President Obama announced on Monday his plans to extend what have become known as the "Bush era tax cuts" for one year for families earning less than $250,000 per year.

For over a year President Obama has come under intense scrutiny for the country's poor economic numbers. Last Friday's jobs report showing that unemployment in June held steady at 8.2 percent did little to bolster the claim that his administration is getting the economy back on track.

"Everybody agrees we've got to do something about these deficits and these debts," Obama said in a press conference in the White House East Room on Monday. more >>

The largest emergency overnight shelter for the homeless in Los Angeles, housing up to 600 people per night, is struggling to survive because of cuts in federal funding and an increased number of poor in a downturned economy, said the shelter's president.

"We need to come up with payroll for this week. Without the payroll I don't know if we'll be able to go forward," said Brenda Wilson, who along with her twin sister, Lynda Moran, operates New Image Shelter for the Homeless.

"This year the need for services all across the board – in the shelter, in our programs that serve homeless families with children – there's an increase," Wilson told The Christian Post Friday. "We are seeing an increase with women, homeless runaway youth, families, and an increase in Asians." more >>

A new Gallup poll released Thursday shows that 68 percent of Americans surveyed blame former President George Bush for the nation's economic problems, while 52 percent say President Obama is responsible.

 When a similar poll was taken six months after Obama took office in January 2009, 80 percent of Americans gave Bush a great deal or moderate share of the blame. Since then, the Obama administration has consistently laid the responsibility for the economic recession at the feet of President Bush.

The percentage blaming Bush in August 2010 had decreased to 70 percent – which has held steady over the years. more >>

In a Thursday speech, President Barack Obama will argue that he needs four more years to undo the damage done under his predecessor, President George W. Bush.

The Obama campaign's new tactic will be to convince voters that they would be worse off with his Republican rival, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, as president because Romney would be similar to Bush, according to an analysis by Andy Sullivan and Caren Bohan for Reuters. Sullivan and Bohan spoke with some Obama campaign insiders for the report.

With the economy in poor shape, many Democrats are coming to the conclusion that they need to contrast Obama's achievements with the state of the economy when he took office in 2009. more >>

The national debt is much larger than most people think, $50 trillion instead of $15.7 trillion, a report by financial services firm Deloitte says. Besides the true debt, the report describes four additional risk factors that deserve attention when considering the extent of the U.S. debt crisis.

The federal government is currently adding about $4 billion per day to the national debt, which comes to about $750 per household per month.

The typical way of calculating the national debt would currently report over $15.7 trillion. This is how much cash is currently owed (including what the government owes itself). This number does not, however, take into account future unfunded liabilities, or payments that the federal government has already promised to make but does not have the revenue streams needed to make those payments. When measuring the national debt on this accrual basis, Deloitte says, the United States actually owes over $50 trillion. more >>

The U.S. economy is currently entering a recession, argues John P. Hussman, Ph.D., the head of an investment company. Others, from both the left and the right of the political spectrum, have similar forecasts about the country's immediate future.

"By our analysis, the U.S. economy is presently entering a recession. Not next year; not later this year; but now," Hussman wrote Monday in a commentary on the Hussman Funds website.

Hussman believes that more evidence that the economy has entered a recession will be forthcoming in the next few months, "but through a constant process of denial in which every deterioration is dismissed as transitory, and every positive outlier is celebrated as a resumption of growth." more >>