Free Republic

The Federal Reserve is stuck between a rock and a hard place. If the Fed pushes rates higher, interest payments on our 34 trillion dollar national debt could spin wildly out of control and bank balance sheets will be in even worse condition than they are now. First Republic just bit the dust, and literally thousands of other small and mid-size banks and in serious jeopardy. So it would be suicidal to hike rates at this point. But if the Fed were to reduce rates, that would be like injecting jet fuel into a raging fire. Our ongoing inflation crisis...

The Biden administration has saddled the U.S. economy with more than $1 trillion worth of final rules and regulations thus far in 2024, according to analysis conducted by the American Action Forum (AAF).The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final emissions regulations for light- and medium-duty vehicles, which some have characterized as an electric vehicle (EV) mandate, pushed the costs of the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda over the $1 trillion threshold for 2024, alone, according to AAF’s analysis. Across all agencies and regulatory actions last week, the federal government published regulations imposing $103 billion worth of total costs and 11.6 million annual...

Biden is again on a tax-raising rampage. He proposes to increase income taxes by nearly $5 trillion for corporations. Increasing the corporate income tax rate to 28% (from 21%) will be a great driver of negative effects on the U.S. economy, reducing long-run GDP by 0.9%, the capital stock by 1.7%, wages by 0.8%, and full-time jobs by 192,000. Additionally, Biden's new tax proposals include increasing the recently enacted corporate alternative minimum tax rate from 15% to 21% and denying business deductions for employee compensation above $1 million.Biden proposes an increase of the corporate income tax that's a higher tax...

resident Biden's latest proposal to hike the top capital gains tax rate to its highest level in more than a century is facing heavy criticism from experts who warn such an action could significantly harm the U.S. economy. According to a report issued by the Treasury Department, led by Secretary Janet Yellen, the president's proposed fiscal year 2025 budget would increase the top marginal rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends to a staggering 44.6%. A capital gains tax hike of that magnitude would take the rate to its highest level since it was first introduced in the early...

President Joe Biden has made student loan forgiveness a top priority after young voters elected him by large margins in 2020. Ahead of another matchup with former President Donald Trump, the voting bloc might just abandon him, anyway. Despite Biden’s continued efforts to cancel massive amounts of student loans for millions of Americans, along with various other left-wing policy achievements, polling indicates his lead among young voters has dropped significantly since last cycle. The loss in support is partially attributable to Biden’s support of Israel following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, as young individuals largely express support for Palestinians...

Nathan Frederiksen is doing pretty well for himself. He turns 40 this year and is on track to retire by 60. It takes some sacrifice — he drives the “unsexiest car ever,” takes a DIY approach to home repairs and doesn’t eat out much — but he’s able to save 10% of his income for retirement and maintain an emergency savings fund while supporting his wife and four children in the suburbs of Boise, Idaho. “I understand that I’ve been lucky with some of my job prospects, but I don’t make a crazy amount of money,” he told CNN. “I...

We are living in the USA where corruption, favoritism, open borders and an out-of-control Federal budget and debt are destroying this once great nation. Former Kansas City Fed President Thomas M. Hoenig was absolutely right when he said recently that The Federal Reserve panders to Wall Street, Congress and special interest groups, prioritizing immediate relief over financial stability. Bernanke’s zero-interest rate policies (ZIRP) and Quantitative Easing (QE) were short-term fixes that never went away. Indeed, since the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008-2009, US Dollar purchasing power is DOWN -32% and M2 Money is up a staggering 177%. While Yellen stuck...

Pesident Biden is pushing for trillions in tax hikes during an election year, despite experts warning it would reduce economic output and have other dire effects. It may be popular with the anti-corporate elements of potential voters, but tax experts say it's a mistake. "The tax increases would substantially increase marginal tax rates on investment, saving, and work, reducing economic output by 2.2 percent in the long run, wages by 1.6 percent, and employment by 788,000 full-time equivalent jobs," according to a recent Tax Foundation analysis. "On a gross basis, we estimate Biden’s FY 2025 budget would increase taxes by...

With a $650 payment for 72 months, this is going to be one expensive Toyota CamryYour twenties are the perfect time to screw up and try to get your xxxx figured out. Sometimes it takes getting to the rock bottom before you can dig yourself out of it. For the sake of everyone involved here, I hope this young woman on Caleb Hammer’s Financial Audit show has reached her bottom and will find a way to get her life turned around. Right now, it seems like the best first step would be to sell her car and find her way...

Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are flooding into U.S. hospitals for treatment and leaving billions in uncompensated health care costs in their wake. The House Committee on Homeland Security recently released a report illustrating that from the estimated $451 billion in annual costs stemming from the U.S. border crisis, a significant portion is going to health care for illegal immigrants.With the majority of the illegal immigrant population lacking any kind of medical insurance, hospitals and government welfare programs such as Medicaid are feeling the weight of these unanticipated costs.Apprehensions of illegal immigrants at the U.S. border have jumped 48...

