Economy

More bad economic news from The New York Times:
The United States economy shed 190,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, up from 9.8 percent in September, the Department of Labor said Friday in its monthly economic appraisal.

Here’s a somewhat surprising result from the new Fox News poll. Asked which president is “more responsible for the current state of the economy,” only 18 percent say President Obama. Fifty-eight percent say former President George W. Bush. Nine percent blame both of them. Republicans are the only subgroup of voters who blame Obama, and [...]

“Mr. Secretary, I’m not a man that fears this administration or you,” Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) told Geithner. “But I do fear the accumulation of power exercised by someone in the future that can be extraordinary.”

Moments ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) shot down a motion by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to proceed to legislation extending federal unemployment insurance by up to 20 weeks in the states hit hardest by the recession. It marks the fourth time in three weeks that GOP leaders have prevented the bill from [...]

The foreclosure crisis has taken a turn in California’s wealthy Marin County, according to Miriam Alex-Lute at Rooflines. Marin residents waged a legal fight a few years back to keep out Habitat for Humanity, the charitable group that builds houses for low-income buyers. But now that abandoned, foreclosed houses are showing up in Marin, Lute [...]

The New York Times reports that the U.S. economy grew last quarter for the first time in the past year:
Gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the three months ending in September, a significant spike from a relatively shrunken base. The economy had contracted at annual rates of 0.7 percent [...]

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), a vocal critic of exorbitant executive pay, fears new legislation will give competitive advantage to the biggest banks.

Over at WalletPop, they’ve looked closer into a big recent auction of foreclosed properties in Detroit, and it’s an even bleaker situation than first reported.
The Wayne County auction of some 9,000 repossessed properties last week resulted in more than 80 percent of them failing to draw a single bid. And that’s even with the minimum [...]

Here’s the video of the day: Neil Cavuto of Fox News reacting to the Dow Jones index’s recovery by asking his first guest whether former President George W. Bush should get credit.

“What was once the Bush recession is now the Bush recovery,” asks Cavuto, “or is that a stretch?”
“It defies logic that you could blame [...]

Many experts say slow job recovery is a simple economic reality going back at least 20 years.