’s key interest rate steady this week. Traders currently expect three rate cuts this year beginning in September.
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A Mississippi-based telecoms and technology company swiftly pulled its advertising from the 2024 Olympics after drag queens apparently mocked the Last Supper during the opening ceremony.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during a speech in Belem, Brazil, on Saturday that the price tag for a global transition to a low-carbon economy amounts to $78 trillion in financing through 2050.
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