Economy
July 28, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The Biden administration is continuing its effort to spin bad economic news. Biden’s statement on today’s negative GDP report avoided any reference to recession, or even to the fact that the GDP number was negative. Coming off of last year’s historic economic growth – and regaining all the private sector jobs lost during the pandemic crisis – it’s no surprise that the economy is slowing down as the Federal Reserve
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July 28, 2022 — Scott Johnson
As we inferred from the Biden administration’s verbal gymnastics this week, today’s Commerce Department report indicates that we are in a conventionally understood recession. According to the department, the economy contracted for a second straight quarter, with growth falling at a 0.9 percent annual rate in the April-June period. The Bureau of Economic Analysis explains: “Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.9 percent in the
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July 26, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The Biden administration continues to prepare the battlefield for the Commerce Department’s second-quarter 2022 GDP estimate on Thursday. Administration officials must anticipate an estimate reflecting that we are in a recession, because they are making fools of themselves to deflect it in the meantime. What they really need to do is bring back the late Carter administration economic official Alfred Kahn and dub it the banana. “Between 1973 and 1975
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July 25, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The White House is prepping the battlefield for next Thursday’s Commerce Department estimate of second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth or contraction. Students of ancient history may recall that real GDP decreased at an annual rate of 1.6 percent in the first quarter of 2022, according to the most recent estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. A second quarter of contraction would suggest that we are in a
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July 13, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Inflation hit a new four-decade high in June as prices rose 9.1 percent from last year — 1.3 percent from the prior month — according to the data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning. The BLS’s “all items index increased 9.1 percent for the 12 months ending June, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending November 1981.” I put it this way: We see it everywhere
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June 17, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Let’s review the record. Here’s what Biden said about energy while campaigning for office: So how’s that “end fossil fuel” working out for you Joe? The Wall Street Journal reports this afternoon: President Biden came to office vowing to cut dependence on fossil fuels, putting environmentalists in charge of energy policy and asking Congress for billions of dollars to fund a transition to cleaner energy. Seventeen months later, greenhouse gas
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June 16, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Who will unwind the torrent of bizarreries, misrepresentations, lies, and howlers unleashed by President Biden in his remarks at the AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia earlier this week? I doubt this is work the professional fact-checkers at the Washington Post and elsewhere will do. They certainly wouldn’t have their heart in it. The New York Post commissioned James Bovard to do the job. Unfortunately, limitations of space confined Citizen Bovard to
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June 15, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I was looking for transcript in all the wrong places, i.e., for the official White House transcript of President Biden’s fabulations at the 29th quadrennial convention of the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia yesterday morning. The White House posted it under Statements and Releases here. I commented on it here based on the PBS video (below). Today’s New York Post devotes a good editorial to Biden’s speech under the heading “The Post
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June 14, 2022 — Scott Johnson
President Biden spoke today at the AFL-CIO quadrennial convention in Philadelphia. I have posted a video of the whole thing at the bottom. Biden is in his element and the torrent of lies is tough to take. The White House has not posted a transcript. As usual, Biden builds himself up by comparison with “the last guy.” In the world according to Biden, life under Donald Trump was a nightmare
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June 14, 2022 — Scott Johnson
President Biden has derided his “predecessor” or “the last guy” (as Biden likes to refer to him) for bragging about the performance of the stock market under his (President Trump’s) watch. Yet he (Biden) has also bragged about the performance of the stock market under his watch. As of the market close yesterday, however, all the Biden gains had been wiped out and the market had slipped into bear market
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June 10, 2022 — John Hinderaker
My wife filled up her gas tank this morning and took this picture: I filled up this afternoon and took this one: So we spent $248.71 on gasoline today. We are fortunate: we can still afford to eat dinner, and we aren’t canceling our trip to New Hampshire next week for my college reunion. Most Americans are not so lucky. And most Americans also understand that the Democratic Party is
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June 2, 2022 — John Hinderaker
I have always bristled at descriptions of the Republicans as the “stupid party” (as opposed to Democrats who are the “evil party”). But, to be fair, there have been plenty of times when the stereotype fit. These days, however, the Republicans are fighting a spirited and often creative battle against the worst administration since James Buchanan’s–coincidentally, another Democrat. I have no idea who Tommy Pigott is–it might even be a
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June 2, 2022 — John Hinderaker
On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted that she was wrong when she said, last year, that she didn’t expect inflation to be much of a problem: "It wasn't just the president who got it wrong." After spending MONTHS insisting it was merely "transitory," Biden Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen finally admits they were WRONG to downplay inflation. pic.twitter.com/IlJMvQsbrU — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 31, 2022 Of course, Yellen’s mea culpa
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May 31, 2022 — Scott Johnson
In its lineup this morning RealClearPolitics has done us the favor of retrieving Daniel Henninger’s weekly Wall Street Journal column of this past Thursday on “Joe Biden’s train-wreck economy” (behind the Journal’s paywall). We noted Biden’s reference in Tokyo to the “incredible transition” he is engineering to renewable energy and a green economy. A beautiful future awaits, if we can draw on our savings to pay $5.00 a gallon and
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May 29, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The infant formula shortage is a crisis for many American families, and the end is not in sight. What caused supplies of a staple product to run out? The most thorough explanation I have seen comes from Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute. (Numerous links in the original are omitted here.) Lincicome fingers government as the culprit, with protectionism as villain number one: U.S. policy has exacerbated the nation’s infant
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May 24, 2022 — Scott Johnson
In the course of his joint Tokyo press conference with the Japanese prime minister yesterday — the White House has posted the transcript here — a reporter asked President Biden about the economy: During your trip here to Asia, you’ve promoted the investments by Samsung and Hyundai. But back home in the United States, Americans are dealing with record-high inflation. The Fed has raised interest rates to try to address
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May 20, 2022 — John Hinderaker
In a banana republic, what do you do when your citizens don’t have enough money because of your socialist economic policies? Simple: print more money! There was a time when we thought American politics were above such insanity, but those days are gone. The Biden administration’s multi-trillion dollar money-printing spree has launched the worst inflation since the Carter administration and the longest collapse of the Dow since 1932. Nice going,
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