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Posted on 11/26/2025 9:28:30 AM PST by SeekAndFind
As the calendar comes to an end, and with it, we approach the end of the first year of the second Trump administration, polling companies and media sites are naturally looking for news stories about how the electorate “feels” about the economy.
It’s a permanent question, of course, as it should be, on sites like RealClearPolitics and other polling-tracker focused sites, but there has been an uptick lately, and the question “How do you rate President Trump’s handling of the economy?” is now more frequently in the headlines than usual.
The problem is, it’s an amazingly subjective question, because there can really be no single definition of “the economy.”
There is one’s personal view of the economy – your own job or job search – and if you’re a head of household, then there’s your job, your spouse’s job, your children’s jobs, and the perceived potential or trends going forward in all of your careers. Is the career you chose for your specialty a career with growing or shrinking opportunities in the foreseeable future?
Then there is one’s view of the local economy – “I’m doing fine – lucky for me – but my town lost a major plant, or the factory relocated to China or Mexico, or the coal mine or oil field or gas clothes dryer factory or lightbulb factory was shut down by the EPA” – and that situation rightly affects your view of the economy in general.
There’s a huge difference in whether one is in a red state, a blue state, or a swing state. Florida and Texas are healthy economies, for example; California and Illinois are on life support due to the choices of decades of bad governors and state legislatures.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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I just heard that gas in some areas of Colorado and Oklahoma is as low as $1.35/gallon. It was $2.35/gallon in Tulsa a couple of days ago.
I hope in six to eight months we see at least the initial impact of the new foreign and US investments in new factories as a result of President Trump’s policies.
That’s fantastic. In AZ, it’s still quite a bit more than that and has not really dropped in the last 8 months.
The most recent higher prices have had many causes...
It takes time to turn it around.
I'm livid...ranchers say they will NOT increase their herds...but a week ago on an ag show...they said they were going to increase their herds and it would take two years to get them to the right number.
I just retired and sold my business, my old business is booming big time.
It was up to $3 a gallon last week at the river
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Good grief! I’d love that! Florida is $3.19 a gallon at the speedway up the road 3 miles. The Mobile is worse. No other option for ten miles.
Are you kidding? Why do you think trump won? Economy!
$2.57 in Cincinnati suburbs, I just filled up at $1.57 with our dollar off a gallon Kroger gas points. 29 gallons $45.50.
Here is the problem - Biden inflation was terrible, Trump has brought the rate down, but that doesn’t bring old prices back, which is what people want. Absent deflation, we are stuck with high prices. The only way out is growing the economy, better jobs, people getting raises. That can happen, but takes time that we may not have.
Federal .gov opened up US land for grazing again. Federal .gov gives new favorable term for loans to expand. If the US .gov could lock in the positive terms given to maybe a ten year program. It would get it started.
It takes at least two years to get a steer to market
seems to be an orchestrated campaign to talk down economy. i expect by spring - well pre-midterms - there will be more visible “oars in the water” with lower taxes showing up, the hump of the shutdown in history books, lower gas prices having shown up beneficially in cost of products, lower interest/mortgage rates etc. but i see this campaign as part of the broader “Fight Back” initiative. there must be push back. Ds have done zero to increase “affordability” and need to be called out for just that.
$2.33/gal at the Sam’s in Central KY near the MIL’s. Near where I live it’s $2.63 (NNW ATL suburbs).
