Household income in the U.S. is weakening as the influence of the government’s stimulus plan fades, prompting economists, Federal Reserve officials and a Nobel laureate to warn that consumer spending may stumble.
Source: Bloomberg
President Barack Obama said his $787 billion stimulus bill “has worked as intended” as he pushed back against Republican criticism that his recovery program has failed to rescue the economy.
Obama, in his weekly Saturday radio and Web address, said the stimulus program is helping state governments save jobs. Were it not for the program, the president said, “state deficits would be nearly twice as large as they are now, resulting in tens of thousands of additional layoffs — layoffs that would affect police officers, teachers, and firefighters.”
Source: Bloomberg
President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus package will help put 14,200 teens and young adults to work this summer in Ohio, and most of the stimulus-funded highway projects in the state are reaching economically distressed areas, according to a federal report released Wednesday.
Source: CNBC, AP
~News submitted by upthecreek
Cisco Systems expects $47 billion of the federal stimulus money will be spent on technology.
Cisco’s fair share? About $1 billion, said Cisco’s senior vice president Bruce Klein during a visit to the company’s Research Triangle Park site Friday. Klein, based in Virginia, is responsible for making sure Cisco gets that share of the money.
Businesses like Cisco can’t receive the federal money directly, but only through projects financed by stimulus funds that are paid to local and state agencies. Toward that end, Klein put together nine teams across the company to pore over government documents and identify business opportunities with local governments, school districts, state agencies, university systems and health care organizations.
Source: News & Observer. Thanks anon for the tip.
According to Reuters: “U.S. President Barack Obama will announce steps on Monday to make it easier for small business owners to borrow money, using $730 million in stimulus funds to cut lending fees, boost loan guarantees and expand other programs, officials said.”
A provision requiring banks receiving federal bailout funds to give hiring priority to U.S. workers over foreigners with H-1B visas made it into the final version of the economic stimulus bill that President Barack Obama signed last week.
But House and Senate negotiators dropped a separate proposal that would have forced all employers benefiting from stimulus money to use the government’s Web-based E-Verify system to vet the employment status of their workers.
Source: ComputerWorld
Obama has said twice in the past few days that Caterpillar CEO James Owens indicated his company would be able to rehire some of the 20,000 recently laid-off employees. “Yesterday, Jim, the head of Caterpillar, said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off,” Obama said in Peoria.
But when asked if the stimulus could do that, Owens said, “I think, realistically, no. The honest reality is we’re probably going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again.”
Source: ABC News
According to CNN Money: “President-elect Obama said Saturday an analysis of his stimulus proposals shows that between 3 million and 4 million U.S. jobs could be saved or created by 2010, nearly 90% of them in the private sector.”
According to NYTimes: “President-elect Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are considering major expansions of government-assisted health care insurance and unemployment compensation as they begin intensive work this week on a two-year economic recovery package.”
“Other policy changes would subsidize employers’ expenses for temporarily continuing health insurance coverage to laid-off and retired workers and their dependents, as mandated under a 22-year-old federal law known as Cobra, and allow workers who lose jobs that did not come with insurance benefits to be eligible, for the first time, to apply for Medicaid coverage.”
“Obama advisers have said the package will carry a total cost of at least $775 billion.“
Oracle Layoffs Discussion (RSS)Powered by WordPress