Economy
October 19, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Hard to believe it has been 30 years since the crash of 1987. It didn’t come entirely out of the blue. Here’s a look back at it, drawn from chapter 13 of my second Age of Reagan books: Looking back afterwards, the harbingers of a stock market breakdown become easier to make out. The stock market could not maintain its level in the face of rising interest rates and extreme
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October 15, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Paul Sperry, writing in the New York Post, warns that “a pair of top Obama-appointed bank regulators still serving in the Trump administration could spark another mortgage meltdown by lowering credit standards and encouraging risky lending practices.” Sperry is the author of The Great American Bank Robbery: The Unauthorized Report About What Really Caused the Great Recession. The two Obama officials are Mel Watt, who is serving a special five-year
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September 4, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
This column by Robert Samuelson is called “The Quiet Comeback of the Middle Class.” It presents a picture of contemporary America at variance from the narrative of both the left and the Trumpians, at least in their 2016 incarnation. Samuelson cites a Gallup poll from June of this year in which 62 percent of Americans said they are in the middle or upper middle class, while only 36 percent classified
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August 16, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
John wrote about and posted what he calls Trump’s first re-election ad. The ad touts the record level stock market and the unusually low unemployment numbers. It doesn’t cite any legislative victories or foreign policy accomplishments. Nor could it. As a re-election pitch, current stock market prices and employment numbers couldn’t be less relevant. The relevant numbers will be the ones in 2020, when Trump faces the voters. At that
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August 1, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The Associated Press has devoted itself to helping the Democratic Party bring down President Trump. The AP’s effort consists mostly of producing multiple negative articles about Trump and his administration every day; these are picked up by hundreds or thousands of newspapers around the country. But that isn’t all: the AP also conducts a rear-guard action, trying to defuse any positive news about Trump and his administration. Today’s AP story,
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July 31, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The Associated Press purports to fact-check President Trump on just about a daily basis, but anyone who pays attention knows the AP is just pushing the Democratic Party’s line. Today’s “fact check” is a good example: The Latest: Trump’s claims about economy not accurate. Only if you read the article, you find that Trump’s statements were indeed correct: President Donald Trump’s tweet Monday about economic progress under his administration isn’t
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July 18, 2017 — Steven Hayward
You may have heard the rant about Washington’s unseriousness about economic growth that JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon delivered on an earnings call the other day. In case you missed it, here it is (with some key bits marked in bold): Since the Great Recession, which is now 8 years old, we’ve been growing at 1.5 to 2 percent in spite of stupidity and political gridlock. Because the American business
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June 29, 2017 — Steven Hayward
I’ve commented before on the current Democratic talking point that “millions will die” if the Senate health care reform proposal is enacted, noting that I had missed this enormous mortality that must have been occurring just a few years ago before Obamacare was passed. There is actually fairly robust econometric literature that establishes the proposition that “wealthier is healthier,” and hence that economic growth is the best general policy for
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June 26, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Well not quite gravity, but close enough for post-modernist work. You know how liberals like to attach taxes on cigarettes so we’ll buy fewer of them, and on alcohol so we’ll drink less, etc? Funny, though, how the basic lesson of supply and demand and price sensitivity falls by the wayside when it comes to the minimum wage. We’ve commented on this invincible ignorance repeatedly (such as here, here, here,
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June 2, 2017 — Steven Hayward
The stock market closed today at record highs, and today’s jobs report, though weak, showed steady progress (especially in mining—one of those sectors Trump had promised to improve). But I wonder if we might be seeing some early signs of trouble. The good folks who produce the copious charts for the Wall Street Journal‘s Daily Shot note that a housing bubble may be reforming as housing sales suddenly show a
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May 18, 2017 — Steven Hayward
There’s good reason to think the stock market is overvalued—perhaps not grossly so, but by historical standards at least—and is due for a retreat, which is perhaps what happened yesterday. One of the key gauges of market complacency is the VIX index, which has been very very quiet of late—often a contrary indicator. Well, problem solved! I also got to wondering whether any of the prediction markets were jumping to
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May 10, 2017 — Scott Johnson
This morning we continue our preview of the new issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Thanks to our friends at the Claremont Institute, I read the new issue in galley to select three pieces to be submitted for the consideration of Power Line readers. As always, wanting to do right by the magazine and by our readers, I had a hard time choosing. You, however, can do your own
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May 5, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, I mentioned Marine Le Pen’s advocacy of the use of two currencies in France. Patriotic, salt-of-the-earth Frenchmen would use the French franc; elitist bloodsuckers would use the Euro. Just kidding. Actually, the franc would be used for France’s “home economy.” The Euro would be used for international trade. Le Pen was hard pressed to defend this seemingly inane proposal during her debate with Emmanuel Macron. This account by CNN
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April 29, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The hundred-days idiocy will soon be behind us, to be followed by some other excuse for Trump-bashing. The whole thing is silly, but apparently inescapable, so it is worth noting that the progress President Trump and the Republican Congress have made in reducing government regulations is a more substantial positive achievement than anything Barack Obama accomplished in eight years, let alone 100 days. The regulations that Congress rolled back under
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April 27, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The Bank of America’s survey of 1,300 small business owners finds a dramatic increase in optimism resulting from the election of President Trump and the Republican Congress: Small business owners’ optimism about the economy has turned around dramatically since before the election, according to a survey released by Bank of America. The number of owners expecting the national economy to improve over the next 12 months jumped to 51 percent
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April 10, 2017 — John Hinderaker
When it comes to countries, there really isn’t any dispute. No country has ever gotten rich through high taxes, big government and onerous regulation. And yet, these are the very prescriptions that often are promoted by international organizations and left-wing politicians. Abir Doumit of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation is here to set the record straight. The path to national success is blindingly obvious, but too often is
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April 3, 2017 — Steven Hayward
I don’t know what is going to happen with the economy, but one of the problems during the Obama years was the uncertainty of just how hostile to enterprise the Obama Administration was going to be. The stock market rally following Trump’s election could be attributed partly to relief that they’d be spared from things getting even worse under a Nurse Ratched Administration, and partly to optimism that Trump would
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