Asked by CNBC if he believed the US risks falling into a double-dip recession , Soros said: “I think we are in it already.”

Soros also says the financial situation in Europe is even more dangerous than the collapse of Lehman Brothers. He also said a number of smaller European nations could default and leave the single-currency system, which would make sense.

“This is a major announcement and breakthrough for our state, and shows that we’re doing the things it takes to make Florida the most attractive place for business to grow,” Governor Scott said. “My primary responsibility as Florida’s governor is to be our state’s chief advocate for job creation. That’s why I focus every day on economic development issues and identifying opportunities like this one to bring to Florida.”

Time Warner will make a $5 million capital investment in the Sunshine State. State and local authorities have offered tax incentives to the company to stimulate the job creation.

The company’s CFO John Martin says the Republican-governed state is “a great place to do business” and comes with a “a talented work force”. To the state he says:

You have created a business environment where we can feel good about investing today with an eye towards growing in the future.

Enterprise Florida President & CEO Gray Swoope says the announcement is “a major score” for the state’s professional services sector, and he joined Martin in crediting the state’s “business friendly environment” for the success.

— The likelihood of a recession within the next 12 months is 26 percent. In June, the economists had put the likelihood at 15 percent.

— The economy will inch ahead at an annual rate of 2 percent in the July-September quarter and 2.2 percent from October through December. Though stronger than the growth for the first half of 2011, that isn’t enough to lower the unemployment rate much, if at all. And next year will barely be stronger.

— Weak consumer spending poses a “major” risk to the economy. In June, Americans cut their spending for the first time in nearly two years. And consumer spending fuels about 70 percent of the economy.

— The unemployment rate will end this year at 9 percent and 2012 at 8.5 percent. Those rates are slightly less than July’s 9.1 percent. But they’re more consistent with a recession than a recovery.

— The Fed’s efforts to keep interest rates at record lows may not succeed in promoting growth or easing unemployment. But its low-rate policies will likely boost stock prices.

The economists do foresee economic growth, job creation, consumer spending and home prices all rising over the next year. But the gains they expect are so slight that many Americans won’t notice.

Worse yet, these projections are actually relatively optimistic compared to projections by the financial sector. Economists at JP Morgan expect almost no economic growth and a spike in unemployment to 9.5% over the next year.

Moody’s Analytics, a sister company to credit-ratings company Moody’s Investors Service, now expects real gross domestic product to increase at an annualized rate of about 2% in the second half of this year and just over 3% next year, compared with its estimate a month ago for growth of 3.5% for the second half of this year and through 2012.

The firm attributes most of the expected decline to a loss of business, investor and consumer confidence, noting the economy’s improving fundamentals such as the strengthening of business’s balance sheets and consumers’ strides in cutting household debt.

In short, a crappy economy.

Moody’s also says it predicts a 1-in-3 change of another recession within the next 12 months. The ratings agency also says the chances of any significant economic growth or job creation have “diminished substantially”.

Americans’ economic confidence plunged to -53 in the week ending Aug. 7, a level not seen since the recession days of March 2009. This deterioration coincided with the final wrangling over the U.S. debt ceiling and Standard and Poor’s downgrade of the United States’ debt rating. Economic confidence is now far worse than the -43 of two weeks ago and the -34 of a month ago.

U.S. economic confidence deteriorated even faster in July and the first week of August than it did in June compared with May. This plunge in confidence contrasts with the relatively flat trend in 2010. It also places consumer perceptions of the economy in the range of March 2009 during the recession. Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index hit its recession/financial crisis weekly low of -65 — just 12 points worse than now — during the week of Oct. 6-12, 2008.

Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index combines two measures: one assessing Americans’ views about whether the U.S. economy is “getting better” or “getting worse,” and the second involving Americans’ ratings of current economic conditions as “excellent,” “good,” “only fair,” or “poor.” The Index’s inception was in January 2008. Both weekly ratings are at their lows since early 2009.

President Downgrade’s approval rating fell to 40% overnight — tying his previous record low. His disapproval rating hit 50%, which represents an increase of 2% overnight.

Now, right off the bat that’s moronically false. Unemployment sat at 7.2% when Barack Obama took office. If the country had lost 8 million net jobs, we would have been in double-digit unemployment territory. Anyone with haf a brain could call bull on Reid’s claim without even a Google search.

But Politifact took things a step further, researching exactly what the employment sector looked like after 8 years of a Republican presidency. It turns out that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bush actually managed to create 1.09 million jobs during his 8 years in office.

But wait, there’s more! Reid didn’t completely make up the 8 million jobs lost figure. That’s real. It’s just that 8 million jobs were lost between the end of the Bush Administration…and more than a year into the Obama Administration. That’s right: Reid is actually blaming Bush for jobs lost under Obama.

This isn’t remotely close to what Reid claimed. Reid’s office didn’t respond to our request for information, but we think we know what he was referring to.

