Economy
September 24, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The commercial real estate market is in the doldrums across much of the U.S., but it is especially bad in some places. Like Minneapolis. John Phelan relates the bad news: Last week, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reported: Two downtown Minneapolis office towers have sold in a deal representing one of the core’s steepest discounts in recent history. The 634,000-square-foot Forum buildings, previously known as International Centre and Oracle Centre,
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August 24, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
With his daughter in the running for president, Donald Harris’ 1978 Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution is getting attention. Check out this anonymous review in the July 24 Economist: The probable Democratic nominee for president breaks into a laugh at the turn of phrase before explaining, somewhat philosophically, the message of the story: “you exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” For
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August 21, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Target is based in the Twin Cities. We try to support it when we can. This morning Target announced that it had beaten Wall Street’s second-quarter expectations for earnings and revenue. We are happy for Target and Target CEO Brian Cornell was pretty, pretty happy about the results. Cornell followed up Target’s announcement with an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box. Mischievous host Joe Kernan asked Cornell if some “price gouging”
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August 17, 2024 — Steven Hayward
A financial analyst I follow on Twitter/X, Robert Sterling, says everyone should calm down about Kamala’s grocery price controls idea. It’s actually worse than you think. Here’s his expectation from his Twitter column: People need to stop overreacting about Kamala’s plan to reduce food inflation, as if it would lead to communism, mass starvation, and the end of America. I worked in M&A in the food industry. Here’s a step-by-step
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August 16, 2024 — John Hinderaker
So now Kamala Harris says she wants price controls on groceries to stop “price gouging,” even though grocery stores operate on razor-thin margins. Scott and Steve have already noted how profoundly stupid this is. I just want to add a few words. First, price controls (notably, price controls on groceries) have a long history, extending back 2,000 years. They always fail, without exception. If price controls worked, every country would
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August 16, 2024 — Scott Johnson
One might wonder why “price gouging” and “corporate greed” regularly emerge as problems under Democratic administrations. One may even wonder what Vice President Harris is talking about as she boldly comes out against them. One may also wonder at the stupidity of White House correspondent Zeke Miller’s AP story (with contributions by “Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, and Chris Rugaber in Washington, and Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in Largo,
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August 15, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Kamala Harris is set to offer up her economic plans tomorrow, and right now it is a coin flip as to whether she will continue to steal Trump’s ideas, like no income taxes on tips and more fracking for domestic oil and gas production, or whether she will go full socialist. Perhaps both. She’s already signaled that she wants wage and price controls (i.e., a higher minimum wage regardless of
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August 5, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The current stock market crash might have a silver lining, if it focuses attention back on what should be a key issue in the election, the economy. The country’s fiscal mess is a disaster that could prove fatal, and a growing economy, while only a partial solution, is indispensable. So it is good to see that most voters understand that a Trump economy will be better than a Biden economy.
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August 5, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Finally! A stock market I like! I almost salivate when the stock market crashes as hard as it is right now, because it means good companies are suddenly selling for 10 percent off. It’s almost always the case that an inverted yield curve eventually leads to a recession, and with our Fed-induced yield curve inverted for more than 500 days now we shouldn’t be surprised to see the economy slowing.
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July 16, 2024 — John Hinderaker
My organization sponsors a quarterly poll in conjunction with our magazine. Meeting Street Insights conducts the poll for us. For our Summer issue, we thought it would be interesting to poll young people in Minnesota, which we defined as ages 18 through 34. To my knowledge, no one has done this before. We asked young Minnesotans not about their views on politics or policy, but about their lives and concerns.
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July 12, 2024 — Steven Hayward
With everyone following every facial tick and minor mis-statement by (P)resident Biden at his presser last night, there has been surprising little notice—and no press follow up so far—to his suggestion that the Biden Administration wants to institute nationwide rent control, and maybe even price controls on the resale price of houses. Here’s what came out of his mouth: “We’re going to make sure that rents are kept at 5% increase
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June 11, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Texas has long been known for stockyards, but now it may also be known as the home of a stock exchange. The Wall Street Journal reports: Earlier this week, the [Texas Stock Exchange] announced that it had raised about $120 million to launch a Dallas-based stock exchange that would let companies save money on costs of complying with NYSE and Nasdaq listing rules. The TXSE, as it is known for
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June 10, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Having more or less given up on California, New York and Illinois, liberals now tout Minnesota as the golden left-wing state–the state that shows liberal policies can succeed, after all. This effort to valorize–to borrow a liberal cliche–Minnesota is nothing new. Way back in 1973, Time magazine touted Minnesota as “the state that works.” Minnesota’s “working” at that time consisted partly of the fact that it had recently raised taxes.
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May 20, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Students of ancient history recall the classic question Ronald Reagan posed in his only debate with Jimmy Carter before the 1980 presidential election: Are you better off than you were four years ago? Students of ancient history also understand that the 2024 presidential election reframes that question, Grover Cleveland style. In the Monday edition of Bubba News, Bubba Atkinson posts “one heck of a chart,” as he calls it. It
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May 17, 2024 — Scott Johnson
President Biden has taken to asserting on more than one occasion that inflation stood at 9 percent when he took office. The statement sems to call for a follow-up question on the source of his misinformation, as they put in the Censorship Industrial Complex that he heads. But no, we have been left hanging. Students of ancient history may recall that inflation rate was actually 1.4 percent when Biden took
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May 15, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Things are not going well here in America. That is obvious to pretty much everyone who lives here. And yet, our democratic, free market heritage is not yet entirely squandered. That is perhaps most easily seen through the eyes of others, like Britain’s Telegraph, which documents how much better off we Americans are compared with UK residents: Pay in Britain has long lagged behind the United States, with the average
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May 13, 2024 — Steven Hayward
As everyone who follows the financial markets knows, the Federal Reserve is trying to walk a fine line, hinting that they’d like to start cutting interest rates, but still worried that inflation is proving too persistent to do it just yet (never mind whether real inflation is actually higher than the official headline rate because of how we measure inflation these days). Further rate hikes seem to be ruled but,
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