The Fed slammed the brakes on the economy between 1999-2000 into a budget surplus because Alan Greensoan believed the economy was overheated, causing the national debt to be paid off too fast. He broke the law. Nothing mandated the Fed to worry about how fast the national debt was paid off, and paying off the debt was de- flationary. It was Greenspan who told policy makers to balance the budget to bring down inflation and interest rates. Recessions are inflationary, causing revenues to crash while spending skyrockets, and the Fed allows more inflation trying to get the economy it caused to contract to start growing again. ...so we came out of that recession by not having the national debt paid off , but the price of gas that was $1.11 in 1981, $1.07 in 1993, fell to 90 cents in 1998, was $1.29 in 2001, when the economy was slowing from an unprecedented boom, with a 3.8% unemployment rate.....but rose to over $2 coming out of recession, after Greenspan lowered rates he’d raised to 6.5% in 2000, slowly down to 1% in 200$. Same thing happened in 2008 and 2010..... gas rose from $2 to $4, then from $1.85 when Obama took office, to over $3.60 by 2011, despite the unemployment rate rising from 7.5% to 10% during the Obama crash, aborted recovery. The Fed always is the big player in the economy, nobody ever seriously talks about, which is weird, because the “ dual mandate” law used by the Fed was passed by liberals in 1977 and was signed into law by Jimmy Carter. It is a law that politicized the Fed, based on the false idea that inflation is good for jobs, and the idea that rising inflation rates drive down unemployment rates, whereas falling inflation rates drive up unemployment rates......but the way the Fed interprets its mandate is controversial in itself. In the late 1970s, inflation and unemployment both rose together, as the Fed allowed more and more inflation, trying to keep Jimmy Carter out of a depression before the 1980 election, desperately trying to get a badly taxed and overregulated evonomg to grow.
Inflation and unemployment both rose together in 2008 and in 2010.
The Fed had its brakes on the George W Bush economy until almost 2003, accommodated growth for only one year.....from 2003-2004.....then raised its funds rate from 1% to 5.25% from 2004-2006 to slam the brakes onto the George W Bush economy so it would not lead to fast growth and a balanced budget following Bush’s 2003 tax cuts. Same happened with the 1988 Reagan tax reform. Greenspan hiked his Funds rate to 9.75% to crash the economy by 1999, preventing Reagan’s reform from getting 4% plus growth to balance the budget by 1992. Greenspan’s 9.75% Funds rate at the end for the 1980s was HIGHER compared to the inflation rate than Volcker raising Funds rate to 19% when the inflation rate was 13.5%. Under Obama, the Fed had its Funds rate at 0% , when the CPI was almost 4%, and the PPI was almost 8%....which led to massive layoffs, all blamed by Obama and the press on Bush. the Fed kept rates at 0% for 8 years of Obama, similar to what the Fed did for Jimmy Carter. Obama was a failure, propped up by big banks he bailed out buying his debt and the Fed buying the formerly toxic mortgaged backed securities. Interest rates were too low, housing prices still were too high, and so were overall prices, so banks wouldn’t lend into increased risk at below inflation rates. So they borrowed money at zero, and bought government debt Obama ran up, as he ran up twice as much debt in 8 years as Bush did, while getting away with the big lie that he fixed the deficit.
Fact is, the Fed can and does whatever it wants and nobody knows what it does or why, which makes it very hard to predict economic outcomes of blame a person or political party. Volcker had his Funds rate at 7.5% in 1979 for Jimmy Carter and allowed 13.5% inflation, but after Reagan got elected, the Volcker Fed did not give Reagan policies a chance to work, but hiked his Funds rate straight to 19% to cause recession by 1982 that hurt Reagan in the midterms, then the Fed did the same to Reagan’s evonomy, hiking its Funds rate to about 10% when inflation was about 4%.......and caused Bush to lose in 1992, and a blue wave, because the Fed was very slow in lowering rates after recession/ crash hit. ...but then after lowering its funds rate to 3% by 1993, the Fed hiked on Bill Clinton and ushered in a Republican wave in 1994 elections, and the era of big government was over, as inflation fell and government spending fell with inflation. The 1990s were mostly sucessful because we had three straight presidents who believed in balancing the budget and a strong dollar, so we got a budget surplus by 1998, and wild but justified optimism that was squished by the Fed for no reason, followed by a bad Bush and Obama presidency, an uneven Trump presidency because his tax and spend policy did not improve deficits at all, then Biden blew everything to bits, so Trump can’t fix it fast, and complicates problems , with the Fed openly opposing him, being political but pretending to be independent......refusing to allow fast growth, low unem0liyment rate, falling budget deficit from growth, rising wages and profits helping shrink the deficit and giving Trump a stronger hand to play.
Today is just another record high of many in my investment account over the last year.
I got my real estate sales license in 1984. On my first day at the company I went into my Broker-owner’s private office and I saw this little sign on the wall:
Interest rates higher, real estate prices lower. “Interest rates lower, real estate prices higher.”
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