Finance

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new unemployment numbers yesterday, showing that 467,000 jobs were lost in June. The unemployment rate now stands at 9.5 percent, with 14.7 million people jobless.

On Wednesday morning, the start of the new fiscal year, lawmakers in California were unable to agree on a balanced budget.  The result is that vendors and local agencies will receive IOUs from the state's government instead of checks for the money owed.

The disagreement that resulted in the rare decision of IOUs occurred because Republicans would not give into Democrats plans to close a gap of $24.3 billion between spending and income. 

This year California has experienced its worst loss in revenues from personal income taxes since the Great Depression and thus, the state risks running out of money later this month.  

Hopefully the state's government will be able to agree on a course of action to balance their expenses.  If not, Californians will be getting chummy with IOUs.

Read more here.

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During good economic times, credit card companies push a great deal of credit on consumers. Now, as credit markets contract, credit card companies are raising interest rates and cutting credit limits on their customers. But they’re not simply slashing credit limits for all of their cardholders.

Ruth Madoff, wife of disgraced financier Bernie Madoff, made her first public comments since her husband's conviction today, after her husband was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Many pundits have claimed that Ruth Madoff's silence shows that she is not sympathetic to the many victims of her husbands fraud. Today, however, she tried to dispel those feelings about her.

"From the moment I learned from my husband that he had committed an enormous fraud, I have had two thoughts - first, that so many people who trusted him would be ruined financially and emotionally, and second, that my life with the man I have known for over 50 years was over. Many of my husband’s investors were my close friends and family. And in the days since December, I have read, with immense pain, the wrenching stories of people whose life savings have evaporated because of his crime."

Read more about Ruth Madoff here 

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On Monday, Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years for the multibillion-dollar fraud scheme he committed. Watch as the victims react to the news of the sentence.  

That is the question that the New York Times should have been asking in an article that reported President Obama's opposition to taxing imported items from countries that have not taken steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions.