It was the consensus view on Wall Street that the economy would slide into a recession, but economic conditions have defied expectations. Gross domestic product (GDP) has expanded at a solid pace, the labor market has added millions of new jobs, and the inflation growth rate has eased from its June 2022 peak.
If this is the current state of the world’s largest economy, why have U.S. households been down?
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was asked about this at the December post-policy meeting press conference, and he attributed this pessimistic view to the “tremendous pain” of high prices.
“Prices went up by a great deal, and people really feel that, and it’s prices of food and transportation and heating your home and things like that. So there’s tremendous pain in that burst of inflation that was very global,” Powell said. […]
]]>— Read More: www.theepochtimes.com
Operation Choke Point was started by the U.S. Dept. of Justice in 2013 as a way to put pressure on banks to sever their ties, without due process, with legal businesses like gun dealers, cannabis dispensaries and payday lenders which the administration found objectionable.
That initiative was ended by President Trump in 2017 but under the Biden administration, it appears that Operation Choke Point 2.0 has begun with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) sending letters to U.S. banks in 2022, urging them to “pause all crypto-related activity.”
Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) told Fox Business that the regulatory abuse is real and that President-elect Trump will put an end to this type of regulatory abuse.
https://twitter.com/SenLummis/status/1868672432438997264
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently described the practice of debanking as “a privatized sanctions regime” on The Joe Rogan Experience, saying, “There’s no rules, there’s no court, there’s no decision process, there’s no appeal. Who do you go to to get your bank account back?” […]
]]>— Read More: amgreatness.com
The regulatory state is a $2 trillion tax on the American economy. We all want worker safety, a clean environment and consumer protections, but in too many cases the costs of regulations far outweigh the societal benefits. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to slash 10 rules for every new rule. Just do it, Mr. President.
As JFK, Ronald Reagan and others have proven throughout history, lower tax rates lead to more growth, more investment and more jobs. The Trump tax cuts meant that a typical family of four earning $75,000 a year saw their tax bill fall by half — a benefit valued at more than $2,000. And the corporate tax rate fell from 35% — the highest in the world — to 21%, bringing jobs and capital to America. Trump has promised to make all these tax cuts permanent. Why? Because they worked almost exactly as we anticipated they would.
Growth will require more able-bodied Americans getting off welfare and into jobs. Welfare — which includes cash assistance, public housing, food stamps, disability payments, unemployment benefits and Medicaid — needs to be a hand up, not a handout.
America has well more than $50 trillion of natural resources that are accessible with existing drilling and mining technologies. This is a vast storehouse of wealth that far surpasses what any other nation is endowed with. We can use the royalty payments and leases to reduce our national debt while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. […]
]]>— Read More: www.zerohedge.com
While Biden made student loan forgiveness a promise in his 2016 presidential campaign, court challenges have stymied his efforts to redistribute the debt without congressional approval. On Friday, he said that his administration had been able to orchestrate another handout.
‘They learned that they don’t have to be responsible for themselves, that someone else will pay — making them devoted slaves.’
“The 55,000 public servants approved for debt cancellation today are workers who have dedicated their lives to giving back to their communities. Now, they are finally earning the relief they are entitled to under the law,” read a message attributed to Biden on social media.
The announcement was immediately assailed on social media. […]
]]>— Read More: www.theblaze.com
They say the U.S. presidency is the loneliest job in the world. Maybe the second-loneliest gig is that of Cabinet secretary in President Joe Biden’s administration.
A piece published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal pulls from dozens of sources who say Biden’s inner circle of trusted aides increasingly kept contact with the president at a minimum, including the people he should have depended on most to consult and advise for the good of the nation.
The president who has spent a good chunk of his term out of the office apparently was not all that keen on meetings with his Cabinet secretaries. In fact, Biden may have met more often with his criminal son’s sketchy clients than he has with his administration’s top managers.
Joe Biden was such a political liability that his handlers hid him away during the 2020 presidential campaign. The man campaigned from his Delaware basement through the brunt of the election year. The cloistered strategy wasn’t as much about protecting the feeble geezer from Covid as it was designed to prevent American voters from seeing what a physical and mental mess Biden really was. […]
]]>— Read More: thefederalist.com
The nonpartisan agency’s analysis, released in a Dec. 18 letter to lawmakers, assumes three scenarios under Trump’s trade policy proposals: a universal 10 percent tariff on all imports; a 60 percent tariff on Chinese imports; and a combination of the two. Under a combined scenario, the CBO projects that the Trump tariffs could slash deficits by as much as $2.9 trillion over the next decade. This would slash by roughly 13 percent the estimated $22.1 trillion in total cumulative deficits that the CBO expects will be generated through 2034.
The agency warned that the proposed tariffs also have downsides. Inflation, as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, an inflation gauge that the Federal Reserve relies on most heavily in setting monetary policy, would increase by 1 percent over the next two years under the combined scenario.
After 2026, the tariffs would not have any additional significant effects on prices. Economic output would also see a decline. Under the most aggressive tariff scenario, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) growth would be a relatively modest 0.6 percent lower over the next 10 years than it otherwise would be.
