Free Republic

The Biden White House is scrapping a decades-old rule that bars administration officials from commenting on economic data for one hour after their release, a notice in the Federal Register indicated Wednesday. Faced with polls showing that the public strongly disapproves of President Joe Biden’s management of economic issues, the White House is changing the rules to give them a new advantage when it comes to spinning economic data in a more favorable light. Instead of the one-hour waiting period that has been in place since the Reagan years, administration officials will be able to weigh in on important economic...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen just admitted what the rest of Americans already knew: high prices are here to stay. Example? Food prices (CPI) are up over 20% under Inflation Joe while gasoline prices are up 38% under Clueless Joe. On the housing front, the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index is up 33.2% under Biden. And Freddie Mac’s 3-year mortgage rate is up 154% under Biden’s leadership (c’mon man! Obama is pulling the strings on Puppet Joe). Speaking during an interview with ABC News Live over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted prices aren’t going down, contradicting arguments repeatedly made...

This reminds me of “The Human Farm” episode of Parks and Recreation. A new report from the US Department of Agriculture forecasts that US farmers are poised for another year of financial misery, facing the most significant decline in incomes in almost two decades as crop prices slide and US dominance in ag exports wanes. USDA forecasts net farm income, a broad measure of profits, to plunge $39.8 billion, or 25.5%, to $116.1 billion in 2024. This follows a forecasted decrease of $29.7 billion, or 16%, from 2022 to $155.9 billion in 2023. If the estimate holds, farmers face the...

“Comparing the fourth quarter of 2019 to the fourth quarter of 2023 shows 2.7 million more people working in the United States — 2.9 million more immigrants (legal and illegal) and 183,000 fewer U.S.-born Americans. Since the depths of the Covid Recession in 2020 employment has increased for both groups. But the number of U.S.-born workers has not made it back to the 2019 pre-Covid level. Equally important, the share of working-age, U.S.-born men without a bachelor’s not in the labor force deteriorated in the decades prior to 2019, and the rate in the fourth quarter of 2023 was lower...

Consumer prices jumped hotter-than-expected, and leftist media outlets were predictably fumbling over themselves trying to spin the bad news in any which way they could to protect the floundering Biden economy. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation report showed that consumer prices spiked 3.1 percent year-over year, with a 0.3 percent increase month-over-month, both exceeding expectations. CBS News even conceded the new hot numbers “complicat[ed]” the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates. The outlet also noted that higher prices “remain sticky.” The Dow Jones Industrial Average also tumbled over 400 points following the news. But that didn’t stop...

As Commander Cody sang, “We have too much debt.” “The prices of some things will decline. Others will go up. But we don’t expect to see a decline in the overall price level,” said Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Nvidia stock hitting new highs, its market cap soaring to $1.78trln. “That doesn’t tend to happen in economies, except in very negative circumstances. What you will see, though, is inflation coming down,” explained the Fed Chairman, the average American neither understanding nor caring about the nuance. “I would say this. In the long run, the US federal government is on an...

As the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs prepare to face off for Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, Americans all over the country will be paying more than ever for their big game feasts and entertainment. Who’s Watching and What They’re Expected to Spend A recently released St. Bonaventure/Siena Research Survey contends roughly 75% of the U.S. population — or roughly 256 million Americans — will watch some or all of Super Bowl LVIII. According to the latest consumer spending data from the National Retail Federation, a record 200.5 million viewers will be adults. Of them, 112.2 million...

ESPN First Take host Stephen A. Smith has had enough of the leftist economic policies exacerbating Americans’ struggles to stay afloat amidst high prices and an unsustainable cost of living crisis. Smith took particular aim at news that New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ (D) administration would be enacting a $53 million taxpayer-funded pilot program to give illegal immigrants prepaid credit cards despite the city’s worsening homelessness crisis. “I see homeless folk in the streets of New York all the time that are American citizens. I damn sure see them in California. We’ve got poor, impoverished, starving people who were...

Clayton Wiles, a truck driver in North Carolina, earns about 20% more than three years ago. Kristine Funck, a nurse in Ohio, has won steady pay raises, built retirement savings and owns her home. Alfredo Arguello, who opened a restaurant outside Nashville when the pandemic hit, now owns a second one and employs close to 50 people. But ask any of them about the state of the American economy, and the same gloominess surfaces. “Unstable” is how Arguello describes it. Said Funck: “Even though I’m OK right now, there’s a sense it could all go away in a second.” There’s...

On Monday’s broadcast of NBC’s “Late Night,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stated that while we have “60% of workers living paycheck to paycheck,” people should vote to re-elect President Joe Biden because the economy “is really doing well, unemployment, extremely low, we’re creating a whole lot of jobs, rebuilding manufacturing in America.” In response to a question on why people should vote for Biden, Sanders said, “Look, this country faces enormous problems today, and we all know what they are. We’re talking about income and wealth inequality, we’re talking about 60% of workers living paycheck to paycheck, and we’re talking...

