Economy

With two-thirds of the year now over, nothing is resolved about the economy, the housing market, the credit markets or the stock market. What a way to get back to work on Tuesday after summer vacation. As the curtain comes up on the final four months of 2008, here's a look at some of the key issues that will preoccupy investors: The U.S. economy.. Recession? Depression? Recovery? None of the above? The script that many analysts wrote for the domestic economy at the start of this year was for a first-half slowdown or even contraction (recession)

It takes 10,000 professional truck drivers to move all the goods that come into the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. And it's no wonder. Our two ports handle 40% of all goods imported to the United States. A lot of the jobs generated by the ports, including those of unionized longshoremen and railroad workers, pay good wages that contribute to a solid middle class in the region. But many of the truck drivers who serve the ports find themselves stuck at the bottom of the economic ladder because of the way their employers classify and exploit them.

Expanding your business in a down economy can be difficult. In many cases it requires you to think differently and more creatively, as well as to re-evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, experts say. In the end, this can be a great time to reconnect with customers and find new opportunities that you may not have explored during better times. "In a robust economy it's easy to become complacent," said small-business expert Rhonda Abrams, president of the Planning Shop, a Palo Alto-based publisher of books for entrepreneurs.

The savory smell of nutmeg and cinnamon wafts through the Azusa bakery, where dozens of workers in blue gloves and hairnets cook up L.A. Unified's newest star product. The "Glorious Morning" muffin is chewy and moist, packed with whole wheat, raisins and carrots - along with flaxseed for heart health and brain development. The muffin is good for children but also for the bakery's business. The Los Angeles Unified School District's order with Buena Vista Food Products Inc. to bake 4 million servings of muffins, coffeecake and corn bread every month has doubled the firm's business and created 100 jobs this year.

Under fire for his assertion that the American economy is fundamentally sound, John McCain moved Tuesday to assure voters of his empathy and accused Barack Obama of attempting to take political advantage of the roiling Wall Street crisis. Obama on Tuesday castigated McCain as having been "scornful" of the very Wall Street regulations he was now espousing, and he launched television ads mocking McCain's Monday statement. The Arizona senator spent seven national TV interviews and two campaign events seeking to make it clear that he understood the depth of concern about the rocky economy.

Imagine a world where prices of all sorts of goods and services just keep moving down. Your weekly grocery bill shrinks. Your hairstylist gladly accepts 15% less, just to get the business. At long last, movie theaters even stop gouging you on popcorn. Good times? Sure — until your employer cuts your salary or fires you to cope with the need to reduce prices. Suddenly, the economy is in the grip of a vicious spiral, as falling consumption forces prices lower, driving unemployment up, which in turn drives consumption and prices down further.

The country's prime minister said Canadians don't need a Parliament that acts like the U.S. Congress and panics like the U.S. Treasury Department. Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticized the way the U.S. has managed the credit crisis a day after political rivals said during a debate that the Canadian leader was out of touch with the seriousness of Canada's slowing economy. The Conservative Party leader said he needs a strong mandate from voters in the Oct. 14 national elections so he can deal with the economy.

The federal deficit will dip below $1 trillion for the first time in five years, a substantial improvement in the fiscal outlook, but one that masks a persistent budget gap that will probably worsen later this decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The last two years of budget battles between the White House and congressional Republicans, coupled with the recovering economy, have slowed the government's gush of red ink. But steps to reduce the deficit have acted as a drag on the economy, slowing the recovery, the budget office said.

The Fourth of July weekend seems like a good time to examine some of the heat and rhetoric lately surrounding one of the basic building blocks of our society: immigration. There is widespread concern that too many immigrants are coming in and, worse, that waves of unskilled workers will form a permanent underclass and change the historic dynamic of American society. These are serious matters. Immigration is part of the DNA of America, and it's as necessary today as ever.

Worried by the worsening economy, Kristen Olson decided she'd better start saving money. She tallied her expenses and was walloped by sticker shock: She and her roommates were spending $900 a year for cable TV. "I'm not watching $900 worth of cable," said the 25-year-old advertising account coordinator, who lives in North Hollywood. She's trying to persuade her roommates to drop the service.

