Economy
January 10, 2023 — Steven Hayward
There are a couple of noteworthy passages in Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech delivered earlier today over in Sweden about central bank independence, such as: [W]e should “stick to our knitting” and not wander off to pursue perceived social benefits that are not tightly linked to our statutory goals and authorities. . . [W]ithout explicit congressional legislation, it would be inappropriate for us to use our monetary policy or supervisory tools
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December 21, 2022 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about the fact that the federal government seems to have cranked out absurdly optimistic job numbers just in time to give the Democrats a boost in the midterms. But that isn’t the only puzzle in current job data. It turns out that America’s employment situation is a bit of a mystery. I asked my colleague John Phelan to explain what is going on. This is his response.
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December 20, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Joe Biden’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that over a million jobs were created in the second quarter, a heartening statistic that no doubt helped the Democrats in November. But now, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve says that those million jobs were almost entirely fictitious: The Biden administration vastly overstated its estimate that employers created more than 1 million jobs in the second quarter of this year, claiming historic job growth
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November 21, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Governments at both the federal and state levels tell us we are in the midst of a transition from internal combustion vehicles to electric vehicles. For a number of reasons, I don’t believe that is true, regardless of the level of bribery and coercion that governments bring to bear. I think the whole project will crash and burn, after doing enormous damage in the meantime. But the Wall Street Journal
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November 14, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Americans’ standard of living has been hammered by inflation the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades. There has been lots of happy talk from the administration, but no one thinks prices are going down any time soon. What, then, is going to happen? My colleague John Phelan offers an answer: prices should be rather stable for a while, unless the federal government embarks on a fresh money-printing spree:
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November 6, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Hard on the heels of Elon Musk’s laying off half the staff of Twitter comes news of layoffs at Meta (Facebook): The layoffs are expected to affect many thousands of employees and an announcement is planned to come as soon as Wednesday, according to the people. Meta reported more than 87,000 employees at the end of September. Company officials already told employees to cancel nonessential travel beginning this week, the
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October 25, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The U.K.’s Daily Mail, one of the world’s top news sites, published a major story yesterday on the economic damage inflicted by covid shutdowns in the United States. The article’s message was that states that had more severe shutdowns suffered worse economic harm. The headline is long: “The price of pandemic restrictions REVEALED: Covid-19 measures cost Massachusetts residents $2,862 each in early 2021 — nearly THREE times as much as
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October 23, 2022 — Scott Johnson
With his economic advisers hanging like drapery in the background this past Friday morning, President Biden gave Remarks on Historic Deficit Reduction. To have no shame can be a real advantage in politics. It has served Biden well so far. However, this performance is a doozy. Brian Riedl calls it “a remarkable feat of gaslighting” in a New York Post column full of useful background. I’ll go with “remarkable,” but
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October 22, 2022 — John Hinderaker
It was obvious early in the covid epidemic that the benefits of lockdowns were speculative and hypothetical, while the costs were large and undeniable. Now that the dust has settled, those costs can be quantified. My staff has produced two new papers on the costs of the covid shutdowns in Minnesota. While their analyses are state-specific, it is reasonable to assume that their findings would be reflected in other states,
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October 17, 2022 — John Hinderaker
BlackRock Inc. is the world’s largest investment company. It has also been the leader in ESG (environmental, social, governance) investing–i.e., prioritizing a left-wing agenda over shareholder returns. It seems, finally, that BlackRock’s political agenda is dragging the company down: Brennan Hawken, an analyst at [UBS], downgraded the stock of BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) to Neutral from Buy and slashed the stock price target to $585 from $700 over growing pushback to
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October 13, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Cost of living data are out for September, and they are grim. The Wall Street Journal reports: U.S. consumer inflation excluding energy and food accelerated to a new four-decade high in September, a sign that strong and broad price pressures are persisting. The Labor Department on Thursday said that its so-called core consumer-price index—which excludes volatile energy and food prices—rose 6.6% in September from a year earlier, the biggest increase
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October 11, 2022 — John Hinderaker
From early in the covid epidemic, it seemed obvious that the shutdowns ordered by nearly all governors and many municipalities did little good and caused tremendous damage. Experience has borne out that conclusion, but almost everywhere, governments have moved on without any accounting for the mistakes that were made. American Experiment has just released two papers that address the consequences of covid shutdowns. While their specific focus is on Minnesota,
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October 4, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Back in 1980, as Britain’s economy fell into steep recession along with much of the rest of the world, recently installed prime minister Margaret Thatcher came under fire for her policies of spending restraint and tax cuts. Much of her own party wanted her to backtrack, never mind the opposition Labour Party and the media. It was in the midst of this that the “Iron Lady” lived up to her
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September 28, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Times are tough, although the elites that run our country probably haven’t noticed. But for most of us, the rising costs of gasoline, electricity, manufactured goods and groceries, along with a decline in the value of our savings and the prospect of paying for trillions in new federal deficits, are alarming. How worried are Americans? This worried: Rasmussen finds that 57% of Americans are expecting a depression: The latest Rasmussen
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September 24, 2022 — John Hinderaker
British Prime Minister Liz Truss is going big. Her Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, has unveiled an aggressive program of permanent tax cuts. The Wall Street Journal likes the plan: Mr. Kwarteng axed the 2.5-percentage-point increase in the payroll tax imposed by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and canceled a planned increase in the corporate income tax rate to 26% from 19%. … Kwarteng also surprised by eliminating the 45% tax rate
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September 13, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The Dow was down 1,276 points today, or 4%. Why? The August inflation number came in worse than expected: The new data showed the consumer-price index rose 8.3% in August from the same month a year ago. That was down from 8.5% in July and 9.1% in June—the highest inflation rate in four decades. But on a month-to-month basis, the figures showed inflation accelerating in August, dashing investors’ hopes that
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September 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
On Friday the White House released “the Biden-Harris economic blueprint” a/k/a “the President’s Economic Blueprint” (press release here, 58-page document here). It’s a “blueprint” with “five pillars” that have done so much for us already and promise to do more and worse in the future. Performing the work that our native media fact-check workers refuse to do, James Bovard assesses the veracity of claims made in the “blueprint.” He introduces
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