Economy
June 8, 2013 — John Hinderaker
We are now nearly five years into the Age of Obama, and I think pretty much everyone understands that, economically speaking, the record is poor. If you think unprecedented levels of unemployment and poverty, declining labor force participation, booming food stamp use and so on are the signs of a healthy economy, then you should be satisfied with the Obama administration. Otherwise, not. It must have hurt the New York
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June 3, 2013 — John Hinderaker
From Bloomberg: Manufacturing in the U.S. unexpectedly shrank in May at the fastest pace in four years, showing slowdowns in business and government spending are holding back the world’s largest economy. The Institute for Supply Management’s factory index fell to 49, the lowest reading since June 2009, from the prior month’s 50.7, the Tempe, Arizona-based group’s report showed today. Fifty is the dividing line between growth and contraction. The median
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May 28, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Early this year, the U.S. economy went over half of a fiscal cliff or more — a supposedly draconian sequester plus some tax increases, albeit not the across-the-board hike that formed the full cliff. From all that appears, the U.S. economy has lived to tell about it. Neil Irwin and Ylan Q. Mui of the Washington Post rehearse some of the good news: Housing prices rose faster over the past
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May 27, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Decades ago, Paul Krugman did useful work as an academic economist in the area of international trade. But those days are gone: Krugman long ago gave up any pretense of academic seriousness and became a partisan, left-wing hack. We are proud of the role we have played (along with many others) in exposing Krugman’s mendacity and laziness; you can find a summary of our efforts here. Nevertheless, Krugman continues to
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May 20, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I’ve expressed my puzzlement and disappointment here before about how Apple, like so much of Silicon Valley, is reflexively liberal in its politics. So it is with some curiosity that I note the story out last week about how Apple CEO Tim Cook was trying to “get out ahead” on the story of his appearance before a Senate committee tomorrow in Washington where he will essentially be called unpatriotic—by both
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May 13, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Today the Minnesota Senate passed a bill authorizing gay marriage which will be signed into law by our governor, Mark Dayton. That is the context for this text, which my oldest daughter sent me a few minutes ago: If I had a dollar for every #time4marriage hashtag on my feed I’d be rich. Someone should start a #time4jobs trend, seeing as there are approx. twice as many unemployed Americans as
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May 9, 2013 — Steven Hayward
You may recall that back in the late 1980s, lots of certified smart people like James Fallows and Clyde Prestowitz were telling us that Japan was eating our lunch in terms of economic policy, because they had embraced the kind of government-led industrial policy that used to put a spring in Walter Mondale’s step. It was confidently predicted that at the present rate, Japan might well overtake the United States
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May 6, 2013 — Steven Hayward
“Dictatorships and Double Standards” is of course the title of Jeane Kirkpatrick’s famous Commentary article about how “human rights” liberals of the time were hard on our allies who had less than stellar human rights records, but supine in the face of totalitarians like the Soviet Union and its allies such as Cuba. (Because, as we all know, Cuba’s literacy and universal health care are more important than bourgeois rights
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April 13, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Any port in a storm: the Obama administration would rather talk about anything other than the economy. Understandably. So it’s one damn thing after another. Michael Ramirez notes the administration’s most recent preoccupation:
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April 9, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
I respect much of Grover Norquist’s work, but certain of his arguments in favor of comprehensive immigration reform are imbecilic. Consider his response to the concern that entitlement payments will skyrocket if such reform comes before the border is secure: The idea of treating people as a liability — that more people coming in might go on welfare — that’s an argument against having babies, that’s an argument for car
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April 5, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Senator Jeff Sessions released this statement about today’s disappointing jobs numbers: Today’s jobs report reveals that 90 million Americans are now outside the labor force. We need to be getting Americans back to work, helping people move off of food stamps and welfare, and find good jobs with steady incomes. But the comprehensive immigration bill being drafted right now would provide nearly immediate work authorization to millions of illegal immigrants
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April 5, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
The latest government jobs reports finds that only 88,000 jobs were added in March. That’s half of the 12 month average and less than half of what most experts expected. The unemployment rate actually declined slightly to 7.6 percent. This is the result of the decrease of folks looking for work. The labor-force participation rate dropped from 63.5 percent to dropped to 63.3 percent, its lowest point since 1978, according
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April 4, 2013 — John Hinderaker
President Obama ran as the candidate of hope and change, but his regime has been one of unemployment and poverty. How a president with such a record could be re-elected is a mystery that historians will try to unravel for many years to come, but in the meantime, Michael Ramirez comments on the shocking fact that nearly one in six Americans is now living in poverty, courtesy of Obamanomics. Our
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April 3, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Under President Obama, the old normal unemployment rate in the former Western Europe — around 8 percent — seems to have become the new normal in the United States. I guess there’s at least poetic justice in this, since leading Democrats like Obama and John Kerry tend to see Western Europe as a model for the U.S. Unfortunately, though, the new normal unemployment rate in Europe is much higher than
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March 27, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
What is the key to a revival of the Republican Party? In a sense, the question is unfair because it assumes the Party is in need of revival even though it did fantastically well in 2010 and well enough at the state and U.S. House of Representatives level in 2012. Even at the presidential level, the Republican candidate did about as well as the Democrat did in 2004. And John
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March 20, 2013 — John Hinderaker
I can’t resist passing on this hilarious Michael Ramirez cartoon. All I can say is, don’t let it happen here!
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March 17, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Just about everyone expects the economy to crash, in some fashion, in the next few years. The fundamentals are very bad: year after year of virtually no growth; ever-declining labor force participation; grotesquely wasteful government spending; exploding federal debt; cronyism that saps vitality from our economy; and a largely dysfunctional education system. The questions are: 1) when will the crash happen? and 2) what form will it take? The last
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