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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: puborectalis who wrote (110529)	8/12/2011 10:43:33 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224755

Confidence among U.S. consumers plunged in August to the lowest level since May 1980, adding to concern that weak employment gains and volatility in the stock market will prompt households to retrench. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment slumped to 54.9 from 63.7 the prior month. The gauge was projected to decline to 62, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. The biggest one-week slump in stocks since 2008 and the threat of default on the nation’s debt may have exacerbated consumers’ concerns as unemployment hovers above 9 percent and companies are hesitant to hire. Rising pessimism poses a risk household spending will cool further, hindering a recovery that Federal Reserve policy makers said this week was already advancing “considerably slower” than projected. “The mood is very depressed,” said Chris Christopher, an economist at IHS Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts. “Consumers are very fatigued and very uncertain. In the short term, people are going to pull back on spending.” Estimates of 69 economists for the confidence measure ranged from 59 to 66.5, according to the Bloomberg survey. The index averaged 89 in the five years leading up to the recession that began in December 2007. Stocks, which initially pared gains after the report, climbed as higher-than-estimated earnings tempered concern the economy is slowing. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 0.8 percent to 1,182.45 at 10:37 a.m. in New York. Treasuries increased, pushing down the yield on the benchmark 10-year note to 2.24 percent from 2.34 percent late yesterday.

To: puborectalis who wrote (110529)	8/12/2011 10:50:18 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 224755

A federal appeals court struck down as unconstitutional the central provision of President Barack Obama’s health-care law requiring most Americans get coverage, bringing the 2010 act ever-closer to the U.S. Supreme Court. The 2 to 1 ruling conflicts with an earlier decision by a federal appeals panel in Cincinnati, which upheld the individual mandate. The provision exceeds Congress’s power to regulate commerce, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled today, affirming in part a lower court in a lawsuit filed by 26 states. “This guarantees that the Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of the individual mandate, and makes it very likely that the court’s ruling will come by the end of June 2012,” said Kevin Walsh, an assistant professor at the University of Richmond School of Law in Virginia. The U.S. Supreme Court often decides to accept cases where two or more of the federal appeals courts are in disagreement. Plaintiffs in the Cincinnati case have already asked the high court to review that ruling. A third federal appeals panel in Richmond, Virginia, has heard arguments in two cases brought over the health care law and has yet to rule. In today’s ruling, the majority wrote that the “mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority.” The law requires “Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them repurchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives.” While throwing out the mandate, the panel overruled the lower court’s decision in that case to reject the entire health care law as a result.