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DOUBLING DOWN ON RECESSION The United States economy had its last severe turn for the worse in November of 2006, when Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats won their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The country immediately dipped into recession, which Barack Obama’s election two years later locked in for good. Historically, recessions are followed by economic growth, including heavy GDP increases and sufficient job creation to rehire people who lost their jobs in the last recession. The Obama administration expected the same to happen this time, apparently not realizing that their policies made it impossible. We have therefore seen an...

Politics: Now that Donald Trump has focused on something he at least has some expertise in -- the economy -- he might be able to get his flagging campaign back on track. And give him credit: The ideas he outlined in Monday's economic speech are mostly excellent. Trump's plan... Across the board income tax cuts... Tax simplification, with a reduction in the number of tax brackets... Tax cuts for businesses, which today face the highest rates -- nearly 40% -- in the industrial world. Trump would cut business taxes... Deduction of child care spending from taxes... A plan to reform...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Yeah, I checked in with Trump and his speech at the Economic Club of Detroit, and I gotta tell you: This audience is eating it up. He is bashing Hillary Clinton's economics. I heard him preview what his tax philosophy is, and he practically got a standing ovation on that one. He hasn't gotten into detail yet except on one thing, and in the middle of it when he started talking about only his campaign's reaching out to everybody and trying to unite everybody, some protestor started screeching like Hillary Clinton, and they had to drag her...

Submitted by Nick Colas of Convergex Many of the smartest investors out there hate stocks. Since May, we’ve heard negative equity calls from Stan Druckenmiller, George Soros, Carl Icahn, Jeff Gundlach and Bill Gross. Wall Street lore says “Never argue about markets with a guy who is much richer than you”. So we’ll take the discussion in a different direction: what do they know? Successful investors are always more plugged in than the market as a whole – hence their success. And while we can only guess at the lynchpins of their negative take on stocks, we do have some...

...The candidates' convention speeches show their intended campaign directions. Summing up each in a word: Clinton's was inclusivity; Trump's, insecurity. Clinton got all she could from her theme... Obama has bequeathed her a host of problems... ...If Clinton is the election's issue, she loses. Only by making Trump the issue can she hope to win. Trump is all too often only too willing to oblige -- -- he missed the chance to give equal weight to the foundation on which Americans' insecurity has rested for years: Our poor economy. The latest report of low second-quarter economic growth shows how bad...

Okay, I know you're not dummies – but if a book is required to break down Microsoft Word into simpler terms, then the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) requires a library. The 2016 candidates both in local races (for example, Paul Nehlen vs. Paul Ryan in Wisconsin) and our presidential race are always talking about the horrors of TPP. But the warnings fall on deaf ears because no one knows what TPP is. Why the hysteria? What exactly is TPP (Obamatrade)? TPP is a massive, pro-corporate trade agreement among the United States and 11 other countries. So what's wrong with that?...

In the public imagination, no industry better symbolizes the downfall of U.S. manufacturing than steel. Shuttered plants dot the Midwest. Since 1973, steel employment has dropped 76%, from 610,700 to 147,300 in 2015. Moreover, the culprit seems clear -- trade -- and its influence seems pervasive: Manufacturing as a whole lost about 5 million jobs from 2000 to 2015. No wonder both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have jumped on the anti-globalization bandwagon. Globalization seems guilty as charged -- except that the popular indictment is wildly misleading. Though trade has helped reshape U.S. manufacturing, it is only one force of...

Economy: The July jobs report was a good one, and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.9%, which in the past would have been sure signs of a robust economy. So why is the country in such a bad mood? An unemployment rate below 5% is a relatively rare thing. Only twice before in the past 40 years has it dropped that low -- once in the late 1990s during that economic boom, and again briefly in 2006-2007. Yet unlike before, there is little joy in Mudville today. Instead of confidence and optimism, there is only malaise. Back in 1997,...

ANGELA Merkel cut an increasingly isolated figure in Europe tonight as the rest of the continent ganged up on Germany over its imposition of crippling austerity. Major EU nations including France, Italy and Spain are clubbing together to form a new alliance with the aim of wrestling back economic power from the German leader. Mediterranean economies have been devastated by an EU-wide policy of austerity enforced from Berlin, which has led to massive youth unemployment and soaring poverty. Fiscally conservative Germany, which is the EU’s largest economy, is reluctant to loosen the purse strings and authorise the huge injection of...

U.S. railroad traffic in July fell 7.9 percent to 2,027,768, carloads and intermodal units, compared with traffic volume in July 2015, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) announced this week. Total carloads in the month declined 8.8 percent to 1,025,367 units, compared with the same period last year. Railroads also transported 1,002,401 containers and trailers last month, down 6.9 percent compared with a year ago. Four of the 20 carload commodity categories tracked by AAR posted increases during the month. They included grain, up 15.3 percent or 12,641 carloads; waste and nonferrous scrap, up 25.9 percent or 3,400 carloads; and...

