The Internet has changed how people communicate and do things like pay bills. Thus, it is no surprise that social media has changed how debt collectors find and communicate with people. Today, it is easier than ever before for collection agencies and their staff to hunt down debtors. With a simple search, one can find a wealth of information about an individual: everything from their phone number to their current address. This is why you need to be careful about what content you put on the Internet and why you should not hide from debt collectors. When you post information  [ Read More ]

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama square off in the first presidential debate. By NBC News Updated at 10:55 p.m. ET Social Security Tonight, President Barack Obama made a claim about Social Security. OBAMA: Social Security is structurally sound, it’s gonna have to be tweaked the way it was by Ronald Reagan and Speaker, Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill. But it is, the basic structure is sound. President Obama said that, unlike Medicare, Social Security does not need to be fundamentally fixed to remain solvent. But according to the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security will run into financial  [ Read More ]

According to the State of New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the state’s economy continues to lag, with the loss of nearly 12,000 jobs and a 35-year record high unemployment rate of 9.8 percent as of July 2012. The unemployment rate for Essex county hovered at 11.6 percent, surpassed only by Passaic county which had an unemployment rate of 12 percent in July. However, things might get a little easier for both New Jersey business owners and unemployed individuals if a proposed bill providing a tax credit to small businesses hiring the unemployed is passed. As reported by  [ Read More ]

By DAVE CLARKE and LAUREN FRENCH | 9/7/12 8:37 AM EDT Updated: 9/7/12 1:43 PM EDT | Politico New jobs numbers released on Friday came in lower than expected, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign a day after the president closed out the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., by asking voters to give his administration four more years to get the economy on the right track. Republicans jumped all over the disappointing report and the new numbers threaten to dampen the enthusiasm Democrats hoped to build among voters following this week’s convention where they promoted Obama’s  [ Read More ]

September 3, 2012 |By Rob Tornoe This is commentary from political blogger and cartoonist Rob Tornoe. As we celebrate Labor Day by grilling burgers and throwing back some beers, consider this: one in four households in New Jersey live one emergency away from falling into poverty.   That’s the finding of the United Way of Northern New Jersey, which released the results of an unprecedented five-year study that tries to shine a giant spotlight on the status of the state’s working poor. According to its ALICE study, an acronym for Asset Limited Income Constrained, and Employed, 1.1 million New Jersey households  [ Read More ]

By Eve Tahmincioglu, Today contributor There’s a simple workplace axiom: You put in your hours and get paid for them. Alas, this doesn’t always happen. There’s been a record spike in wage and hour violation claims by employees thanks to sustained tough economic times, an increase in enforcement by the government, and confusion over — or disregard of — overtime pay provisions. Already this year, there have been a record number of lawsuits filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which covers wage and hour provisions, with 7,064 filed so far this year. That’s up from 7,006 filed for all  [ Read More ]

By Ed Beeson/The Star-Ledger Starting Saturday, more than 26,000 out-of-work New Jerseyans who have been searching for a job the longest will have a safety net yanked out from under them. The same prospect is looming for 100,000 more as federal unemployment benefits are due to expire by the end of the year. Because of a quirk in federal law and the state’s slowly improving employment picture, so-called extended benefits for New Jersey’s jobless will stop Saturday. These benefits cover people who have been out of work and collecting unemployment for between 79 weeks and 99 weeks. But ultimately, the  [ Read More ]

(Reuters) – Small businesses in June reported cuts to their staff for the first time this year, the National Federation of Independent Business said on Thursday in the latest sign the economy has lost a step. A survey by the NFIB of 740 small businesses found that the seasonally adjusted average change in employment per firm fell by 0.11 in the three months through June after being flat in the period through May. The reading has not been negative since December. “The figures suggest that job creation has been very weak,” said NFIB economist William Dunkelberg. The survey, which was  [ Read More ]

By Charles Riley @CNNMoneyInvest NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon will tell Congress Wednesday that the bank’s massive loss can be blamed on insufficient risk controls and a failure by traders to understand the bets they were placing. Dimon’s prepared testimony, provided by the bank, indicates that the CEO will sound a note of contrition before members of the Senate Banking Committee. We have let a lot of people down,” Dimon will say, “and we are sorry for it.” JPMorgan (JPM, Fortune 500) announced last month that it had suffered a multi-billion dollar loss on trades built  [ Read More ]

Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) has announced that even if the New Jersey state legislature sends him a bill to increase the state’s minimum wage, he will veto it. Christie claims that the result of the bill — which would raise the Garden State’s minimum wage to $8.50 and index it to inflation — would be “more layoffs“: “We’re telling small business owners that not only are we going to raise their costs by a buck and a quarter, but we’re also going to raise it with these cost-of-living adjustments,” Christie, a 49-year-old Republican, said during a town-hall style meeting in  [ Read More ]

By MOTOKO RICH Published: June 9, 2012 | NY Times PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — This retirement oasis in the desert has long beckoned those who want to spin out their golden years playing golf and sitting by the pool in the arid sunshine. But for Clare Keany, who turned 62 last fall and cannot find work, it feels more like a prison. Just a few miles from the gated estates of corporate chieftains and Hollywood stars, Ms. Keany lives in a tiny mobile home, barely getting by on little more than $1,082 a month from Social Security. “I would rather  [ Read More ]

By Ed Beeson/The Star-Ledger | NJ.com Call it a warm winter hangover. Friday’s news that the U.S. economy added only 120,000 jobs in March disappointed economists and investors who were expecting employment gains closer to 205,000. But one of the theories that emerged to explain the sudden drop-off was that the mild winter spurred hiring in some sectors — construction, retail sales and temporary help — so much so that employers felt they didn’t need to add more to their rosters last month. “This could be a bit of a payback for it,” Anika Khan, an economist with Wells Fargo,  [ Read More ]

Source: www.beaconequity.com Trends Research Institute founder Gerald Celente predicts that a war with Iran is scheduled to cover up the next leg down to the financial collapse of the U.S. and political upheaval a collapse engenders. “I’ve been in this business now since 1980, and I’m always marveled at the schemes undreamed of that they come up with,” Celente told GoldSeek Radio host Chris Waltzek. “So, when things should collapse, they often don’t, because they come up with another scheme. So, here’s the scheme undreamed of that I believe is going to be America’s worst nightmare, and that’s war with  [ Read More ]

Oil is $120, and Europe is Europe, but the evidence of a real recovery is growing. In the last three months of 2011, U.S. economic growth kissed 3% for the first time in two years, according to today’s GDP revisions. Under the hood, the news is still good. Consumer spending is growing faster than we previously thought. Government is still a drag, but that makes the 3% figure all the more impressive. If the public sector had simply continued spending at an even pace, this might have been the best quarter of the recovery. Here’s a look at Reuters’ fantastic  [ Read More ]

Economic growth doesn’t always mean jobs growth. Look at the current U.S. recovery: According to the Commerce Department, the economy has been growing for the past 10 straight quarters. In fact, the U.S. now produces more goods and services than it did before the downturn began in 2007. Unfortunately, this greater output is being done with 6 million fewer workers. Corporate profits are at an all-time high. But companies are sitting on record amounts of cash, or are investing in equipment rather than their work force. The average monthly jobs growth has only been 135,000, which barely keeps up with  [ Read More ]