…historically, voters have given a second term to incumbent presidents who preside over even modest economic growth during an election year.
That pattern appears to have held for Obama. If the economy is not exactly roaring ahead, it improved steadily over the course of the year.
“It was never going to be a landslide,” said John Sides, a political science professor at George Washington University. “But it was always his race to lose.”
Preliminary results of an exit poll conducted for The Associated Press show that the presidential election hinges once again on the economy.
The survey of voters as they leave polling places Tuesday shows 6 in 10 voters say the economy is the top issue facing the nation, with unemployment and rising prices hitting voters hard.
Heavenly Father we ask that you will have mercy on America today and bless us in spite of ourselves. We ask that you will give wisdom to all who go to the polls to cast their votes. Help us as we make difficult decisions on a variety of issues and as we seek to elect men and women who will hunger for righteousness and seek the common good to positions of authority in our towns and cities, in our states and in our nation. We pray against any voter fraud or any corruption of proper voter access and ask that justice be done in each and every election, whatever the locale. We also pray for peace and grace with one another as the results are received and digested, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns in glory everlasting, Amen–KSH.
Talking about the struggles faced by the working poor has become a social taboo. We would prefer to pretend that the problem wasn’t there ”“ but sadly it is.
It is a very grim reality that needs addressing urgently by all of us.
We will not make this country stronger by impoverishing others. Whether that is by offering unpaid internships and work experience to young people ”“ or by freezing Minimum Wage levels for the poorest ”“ the end result is that our society, our communities and our nation become sicker and less cohesive as a result….
Finance chiefs of the world’s 20 leading economies are ringing alarm bells over the U.S. fiscal cliff and Europe’s debt woes at a meeting in Mexico this weekend as they look to push back deficit reduction targets to help boost growth.
Unless a fractious U.S. Congress can reach a deal, about $600 billion in government spending cuts and higher taxes are set to kick in on January 1, threatening to push the American economy back into recession and hit world growth.
“The Americans themselves acknowledge that this is a problem,” a G20 official said on condition of anonymity. “The U.S. administration says it doesn’t want to fall off the fiscal cliff, but right now it can’t tell us how exactly it will address it because that issue is on ice ahead of the election.”
As debt-burdened European governments struggle to overcome the disparities in their still-imperfect union, old demons of regional separatism have surged anew in recent months, raising another unwelcome challenge to the continent’s traditional nation-states.
Separatist movements have dramatically reinforced their positions here in Belgium’s prosperous Flanders region, where the independence-minded New Flemish Alliance captured Antwerp’s 16th-century City Hall on Oct. 14 and, under its populist leader Bart De Wever, is heading into national elections in 2014 with new wind in its sails.
“There is an outcry in Flanders for change,” declared Danny Pieters, vice president of the Belgian Senate and a senior Flemish alliance leader.
On the third day after Hurricane Sandy soaked Hoboken in several feet of water, leaving the city one of the most crippled in the region, those with the least found themselves suspended in the storm’s cold, dark aftermath. Late this week, Hoboken started to hum with generators and a taco truck.
The projects where [Grace] Rodriguez and her daughter, Jayleen Avalos, lived were still at the bottom of the world. The 25 or so buildings operated by the Hoboken Housing Authority were clustered together on 17 acres at the city’s southern edge. They were hemmed in by gentrification on one side ”” $600,000 lofts with same-day shirt service dry cleaners ”” and a steel fence in the back. Two feet of floodwater created a moat around the buildings. The National Guard brought water and MREs. The Red Cross brought bologna-and-cheese sandwiches.
But the one commodity residents were starved for was information, and the absence of it deepened their sense of isolation. The city government used social media to update citizens. Grace Rodriguez would have appreciated a bullhorn.
French leader François Hollande is uncomfortably close to a collapse in credibility. His poll rating has sunk to 36pc. The speed of decline has been shocking.
The latest broadside comes from ex-German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, supposedly his ally on the Left.
“The election promises of the French president are going to shatter on the walls of economic reality,” he said in Paris.
U.S. nonfarm payrolls increased by a seasonally adjusted 171,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. The politically important unemployment rate, obtained by a separate survey of U.S. households, rose one-tenth of a percentage point to 7.9%.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast a gain of 125,000 in payrolls and a 7.9% jobless rate.
Friday’s report offers the last broad snapshot of the economy before the Nov. 6 election. The campaign was overshadowed much of this week by Sandy, though severe disruption and damage caused by the storm isn’t reflected in the October employment figures because they are based on surveys conducted earlier in the month.
Read it all. Blog readers know I prefer U-6, which I consider the most representative rate–it went down from 14.7 to 14.6 month over month. You can find a list of all measures, U-1 through U-6, there and a longer term U-6 chart there–KSH.
Update: Dylan Matthews has 6 charts on the employment report here; note especially the one on wages.
