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Election 2016: Hillary Clinton has big plans for the economy if she's elected president, as she made clear in her speech in economically troubled Warren, Mich., on Thursday. It's too bad that her big plans involve only big spending and big taxes, which will produce little if any economic growth. Clinton's speech was framed around four questions. Which candidate has a plan to create good jobs? Who will ensure the top pay their "fair share" of taxes? Who will go to bat for families? And who can deliver results? But her answer to every question was the same: more government...

Throughout his two terms in the White House, Barack Obama has either exaggerated or covered up his failed record on the economy. Soon after taking office in the midst of a deep recession, he said the only way to grow our economy was to blow $1 trillion on government infrastructure projects across the country and fatten the budgets of a lengthy list of federal bureaucracies here in Washington. He raised taxes, created a sea of costly regulations on struggling businesses and employers, and made excuses when the economy continued to limp along year after year, by blaming the Bush administration,...

Thursday, August 11, 2016:Full replay of Donald Trump’s address to the National Association of Home Builders Board of Directors Meeting in Miami, FL at the Sparkle Ballroom at Fontainebleau Miami. Full Speech: Donald Trump Addresses NAHB Board of Directors 8/11/16

Jeff BerwickAugust 11, 2016 We are at an incredible moment in history. US stock markets are at nominal all-time highs. Government bonds are at or near all-time highs. Yet, central banks worldwide sit at 0% interest rates or less because things are too precarious to even raise rates a paltry 0.25% for fear of collapsing the entire system. In “traditional” economics this makes no sense. But we are far out of “traditional” now… we are in the extreme end-stages of a collapsing system. When that happens, nothing makes sense from a traditional/normal perspective. In the third quarter of 2015, during...

While the mainstream media didn’t give Donald Trump much credit, the economic plan he laid out this week at the Detroit Economic Club is exactly what we’ve been waiting for. Not only did the speech—which stirred repeated cheers from the audience—have great substance, but Trump came off as extremely “presidential.” However, most importantly, I liked the focus he placed on the average American in his remarks. All throughout his presentation, I couldn’t help thinking: “This is someone who truly does care about the average American.” Maybe you don’t believe that. But I do. I think Trump is aware that American...

Hillary Clinton is set to go after Donald Trump’s economic agenda — aiming to portray her rival’s approach as offering handouts for the rich. […] Her campaign says she’ll try to make the case that the Republican presidential nominee’s plans would benefit him and his wealthy friends — and amount to an update of “trickle-down economics.” …

Americans' view of the economy rebounded in early August from the worst level in several years to the best since June 2015, according to the IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index. The subgauge of the six-month economic outlook jumped to a still-dreary 44.7 from July's 36.7, which had matched the worst level since October 2013. The reading below the neutral 50 level still reflects a modestly pessimistic outlook. The improved sentiment comes amid news of higher wages... Separately, the National Federation of Independent Business reported on Tuesday that its Small Business Optimism Index rose slightly in July but remained on the soft...

The left argues that wealth inequality will doom and economy because ‘no one will be able to afford anything’. But the empirical evidence refutes this. Consumer spending is at record highs and keeps rising. Stocks that are dependent on consumer spending keep making new highs. Amazon.com, Johnson and Johnson, Disney, Nike, Facebook, Google, and the consumer staples and consumer discretionary ETFs are are record highs.

Federal data released Aug. 9 shows that Americans’ wages are dropping again, seven years after President Barack Obama declared the economy had recovered from the property-bubble — and three months before the 2016 election. The dramatic drop was buried in an Aug. 9 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which said that officials have radically revised their prior claim that wages grew 4.2 percent in the first quarter, from January to March. “Real hourly compensation decreased 0.4 percent after revision, rather than the previously-published increase of 4.2 percent,” the BLS admitted. Compensation also fell another 1.4 percent in the...

When is someone on the right going to expose the bogus employment and new job creation statistics being bandied around by almost everyone on the left? Usually, the media lets Obama and his minions drone on about the U3 unemployment rate of 4.9% or so and the number of “new jobs” created each month over the past seven years under Obama. Occasionally, a conservative media pundit will call them on the fact that there are many folks who have given up trying to find a decent job and have left the workforce and that many of those “new jobs” are...

Hillary Clinton Has Praised President Obama’s Handling Of The Economy, But Many Americans Are Struggling With Stagnant Wages And Increasing Poverty Clinton Has Praised Obama’s So-Called “Recovery” And Gave His Administration An “A” Grade For Its Performance: In October 2015, Clinton Gave The Obama Administration An "A" For Its Overall Performance, Including The Clinton-Obama Economy. HILLARY CLINTON: "I'd give him an 'A.' I don't think he gets the credit he deserves for saving our economy from falling into a great depression, for saving the auto industry which represents millions of jobs up and down the supply chain, for beginning the...

During the 29 years after Alan Greenspan became Fed chairman in August 1987, the balance sheet of the Fed exploded from $200 billion to $4.5 trillion. Call that a 23X gain. That’s a pretty massive increase—so let’s see what else happened over that three-decade span. Well, according to Forbes, Warren Buffett’s net worth was $2.1 billion back in 1987 and it is now about $73 billion. Call that 35X. *** Further down the Greenspan era rabbit hole, we have the average weekly wage of full-time workers in inflation adjusted dollars. In constant 1982 dollars that was $330 per week in...

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,...