C’est la vie. Such is life in the French Republic, where unemployment is high, growth is low, and government is big. Since the global recession the French economy has been on life support, burdened by the suffocating presence of government in the economy and labor laws that reward lethargy. Thankfully, …
Elected officials will face many contentious issues affecting economic and foreign policy during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress and heading into 2013. However, one issue on which they should be able to work together is extending permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to Russia. Russia officially joined the World Trade …
Followers of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have long joked that the fund’s acronym stands for “It’s Mostly Fiscal.” For a long time it has helped bail out basket-case economies with severe fiscal deficiencies, such as Greece, Russia, and Argentina. But a recent report shows that the IMF is now …
Americans could be waiting another five years for a return to normal employment based on the sluggish pace of the U.S. economy. After nearly four years in office, President Obama has overseen the worst recovery since the 1960s. This week’s chart comes on the heels of Friday’s employment report, which …
Despite more than $14 billion in cash payments to solar, wind, and other renewable energy project developers since 2009, just 48 terawatt hours of additional annual electricity generation were expected to be added through funds authorized by the stimulus, according to documents released by the Department of Treasury. The more …
The October jobs report essentially agrees with the rest of the current data on the economy—the economy is growing slowly, too slowly to bring down unemployment rapidly. In fact, the unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent in October and the economy created about 171,000 jobs, roughly equal to the usual …
After three years of hyper-regulation, the Obama Administration has noticeably slowed its rulemaking in recent months. A variety of major rules have been parked in prolonged “review” by the White House, while the regulatory agenda required by statute has failed to materialize—twice. This flouting of the law is disturbing enough, …
