Category: U.S. economy

The Age of Easy Money Is Over

Commentary What began in 2008 and continued for the better part of 14 years appears finally to be coming to an end. The era of cheap money and credit is over. It’s hard to wrap one’s brain around the implications. It will affect all of business life and personal finances. It will dramatically change financial…


Maybe the Fed Too Was Trolled

Commentary The Federal Reserve—and central banks the world over—played a crucial role in making lockdowns possible and weaponizing the panic of politicians. As the lender of last resort and the provider of liquidity for the entire federal government, it removes normal fiscal restraint. It writes checks that cannot bounce to fuel governments in normal times…


What It Means for Inflation to Be Embedded

News Analysis Every economic news release these days is an exercise in downplaying disaster. The bureau in question carefully crafts the results announcement, and the media picks up on it, spinning the bad news as good news. It seems to happen every time, such as with the terrible jobs report last week that somehow got…


The State of the US Economy on Election Day

Millions of Americans are heading to polls, with many seeing the struggling state of the U.S. economy as their primary concern for Election Day. The highly anticipated Nov. 8 midterm elections are a referendum on President Joe Biden and the Democrats, as the Republicans attempt to take back both houses of Congress. If the Republicans…


Joe Biden Is the King of Debt and Deficits

Commentary Imagine someone close to you has a drinking problem. Night after night, he goes out to the bars on wild binges, chugging down 10 to 12 beers a night. But then, in a supreme effort to reform himself, the drunkard cuts his consumption down to a six-pack every night. He starts boasting of his…


Essential and Nonessential Workers: Reshuffled!

Commentary It’s finally happening: Elon is bringing economic rationality to Twitter, the company he just took over under very high pressure to amp up cash flow in the midst of a stagflationary environment. It’s no easy task but it certainly begins with cost cutting. First on the chopping block: the labor pool itself. Half the…


The Fed Has Just Begun to Fight

News Analysis There was widespread fear and loathing on Wall Street after the Fed’s announcement of further rate increases, 75 basis points again and the sixth increase this year. The Fed has not increased rates this far this fast in the entire postwar period. The pace is without precedent, and indicates that the Fed is…


Inflation by Design

Commentary Years ago, one of my high school teachers showed us the great essay by Leonard Read called “I, Pencil.” We used pencils in those pre-internet days, and my “young mind full of mush” (hat tip to Rush Limbaugh) was inspired by the essay’s message: the common pencil, in its components, is extraordinarily complex and the…


The Cultural Destruction of Inflation

Commentary What is inflation doing to the culture? For a clue, have a look at trends in household economics. Start with credit card debt, which is now rising 14 percent per year in the United States, after having fallen dramatically during 2020 lockdowns. People wisely used stimulus payments to pay off some debt. That is…


The US Economy Isn’t Stronger, It’s Fatter

Commentary The headline gross domestic product (GDP) figure for the third quarter seemed to signal a return to growth and a significant improvement from the previous readings. Real GDP increased at an annual rate of 2.6 percent in the third quarter of 2022, in contrast to a decrease of 0.6 percent in the second quarter,…