May 11, 2012 PARIS (AP) — French President-elect Francois Hollande is suggesting that outgoing leader Nicolas Sarkozy’s government underestimated the country’s budget problems. The Socialist Hollande spoke after the European Union lowered its growth forecasts for France and the whole of the 17-country eurozone. Hollande told reporters Friday, “I have known for several weeks that [...]

By Emily Stephenson WASHINGTON | Thu May 10, 2012 4:38pm EDT (Reuters) – The Postal Service said its loss widened to $3.2 billion in the first three months of 2012 and repeated on Thursday its warning that it will likely default on payments to the federal government unless Congress passes legislation offering some relief. The [...]

Friday, 11 May 2012 By: Reuters JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, said it suffered a trading loss of at least $2 billion from a failed hedging strategy, a shock disclosure that hit financial stocks and the reputation of the bank and its CEO, Jamie Dimon. For a bank viewed as a strong risk [...]

If austerity is so terrible, how come Germany and Sweden have done so well? May 9, 2012 – WSJ By ROBERT J. BARRO The weak economic recovery in the U.S. and the even weaker performance in much of Europe have renewed calls for ending budget austerity and returning to larger fiscal deficits. Curiously, this plea [...]

Roosevelt reluctantly unleashed industry to win World War II, thereby laying the groundwork for America’s economic recovery. May 9, 2012 – WSJ By ARTHUR HERMAN If President Obama still wants to turn our economy around, it’s time for him to act more like Franklin Roosevelt—but not in the way he might think. It takes a [...]

The auto bailout makes Bain Capital look like an amateur on job losses and outsourcing. May 10, 2012 – WSJ By KARL ROVE President Barack Obama’s re-election organization is spending a lot of time attacking Mitt Romney over his careers in venture capital (investing in start-ups) and private equity (investing in troubled or failing businesses). [...]

May 10, 2012 – Ken Blackwell When politicians want to look busy while avoiding tough decisions during an election year, what do they do? They form commissions and councils. And when President Barack Obama saw Americans struggling with higher gasoline and home energy prices, did he encourage more domestic oil exploration, off-shore drilling, or coal [...]

By Larry Elder (Archive) · Thursday, May 10, 2012 National Public Radio’s Kai Ryssdal recently talked about the weak economy. His guests, two reporters from The Washington Post and The New York Times, acknowledged the obvious — that the economy is underperforming. Yet, in the 20 minutes of my sitting and listening in the car [...]

By George Will (Archive) · Thursday, May 10, 2012 BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Bill Hewlett and David Packard, tinkering in a California garage, began what became Hewlett-Packard. Steve Jobs and a friend built a computer in the California garage that became Apple’s birthplace. Bill Cook had no garage, so he launched Cook Medical in a spare [...]

May 9, 2012 Energy Security: Do America’s enemies wish us well? It’s an important question because they’ve made a big push to halt U.S. energy production. So why does the Obama administration’s policies support their aims? Energy is the lifeblood of the mighty U.S. economy, and it ought to surprise no one that America’s enemies [...]