From the Associated Press:

The U.S. unemployment rate fell last month to its lowest level in more than two and a half years, as employers stepped up hiring in response to the slowly improving economy.

The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate dropped sharply to 8.6 percent last month, down from 9 percent in October. The rate hasn’t been that low since March 2009, during the depths of the recession.

Still, 13.3 million Americans remain unemployed. And a key reason the unemployment rate fell so much was because roughly 315,000 people had given up looking for work and were no longer counted as unemployed.

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From the Associated Press:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the economic recovery “is close to faltering” and the central bank is prepared to take further steps to support it.

The economy is growing more slowly than the Federal Reserve had expected, Bernanke said Tuesday before the congressional Joint Economic Committee. He said the biggest factor depressing consumer confidence is poor job growth.

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From the Associated Press:

he number of people applying for unemployment benefits fell last week, though the decline isn’t enough to signal improvement in the job market.

The Labor Department says weekly applications dropped 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 423,000. The four-week average, a less volatile figure, rose slightly for the fifth straight week to 421,000.

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Last week, Peter Schiff, CEO of of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, provided stunning testimony to the House Oversight Committee and explained how President Obama’s ideas of government stimulus are not the solution to the unemployment problems, they are the problems.

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New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, in a radio interview on Friday, warned that high unemployment could lead to widespread rioting. That’s right. He actually said that. At a time when European cities have suffered massively from hooliganism, and at a time when U.S. towns like Philadelphia and Kansas City have suffered huge human and commercial tolls from so-called flash riots.

For Bloomberg to come out with this statement is irresponsible and incendiary. But you know what? He’s got a personal agenda. This is a desperate talking point to sell Obama’s jobs plan, which Bloomberg favors as a solution to high unemployment and zero growth.

There’s a whole history here of liberals threatening riots if they don’t get their way. WABC radio host Mark Simone reminded me that back in 1994, Matilda Cuomo warned there would be race riots in New York if her husband Mario weren’t reelected governor in his race against George Pataki.

So now the liberal Mike Bloomberg is trying to go to bat for his pal Obama. And he’s doing so in a very clumsy and inappropriate way.

In fact, Bloomberg is pitching for the whole Obama jobs package — the $450 billion stimulus plan and the $470 billion tax hike. The package is totally unpopular. A recent Bloomberg poll (how ironic) showed that voters disapprove of more Obama stimulus by 51 to 40 percent, and that 56 percent of independents oppose it. Other polls show that more than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy.

Memories are long. The $800 billion stimulus package nearly three years ago didn’t work. So why do it again?

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Who would have really expected a 300-point stock market plunge on the day after President Obama’s so-called jobs speech?

Yes, worries over new fears of a Greek default ripped through the markets on Friday. As did fears of an al-Qaeda bombing plot on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. But you can’t help but think that at least some of the stock plunge is a signal of no economic confidence in Obama’s plan.

And for that matter, who really expected an unbelievably large $450 billion plan? That’s way more than 50 percent of the original $800 stimulus package in 2009 — which did not work.

Leaked reports leading up to the speech suggested a $300 billion plan — already way too big. But $450 billion? At a time of massive deficits and debt? And a downgrade? How is this going to be paid for? That’s what many folks want to know. Obama didn’t tell us.

In very round numbers, the package comes to $250 billion of temporary payroll tax cuts of one kind or another, with another $200 billion in new spending on infrastructure, unemployment benefits, and direct aid to state and local governments. But didn’t we learn from Obama Stimulus One that more government spending doesn’t grow the economy or reduce unemployment?

And while more than half of the president’s new package is called “tax cuts,” the reality is that these are temporary tax cuts. Even though tax rates are reduced for both employers and employees, it’s just for one year.

That blunts the true incentive impact of the tax cuts. Businesses like to look ahead at least three to five years for their employment planning. And they’re already worried about the tax and regulatory mandate costs of Obamacare, which has become a great deterrent to job creation. But nobody makes clear business decisions based on temporary one-year tax cuts. That’s not the way business works.

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I’ve made some uncannily accurate predictions in the past 3 years.

Back in 2008, as I ran for Vice President of the United States on the Libertarian Presidential ticket, I made a prediction I’m very proud of today. I said, “Voting for McCain is voting for four more years of Bush. But voting for Obama is voting for four years of Karl Marx.” How’s that working for you?

