Free Republic

ALBANY — Jack’s Oyster House, the oldest and most storied restaurant in New York’s capital city — host to bivalve-slurping power lunches for generations of politicians, including every New York governor since its 1913 founding — is officially closed and being put on the market, owner Brad Rosenstein said Monday.

The Biden administration’s “Bidenomics,” which they have touted as improving the lives of middle and working-class Americans, has been taking a major hit lately. Recent surveys show most U.S. households are still facing economic hardship, according to The Hill. Over 60 percent of Americans report living paycheck-to-paycheck, including 45 percent of those earning over $100,000 a year, an August Lending Club survey found, The Hill reported. On Thursday, President Joe Biden made a rare campaign trail appearance, making an impromptu stop at a Cook Out restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he enjoyed a milkshake and burger, according to the...

Studies by both Bank of America and Fidelity showed a disturbing trend last year: Hardship withdrawals and participant loans from retirement plans increased, likely due to inflation and the rising cost of living. Bank of America’s 2023 Participant Pulse found the number of participants taking hardship distributions increased by more than a third year-over-year, following increases in Q1 2023. Further, the report showed more participants borrowing from their workplace plan in Q2 (2.5%, an increase from 1.9% in Q1 2023). The good news is that both B of A and Fidelity’s research found most employees were maintaining – and even...

The Washington Post should know that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Continuing to tell voters they’re ignorant for not appreciating the Biden economy is case in point. “The economy is improving under Biden. But many voters aren’t giving him credit,” read The Post’s condescending Jan. 14 headline. But that was just the start of The Post’s nonsense, which took six authors to spit out. It proceeded to cite data points without context to prop up President Joe Biden’s cadaver of an economy: “By many measures, the U.S....

The Federal Reserve quietly lost a fortune in 2023 as interest it pays out to banks swamped the interest it earns on its bond portfolio, data released by the central bank Friday showed. The Fed said it lost roughly $114.3 billion in 2023, its largest-ever annual loss. The losses occurred because the money the Fed pays banks for reserves held at the central bank exceeded the interest earned on the mortgage bonds it holds. The Fed has been raising the interest rate paid on reserves alongside the hikes on the benchmark federal funds rate to stem the worst inflation in...

The tale President Joe Biden tells is that his “Bidenomics” had a positive impact on the economy by reducing the budget deficit and getting inflation under control. The problem is that it’s just not true. On the one hand, we have the claims made by the White House and the Treasury, but on the other hand, we have the cold hard facts. Unfortunately for the White House, the final budget data for fiscal year 2023 tells the story of out-of-control spending, even outpacing rising revenues, and the devastating effects that can have on an economy through inflation.

The Biden team has been limiting his contact with media for a long time. As part of the new strategy that they're going to employ, they're going to have him out meeting the people more, and doing smaller podcast-type interviews. They think that's going to help sell him and get past the age problem. That didn't work out very well when they ran him around to various stores in the Allentown, Pennsylvania, area and he looked very bad, and contradicted himself on the Houthis, and other subjects. They also had him do a very short interview with historian Heather Cox...

The Federal Reserve has line on you! The Federal Reserve has tightened their monetary manipulations to combat inflation caused by loose monetary policy and excessive spending by Biden and Congress. The result? US conforming 30-year mortgage rates are up 8.3% since last year and up a whopping 141% since the beginning of 2021 (the year Biden was selected to be President). Check out mortgage rate GROWTH (blue line) as M2 Money growth *green line) went negative (orange box). This graph corresponds nicely with this chart of YoY changes in The Fed Funds rate. Which is still rising at a rate...

Did you see the recent government propaganda from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics? Not the latest faulty claim that consumer prices increased at an annual rate of just 3.4 percent in December. But rather the claim that 216,000 jobs were added in December. Upon release, and right on cue, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen declared that the U.S. economy had achieved a soft landing. She also said that her “hope is that it will continue.” What Yellen neglected to mention was that October employment was revised down by 45,000 jobs and November was revised down by 26,000 jobs. That’s 71,000...

Well, we've entered a presidential election year and President Biden's numbers are swirling the drain and nobody's believing the White House's gaslighting about how great the economy is. With that in mind, it looks like Team Biden has settled on a strategy: Handing out more money: A new federal program will provide summer grocery money to 21 million children across 35 states, part of the Biden administration's goal of making sure students get enough food when they're not in school and can't access free or reduced breakfast and lunch. The program will be rolled out in 35 states and all...

