Economy
January 18, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• The Wall Street Journal reports this morning: Texas, Arizona Have Recovered All the Jobs Lost When Covid-19 Hit Texas and Arizona have joined two other states in recovering all the jobs they lost at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, leading a trend that is expected to include another dozen states by the middle of this year. The states, which also include Utah and Idaho, have benefited from demographic
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January 4, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Everyone knows that millions of people are leaving blue states and moving to red states, but I still haven’t have heard the liberal line on the phenomenon. They have to come up with an explanation other than the obvious one–liberal policies don’t work, and create inferior living conditions–but what is it? I am all ears. Mark Perry lists the top ten states that are gaining and losing residents (raw numbers,
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January 2, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I think it is time to retire the “Civil War on the Left” series and replace it with The Liberal Crackup, because the left is indeed crumbling. And let’s start with the genius idea for a remedy for inflation: price controls! That’s the recommendation from (who else) The Guardian: We have a powerful weapon to fight inflation: price controls. It’s time we consider it By Isabella Weber (assistant professor of economics
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December 16, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Harvard Professor Robert Barro is Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard. He is a prominent member of the economics profession. AEI has posted his December 4 Project Syndicate column “Big-state inflation.” In the column he addresses the attribution of responsibility for our current inflation to “supply chain” issues. Professor Barro does not entirely discount the contribution of these issues as a contributing factor. Focusing on the contribution of
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December 14, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
I hate inflation, but there’s something delicious about the fact that this problem, above all others, is responsible for the low esteem in which voters currently hold Joe Biden and his party. Inflation is reality’s “F-you” to a central element of liberal hubris — the view that the government can do whatever the hell it wants by way of spending, energy policy, etc. and suffer no bad economic consequences. How
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December 13, 2021 — Steven Hayward
You’d think it would hardly need restating that inflation is chiefly caused by monetary profligacy by the government (especially the Federal Reserve and other central banks that think they can “create” money out of thin air), but the Biden Administration began on an ominous note with Slow Joe proclaiming that “Milton Friedman isn’t in charge any more.” Well, the CPI seems to have something to say about that. Economist and
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December 3, 2021 — John Hinderaker
I don’t believe we have yet commented on today’s disappointing jobs report. Economists had expected the BLS to report 550,000 net new jobs, but instead there were only 210,000. The nation is still struggling to recreate the economy that we had under President Trump, before it was devastated by covid shutdowns. The Democrats try to spin people going back to work as strong “job creation,” but in fact we are
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November 29, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Throughout the last decade, Greece’s economy was a basket case. Lally Weymouth of the Washington Post reminds us that Greece endured a crippling depression in which it lost one-fourth of its GDP. The nation’s banks nearly collapsed and European Union officials contemplated expelling Greece from the EU. But in 2019, the Greeks dumped the leftist government of Alexis Tsipras and replaced it with a center-right government led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
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November 16, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Scott has described the stages of spin that the Biden administration has deployed in response to skyrocketing inflation: It’s transitory! It’s good for you! You can afford it! The administration’s efforts are laughable, but unfortunately, it is the rest of us who are paying the price. Literally. Recognizing that most people experience inflation tangibly in the rising cost of staple commodities, my organization has put up 30 physical billboards and
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November 14, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Earlier today, John reported some grim polls for Democrats. There’s more grim news for Dems in the latest University of Michigan consumer sentiment index. That survey measures how American consumers view prospects for their finances and the general economy. As measured by this index, consumer confidence fell last month to 66.8, down from 71.7 the previous month. The latest number is the lowest in 10 years. This is another one
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November 11, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Bummer Beyond Belief is my take on the centerpiece of the Biden’s plan to reduce the United States to ruin. His plan to erase our borders has already been implemented to stunning effect. The Bummer Beyond Belief bill complements it perfectly. Bummer Beyond Belief also works as a description of the complete Biden package, so to speak. The biggest story this week is inflation. Larry Kudlow concisely put it this
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November 9, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
My friend the New York Times reader calls my attention to this article called “Americans Are Flush With Cash and Jobs. They Also Think the Economy Is Awful.” The suggestion is that Americans are too dumb to realize how prosperous they are. The author cuts Americans some slack, though. He blames our misperception of how we’re doing on inflation. His thesis is that when prices are rising, we’re misled into
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October 26, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Americans are worried about rising inflation, and a recent survey found that 60 percent of likely voters believe the Biden administration isn’t paying enough attention to the matter. To add insult to injury, a leading Democrat economist believes that even the Federal Reserve Board isn’t paying enough attention to inflation. Larry Summers, who served as Secretary of Treasury under Bill Clinton, has warned that the Fed and other central banks
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October 24, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Harry Enten, formerly of FiveThirtyEight and now of CNN, takes up the question. He writes: While the causes of Biden’s decline are numerous (e.g. declining trust of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan), perhaps the biggest one is that Americans believe there are big economic problems and that Biden isn’t focused nearly enough on them. I think that’s right. Enten notes, as we
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October 23, 2021 — Scott Johnson
My favorite fast food spot is Zantigo on West Seventh Street at the southwest edge of St. Paul. It is a former Zapata and Taco Bell outlet that is now part of a strictly local chain. I go back to the Zapata days. I’ve been a customer all the way along since 1969 or so. The local chain has taken to closing on Sundays because of staffing issues. I don’t
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October 20, 2021 — Scott Johnson
I have settled on psychedelic as the Homeric epithet to accompany the name of White House pspokesman Jen Psaki. She blows my mind, as in her response to the question posed at yesterday’s briefing about psupply chain issues. She mocked them. They’re a big joke, but (as the New York Post observes on its cover today) it’s not funny. Let me put that in block letters like the Post uses:
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October 19, 2021 — Steven Hayward
With the stock market at or near all-time highs, and with traditional measures suggesting it is overvalued, I’ve been seeing a number of articles about today’s anniversary of the crash of October 19, 1987, when the Dow crashed 22 percent in a single day—still the largest one-day decline in history. A lot of the articles I’m seeing now say “we still don’t know exactly why it happened,” but I think
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