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"Donald Trump's Economic Plans Would Destroy the US Economy!" screams the headline in The Atlantic. Of course to go with the headline they find a very unflattering picture.... I do give The Atlantic one bit of credit: They didn't bury the lede. "I've borrowed knowing that you can pay back with discounts," he told CNBC. "I would borrow knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal.” "This policy would be so disastrous that even its suggestion is dangerous." Oh really? The article goes on to say that suggesting that one might haircut the debt would collapse markets...

Trump and the Republican Drama Obscures the Real Crisis The most important issue the new president will face continues to be sidelined. May 10, 2016 Bruce Thornton    Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The Republican caterwauling over Donald Trump reminds me of the lyric from “That’s Entertainment”: “There’s no ordeal/like the end of Camille.” Jeb Bush, Lyndsey Graham, and Mitt Romney have announced that they will snub the GOP convention. GOP big donors are closing their wallets. Some pundits and politicians are contemplating a third-party candidate to prove the purity of...

New York Magazine's Annie Lowrey excitedly writes "that there's a welfare-policy idea that is very in vogue. That idea is just giving everybody enough money to live on, rich or poor, old or young, working or not working. It is called a universal basic income." She adds that the idea has captured the imagination of Silicon Valley technologists, European socialists, U.S. policymakers on the left and right, and seemingly everyone in between. And while Lowrey is hedging herself as to whether a universal basic income or guaranteed income will succeed, it doesn't take much casual analysis to see that what...

Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed paying for his proposals to transform large sectors of the government and the economy mainly through increased taxes on wealthy Americans. A pair of new studies published Monday suggests Sanders would not come up with enough money using this approach, and that the poor and the middle class would have to pay more than Sanders has projected in order to fund his ideas. The studies, published jointly by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center and the Urban Institute in Washington, concludes that Sanders's plans are short a total of more than $18 trillion over a decade....

Employment: April’s job growth was below expectations, which after seven years of missed targets shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. But doesn’t slow and steady win the race? The short answer is, no. Any way you look at it, April’s report was mediocre. At 160,000 new jobs, April’s number came in well below expectations — which ranged up to 240,000. The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised its job growth number down by 19,000... ...the number of people employed dropped by 316,000 last month, while 562,000 dropped out of the labor force. As a result, the labor-force participation rate dropped...

Should we be alarmed that the number of job cuts announced by large U.S. companies was 35 percent higher in April than it was in March? This is definitely a case where the trend is not our friend. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. firms announced 65,141 job cuts during April, which represented a massive 35 percent increase over the previous month. And so far this year overall, job cut announcements are running 24 percent higher than for the exact same period in 2015. Meanwhile, on Thursday we learned that initial claims for unemployment benefits shot up dramatically...

First, let’s take a look at the reports, then we will take a look at what this may mean for the economy. Class 8 Truck Orders Plunge 39% The Wall Street Journal reports Truck Orders Fall in April. Last month, trucking fleets ordered just 13,500 Class 8 trucks, the big rigs used on long-haul routes, down 16% from March and 39% from a year earlier. It was the fewest net orders in any April since 2009, FTR said. DAT Solutions, an Oregon-based transportation data firm, reported that loads available for dry vans, the most common type of tractor-trailers used for...

We continue to get more evidence that the U.S. economy has entered a major downturn. Just last week, I wrote about how U.S. GDP growth numbers have been declining for three quarters in a row, and previously I wrote about how corporate defaults have surged to their highest level since the last financial crisis. Well, now we are getting some very depressing numbers from the rail industry. As you will see below, U.S. rail traffic was down more than 11 percent from a year ago in April. That is an absolutely catastrophic number, and the U.S. rail industry is feeling...

Why a conservative economist says Trump could make America ‘the North Korea of economics’ By Jim Tankersley May 6 In his run for the White House, Donald Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on imports from China, in almost-certain violation of international rules. He has threatened to confiscate money that immigrants from Mexico wire home to their families, in order to force the Mexican government to pay for a border wall. This week, he suggested that, in an economic crisis, the government might repay only some of the money it owes to certain holders of its debt. Those threats reflect...

There was no dramatic monologue or carefully written statement needed. Trump Supporters have known all along that Sean Hannity would support Trump when Trump became GOP nominee. This was confirmed with a simple tweet “Yes, I do.” Thank you, Sean, for always being fair and for endorsing Donald J. Trump for President.

