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The weekly jobless claims figure came in at 474,000. That is up 17,000 from the previous week. Revisions of the two prior weeks put the net surge at 18,000. The 4-week average is 473,750. All numbers are seasonally-adjusted.
This latest data is the highest seasonal adjustment we have seen since the stock market improved and since [...]

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Last week after the Thanksgiving holidays, the Supreme Court started to hear oral arguments in Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Dep’t of Environmental Protection, a case of eminent domain.  This is the biggest case since the court extended the use of eminent domain in the landmark Kelo v. City of New London case in [...]

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Paul Krugman and Bruce Bartlett debated on PBS whether President Obama should divert money from the TARP program to a jobs program to combat high unemployment (Hat tip Mark Thoma).  Here is the video and a transcript of part of the exchange. I have bolded the parts with which I agree:

JUDY WOODRUFF:Paul Krugman, to [...]

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I am not sure I buy Meredith Whitney’s assertion that the government is “out of bullets” in its quest to prop up the economy. It’s a matter of political will more than anything else. Nevertheless, I do agree with her basic premise in the CNBC video below that the financial sector is likely to see [...]

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(Video embedded above)

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I happen to think we are in (an unsustainable) recovery. And that means that the labour market, while poor is improving.  This is why my headline from the latest employment figures was “Unemployment rate recedes as worst of this downturn is over.”
Nevertheless, we shouldn’t see the decline as any more than a one-off for now. [...]

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In the past few weeks I have been alarmed about the growing debate about deficits and taxes, so much so that I have moved to a double dip baseline from one of a multi-year recovery.  I find it in total disregard of past economic history that we are moving in this direction so quickly.
So, [...]

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From the U.S. Department of Labor:
In the week ending Nov. 28, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 457,000, a decrease of 5,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 462,000. The 4-week moving average was 481,250, a decrease of 14,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 495,500.

As I said last week, [...]

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Gallup’s monthly economic  survey breaks down the employment situation by region in the U.S.. No region is doing great, but the West is doing the worst and the situation is getting worse.  Here is what they say:
During a week of intense government focus on jobs, punctuated by the president’s jobs summit, the Gallup Job Creation [...]

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This is an important question which Brad DeLong asks (Hat tip Mark Thoma). Here’s the logic:
Right now, if you ask the decisive members of congress—by which I mean the Blue Dog Democrats in the House, or the most conservative Democrats and most liberal Republicans in the Senate —why the president and the Congress are not [...]