Trump, who has called himself “Tariff Man,” has repeatedly touted the use of tariffs for a range of policy outcomes, including protecting domestic industries from unfair foreign competition and incentivizing the reshoring of manufacturing jobs. During his first term, he used the tariffs or the threat of tariffs as a bargaining tactic to pressure countries into renegotiating trade deals that he felt unfairly disadvantaged American businesses. Recently, Trump threatened Canada and Mexico with 25 percent tariffs if they didn’t take action to stop the flow of fentanyl and illegal immigrants across their borders into the United States. […]
]]>— Read More: www.theepochtimes.com
Now, Johnson and his team have to get a deal done Friday that will appease enough Democrats and dissenting Republicans or there will be a partial government shutdown.
According to Fox News:
The legislation was hastily negotiated on Thursday after GOP hardliners led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy rebelled against an initial bipartisan deal that would have extended the government funding deadline until March 14 and included a host of unrelated policy riders.
The new deal also includes several key policies unrelated to keeping the government open, but the 116-page bill is much narrower than its 1,547-page predecessor.
Like the initial bill, the new iteration extended the government funding deadline through March 14 while also suspending the debt limit – something Trump had pushed for.
It proposed to suspend the debt limit for two years until January 2027, still keeping it in Trump’s term but delaying that fight until after the 2026 Congressional midterm elections.
Some Republicans who voted against the bill chimed in on X:
I voted no on a Trillion Dollar CR that I wasn’t even allowed to read. pic.twitter.com/Y6CUtsIRaG
— Tim Burchett (@timburchett) December 20, 2024
I understand a lot is flying around – but I was one of the first out publicly against the CRamnibus.
Currently, I’m against raising the debt ceiling without major spending cuts/reform.
Congress needs to feel the pain of their actions and confront reality. https://t.co/X2n5XnNL7M
— Chip Roy (@chiproytx) December 20, 2024
This isn’t complicated.
Separate the bills and vote on them individually.
one vote on the clean CR
one vote on the debt limit
one vote on disaster relief
one vote on farm bailouts
Radical right? Individual bills for each issue.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) December 20, 2024
My conscience led me to a “no” as the bill increases spending by over 100 billion, increases the debt limit, and does NOT offer real spending cuts, therefore allowing inflation to continue. My mind is on all Oklahoma families, farmers, and ranchers who have lost approximately 20…
— Congressman Josh Brecheen (@RepBrecheen) December 19, 2024
Will the government get shut down? Will relief be delivered to hurricane victims and farmers? Will spending be cut? These are all questions that may or may not get answered Friday.
]]>Speaker Mike Johnson is getting some well-deserved coal in his stocking from conservatives livid with the Louisiana Republican’s attempt to play Santa with a Christmas list stopgap spending bill.
The massive house-of-cards measure Johnson countenanced collapsed Wednesday amid scathing criticism from conservatives and an incoming president who urged Republicans to get “SMART and Tough” with Democrats.
Johnson loathes the descriptor, but the proposed resolution the speaker has presided over is nothing more than a bloated omnibus bill packed with pork, censorship, and sweetheart deals for Congress. Turning from his reported intentions to deliver a clean “continuing resolution” to keep the bloated federal government fully open for another few months, the simple spending plan has grown to a bloated 1,500-plus pages.
On Wednesday, the scam proposal included a possible pay hike for congressional members and a provision allowing senators and representatives to opt out of Obamacare for better taxpayer-funded insurance. […]
]]>— Read More: thefederalist.com
For many Americans, our banks know more about our lives than our own mothers. Based on our financial records, they can accurately guess a customer’s religious beliefs, political leanings, and more. Yet this extensive knowledge has been used to spy on us on behalf of the federal government, a revelation that was brought to light by a bombshell report released by the House Judiciary Committee (HJC) and accompanied by a video posted by the subcommittee.
The HJC report is titled “Financial Surveillance in the United States: How The Federal Government Weaponized The Bank Secrecy Act To Spy On Americans.” The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), referred to in the report title, is an antiquated law enacted in 1970 to combat criminal money laundering schemes. The BSA requires a financial institution to file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) on its customer if it identifies “a suspicious transaction relevant to a possible violation of law or regulation” or file Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs) if a customer “conducts a transaction over $10,000 or multiple transactions that amount to over $10,000 in a single day.”
However, the HJC’s investigation revealed that a law that was meant to catch criminals had been weaponized by the federal government to surveil Americans without a warrant.
The HJC report uncovered three main issues. First is how financial institutions’ over-reporting has affected millions of law-abiding Americans. Since there is a significant monetary penalty for failing to file, the law incentivizes financial institutions to over-file SARs in a desire for self-preservation even when a customer’s activity could be completely legal. […]
]]>— Read More: thefederalist.com
So it probably wouldn’t be surprising to have people who might not be fans of the Department of Government Efficiency just because of its connection to the Trump administration.
But when Fox interviewed folks about government spending, the exchanges were hilarious when they found out just how our money was being spent.
DC Residents said they were not fans of DOGE until they learned how the government spends their tax dollars. pic.twitter.com/VLkhBuqAd1
— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) December 13, 2024
They thought the government spent too much money, one saying, “By definition.”
But then, when Fox asked about some of the crazy things that the government spent money on, they were stunned at how ridiculous the expenditures were. The Fox interviewer asked about the government spending $750,000 to determine whether it was “one small step for man” or “one small step for a man” in regard to the moon landing. What the heck? As the D.C. resident said, not just why would you do that, but how could you spend that much money on that question? […]
]]>— Read More: redstate.com