EconomicCrisis.US

The tornadoes and floods that have devastated parts of the South and Midwest have also hammered the local economies – flooding farmlands, suspending factory work and disrupting energy production.

Yet for the U.S. economy overall, the damage will likely be scant. At most, the disasters might knock one-tenth of 1 percentage point off national economic growth in the April-June quarter, Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner estimates.

“It’s so small, you aren’t going to notice it,” said Patrick Newport, an economist at IHS Global Insight.
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In January 1981, when Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th U.S. president, he declared the federal budget to be out of control.

The deficit had reached $74 billion and the federal debt was at $930 billion. Reagan said that a stack of $1,000 bills equivalent to what Uncle Sam owed would be 67 miles high. Chump change and height today.

Now that same stack of $1,000 bills would reach 900 miles high. In $1 bills it would pile up to the moon — and back. Not once, but twice.

Like a drunken sailor, America continues to borrow about $125 billion a month — $10 billion of it from China. The United States now owes China $1.3 trillion.
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Highlights
According to the revised report by the Census Bureau, overall poverty in 2009 stood at 15.7 percent, or 47.8 million people. MSNBC

According to the revised report by the Census Bureau, people residing in the suburbs, the Northeast and West were the regions mostly likely to have poor people – nearly 1 in 5 in the West. MSNBC

According to the revised report by the Census Bureau, the official poverty rate for those ages 18 to 64 is currently 12.9 percent, the highest since 1960s levels that launched the war on poverty. Working-age poverty has increased to 14.8 percent. MSNBC
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U.S. stock futures hugged the flat line Friday, as investors remained cautious before the release of housing and consumer-sentiment data and the long holiday weekend.

Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1 point to 12410, and those on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index were virtually unchanged at 1327. Nasdaq 100 futures edged up 2.25 points to 2327.50.

On Thursday, the blue-chip Dow index finished marginally higher.

Caution dominated sentiment early Friday, the last trading session before a long weekend. Markets in the U.S. and the U.K. will be closed Monday for national holidays.
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