(The Center Square) – The housing market is not immune from inflationary woes as buyer’s purchasing power has significantly diminished in four years. Home buyers in 2024 need 80% more income to purchase a home than they did in 2020, according to a new report by Zillow. “The income needed to comfortably afford a home is up 80% since 2020, while median income has risen 23% in that time,” the report states. That equates to $47,000 more than four years ago. “Home shoppers today need to make more than $106,000 to comfortably afford a home,” according to the report. “That...

It’s a pretty terrible sign of the times when a record number of Americans are forced to plunder their 401(k)s. “A record share of 401(k) account holders took early withdrawals from their accounts last year for financial emergencies,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Overall, 3.6% of its plan participants did so last year, up from 2.8% in 2022 and a pre-pandemic average of about 2%.” The whole point of a 401(k) is to keep that money out of reach until you reach age 59 ½ or above. Removing that money earlier is about the worst financial move anyone can make....

The debt load of the U.S. is growing at a quicker clip in recent months, increasing about $1 trillion nearly every 100 days. The nation’s debt permanently crossed over to $34 trillion on Jan. 4, after briefly crossing the mark on Dec. 29, according to data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It reached $33 trillion on Sept. 15, 2023, and $32 trillion on June 15, 2023, hitting this accelerated pace. Before that, the $1 trillion move higher from $31 trillion took about eight months. U.S. debt, which is the amount of money the federal government borrows to cover...

If you want to determine what people believe, don’t listen to what they say. Rather, closely watch what they actually do. In recent days, the stock market has been hovering near all-time record highs and business leaders have been assuring us that good days are ahead. But meanwhile many of our most famous billionaires have been doing things that indicate that they are extremely concerned about what is coming in the future. For example, during the first two months of this year Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon and Mark Zuckerberg “have all sold big chunks of shares in their own companies”…...

That’s Bidenomics for you! The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) continued its decline in January, dropping 0.4% MoM (notably worse than the -0.1% MoM expectations), and December’s 0.1% declin e was revised down to a 0.2% decline. The biggest positive contributor to the leading index was stock prices (again) at +0.10 The biggest negative contributor was average workweek at -0.18 This is the 22nd straight MoM decline in the LEI (and 23rd month of 25) – equaling the longest streak of declines since ‘Lehman’ (22 straight months of declines from June 2007 to April 2008) “The U.S. LEI fell...

Michigan autoworkers are worried that President Joe Biden’s policies pushing for a transition to electric vehicles (EV) will cost their jobs, according to The New York Times. Some autoworkers represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union are not pleased with the president’s support of EVs due to the products needing less manpower to produce, which could eliminate tens of thousands of jobs not just in manufacturing, but also in supporting services like insurance and trucking, according to the NYT. Biden has made union support a key part of his campaign and presidential policy, but his push to have half...

Today, Joe Biden is cracking down on manufacturing, but I bet he doesn’t have the scientific data to give credibility to the new policies, but he doesn’t care. He is bending over for the green pushers. Here’s this, from Fox News:Biden’s latest climate rules crack down on manufacturing, ignoring industry warnings of economic devastationBiden admin’s actions will ‘grind permits to a halt for a large portion of our country’The Biden administration finalized regulations severely tightening restrictions on fine particulate matter that the manufacturing and energy sectors are legally allowed to emit, an action that industry said would have devastating economic...

Clayton Wiles, a truck driver in North Carolina, earns about 20% more than three years ago. Kristine Funck, a nurse in Ohio, has won steady pay raises, built retirement savings and owns her home. Alfredo Arguello, who opened a restaurant outside Nashville when the pandemic hit, now owns a second one and employs close to 50 people. But ask any of them about the state of the American economy, and the same gloominess surfaces. “Unstable” is how Arguello describes it. Said Funck: “Even though I’m OK right now, there’s a sense it could all go away in a second.” There’s...

President Joe Biden spent much of his third year in the White House trying to brag about what he'd done for the American economy. In February, speaking to a chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Maryland, he declared, "For the past two years, we've been carrying out my economic plan that grows the economy from the bottom up and the middle out, not the top down." Biden then recited a laundry list of economic indicators. The unemployment rate was 3.4 percent. Gas prices had dropped by $1.60 per gallon. In his first two years in office, he...

The pace of job cuts by U.S. employers accelerated at the start of 2024, a sign the labor market is starting to deteriorate in the face of ongoing inflation and high interest rates. That is according to a new report published by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which found that companies planned 82,307 job cuts in January, a substantial 136% increase from the previous month. However, that is down about 20% from the same time one year ago. It marked the second-highest layoff total for the month of January in data going back to 2009. "Waves of layoff announcements hit U.S.-based...