“Initial Claims” were 584,000 today, scream the headlines, and the pumpers all claim this is “better than expected” when looking at continuing claims, which declined slightly to 6.416 million on a 4-week rolling basis. But those numbers don’t include the people who rolled off the original 13 week unemployment rolls and onto the extended programs [...]

July 31 (Bloomberg) — The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed. The world’s largest economy contracted 1.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the last three months of [...]

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PROVIDENCE — State tax officials have put more than 1,200 businesses across the state on notice this week that they are out of business unless they pay their overdue sales taxes immediately. For most, that action came in the form of a personal visit from the state Division of Taxation, ordering business owners to lock [...]

By Alistair Barr, MarketWatchSAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — More than 1,000 banks may fail during the next three to five years as the recession intensifies and loan losses climb, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets estimated on Monday. In 2008, analyst Gerard Cassidy forecast 200 to 300 bank failures, but now he says the environment has [...]

Is this reason why the market is surging?Headlines:Upbeat earnings reports and new data on unemployment gave Wall Street a reason to continue its surge. Sony Posts $390.5 Million LossThe electronics and entertainment giant maintained its forecast for a second straight year of red ink as the global slump continued to weigh on its bottom line.Volkswagen [...]

The commercial real estate bust is going to be legendary. We are talking trillions of dollars. The attention of Americans is being pulled away by massive market volatility that has seen the S&P 500 shoot up 44 percent in four months. Yet the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve have kept their eye on this market [...]

(Snippet)It’s not for nothing that the Goldman Sachs Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner is hotfooting it around the world lately, last week to Saudi Arabia and the UAE… last month to China. The purpose of his trip, Geithner told reporters in Paris, he was doing this tour ”to make sure we keep working with [...]

Economic destruction of America a real threat, debts too massive for paper to absorb, mysteries still surround Madoff, the Goldman scam, 57 banks have now gone under this year, families struggle to pay college bills, TARP a mystery to taxpayers, no stability at AIG, jobless benefits drying up for workersThe US Illuminists are gambling big. [...]