From the economy’s peak to its low point, the nation lost 8.75 million jobs. Here’s the problem: The peak for jobs came in January 2008, while the low point for jobs came in February 2010.
This means the starting point for Reid’s measure came seven years into Bush’s eight-year tenure, and the low point occurred about a year into Barack Obama’s tenure.

In other words, Reid had a point in saying that there was a “loss of eight million jobs” — but it didn’t come “during the Bush eight years.” The loss of eight million jobs occurred during a roughly two-year period shared more or less equally between Bush and Obama.

Reid also went on to overstate job creation during the Clinton Administration, which you’ll recall left office and handed the Tech Bubble recession over to the Bush Administration.

Politifact concludes Reid was “flat wrong” to say 8 million jobs were lost during the Bush Administration. The fact-checking service labels Reid’s statement “Pants on Fire”.

In short, he lied — and he lied big. But that’s nothing new for Senator Reid. Lying is what he does best.

Why pressure from the Obama Administration? The president knows voters would punish him for overseeing a credit downgrade. So he’s willing to pressure credit rating agencies to lie to the public about the credit-worthiness of the United States. It’s politics.

The administration claims S&P bungled the numbers and Obama’s folks caught it. I thoroughly doubt that. This administration is notoriously bad at numbers, famously projecting unemployment would remain below 8% if the stimulus were passed. They suck at both math and projections.

This is more likely the result of political pressure. As Hiya Ciska writes at Hot Air, “When reality doesn’t match political projections, you are required to change reality to match the projections.” Indeed. And it wouldn’t be the first time this administration has tried to change reality to match projections.

“Hey, S&P, nice little business you’ve got there. Be a shame if something were to happen to it. Maybe new regulations. Maybe a review of your own financials. What’s that? You’ll review the downgrade? You say you made a mistake? That’s what we thought.”

A government official tells ABC News that the federal government is expecting and preparing for bond rating agency Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the rating of US debt from its current AAA value.

Tapper says the administration will attempt to blame Republicans for not agreeing to tax hikes.

Um, no. There’s not enough tax revenue from here to Moscow to make more than $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities look stable. You could tax everyone at 100% and we’d still have debt problems.

Plus, let’s keep in mind that Republicans were more than happy to balance the budget and cut many trillions of dollars. It was Democrats who filibustered that plan in the Senate.

Don’t blame Republicans for Democratic obstructionism. It’s not the fault of Republicans that Democrats cling to unsustainable programs like Michael Moore clings to a cheeseburger.

The economy added 117,000 jobs during the month of July. BUT, that’s about half of what’s needed to make any real dent in the weak economy. And workforce participation dropped to its lowest point since 1982.

Finally, as former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich notes, another month like this and we’ll be looking at a 50-50 chance of falling into a double-dip recession. Keep that in mind as administration officials try to spin this as wonderful news.

More: Something else to keep in mind.

As a reminder, US needs to be creating 245K jobs per month to be keeping up with population growth

Years into this supposed recovery, and we’re still creating 128,000 too few jobs per month to keep up with population growth. Absolutely pathetic.

And More Yet: Things get crappier! Motoko Rich of the New York Times notes:

Temp help, usually a precursor of future hiring, added 0 jobs in July

So there’s that.

These numbers are weak. Better than last month, but then last month was disastrous. Not bad — disastrous. These are just weak. A few months ago, these numbers would have sparked a market fall.

Not Done Yet: Another New York Times economics columnist.

Better than expected does not = good. Share of adults with jobs falls to new three-decade low, 58.1%.

We’re also learning that 6.2 million Americans were out of work for more than six months as of June. And “discouraged” workers rose by 137,000.

Say: Why did the unemployment rate drop to 9.1%? Oh, right:

The jobless rate dropped to 9.1 percent as more Americans left the labor force, while average hourly earnings climbed 0.4 percent.

People are giving up. And that’s lowering the unemployment rate. Yay!

The Dow Jones Industrial average closed down 512 points, meaning the index has closed down 9 of the past 10 trading sessions. The S&P lost 60 points, or about 4.7% of its total value. The Nasdaq shed 136 points, or just over 5%, on the session.

Oil also fell by about 6%, but benefits from that price decrease are offset by 401(k) and other consumer financial losses. The yield on the two-year Treasury note hit a record low, as investors flocked to the relatively stable investment.

Investors now fear the prospect of a double-dip recession. And barring some miraculous job numbers tomorrow (creation is expected at around 114,000 for the month of July), the markets could extend their losing streak on Friday. Asian markets will open soon and European markets will be trading tomorrow.

Two other locales are now considering bankruptcy filings: Alabama’s Jefferson county and Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania. Jefferson County is looking at $3.2 billion in debt and Harrisburg is struggling under a $300 million burden.

“Chapter 9 has been a fairly unusual event but we and many others think that’s not necessarily going to be the case going forward,” said Sean Scott, a municipal bankruptcy expert at law firm Mayer Brown.