To those who were surprised that the European Union received the Nobel Peace Prize, I say: “Think twice.” This was not only a deserved award for Europe’s contribution to bringing peace and stabilizing democracies in the recent past. The Nobel Committee was also sending a clear warning to contemporary leaders. I could almost hear them saying: “On this difficult odyssey, don’t abandon ship. In today’s world, the EU is too valuable to squander.”
It was an indirect but powerful rebuttal to the dangerous nationalist and populist rhetoric some politicians have adopted when describing the recent financial crisis.
This message couldn’t have come at a better time.
Since the Fresh & Easy grocery chain was founded five years ago, it has opened 150 stores in California and positioned itself as a hip, socially responsible company.
A cross between Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, the company brags that its house brands have no artificial colors or trans fats, that two-thirds of its produce is grown locally and that its main distribution center is powered by a $13 million solar installation.
But in one crucial respect, Fresh & Easy is just like the vast majority of large American retailers: most employees work part-time, with its stores changing many of their workers’ schedules week to week.
The middle class has been caught in an economic vise, trying to pay 2012 prices with paychecks that haven’t grown since the good times went bust ”” or even earlier.
Across the nation, family income was down 8 percent last year from what it was in 2000. And in South Carolina, the median income last year was just over $40,000.
That’s the lowest wages have been in the Palmetto State since 1985, according inflation-adjusted figures from the U.S. census.
Writing is hard. All by itself with no bells and whistles, when it’s just your thoughts pulsing through your mind, filtered through your heart, and fighting to get out of your fingers as articulately as possible ”“ it’s hard.
But we, we are living in the age of bells and whistles. In a day and time when being published, being read, is easier than ever ”“ the task itself has become harder.
The responsibilities of writing have been weighed down with drudgery. Writers aren’t simply creatives anymore. We are publicists, agents, assistants, marketers, back-scratchers, promoters, tech gurus, networkers, platform-builders .
State officials say someone hacked into the Department of Revenue, exposing about 3.6 million South Carolina tax returns.
Gov. Nikki Haley said Friday about 387,000 credit and debit card numbers were also exposed, and 16,000 of those were unencrypted. State officials are urging anyone who has filed a state tax return since 1998 to call a toll-free number to determine whether their information is affected.
Europe’s economic woes are washing over U.S. multinational companies, contributing to a season of weak corporate earnings.
Domestic sales are growing, as the U.S. housing market and consumer confidence recover. But China’s economy has slowed, robbing U.S. companies of their most reliable growth engine of recent years.
Almost uniformly, however, U.S. companies reporting third-quarter results identify Europe as the weakest link in the global economic chain.
For the first time since the Great Recession hit, American households are taking on more debt than they are shedding, an epochal shift that might augur a more resilient recovery.
For two of the last three quarters, American households’ total outstanding borrowing on things like credit cards, mortgages and auto loans has increased after falling for 14 consecutive quarters before then. Some economists even see an end to the long, hard process of deleveraging ”” as they refer to the cutting of debt relative to income or the nation’s economic output. That process, they say, has been a central reason for the extraordinary sluggishness of the recovery.
“We’re at an inflection point,” said Kevin Logan, the chief United States economist for HSBC. “Debt is less of a burden” for households, he said.
Deficit-reduction principles backed by more than 80 U.S. chief executive officers are so broad that anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist and an ally of President Barack Obama both claim their plans could satisfy the standards.
The Campaign to Fix the Debt, with more than $30 million in backing, announced an expanded list of supporters yesterday, including the leaders of Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) On the most vexing issue — whether tax increases should be part of a deal — the principles refer to lower tax rates and higher revenue, not higher taxes.
Read it all. You can also find the CEO Debt Concerns Press Release here.
“What we’re trying to do right now is to have a set of standards, a set of criteria, and have a decision-making process that will govern our counterterrorism actions ”” we’re talking about direct action, lethal action ”” so that irrespective of the venue where they’re taking place, we have a high confidence that they’re being done for the right reasons in the right way,” [John] Brennan said in a lengthy interview at the end of August.
A burly 25-year CIA veteran with a stern public demeanor, Brennan is the principal architect of a policy that has transformed counterterrorism from a conventional fight centered in Afghanistan to a high-tech global effort to track down and eliminate perceived enemies one by one.
It is with sadness that the Anglican Church of Canada and Augsburg Fortress Canada announce that the Anglican Book Centre at 80 Hayden Street will close on Jan. 18, 2013. Canadian Anglicans will still be able to order resources online and by phone through Augsburg Fortress Canada.
“Religious book and gift stores across Canada have faced significant challenges resulting in the closure of over 120 stores in the past 10 years,” said Andy Seal, Director of Augsburg Fortress Canada/Anglican Book Centre.
“Sales at our Hayden St. store have decreased each year since 2009. By 2011 Toronto sales were 28% below the break-even level. In spite of hard work and innovation, the trend has continued in 2012.”
“Potentially, the government may amend its complaint to include individuals, present or former employees of Bank of America,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Pierre Armand told U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff.
Some Orthodox Christians in Russia have taken issue with Apple’s logo recently, seeing an anti-Christian symbol for humanity’s original sin in the image of a bitten fruit….
