Economy
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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March 10, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The Associated Press is bidding to overtake the New York Times as the most biased news source in America. To perhaps a greater degree even than the Times and the Washington Post, the AP has set itself up as the opposition to the Trump administration. Often, its bias has to be seen to be believed. As with this story: “Jobs report no longer phony, Trump says, now that it’s his.”
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March 8, 2017 — John Hinderaker
ADP’s National Employment Report shows that the economy added 298,000 jobs in February. January’s number was also revised upward from 246,000 to 261,000. The February number was well above what most economists had predicted. “February proved to be an incredibly strong month for employment with increases we have not seen in years,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. For context, here are ADP’s numbers
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February 21, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Nicholas Eberstadt, one of the most perceptive analysts I know of, contends that “things have been going badly wrong in America since the beginning of the 21st century.” He makes a solid case, and I’m not here to dispute it, much less to argue that this century has been a bed of roses. Eberstadt attributes President Trump’s stunning victory to the “miserable” century Americans outside of the “bubble” have been
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January 3, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Ford CEO Mark Fields announced today that Ford has canceled plans to invest $1.6 billion in a new plant in Mexico. Instead it will produce the vehicles the Mexican plant would have manufactured at facilities in Michigan and Illinois. The move is expect to create approximately 700 jobs in the U.S. The Washington Post buries this news in an article about Trump “targeting” American automakers, especially General Motors, by threatening
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December 27, 2016 — John Hinderaker
Immediately after the election, arch-leftist Paul Krugman offered one of his worst predictions ever: It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of
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December 8, 2016 — Steven Hayward
John Maynard Keynes was right about one thing: economic dynamism depends on “animal spirits,” that is, the appetite for entrepreneurial risk-taking needs to reach a critical mass for an economy to boom. And this isn’t something that can be easily quantified, though the fact that new business startups under Obama plummeted is certainly one tangible measure of how the economy has been smothered in the Obama years. Hence, beyond specific
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December 5, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, I wrote about what appears to be Donald Trump’s first foreign policy call — a telephone conversation with the Taiwanese president that signals to China the possibility of closer relations between the U.S. and Taiwan. I argued that this was a good call. I take the deal Trump worked out with Carrier to keep about 1,000 jobs in the U.S. to be the president-elect’s first economic policy call. How
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November 20, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Donald Trump cracked the Democrats’ “blue wall” by narrowly winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. He accomplished this by attracting non-upscale white voters. He also took advantage, it seems, of lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton among black voters in cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee. Has Trump thereby transformed the electoral landscape? The answer probably depends on the extent to which his policies improve, or will be perceived as
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