It looks like July was another off month for Class 8 truck orders as industry analysts are predicting some of the lowest numbers since 2010, according to preliminary numbers from ACT Research and FTR. FTR is predicting Class 8 truck orders will come in at around 10,400 units while ACT Research is projecting 10,500 units for the month. Both forecasts are well below July 2015 orders and mark one of the weakest months since 2010. Compared to June, orders were down 19%, which FTR attributed to higher than normal order cancellations in the month. “Usually there are a low number...

Since 2014 The US Has Added Half A Million Waiters & Bartenders And No Manufacturing Workers: Here's Why by Tyler Durden Aug 5, 2016 12:43 PM 0 SHARES As part of our monthly tradition showing the gaping disparity in the quality of the US labor market, we present the breakdown between the lowest paid jobs available, those for workers in "food services and drinking places", also known as waiters and bartenders, and compare them to the number of workers in the traditionally best paid sector, manufacturing. Here is the bottom line: as the chart below shows, there have been half...

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton last week released a proposal to overhaul the capital gains tax, which is paid on profits from the sale of investments. The detailed plan was designed to counter the pursuit of short-term gain at the expense of long-run investment – what Clinton called “quarterly capitalism” – by making it more expensive to sell stock in public companies that has been held for less than two years. The problem, according to Len Burman, the director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, is that it won’t work. “The proposal suffers several defects,” Burman wrote in an analysis...

2016 Elections: Largely overlooked because of the dust over his attacks on Khizr Khan, Donald Trump made an eye-opening promise on Tuesday, saying that he'd spend twice as much as Hillary Clinton on fixing roads and bridges. It's an outlandish proposal for any politician to make. But it's almost inconceivable that the Republican nominee for president would be trudging down this dreary big-government path. "We need much more money than (Clinton's plan) to rebuild our infrastructure," Trump told Fox... The numbers we're talking about here are massive. Clinton says that if elected she would boost federal spending... Trump says he'll...

A Half Of Millennials Live Paycheck To Paycheck, Most Don't Think They Will Ever Be Millionaires by Tyler Durden Aug 3, 2016 7:59 PM 0 SHARES In a stark refutation of Obama's "recovery" narrative, most millennials don't see a bright future for their personal finances. Take the case of Shaun Luberski, a 21-year-old recent graduate of Temple University, who is skeptical she will be able to save $1 million by the time she retires. Ms. Luberski landed a full-time job as an account coordinator at Philadelphia magazine and works various side jobs in marketing and promotions.  A big problem plaguing...

The most recent batch of economic stats was even more disappointing than usual, resulting in a cliff dive for the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow US growth report: It’s the same around the world, with European, Japanese and Chinese numbers coming in below (already lowered) expectations. The implication? Interest rates in major countries will either remain extremely low or fall further from here. With $11 trillion of government bonds already trading with negative yields, that’s an historically unprecedented prospect. But for financial companies like insurers, pension funds, and money market funds, today’s world is not just unprecedented, it’s existentially threatening. Consider, for...

What economists call an ability to make "compensating differences" is a valuable tool in everyone's arsenal. If people are prohibited from doing so, they are always worse off. You say, "Williams, I never heard of compensating differences. What are they?" Jimmy Soul's 1963 hit song, "If You Wanna Be Happy," explained the concept of compensating differences. His lyrics went: "If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife. So from my personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you." His point was that an ugly woman would...

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says he’s never been a big investor, but when it comes to putting his money in U.S. stocks he told the FOX Business Network’s Stuart Varney, “I don’t like a lot of things that I see.” “I did invest and I got out and it was actually very good timing,” he said. Trump expanded on why he’s skeptical of investing in the markets. “I don’t like a lot of the signs that I’m seeing... He added: “The only reason the stock market is where it is, is because you get free money.” When asked about...

I wrote about this in a letter late last year, but now here we are more than halfway through the year and it’s only getting worse. So much worse that the Chinese property bubble is now the catalyst that will reset markets – and will likely be one large event that cascades across the globe.- snip - I’m convinced that what finally puts an end to central banker madness and the incessant stream of QE will be the Chinese real estate bubble.- snip - China is going down. The China Beige Book (which is much more accurate) recently showed that,...

This has been on my mind and chest for a long time and basically I want to get your views on this topic. Everyone says we need to save/rescue the mainstream middle class from oblivion and basically do what we can to bring jobs. To be honest, I'm all for letting the mainstream middle class sink or swim. I don't like how the mainstream whine about people on welfare being dependent on the government, but want the government to create laws and policies to protect their interests. They want student loans forgiven, but keep taking out massive loans for prestigious...