I also predicted that Obama’s entire Presidency would be devoted to saving the union- the teachers union, government employees union, and auto union. Sure enough, the White House now comes adorned with a union label. If you look closely at Obama’s forehead, you’ll find it’s stamped SEIU. Obama’s signature initiative Obamacare affects every American citizen, except union members. Real life under Obama is more shocking than fiction.

A year ago, while economists and Obama administration lackeys talked of a recovery, I publicly stated we’d never left the last recession and the worst was yet to come. I predicted that “Obama’s Axis of Evil” policies of taxation, regulation, government strangulation, unionization, litigation and illegal immigration would turn a serious economic crisis into The Greatest Depression Ever. It’s all unfolding before our very eyes on a daily basis.

As conditions got progressively worse during 2010, I predicted the Tea Parties would pull off one of the great landslide victories in U.S. political history that November.

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In today’s New York Post:

There was once a time when trouble in foreign markets, whether in Asia or as now in Europe, would be good for US stocks.

Sure, our markets can get hammered when news like the 1997 Asian currency crisis hits. But we often make a comeback as investors digest the news and come to the conclusion that the best place to bet for future growth is on the companies at the heart of the US economy.

No longer.

And it’s not just the zero-percent job growth and 9.1 percent unemployment we’ve got now.

The mainstream business media will tell you that the problem lies in the “dysfunction of Washington.” In other words, the economic slump and all the market turbulence, including yesterday’s 100-point drop in the Dow, stem from a bipartisan cause — lawmakers and President Obama can’t manage to craft a sensible plan to grow the economy.

But talk to enough investors, and they’ll tell you this isn’t really a bipartisan problem. Rather, it largely remains at the top, meaning with Obama and his economic advisers — who, when they aren’t threatening to raise the taxes of “millionaires and billionaires” who make just $200,000 a year, are offering up the leftovers of previously failed economic policies, such as this “infrastructure bank” gimmick that the president plans to unveil in what’s being billed as a major economic speech later in the week.

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From the Associated Press:

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The economy weak and the public seething, President Barack Obama is expected to propose $300 billion in tax cuts and federal spending Thursday night to get Americans working again. Republicans offered Tuesday to compromise with him on jobs—but also assailed his plans in advance of his prime-time speech.

In effect, Obama will be hitting cleanup on a shortened holiday week, with Republican White House contender Mitt Romney releasing his jobs proposals on Tuesday and front-running Texas Gov. Rick Perry hoping to join his presidential rivals Wednesday evening on a nationally televised debate stage for the first time.

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From AFP:

Republican US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney unveils his economic plan Tuesday, focusing on lower taxes, less regulation, scrapping the Obama health plan and ending trade “surrender” to countries such as China.

The former front-runner in his party, Romney said President Barack Obama “has had his turn at fixing the American economy” and has failed.

“For my part, I believe America can do better,” Romney writes in the USA Today newspaper ahead of a speech later in the day on his economic plan.

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From the Associated Press:

Public support for both President Barack Obama and the US Congress has hit news lows, as a pair of polls Tuesday reflected Americans’ frustration with the stalled economy and rancorous partisan squabbling.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll, released just days ahead of Obama’s planned major address on job creation, found that 53 percent disapprove of his job performance and 77 percent think the country is on the “wrong track.”

The poll found 35 percent of Americans believe they have become worse off financially under Obama’s presidency, the highest since the 1980s.

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American political fortunes have long been tied directly to the economy… so you would think that politicians would do a better job understanding how to improve the economy.  We know consumer demand is down – because consumers don’t have the money or home equity they used to have.  That alone is keeping the economy down.  Businesses, however, are said to have money but they are not spending or investing it.  Why? Because for them it’s the early 1920’s all over again.

Our so-called brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning President, for months, has exhorted American businesses to hire employees and invest – as if wishing for an economic recovery would make it so.  Recently, however, Democrat and mega-businessman Steve Wynn told the country – and Obama, if he was listening – why cash rich business is not hiring and investing.  According to Wynn, “this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime . . . those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President . . .”

