"While short-term fixes have temporarily averted widespread access problems, they have also grown the size of the problem - and the cost of reform. The AMA is committed to fixing the Medicare payment problem once and for all for seniors, baby boomers and the physicians who care for them.<< MORE >>

President Obama's presidential campaign focused on "making" the news media cover certain issues while rarely communicating anything to the press unless it was "controlled," White House Communications Director Anita Dunn disclosed to the Dominican government at a videotaped conference. << MORE >>

According to InsideFacebook.com, 3 million of those users are older than 50. Between September 2008 and March 2009 alone, the 55-65 age group grew more than 500 percent. Boomers -- defined as Americans born between 1946 and 1964 -- are changing the face of Facebook.<< MORE >>

Statistics show that of the nation's 10.9 million self-employed workers, the largest category, 25 percent, is boomers ages 45 to 54.<< MORE >>

"The statistics show the lifestyles of the Baby Boomers are coming home to roost - they are defaulting on debts mounted up over the years which they can now no longer service - the recession has seen many Baby Boomers lose their jobs while others have had their wealth eroded," Veda Managing Director John Roberts said.<< MORE >>

If you’re retirement age and your advisor hasn’t suggested strategies to avoid running out of savings, of course you ought to be looking for another advisor!<< MORE >>

U.S. financial advisors are due for upheaval as baby boomers, controlling $10 trillion in assets, reach retirement age and shift their investment priorities, said a senior executive at asset manager BlackRock Inc. << MORE >>

Posted: 1:34 AM, September 27, 2009

trackback:  http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/the_dead_end_kids_AnwaWNOGqsXMuIlGONNX1K

The unemployment rate for young Americans has exploded to 52.2 percent -- a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. -- meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.

And worse, without a clear economic recovery plan aimed at creating entry-level jobs, the odds of many of these young adults -- aged 16 to 24, excluding students -- getting a job and moving out of their parents' houses are long. Young workers have been among the hardest hit during the current recession -- in which a total of 9.5 million jobs have been lost.

"It's an extremely dire situation in the short run," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. "This group won't do as well as their parents unless the jobs situation changes."

Al Angrisani, the former assistant Labor Department secretary under President Reagan, doesn't see a turnaround in the jobs picture for entry-level workers and places the blame squarely on the Obama administration and the construction of its stimulus bill.

"There is no assistance provided for the development of job growth through small businesses, which create 70 percent of the jobs in the country," Angrisani said in an interview last week. "All those [unemployed young people] should be getting hired by small businesses."

There are six million small businesses in the country, those that employ less than 100 people, and a jobs stimulus bill should include tax credits to give incentives to those businesses to hire people, the former Labor official said.

"If each of the businesses hired just one person, we would go a long way in growing ourselves back to where we were before the recession," Angrisani noted.

During previous recessions, in the early '80s, early '90s and after Sept. 11, 2001, unemployment among 16-to-24 year olds never went above 50 percent. Except after 9/11, jobs growth followed within two years.

A much slower recovery is forecast today. Shierholz believes it could take four or five years to ramp up jobs again.

A study from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a government database, said the damage to a new career by a recession can last 15 years. And if young Americans are not working and becoming productive members of society, they are less likely to make major purchases -- from cars to homes -- thus putting the US economy further behind the eight ball.

Angrisani said he believes that Obama's economic team, led by Larry Summers, has a blind spot for small business because no senior member of the team -- dominated by academics and veterans of big business -- has ever started and grown a business.

"The Reagan administration had people who knew of small business," he said.

"They should carve out $100 billion right now and create something like $5,000 to $6,000 job credits that would drive the hiring of young, idled workers by small business."

Angrisani said the stimulus money going to extending unemployment benefits is like a narcotic that is keeping the unemployed content -- but doing little to get them jobs.

Labor Dept. statistics also show that the number of chronically unemployed -- those without a job for 27 weeks or more -- has also hit a post-WWII high.

Applications for retirement benefits are 23 percent higher than last year, while disability claims have risen by about 20 percent. Social Security officials had expected applications to increase from the growing number of baby boomers reaching retirement, but they didn't expect the increase to be so large. << MORE >>

Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it "Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold."

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According to an annual report released by the four federal bank-regulatory agencies on Thursday, credit quality deteriorated to record levels this year.<< MORE >>

Brown had not only been seeking a bilateral meeting with Obama, but feelers were also sent out to hold a joint press conference, an event that would have boosted Brown's efforts to offer himself as a linchpin of international diplomacy.<< MORE >>

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told The Dispatch that the level of "harsh discourse in Washington has probably reached an all-time high," and he partly blamed it on "all of this trash talk about the process and about politicians 24/7" on cable television and talk radio.<< MORE >>