292 Union Pacific engines idled in Arizona Desert Total US rail traffic in April plunged 11.8% from a year ago, the Association of American Railroads reported today. Carloads of bulk commodities such as coal, oil, grains, and chemicals plummeted 16.1% to 944,339 units. - snip - Only five of the 20 commodity categories saw gains. Of the decliners, coal was the biggest. But petroleum products also plunged 25%, and grain mill products dropped 7%. Even without coal, carloads were down 3% year-over-year.

Hillary Cinton isn't over the finish line yet, but as she continues to battle Bernie Sanders she's also turning her attention to a general election matchup with Donald Trump. A lot of Democrats say that in order to beat Trump, she needs to be developing a clearer message on the economy. That's not Donald Trump's problem. Not only does he have a simple, clear message — he often says so himself. "Our theme is very simple," Trump reminded voters last week after winning the Indiana primary. "Make America great again. We will make America great again. We will start winning...

On April 12, in one of the easiest financial predictions in history, I challenged the notion that a €5 billion slush fund dubbed “Atlas” could possibly prop up €360 Billion of non-performing loans in Italian banks. Less than a month later, “Atlas” is already a notable failure. I seek no credit for my call, and none is due. Failure was a certainty from the start. Instead, I question the sanity of anyone who thought such a preposterous scheme could work in the first place. Please consider Atlas Strains to Hold up the Sky Over Italy’s Banking Sector. “A government-orchestrated, privately...

Distinguished law scholar Elizabeth Warren teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law at Harvard Law School. She is an outspoken critic of America's credit economy, which she has linked to the continuing rise in bankruptcy among the middle-class. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Council Lectures" [6/2007] [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 12620]

Candidate Ted Cruz and candidate John Kasich have officially “suspended” their campaign efforts to win the republican nomination. However, the campaign effort to deliver a resounding win for Donald Trump continues.Yes, a major hurdle has been crossed – Donald Trump is now the last remaining candidate running for the nomination; but that doesn’t mean the push through the last remaining states should be any less important. Every vote counts. Every delegate matters.Anyone who is inclined toward complacency needs only to look at the reaction yesterday by House Speaker Paul ‘Omnibus‘ Ryan and note why it is vital for the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy added the fewest number of jobs in seven months in April and Americans dropped out of the labor force in droves, signs of weakness that cast doubts on whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates before the end of the year. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 160,000 jobs last month as construction employment barely rose and the retail sector shed jobs, the Labor Department said on Friday. That was the smallest gain since September and below the first-quarter average job growth of 200,000. Employers added 19,000 fewer jobs in February and March than previously...

Seldom have we seen so many assets and indicators at decision points simultaneously! We see stocks, gold, and the U.S. dollar trading at extremely important levels, all in conjunction. Note that this is not according to technical analysis, but our intermarket analysis and chart patterns.First, as indicated in recent analysis, risk indicators in U.S. stocks have turned positive in recent weeks. That suggest a bullish outcome for stocks, almost exactly at their breakout level. We prefer to let the market do its work, and so far we have not seen a breakout. But there are sufficient signs that it is in the making. As stocks are testing key resistance, the U.S. dollar...

Donald Trump told CNBC on Thursday he's for low interest rates unless inflation perks up, and he would probably replace Janet Yellen when her term is up as Federal Reserve chair. "I have nothing against Janet Yellen whatsoever. I think she's been doing her job," the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said in a wide-ranging phone interview with "Squawk Box."

Trumped! Why It Happened And What Comes Next, Part 1   Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blogFirst there were seventeen. At length, there was one.Donald Trump’s wildly improbable capture of the GOP nomination, therefore, is the most significant upheaval in American politics since Ronald Reagan. And the proximate cause is essentially the same. Like back then, an era of drastic bipartisan mis-governance has finally generated an electoral impulse to sweep out the stables.Accordingly, the Donald’s patented phrase that “we aren’t winning anymore” is striking a deep nerve on main street. But that is not on account of giant trade deficits or a faltering foreign policy and failed military adventures per se.Indeed, it...

The rap on Donald Trump is that he’s all bluster. The New York Times says he’s offering “incoherent mishmash.” Ted Cruz claims Trump has “no idea” how to fix the economy. Don’t’ believe it. The Trump campaign is putting forward proposals to fix problems facing the nation, from the long waits for medical care at the VA to the impending collapse of Obamacare. Check out Trump’s economic plan, for starters. Unlike Hillary Clinton’s radical anti-business agenda, Trump’s plan would actually help unemployed Americans get back to work. Trump slashes the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, down from the current...