President Calvin Coolidge used to say, “The chief business of the American people is business.”  Even so, business doesn’t invest just for fun – they invest for profit – and they don’t invest if they think the risk of not making an acceptable profit is too high.  I wrote “acceptable” because business weighs the fact that even if they make money, it will be taxed.  As such, a business must decide not only if it will be able to make a profit, but will the profit be so much that it would be worth the trouble/risk after taking taxes into consideration.  Keep in mind business knows that it carries all of the downside risk and that government will take a good portion of any upside.  If at some point the risk gets too high, business investment and spending is stalled.

Today, Steve Wynn, and much of American business, believes that the risk of not making a decent profit is too high for several reasons.  For instance, business doesn’t see sufficient consumer demand – so they don’t stock their shelves or expand production as they otherwise might.  Regulations and the threat of more regulations are so high that they hold back money to pay for future costs.  Taxes and the threat of higher taxes are also high – and that too causes business to hold back spending in order to pay those future taxes.  As a result, business investment and spending is stalled.

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There he goes again. Out on the campaign trail, President Obama is proposing more federal spending as his answer to sluggish growth and jobs. That won’t do it, Mr. President.

He wants more infrastructure spending, undoubtedly in the form of an infrastructure bank. That’s a terrible idea. It’s borrowed from Latin America, where bloated and corrupt bureaucratic construction agencies have helped bankrupt any number of countries in the past.

He wants to lengthen 99-week unemployment insurance, although numerous studies have shown that continuous unemployment benefits are associated with higher unemployment.

And he wants to extend the temporary payroll tax credit, which is not a permanent reduction in marginal tax rates, has no incentive effect, has not worked so far, and is really a form of federal spending — not real tax relief.

Earlier this week, when he signed the debt-ceiling bill, the president ranted on about the need to raise tax rates on successful earners, investors, and small businesses. He’s trying to bring back tax hikes as part of the phase-two special committee seeking additional deficit reduction, even though his own party rebuffed him on this in the late stages of the debt talks. All this is a prescription to grow government, not the economy.

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Las Vegas CEO Steve Wynn drew attention for a boardroom rant denouncing the intolerable business climate fostered by the White House. He’s hardly the first. What’s happening is emblematic of a bigger problem.

On a Monday conference call, the casino magnate credited with revitalizing Las Vegas slammed President Obama, declaring him “[T]he greatest wet blanket to business, progress and job creation in my lifetime.”

Wynn’s statement was remarkable for two reasons: First, the hotelier has been a staunch supporter of the Obama administration from the beginning and still considers himself a Democrat. Even more remarkable, it’s historically out of character for CEOs such as Wynn to express their views in such blunt terms on political matters.

“A lot of people don’t want to say that. They’ll say, ‘Oh God, don’t be attacking Obama.’ Well, this is Obama’s deal, and it’s Obama that’s responsible for this fear in America,” said Wynn, “The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution, and maybe ‘we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest or (are) holding too much money.’ We haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists.”

Business is being hammered, he said. “I’m telling you that the business community in this country is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the president of the United States.”

From the Associated Press:

Hiring slowed to a near-standstill last month. Employers added the fewest jobs in nine months and the unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent.

The economy generated only 18,000 net jobs in June, the Labor Department said Friday. And the number of jobs added in May was revised down to 25,000.

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Here’s a question: Why is repealing the Bush tax cuts such a constant obsession for the Democratic Party? Especially the top rates for the most successful earners and small business entrepreneurs?

It seems this is the Democratic answer for every single issue, every problem, every debate.

This, of course, saddens me enormously.

And so, always ready to help, I am recommending a 12-Step program to help them overcome their anger, resentment, and obsession over the Bush tax cuts. Democrats really need a Higher Power on this.

First, when tax rates were lowered across-the-board in mid-2003, the incentive effect kicked in to jump-start the economy immediately. Over the next four and a half years, before the financial meltdown slammed the economy– and that was a credit event, not a fiscal one—8.2 million jobs were created.

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By now, most people have heard about Obama’s comments on unemployment from this past week essentially saying ATMs have taken jobs away from people. He said, “There are some structural issues with our economy, where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient, with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to the bank and use an ATM — you don’t go to a bank teller.”

