Economy
Boston Fed Chairman Calls for More Inflation, Even If It Doesn't Help Economy
Written by Thomas R. Eddlem
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President and CEO Eric S. Rosengren told a Babson College audience November 1 he favored the Federal Reserve continuing QE3 policies at least until unemployment falls below the 7.25 percent marker, even if the policies fail to stop another recessionary spike in unemployment.
After learning that the White House had failed to enforce the law in order to protect President Obama’s reelection chances from potential negative feedback, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) wrote a letter dated October 25 asking the president to comply with the legal requirement that agencies publish their regulatory agendas on a semiannual basis.
Enough Spent on Welfare in 2011 to Give Every Poor Household Nearly $60,000
Written by John Larabell
According to an October 16 memorandum prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) for the Senate Budget Committee, the federal government spent $746 billion on means-tested welfare programs in 2011. As the U.S. Census Bureau notes, there were 16.8 million households living below the poverty level in America in 2011. In other words, if the federal government were to give this money directly to the impoverished households, all 16.8 million households would have received over $44,000. This is double the 2011 federal poverty rate of $22,350 for a family of four, and nearly double the 2012 poverty rate of $23,050 for a family of four.
As the deadline to extend the Bush-era tax cuts looms, economists have agreed that the pending tax hikes would be devastating to the economy, and that permitting their expiration would have about twice the impact on economic growth as government spending cuts under the sequester.
The preliminary report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Friday about the nation's economic activity during the last quarter was called "a nasty surprise" by an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
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