In other economic news, manufacturing in July hit the lowest level in two years. It’s yet another sign that the ongoing recession is far from over — despite trillions of dollars spent by Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress. The “stimulus” spending apparently failed to stimulate.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, in order to encourage more buying, and in an attempt to push their profit margin to the limits, relaxed their standards in order to buy more loans. Wall Street banks also lowered their standards in the hopes of cashing in as well. Greed and arrogance carried the wave for a short time, but like with anything, what goes up must go down.

A glimmer of hope popped its head up last Spring when builders began building the final build-outs of projects, and a number of them sold rapidly. Industry experts hoped that the industry would see these few sales as a move back in the right direction, and held their breath for a moment to see if a new bubble would begin to expand. However, cautious in this new housing environment, the builders remained happy to only work on the final houses of their last projects so that they could simply close their books on the projects by the year’s end. No new projects emerged, as some had hoped, and the bubble deflated before it had a chance to grow.

Now, the banking industry is in a crisis. As usual, there are those faint little calls by some Americans screaming, “The government has to do something about it!” And so, as some would expect from a President with Globalist leanings, and a Congress with the hopes of America becoming a Socialist Nation, the government has announced that it will take over the two mortgage giants, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

It is being called a monumental move designed to protect the mortgage market from the failure of the two companies. The intervention will cost taxpayers billions, and the news of this governmental takeover of the banks follows news that more than 4 million American homeowners with a mortgage, a record 9 percent, were either behind in their payments, or in the process of foreclosure.

The two mortgage giants lost $3.1 billion from April to June, half of that coming from risky loans with ballooning monthly rises. While the companies claim to have enough resources to withstand the losses, the belief is that at the current rate of loss their financial cushions are not enough, and the companies will eventually find themselves in a position of not being able to fund their operations.

The result of this “rescue package” is the exposure of taxpayers to billions of dollars of potential losses, a wipe-out of common stockholders, and it could end up being costly to scores of investment, banking, and insurance companies.

Fannie Mae was created in 1938 in an attempt to increase home ownership across the United States, and to enable Congressional Oversight into the industry. The sale of the idea to the American Public was that everyone had a “right” to home ownership, and the government was going to make sure it happened.

Thanks to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Socialist Programs of the New Deal, the notion that it was an American’s “right” to own a home by means of government subsidies was so firmly entrenched in the American mindset, Fannie Mae not only grew, but in 1968, as a part of Lyndon Johnson’s societal engineering agenda, Fannie was converted into a private corporation and the ability to guarantee government-issued mortgages was switched from Fannie Mae to the federal government’s newest creation, Ginnie Mae (Government National Mortgage Association). This meant that Fannie would begin to operate with private capital on a self-sustaining basis.

In 1970, Fannie Mae was authorized to buy conventional mortgages, and by the 1980s it began to purchase second mortgages and adjustable-rate mortgages. In the 80′s it also commenced its mortgage-backed securities scheme.

Between Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (another GSE), the largest source of cash for home buying in the United States was in existence, and they accounted for almost 50% of all mortgage bonds sold through April of 2007. Since the beginning of 2006, however, over fifty mortgage companies discontinued operations, claimed bankruptcy, or sought a buyer. Fannie Mae, however, continued to flourish until recent months. Since the end of March 2007, Fannie Mae’s stock price increased by almost 20% whereas the S&P 500 Index had risen only 8.1% by July of that year.

Fannie Mae was a New Deal innovation, created by and for the federal government. This gives it different abilities and freedoms than your usual corporations, which are generally chartered by the states. The sole purpose of this federally chartered, quasi-private entity was to directly intervene in the housing market while avoiding a more conspicuous regulatory apparatus governed by rules. This allowed the government to advance and steer the government’s progressive entitlement programs put in place by the New Deal without anyone ever really taking notice. Meanwhile, Fannie Mae expanded into mortgage insurance, sub-prime mortgages, and non-mortgage investments, exposing taxpayers to a massive risk of default or bankruptcy.

The Founding Fathers wrote the U.S. Constitution to limit the powers of the Federal Government, and they were specifically suspicious of judges and banks. The first step toward the centralization of banking through the Federal Reserve Act which was signed into law by Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat. The New Deal Programs by FDR, and the expansion of entitlement programs by Lyndon B. Johnson, were strictly against what the Founding Fathers intended, and these Democratic Party programs are now falling apart because of their unconstitutional characteristics.

As the government now takes another step towards centralizing control over banks, and further expanding entitlement programs, the consequences for poor decisions by individuals are not being paid. Now, with this program to bailout mortgages and save the banks, the taxpayers that were not driven by greed and arrogance are being punished.

Government manipulation is the cause of the problems we see rising in the economy and banking system. And government manipulation, and control, is going to exacerbate the problem. As painful as it may seem, to straighten out this mess the banks need to collapse, the home owners who are currently in foreclosure need to lose their homes and move into more affordable accomodations like apartments, and we need to all buckle down, and get through this together, without government intervention.

If we don’t bear the burdens of our mistakes as individuals, before the next dozen years are finished, we will be steamrolling in the direction of socialism, the “privilege” of home ownership will be gone, and it will take a revolution to turn us around to head back in the direction of liberty, and the American Way.

by Douglas V. Gibbs