I think the Biden Presidency is nicely summed-up by Biden confusing France’s President Macron with former French President Mitterand. Particularly since Mitterand died in 1996. Is Biden seeing dead people?? Anyway, the Biden economy and his Bidenomic strategy is based on massive debt expansion, both public and private debt. Household Debt reached $17.5 Trillion in Fourth Quarter; Delinquency Rates Rise Credit card delinquecies (90+ days) rose to almost 10% in Q4 2023. Credit card delinquencies surged more than 50% in 2023 as total consumer debt swelled to $17.5 trillion, the New York Federal Reserve reported Tuesday. Debt that has transitioned...

The New York Times kicked its pro-Bidenomics Pravda into overdrive as the U.S. gears up for a contentious presidential election this year. “The Economy Looks Sunny, a Potential Gain for Biden,” read the latest headline spin from Times economics reporter Jim Tankersley, whose record of ridiculous fanboying for President Joe Biden is a feat in and of itself. Tankersley wasted no time in throwing confetti on the Bidenomics trash heap. “A run of strong economic data appears to have finally punctured consumers’ sour mood about the U.S. economy, blasting away recession fears and potentially aiding President Biden in his re-election...

Bidenomics boosters in the media and on Wall Street are everywhere to be seen these days, selling the election-year idea that our president’s economic policies have somehow triumphantly raised our economy Phoenix-like from the ashes. Nothing could be further from the truth. A sampling of headlines going back to last summer show the adulation for Bidenomics among our supposedly objective economic cognoscenti (Latin for “know-it-alls”): “Bidenomics Is Real Economics,” Time Magazine. “Bidenomics is working,” New York Magazine. And our over-the-top favorite: “Bidenomics’ critics are being proven wrong. Happy days are here again,” Fortune Magazine. We could go on, but why...

The last time the phrase “soft landing” was this popular on the internet was on the eve of the largest financial crisis the world has ever seen. The idea behind an economic soft landing is that the central bank (for the United States, the Federal Reserve) is able to bring inflation from an overheated economy under control by increasing interest rates without producing a recession or a collapse of the financial markets. This is what markets desperately long for in early 2024 and are trying to manifest by simply repeating it as a mantra and believing in it hard enough....

The pace of job cuts by U.S. employers accelerated at the start of 2024, a sign the labor market is starting to deteriorate in the face of ongoing inflation and high interest rates. That is according to a new report published by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which found that companies planned 82,307 job cuts in January, a substantial 136% increase from the previous month. However, that is down about 20% from the same time one year ago. It marked the second-highest layoff total for the month of January in data going back to 2009. "Waves of layoff announcements hit U.S.-based...

Yikes! Bidenomics is a disaster! MBA mortgage purchase applications are down 54% from Pandemic Peak. I was going to play “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot and rename it “The Wreck of The US Economy.” Mortgage demand fell to a new 30-year low in January 2024, down 54% from the pandemic peak. Mortgage demand is down 14% over the last year and 40% from pre-pandemic levels. Mortgage applications decreased 7.2 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending January 26, 2024. Last week’s...

As my colleague Nick Arama reported on Saturday morning, left-wing, virtue-signaling, multimillionaire actress Alyssa Milano had the intestinal fortitude on Thursday to ask her fans to help pay for her son's traveling baseball team's trip to Cooperstown, N.Y., home of Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame. My son’s baseball team is raising money for their Cooperstown trip. Any amount would be so greatly appreciated. You can read more about the team and make a donation here:Why all the gall— Wait. We're talking about Alyssa Milano. Never mind.My son’s baseball team is raising money for their Cooperstown trip. Any amount would...

To quote Cousin Eddie from Christmas Vacation, “That there’s an RV.” Recreational goods and vehicles (aka, RVs) were second in Personal Consumption spending after America’s overpriced healthcare. Spending on RVs makes sense since housing has become unaffordable for millions of households under Bidenomics. The increase in real GDP reflected increases in consumer spending, exports, state and local government spending, nonresidential fixed investment, federal government spending, private inventory investment, and residential fixed investment (table 2). Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased. The increase in consumer spending reflected increases in both services and goods. Within services, the...

Baby, it’s cold outside! Of course, government still wants to ban natural gas and coal. The average price of electricity has risen a whopping 24.25% under Biden and Bidenomics. Brrr!! No wonder Biden only wants to talk about unlimited abortion and NOT the immigration (Fentanyl, child trafficing, crime, etc) fiasco at the border and continually rising prices. Or Biden’s growing wars. The NASDAQ commodity index RATIO is getting back to dot.com era bubble levels.

Hello fellow FReepers. I have just been given the shocking news that my monthly rent for a 1-bdr apartment in N. Alabama is going up by $300 which works out to a 45% increase. The apartment complex has been recently bought by a NJ based company and apparently they have resolved to raise every tenant's rent. The reason that the manager told me was that materials costs are up "such as drywall". Ridiculous excuse. I just cant believe that this has happened. People here cant afford this kind of increase. Wages have not gone up AT ALL. I just dont...