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President Barack Obama recently visited Penn State University to introduce his Better Buildings Initiative, an incentive program intended to stimulate energy-efficient retrofits to existing commercial buildings.  The initiative is also designed to create jobs in the construction and manufacturing industries. Despite the long-term economic benefits of energy efficiency, many building owners often run into difficulty […]

The results of the long-awaited 2010 U.S. Census are in and reveal some interesting statistics.  One is the fact that 85 percent of the nation’s population growth over the last 10 years is attributable to minorities – primarily Hispanics, who make up the gains made in states that will add new seats in the House […]

Implementation of the historic Dodd-Frank bill – which President Barack Obama signed into law last July to regulate Wall Street against the excesses that led to the Great Recession — is in danger of being gutted if Republicans’ proposed deep spending cuts become a reality.  Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) pointedly criticized Republicans’ proposal to slash […]

New-home construction fell 4.3 percent in December compared with November to its lowest level in more than a year to a seasonally adjusted rate of 529,000 starts for 2010.  December saw the lowest level of new home starts since October of 2009, according to Department of Commerce statistics.  Starts ended the year 8.2 percent below […]

The United States’ 2010 GDP soared at an annualized rate of 3.2 percent, as consumer spending rose by the greatest levels in four years.   “The consumer really drove the economy in the 4th quarter,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia.  “The economy has moved beyond recovery to a […]

Chicago is # 1!  Unfortunately, this is not good news because the Windy City has been ranked by one study as having the worst traffic congestion in the nation.   The news was one finding of the Urban Mobility Report (UMR),  conducted by the Texas Transportation Institute, the United States’ largest university-affiliated transportation research agency.  Earlier […]

Rising gas prices and the dearth of jobs are negatively impacting consumer confidence and bringing the first hint of inflation in a long time.   The Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed an increase of 0.5 percent in December, primarily a result of skyrocketing gas costs, according to the Department of Labor.  The AAA reports that the […]

At the instruction of Congress, the Federal Reserve has released the names of the approximately 21,000 recipients of $3.3 trillion in aid provided during the financial meltdown –without doubt the nation’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  Not surprisingly, two of the top beneficiaries were Bank of America and Wells Fargo, who received approximately […]

The Federal Reserve has observed that Wall Street’s big banks eased credit terms for hedge funds and private equity firms in the 4th quarter of 2010.   More banks believe that credit terms have “eased somewhat” than those that think it has “tightened somewhat” in the last three months of 2010, according to the Fed’s year-end […]

How crucial is human interconnection to our health and well-being?  Connections are of vital importance, if  human beings do not want to feel alienated from their fellow man, writes New York Times columnist David Brooks in The New Yorker.  “We are living in the middle of a revolution in consciousness.  Over the past few decades, […]