…[We now, however, that many] people have offered many explanations for what they see as the obvious significance of Apple’s logo. This is to be expected, since any symbol””or “signifier” for you semantics aficionados””has a fluid link to the meaning signified. But if these interpretations are all up for debate, then why bother discussing such niche exegeses as the one put forward by conservative Russian Orthodox?
Because their interpretation is scheduled to collide with public policy….
At 4.06pm, less than 30 minutes before Synod rose for the year, the first count of this year’s meeting was held on a proposed amendment during a debate on church planting (the establishment of new congregations across Melbourne and Geelong). This time, the amendment was carried.
Synod called on the Diocesan Council to review how the living requirements of clergy in the Melbourne Diocese were met, including the setting of stipends, recompense for travel costs, housing, superannuation, benefits, stipend continuance insurance and retrenchment.
A senior clergyman, the Revd Dr David Powys of St John’s Cranbourne, said in his mover’s speech that the fundamental way in which clergy remuneration and provisions were conceived had not changed very much in 30 years but “very many other things” about ordained ministry had changed very substantially. These included the dwindling proportion of clergy who were vicars, a reduction in ministry households where the stipend was the main source of income, the decline in clergy living in vicarages and church-owned accommodation, the increasing number of clergy in part-time appointments and the fact that women now made up a significant proportion of clergy ranks.
The Ontario Medical Association’s call to slap hot fudge and French fries with a so-called fat tax is a regressive measure that will hurt consumers without any provable benefit. The association is also off-base with its proposal to put graphic photos of diseased organs and limbs on junk food packaging. While the association’s aim of raising awareness is laudable, food is not tobacco and shouldn’t be treated as an inherently harmful substance….
The financial markets have been notably calm of late. Stock indexes have ticked upwards and interest rates on sovereign bonds have drifted downwards. The euro has also remained relatively stable against the dollar. And investor panic seems to have dissipated.
But appearances can be deceiving, said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble on Tuesday. “I’m not so sure that the worst of the crisis is behind us,” he said at a mechanical engineering conference in Berlin, warning that reform efforts needed to be re-doubled to ensure that trust in the euro returns.
His comments were echoed by Yves Mersch, a member of the European Central Bank Governing Council who was also present at the event. He warned that even if calm had returned to the markets, it could be deceptive. “The bleeding has been stopped, but the patient is not yet in the clear,” he said.
The federal government has filed another mortgage-fraud lawsuit against Bank of America, contending that defective loans generated by the bank’s Countrywide Financial Corp. subsidiary caused mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lose more than $1 billion.
A statement Wednesday from the office of U.S. Atty. Preet Bharara in New York said that after the subprime mortgage market collapsed in 2007, Calabasas-based Countrywide devised a loan-processing system called “Hustle” to “process loans at high speed and without quality checkpoints.”
Taxes and government spending. Health care. Immigration. Financial regulation.
They are the issues that have dominated the political debate in recent years and have played a prominent role in this presidential campaign. But in many ways they have obscured what is arguably the nation’s biggest challenge: breaking out of a decade of income stagnation that has afflicted the middle class and the poor and exacerbated inequality.
Many of the bedrock assumptions of American culture ”” about work, progress, fairness and optimism ”” are being shaken as successive generations worry about the prospect of declining living standards. No question, perhaps, is more central to the country’s global standing than whether the economy will perform better on that score in the future than it has in the recent past.
“Companies are having to retool their thinking, saying, ”˜What is it that our customers are doing through the mobile channel that is quite distinct from what we are delivering them through our traditional Web channel?’ ” said Charles S. Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research, the technology research firm.
He added, “It’s hilarious to talk about traditional Web business like it’s been going on for centuries, but it’s last century.”
Americans in their late 30s are now the group most likely to doubt they will be financially secure after retirement, a major shift from three years ago when baby boomers nearing retirement age expressed the greatest worry.
The survey findings by the Pew Research Center, released Monday, reflect the impact of a weak economic recovery beginning in 2009 that has shown stock market gains while housing values remain decimated….
“My biggest fear is not being able to retire,” [37 year old Nicole] Gilliard said as she came out of the courthouse on Meeting Street after work Monday. “I have a 5-year-old, and my biggest fear is that I’m going to have to keep working to put her through school.”
Baby Boomers were the first generation to enjoy the concept of being a teenager, and also the first of the last century to enjoy a prolonged period of national prosperity in which they were encouraged to “have it all”, with widespread home ownership, increasing numbers taking holidays abroad and enjoying the burgeoning consumer economy.
That group of post-war babies are now approaching older age, relinquishing the habits of working life and finding themselves with decades still to live in which they might stay fit and healthy or become increasingly dependent on ”¨help and care from those around them. They ”“ and all of us ”“ are mostly in the dark about when we might crumble physically or mentally.
For many who are retired or ”¨who are facing retirement soon, the huge questions of how long their health will last, who will care from them and how they finance their care are a colossal and persistent worry….