The economic contributions of U.S. copyright industries reached new heights last year, for the first time contributing more than $1 trillion to the gross domestic product and accounting for 6.5% of the nation's economy, according to a new report. The study tracks the economic effect and contributions of U.S. industries engaged in the creation and distribution of computer software, video games, books, newspapers, periodicals and journals, as well as motion pictures, music, radio and television programming.

Michal Ruminski was 6 when his father took him through a local supermarket here. The store shelves were empty, except for some bottles of vinegar, but that was precisely the point. His father wanted the young boy never to forget the deprivations of living in a backward communist state. Today, streets once patrolled by soldiers and armored vehicles now teem with trendy cafes and tony boutiques, not to mention grocery stores filled to bursting. And Ruminski, now 39, as managing partner of a venture capital firm, can provide his wife and his own 6-year-old son all the comforts of life.

Like many Republicans - what's more, like many Americans - I regard Ronald Reagan as my political hero and inspiration. For conservatives who came of age in the 1960s and '70s, President Reagan offered a principled and compassionate argument for individual freedom and an equally compelling case for personal responsibility. In 1989, Reagan described his view of America "as a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.

BEIJING - The Chinese leadership is hyping a Communist Party meeting that began Saturday as the greatest financial rethink since leader Deng Xiaoping launched China's economic revolution in the late 1970s. In keeping with past patterns, the Chinese will not divulge specifics of the four-day session here until it concludes. But proposals that have leaked out in recent weeks include easing business regulations and liberalizing interest and currency exchange rates. The economic revolution launched more than three decades ago is still unfinished, leaving the country with a hybrid economy sometimes waggishly referred to as "capitalism with Chinese characteristics.

VH1 will look at hip-hop's influence on culture with a four-part documentary, the network announced  Wednesday.   Based on Steve Stoute's best-selling book, “The Tanning of America: How Hip-Hop Created a Culture That Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy,” VH1's documentary will provide a visual history of “the hip-hopification of America” -- which Stoute coined in his book as “tanning.” The series, which falls under the network's Emmy-winning...

A budget panel composed of Democratic, Republican and independent members of the Senate and House is working on ways to avoid another government shutdown like the nightmare we all were just forced to endure. As a member of that committee, I realize that our $17-trillion national debt and $700-billion deficit are serious problems that must be addressed. But I also realize that real unemployment remains close to 14%, that tens of millions of Americans with jobs are paid horrendously low wages, that more Americans are now living in poverty than ever before, that wealth and income inequality in the U.S. is greater than in any other major country and that the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider.

There are few things the good people of Shanghai love more than shopping. And there were few shopping centers as luxurious as the city's Jinjiang Dickson Center. When it opened in 1994, the Jinjiang was China's first luxury retail mall, well situated among the leafy London plane trees of the former French Concession along the auspiciously named Changle Lu, the Street of Eternal Happiness. Across the street from the mall stood the hotel where, in 1972, President Nixon and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai signed the treaty that would formally open trade between what are now the two largest economies on the planet.

The poor economy is taking a toll even on the dead, with an increasing number of bodies in Los Angeles County going unclaimed by families who cannot afford to bury or cremate their loved ones. At the county coroner's office -- which handles homicides and other suspicious deaths -- 36% more cremations were done at taxpayers' expense in the last fiscal year over the previous year, from 525 to 712.

Spain pulled out of two years of recession in the third quarter, news that should give a boost to the efforts of its prime minister to repair the nation's economy though tax increases and spending cuts. The Bank of Spain said Wednesday that gross domestic product grew 0.1% in the third quarter, compared with a 1.2% drop in the same period a year ago. The news, while positive, has been viewed skeptically by some economists who point out the Spanish economy has slipped more than once into recession in the last five years.

WASHINGTON -- Americans are more pessimistic about the state of the economy after the partial government shutdown and debt limit fight, according to poll results released Tuesday. Just 29% of respondents in a CNN/ORC International survey said economic conditions are good, down four percentage points from late September. The figure is the lowest since December, when the nation was staring at the "fiscal cliff" combination of tax hikes and automatic spending cuts. The poll also showed that just 40% of respondents thought the economy would be in good shape a year from now, down from 50% in June.