Blog Posts by Peter Gorenstein

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A majority of Americans think President Obama's jobs plan won't help lower the 9.1% U.S. unemployment rate: 51% say it won't work, while just 40% think it will create enough jobs to lower the jobless rate, according to a recent Bloomberg News poll.

Jeffrey Miron, director of undergraduate studies in the department of economics at Harvard University and senior fellow at the Cato Institute agrees with the majority for several reasons.

The first part of "The American Jobs Act" focuses on helping small businesses though tax cuts.

Specific ideas, according to the White House, include:

• Cutting the payroll tax in half for 98 percent of businesses: The President's plan will cut in half the taxes paid by businesses on their first $5 million in payroll, targeting the benefit to the 98 percent of firms that have payroll below this threshold.
• A complete payroll tax holiday for added workers or increased wages: The President's plan will completely

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President Obama is battling falling approval ratings, an economy that hasn't meaningfully recovered and a Congress that is committed to thwarting all his political ambitions.

72% of Americans say the U.S. economy is on the wrong course, according to the latest Bloomberg News poll. That same poll shows as many as 62% of Americans disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy and his approval ratings are down to a low of 45%.

Ugly.

However, odds are Obama will win re-election, says Gerald Celente publisher of the Trends Journal. Head-to-head, the President would defeat the top three GOP candidates - Mitt Romney, Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann, he says in the accompanying clip.

Why?

"He (Obama) will promise the people something while the [Republicans] are promising to take way from them," says Celente, referring to the GOP's focus on spending cuts and restructuring of entitlement programs. In other words, it's not a vote of confidence,

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The Great Recession is technically over but with more than 22 million Americans un- and underemployed, six million who have been out of work for more than six months, the situation is still dire.

It's especially bad for America's young workers, who are facing a "depression-era crisis," according to Tamara Draut, vice president of policy and program for Demos and author of Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead.

"It's become harder for anyone of this generation to either work or educate their way into the middle class," Draut tells The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task in the accompanying clip.

The result has been higher than average unemployment in this group. In 2010, the unemployment rate among 17-24 year olds was 17.3%. The reality is even worse for minorities. Latinos of that age suffered 20.1% jobless rate; for African-Americans it was 28.8%.

Draut says the country's declining manufacturing base is to blame for the plight

Eleven years into a gold bull market, Marc Faber publisher of the Gloom Boom and Doom report still doesn't think gold is in a bubble. Joining us via Skype from Chiang Mai, Thailand Thursday, Faber told the Daily Ticker's Aaron Task there are fundamental reasons why gold, already nearly 30% higher for they year, will continue to gain value.

Faber admits the price of the precious metal may remain volatile; after hitting a new high of $1923.70 on Tuesday, gold has fallen about $100 per ounce.

But in the long-term "gold will be very well supported" because of global demographics and the continued debasement of fiat currencies, including the U.S. dollar. Compare gold prices to the amount of wealth created in the emerging markets over the last decade and the increase in the monetary base around the world, the price of gold is "relatively low," says Faber. Compare it to the quality of politicians and at $1,800 per ounce gold is "dirt cheap," he half jokes. He won't put a price target on the

President Obama is scheduled Thursday to unveil his plan to put Americans back to work. According to early reports, the plan follows a similar script the President used in 2009: government stimulus.

Specifically, the plan calls for $300 billion in government spending through tax cuts, infrastructure spending and aid to state and local governments.

"Almost half the stimulus would come from tax cuts, which include an extension of a two percentage-point reduction in the payroll tax paid by workers due to expire Dec. 31 and a new decrease in the portion of the tax paid by employers," Al Hunt of Bloomberg reports.

The GOP may back the tax cuts but is likely to reject the overall plan on its face, calling it a repeat of failed measures.

Setting aside the GOP reaction ("We hate it!") and the likelihood of it passing ("Not over my dead body"), in the accompanying clip, The Daily Ticker's Henry Blodget asks Yahoo! Finance economics editor Daniel Gross if, in fact, the plan is a good one?

Tax

More than half Americans disapprove of President Obama's job performance. 51% of adults surveyed in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll don't think the President is doing good job. Only 44% approve of the job he's doing. Adding insult to injury, 44% of those surveyed say they are more likely to vote Republican in 2012 versus 40% that are more likely to vote Democratic. That's a reversal from earlier polls which showed the Democrats in the lead.

This is bad news for the President ahead of his Thursday jobs speech and following a month where the economy didn't add any jobs. (The poll was taken Aug. 27-31, before the August payroll number was released.)

New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman says the country is suffering from high unemployment because the government has been preoccupied, or he puts it, distracted by deficit reduction, when they should have been spending money on job creation. What the country needs is a government spending program that will

August was in like a bear and out like a bull. Stocks closed moderately higher Wednesday, stretching the equity market's winning strike to four consecutive days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is once again higher for the year. And, the Dow has been up seven of the last eight trading sessions.

A positive factory orders report helped boost stocks Wednesday, but that likely wasn't the only reason. Investors may be baking in another round of stimulus from the Federal Reserve following the release of the August FOMC minutes and the Chicago Fed President Charles Evans' comments on CNBC Tuesday. Both hint at the possibility of another round of QE which is viewed by stock investors as a reason to keep taking more risk.

In the accompanying clip, The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task and Michael Pento of EuroPacific Capital discuss the Fed's plans and the state of the U.S. economy.

Pento is a vehement critic of the Fed's easy money policies who believes pumping up assets like stocks come at a great

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Nobody's perfect. Not even the "bond king" Bill Gross. The Pimco co-founder and manager of the $244 billion Total Return Fund tells the Financial Times betting against U.S. Treasuries was a mistake.

The Total Return Fund sold all its U.S. Treasury holdings this winter thinking Treasuries were the "most overvalued" fixed income asset (as he told The Daily Ticker in March) and an improving economy would create inflation, thereby making the low-yielding debt less attractive. Gross tells the FT he erred by being too optimistic on the U.S. economy. "I get that it was my/our mistake in thinking that the US economy can chug along at 2 per cent real growth rates. It doesn't look like it can." Gross has been proven wrong and his fund has suffered. As of Monday, Pimco's flagship fund ranked 501th out of 589 bond funds in its category, says the FT.

Gross was also burnt by the European sovereign debt crisis and a stock market sell off that drove investors