The U.S. government saw a budget deficit of $680.3 billion for fiscal year 2013, showed Treasury Department data on Wednesday, a 37 percent drop from the fiscal 2012 deficit and marking the first time in five years that the figure has been below $1 trillion.
More than half of employees working at the largest fast-food chains in the U.S. are earning so little in wages that they must rely on some sort of public assistance to get by, according to a new study co-published by the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Illinois on Tuesday.
The study, which came after large nationwide protests by fast-food workers this year, found that about 52 percent of U.S. fast-food workers had been dependant on at least one form of public assistance between 2007-2011, costing taxpayers nearly $7 billion a year.
Some 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted every year, according to a United Nations report published in September. Other reports suggest that the number is much higher at close to 4 billion tons.
U.S. President Barack Obama first shot to global prominence in 2004 as a uniter, not a divider. But while most of the blame for Washington’s gross dysfunction will probably lie at the feet of the Republican right, that hates Obama with a rare passion, the Obama presidency may well soon be over – at least in terms of his ability to move the policy dial at home and abroad.
As the U.S. government shutdown enters into its second week, officials from the United States Trade Representative (USTR) office have postponed plans to hold a second round of negotiations with the European Union this week on a free trade pact, claiming that financial and staffing constraints made it impossible to send a full negotiating team to Brussels.
Germany and the United Kingdom have become the first countries to issue advisories for travellers to the United States, warning of possible delays at immigration and tourist sites as the U.S. government remains partially shut due to a budget impasse.
America’s “Great Stagnation” first began in 1973, when both income and productivity started to show signs of slowing down. But thanks to the shale boom, the figures are once again on the rise and may continue to rise further.
The U.S. federal government’s partial shutdown, starting on October 1st, will cost the economy at least $300 million a day in lost output, according to a Bloomberg report, with close to 1 million federal employees now on unpaid leave, while national parks and some government services have all been closed.
The numbers don’t lie—but politicians and industry bigwigs do. While pundits still wax poetic about an era of American energy independence, Bill Powers, author of the book “Cold, Hungry and in the Dark: Exploding the Natural Gas Supply Myth,” sees productivity plummeting in almost every major shale play.
In May this year, the U.S. Internal Service (IRS) was accused of misusing its audit powers after the agency revealed that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for closer scrutiny based on their names or political themes.
The controversy subsequently led to both political and public condemnation of the agency, while the Federal Bureau of Investigation began investigating the IRS’s actions as part of a criminal probe ordered by United States Attorney General Eric Holder.