Yes, it’s Biden’s fiscal inferno! And getting worse as the Presidential election approaches! Remember when I showed that the “stealth” secret sauce behind Bidenomics was nothing more than a massive, multi-trillion debt-fueled spending spree, which led to the biggest peactime, non-crisis budget deficit in US history, with the total deficit for fiscal 2023 ending just over $2 trillion, or double the prior year, something which BofA’s Michael Hartnett called the “era of fiscal excess”? Well, we have news for you: if 2023 was bad, 2024 – an election year of course – is shaping up to be far worse. Moments...

It’s unclear anymore whether New York Times propagandist-in-chief Paul Krugman actually believes the pro-Bidenomics psycho-babble he spits out or if he’s just trolling at this point. Krugman tried bridging the gap between his illusion of a goldilocks Biden economy and the disgruntled, inflation-rattled consumers who aren’t as deluded as he is in his latest 1,108-word hot take, “Is Poor Economic Sentiment All About MAGA.” In Krugman’s distorted view, Americans struggling to make ends meet against the increasingly tenuous cost of living squeeze is just a mirage. “The more I look into it, the more I’m convinced that much of what...

That probably seems like a decent amount of money, and it is: the median household income in 2022 was $74,580, according to the US Census. However, consider that members of Congress generally have to maintain two residences — one in Washington, DC, and one in their home state — and that they haven't gotten a raise since 2009. Meanwhile, inflation has eaten away at the value of that salary over time: if lawmakers' salaries had kept pace with inflation, they would be paid over $250,000 today. Rep. Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican who served as the interim speaker of...

Joe Biden can be called “Sloppy Joe” because of the economic havoc he has sprung on an unsuspecting middle class. The following seven charts are what keeps me up at night (unlike what keeps multimillionaire Michelle Obama up at nights). First, US interest payment on Federal debt is rising faster than our bloated military budget. Thanks mostly to The Fed raising rates to fight inflation under Biden. Second, contrainer shipping rates are soaring thanks to Iran’s interference in the Middle East and Biden’s failed diplomacy with Iran. Third, food prices are over 20% more expensive under Biden while gasoline prices...

Bidenomics has taken the US economy to the underworld. Where households have to run up credit cards to ridiculous levels to cope with inflation under Bidenomics. Under Bidenomics, food prices are up 20.4%, home prices are up 33.5% and regular gasoline prices are up 28.2%. Whip out those credit cards!!!!! According to the latest monthly consumer credit report from the Fed, in November, consumer credit exploded higher by $24.75BN, blowing away expectations of a “modest” $9BN increase after the surprisingly subdued $5.8BN (upward revised from $.5.1BN) in October and the $4.3BN average of the past 6 months. This was the...

The global stock market is off to a rocky start in the new year, experiencing its worst performance since the financial crisis of 2008. As concerns mount and comparisons to the tumultuous year of 2020 arise, investors are bracing for a potentially volatile period ahead. Analysts are drawing attention to a historical anomaly, noting that the current situation resembles the challenges faced in 2020. There’s a growing sentiment that the next 45 days could see a surge in market activity, reminiscent of the frenzied trading seen during the unprecedented events of the previous year.

The closer we look at the December jobs report, the worse it gets. Its like the lights are on, but nobody is home. A closer look at the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the government quietly erased 439,000 jobs through November 2023. That means its initial jobs results were inflated by 439,000 positions, and the job market is not as healthy as the government suggests. Since the government wiped out 439,000 jobs after the fact, the total percentage of jobs created by the government last year is even higher. But just in December, the civilian labor...

Global energy developers Equinor and BP announced Wednesday they are canceling the contract for a massive wind project slated for construction off the coast of New York. The two companies said they had reached an agreement with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to terminate the offshore wind renewable energy certificate for their Empire Wind 2 project. Equinor and BP explained that commercial conditions, namely inflation, interest rates and supply chain disruptions, prevented its contract for the project from remaining viable. "Commercial viability is fundamental for ambitious projects of this size and scale. The Empire Wind...

Shopping during Bidenomics!!! Whoever made THIS👇🏼 FREAKING ROCKS!! https://twitter.com/SaltyGoat17/status/1723891547245101344?

Tth elevated interest rates and persistently high home prices, American homebuyers have felt firsthand the squeeze on their budgets. According to real estate mogul Grant Cardone, the necessity for substantially longer mortgage terms is on the horizon. “The savior of America will not be lower prices, it will be longer mortgages,” he said in a recent TikTok video. “In your lifetime, you will see mortgages go from 30 to 40, 50 and maybe even 60 years. You could, if you live long enough, see a 100-year mortgage in America.”