<embed flashvars=”file=http://mrc-tv.s3.amazonaws.com/sites/default/files/videos/converted/102415.mp4&image=http://mrc-tv.s3.amazonaws.com/sites/default/files/video_thumbs/102415/102415_0002.jpg&dock=false&controlbar=bottom&skin=http://www.mrctv.org/jwplayer/skins/modieus/modieus.zip&plugins=yourlytics-1,sharing-2&yourlytics.callback=http://mrctv.org/postback/remoteview?nodeid=102840&sharing.link=http://www.mrctv.org/videos/save-economy-ban-atms&sharing.code=%3Ciframe+title%3D%22MRC+TV+video+player%22+width%3D%22640%22+height%3D%22360%22+src%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mrctv.org%2Fembed%2F102840+frameborder%3D%220%22+allowfullscreen%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E&autostart=false” allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” id=”player1″ name=”player1″ src=”http://www.mrctv.org/jwplayer/player.swf” width=”640″ height=”360″ />So, are people trying to create some jobs? Take a look:

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Earlier this week, President Obama repeated his claim that, while the current economy isn’t perfect, at least “we yanked an economy out of what could have been a second Great Depression.”  To date, no one has contested the validity of this claim.  They should, because that’s not what the Obama Administration said when they took office.

In January 2009 the new Obama Administration issued its now-infamous report titled “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan,” more commonly known as the “Romer/Bernstein Report” after the President and Vice President’s economists who authored it.  This report included estimates of what would  happen if the Administration’s stimulus plan was enacted, and what would happen if it wasn’t – presumably casting the U.S. into “another Great Depression.”  This chart displays the unemployment rates the Administration forecast in that January 2009 report if their stimulus plan passed (the “with stimulus” line), if their stimulus plan didn’t pass (the “without stimulus” line), and what actually happened:

Notice something important?  The unemployment rate the Administration in January 2009 predicted the U.S. would have now without their “yank(ing) the economy out of another Great Depression” (about 8 percent in the “without stimulus” line) is less than the current official U.S. unemployment rate (9.1 percent in May 2011).  Clearly, this data doesn’t support the President’s claim that the Administration “yanked the economy out of another Great Depression.”

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Political advantage can be fleeting. A couple of months ago, during the winter quarter, job gains looked to be picking up, unemployment was easing lower, and President Obama’s reelection hopes looked more secure. But things sure have changed.

In recent weeks, a whole bunch of new economic stats have been pointing to a sputtering economy — maybe even an inflation-prone, less-than-2-percent-growth recession. Stocks have dropped five straight weeks, as they look toward slower growth, jobs, and profits out to year end. And Friday’s jobs report didn’t buck these trends.

“Anemic” is the adjective being tossed around the media. According to the Labor Department, nonfarm payrolls increased a meager 54,000 in May, while private payrolls gained only 83,000. A week or two ago, Wall Street expected 200,000-plus new jobs. Didn’t happen.

Perhaps the most telling weakness in the jobs report comes from the household survey, which is made up of self-employed workers. Think of mom-and-pop owned stores and small businesses. Think of the Main Street entrepreneurial families who make up the backbone of the economy, and for the matter the country. And they vote, too.

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I’ve started more than a dozen small businesses. For one, over $20 million was invested by me and investors who believed in me. I’ve paid payrolls, health insurance, payroll taxes, workers comp, and unemployment insurance for hundreds of employees.

Because of that, my employees were able to pay their mortgages, buy groceries, send their kids to college, and provide for their families. For this same small business, I spent about $50 million dollars on things like advertising, marketing, promotion, lawyers and accountants. That money enriched and employed thousands of others. And, that’s just one small business. Think of the impact that thirty million small business owners have on the U.S. economy. No wonder we create 70% or more of America’s new jobs. Small businessmen and women are a far more powerful economic force than Exxon, Microsoft, GE, or Wal-Mart.

So why do Obama and his socialist cabal hate us? Why do small businessmen and women feel demonized and punished? Why is it Obama’s goal to drive us out of business?

Mug or rob me once? Maybe it’s ignorance or a mistake. Twice? It’s a pattern. But, coming up with ways to rob and destroy me and my businesses on a daily basis? It’s time to get the message. Without a doubt, Obama and the progressive left are the enemy of small business.

Let’s look at the facts.

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