PODCAST: Exporting gas, cars, and jobless claims
Tomorrow we’re expecting all important monthly jobs report. But numbers released today show fewer Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week. New claims fell for a third straight week. Initial claims dropped by 25,000 to seasonally adjusted 370,000, according to the Labor Department.
Apple has famously produced much of it’s hardware in China, but that’s about to change. The company just revealed plans to start producing some Mac computers in the U.S. next year.
We’ve all heard America’s full of natural gas — trillions of cubic feet of the stuff. So why not export some of it and make money?
Well a new Energy Department reports says that’s exactly what the U.S. should do. And it finds there’s a net economic benefits to exporting American natural gas. So why aren’t we doing it?
It appears the battle over what to do about fiscal cliff is all about perception. Today President Barack Obama is trying to make his case by visiting a middle class family in Northern Virginia to show how ordinary Americans will be impacted. There are only a few weeks to go before a pack of steep tax hikes and budget cuts are set to go into effect. That is, unless Congress and the White House can reach a deal. How does the public views this debate? We take a look with Attitude Check, our weekly partnership with the polling firm Gallup.
In New York, state police are in a desperate search for a woman. What’d she do wrong? Being nice at Christmas. The woman approached a state trooper near Albany and gave him a holiday card. She was impressed with his work. When the trooper got home he opened the card and found inside $1,000. But he can’t keep it. Hence the search. Police want to ask her: Where should we donate that money?
State governments are still getting paid from a 1998 settlement with the tobacco industry. This year they’re expected to collect $26 billion — that’s record revenue, according to a report out this morning. But for all that cash, states are not expected to spend very much to help people quit smoking.
GM now sells more cars in China than it does in the U.S. As Marketplace China bureau chief Rob Schmitz reports, the company may soon look beyond China to the lucrative Southeast Asian market.
And finally, don’t have a job? Here’s a plane ticket out of the country. That was New Zealand’s strategy. The country was buying one-way airline tickets to Australia for its citizens so Kiwis could find work and to get them off subsides. It was part of a transition-to-work-grant program. To get the grant applicants had to say what was keeping them from a job — to which some replied, this country. Sixteen people had their airfare paid by the program before it was cancelled.
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