The new unemployment numbers have been released and the White House must be somewhat happy. The joblessness rate is down to 8.2 percent, which means the number that gets the most publicity continues to move in the right direction. I’ve been predicting that Obama will win reelection if the unemployment rate falls to 8.0 percent […]

I’ve been a big critic of Obama’s policies on taxes, spending, regulation, and intervention, so you won’t be surprised that I argued on CNBC that his policies have made the economy worse. Here are two graphs, which I posted earlier this month, that make my point. The red lines show the economy is finally – […]

I’ve written periodically about the perverse incentives of the unemployment insurance system. Simply stated, there will be fewer jobs if the government subsidizes joblessness, and I even showed that this is a consensus position by citing the academic writings of left-leaning economists such as Larry Summers and Paul Krugman. The San Francisco Federal Reserve also […]

The new unemployment numbers show a joblessness rate of 8.3 percent. From a political perspective, this is good news for the White House. Even though the Obama Administration projected that the unemployment rate today would be about 2-percentage points lower if the so-called stimulus was adopted, most people aren’t looking at the numbers analytically. Instead, […]

On this day last year, I posted two charts that I developed using the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank’s interactive website. Those two charts showed that the current recovery was very weak compared to the boom of the early 1980s. But perhaps that was an unfair comparison. Maybe the Reagan recovery started strong and then hit […]

The White House doubtlessly is happy that the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.5 percent, in part because the President is much more likely to get reelected if voters think the economy is heading in the right direction. My political predictions have a mixed track record, so take this for what it’s worth, but I’ve […]

I’ve written before about the perverse impact of the unemployment insurance program, and I’ve even cited how left-wing economists such as Paul Krugman and Larry Summers admit that you get more joblessness when you pay people for not working. I’ve even shared a very good cartoon making the same point. And who can forget Nancy […]

Even though leftist economists such as Paul Krugman and Larry Summers have admitted that unemployment insurance benefits are a recipe for more joblessness, the White House is arguing that Congress should enact legislation to further subsidize unemployment. It’s understandable that the Obama Administration is concerned about the issue. These four charts show that the labor […]

The President’s “green energy” loan program has turned into an embarrassment for the White House, in part because of the sordid corruption associated with the bankruptcy of Solyndra. But the subsidy program also has attracted some negative attention for its failure to create jobs – even from media outlets that normally are sympathetic to big […]

Herman Cain probably had the best reaction to the President’s speech: “We waited 30 months for this?” My reaction yesterday was mixed. In some sense, I was almost embarrassed for the President. He demanded a speech to a joint session of Congress and then produced a list of recycled (regurgitated might be a better word) […]