Economy
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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October 16, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Well, that was just a lie. According to Biden chief of staff Ron Klain endorsing the deep thought of former Obama administration CEA chairman Jason Furman, inflation, supply chain fiascos, and all the rest are the kind of problems we should be grateful to have, or to be able complain about, or something. They are “high class problems” so long as we are south of 10 percent unemployment. This 👇👇
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October 15, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
In commenting on the supply chain crisis the other day, Joe Biden said: I want to thank my Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force, which we set up in June, led by Secretaries Buttigieg, Raimondo, and Vilsack, and by my Director of National Economic Council, Brian Deese. I want to thank them for their leadership. . . . But yesterday, we learned that Buttigieg has been on paternity leave since mid-August.
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October 14, 2021 — Scott Johnson
If there was ever an administration unequal to the challenge of mitigating product shortages and lowering inflation, it must be the Biden administration. They know they have to do something, but they do not have a clue except in the public relations department. In the real world, the administration’s actions and proposals either have aggravated or will aggravate the underlying problem(s). Yesterday President Biden stepped forward to read from a
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October 13, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The AP reports that inflation has risen 5.4 percent from a year ago — unexpectedly. (Where have we heard that before?) Here are the first four paragraphs of the AP story: Another surge in consumer prices in September sent inflation to 5.4% from a year ago, matching the highest such rate since 2008 as tangled global supply lines continue to create havoc. Consumer prices rose 0.4% in September from August
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September 27, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Joe Biden has made the absurd claim that his $3.5 trillion socialist boondoggle is free: That’s not what “costs zero dollars” means. https://t.co/ynULisP4CH — Brad Polumbo 🇺🇸⚽️ 🏳️🌈 (@brad_polumbo) September 26, 2021 The idea that a $3.5 trillion (or whatever the true price tag turns out to be) boondoggle “costs zero dollars” is ridiculous. It costs $3.5 trillion, and the cost has to be paid for through a combination of
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August 15, 2021 — Steven Hayward
That Richard Nixon announced that the United States was abandoning the Bretton Woods monetary system that anchored the dollar to gold at $35 an ounce, and added on a helping of wage and price controls to boot. Here’s my narrative of the scene from volume 1 of The Age of Reagan: On a more substantive level, Nixon decided to do what he could to stimulate the economy with the federal
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August 14, 2021 — John Hinderaker
It is early yet, but as of today it looks like the top issues in next year’s Congressional elections will be the cost of living, crime and critical race theory. If that turns out to be true, Democrats are in serious trouble. For the first time in quite a few years, prices for staple items are rising rapidly, and with the federal government borrowing and spending at a record pace
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August 13, 2021 — Steven Hayward
That the Gipper signed his three-year, 25 percent income tax cut package up at the ranch in the mountains north of Santa Barbara, the capstone in many ways of the “supply side revolution.” Needless to say, reversing this has been the top priority of the left ever since, with partial success. It was a close run, epic legislative struggle. Here’s my account of the climax of the story from The
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August 11, 2021 — Steven Hayward
President Biden has said openly that one of his main objects is to turn back Ronald Reagan’s famous line from his first inaugural address that “Government is the problem.” Of course, everyone omits the qualifying preface of the entire Reagan quote: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem.” (Emphasis added.) While we can argue about how Reagan’s qualifier “in this present
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