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On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” host Neil Cavuto responded to President Joe Biden arguing earlier in the day that “bringing down the deficit is one way to ease inflationary pressures” by stating that this should probably be a reminder that the best way to handle inflation going forward “is to put down the spending shovel.”

The amount of money that investors are parking at a major central bank facility climbed to yet another all-time high as supply-demand imbalances continue to dog U.S. dollar funding markets. Eighty-one participants on Monday placed a total of $1.758 trillion at the Federal Reserve’s overnight reverse repurchase agreement facility, in which counterparties like money-market funds can place cash with the central bank. That surpassed the previous record volume of $1.705 trillion from Dec. 17, New York Fed data show. Demand for the so-called RRP has climbed further as principal and interest payments from government-sponsored enterprises has entered short-end funding markets....

Republicans have criticized Democrats for continuing to push their pandemic stimulus package while accepting little to no Republican input. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Wednesday out of 286 amendments proposed by Republicans for the $1.9 trillion spending package, only two were accepted. “Republicans offered 286 amendments to President Biden’s massive $1.9 TRILLION spending blowout. Democrats accepted 2 of them. So much for Biden’s calls for ‘unity,'” McCarthy said in a statement. On Feb. 19, Democrats unveiled the full text of a 591-page bill (pdf) titled the “American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.” House Republicans held a press conference...

Coronavirus is both a public health problem and an economic problem, and the two work against each other. The measures we must take to save lives necessarily mean shutting down large parts of our consumer-driven economy. People are losing jobs and businesses are losing revenue. Does that mean we simply ignore the virus and let people get sick and sometimes die? No, that won’t work, either. Our healthcare system can’t handle what would happen. It would collapse and be unable to help anyone with anything. We need to sustain the economy for however long it takes to beat down the...

The economic indicators all show the economy is booming. Unemployment is at record lows. The stock market is seeing record highs. Wages are up, and taxes are down. Stifling regulations are being lifted. Everything seems to be working just fine. There is much truth in this perception of a boom. Part of this can be attributed to less government interference and taxation. Unnecessary government regulation and spending always hurt the economy. When markets are freer, profits tend to come galloping back. And much has galloped back. However, beneath the surface, major problems threaten the boom. These problems have long plagued...

A booming economy should help people make good financial decisions since more money can be directed to other needs. That is why savings rates normally go up as the economy improves. People naturally tend to take advantage of better days especially after bad or slow times. This is not happening now. Many Americans are spending more on consumer goods, but they are not saving their money or accumulating wealth. No Emergency Funds Nearly a quarter of households, for example, do not have any available emergency funds according to a survey conducted by the SSRS research firm. Another third do not...

Germany's biggest lender is rapidly slashing jobs, it's losing a ton of money and the stock is trading near all-time lows. Many of Deutsche Bank's problems are self-inflicted. It's been badly mismanaged. Deutsche Bank (DB) never fully cleaned up its crisis-era balance sheet. Restructuring efforts fell short. And its countless legal black eyes haven't helped matters. But Deutsche Bank's struggles have also been amplified by something the 149-year-old lender never imagined, mostly because it had never happened before in modern history: negative interest rates. In 2014, the European Central Bank wanted to boost the sluggish economy but interest rates were...

With the next round of Democratic presidential candidate debates upon us, we will surely hear more about government activism to fix racial inequalities. Inequality is real and needs attention. According to the Urban Institute, average white household wealth in 2016 was $171,000 compared with average black household wealth of $17,409. Sen. Cory Booker wants government to make deposits into savings accounts for low-income children to the tune of up to $50,000 each. Sen. Kamala Harris proposes $100 billion in government subsidies for black homeownership. These kinds of proposals may win some black votes, but should they? Will they really make...

The massive spending deal, negotiated by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and agreed to by the president, looks poised to kill off the Budget Control Act of 2011—the law that was meant to restrain federal spending. With that law on the way out, the question arises: Where can fiscal conservatives turn to exert real and lasting fiscal discipline? Thankfully, two members of Congress have introduced a bill to do just that. The Maximizing America’s Prosperity Act—or MAP Act—is a bill proposed by Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., that would limit federal spending...

In late April, President Trump and Democratic congressional leaders finally found something they agreed on: infrastructure. Outside the White House after a meeting with the president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat, issued the pronouncement, “Big and bold.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Democrat from New York, echoed the takeaway: “We agreed on a number, which was very, very good, $2 trillion.” Trump himself has been publicly quiet but didn’t dispute that he told the Democrats he “like[s] the number.” By May, this renewed spirit of cooperation had fallen apart, at least temporarily, with a second meeting collapsing...

A new government report has given us a glimpse into our nation’s fiscal future, and the outlook is grim. Absent major reforms, America’s debt will only continue to balloon. The Congressional Budget Office released its updated long-term budget report on Tuesday, which projects the nation’s fiscal situation for the next 30 years. Despite the strong economy, the nation remains in a precarious and unsustainable budget position, just as it was last year. Debt held by the public is set to rise to nearly one and a half times the size of the economy in the coming decades. The report also...

President Trump indicated Wednesday the U.S. government would start paying down the $21.6 trillion in debt it's accrued over the last 80 years. "We're going to start paying down debt, we have a lot of debt," Trump said during a Wednesday discussion at the White House on the economy. "We're going to start paying down debt." Trump didn't elaborate, but he made the comment in the context of a discussion about how to improve some of the trade and economic agreements the U.S. has reached over the years. Trump said those past agreements have only helped to let U.S. wealth...

Chicago Officials Looking at Universal Basic Income Program Cole Lauterbach - Watchdog.org 3 minutes BY: August 11, 2018 4:58 am Officials in Chicago want to test the waters of offering a universal basic income. A majority of city council members are telling Mayor Rahm Emanuel to form a task force to look into Universal Basic Income programs, which is essentially a periodic check from the government with no strings attached. The City Council wants to explore a program that would send at least $500 a month to 1,000 Chicago families. The same families also would get Earned Income Tax Credit...

11:02:22, FBI Employee: “All the people who were initially voting for her would not, and were not, swayed by any decision the FBI put out. Trump’s supporters are all poor to middle class, uneducated, lazy POS that think he will magically grant them jobs for doing nothing. They probably didn’t watch the debates, aren’t fully educated on his policies, and are stupidly wrapped up in his unmerited enthusiasm.”

It takes a lot of courage for a president to target almost a quarter of the federal budget for reform in an election year. But this is exactly what President Trump is doing with his executive order, "Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility." We're now spending more than $700 billion per year on low-income assistance, which is more than we are spending on our national defense. And there are plenty of reasons to believe this spending is inefficient, wasteful and counterproductive. Over the last half-century, some $22 trillion has been spent on anti-poverty programs and yet...

“MASON CITY: To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new.” — Robert Penn Warren, “All the King’s Men” (1946) WASHINGTON — Appropriately, Warren began the best book about American populism, his novel based on Huey Long’s Louisiana career, with a rolling sentence about a road. Time was, infrastructure — roads, especially — was a preoccupation of populists, who were mostly rural and needed roads to get products to market, and for travel to neighbors and towns, which assuaged loneliness. Today, there is no comparably sympathetic constituency clamoring...

Budget: President Trump's budget plan doesn't come close to balancing the books, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But it does cut the deficit in half, even while reducing taxes. The CBO's analysis of Trump's budget says that it would, if enacted, produce a deficit of $720 billion in 2027, not the small surplus Trump claimed. That's what made the headlines. But as if often the case, it's what didn't make the headlines — or get pundit tongues wagging — that matters. In this case, it's the fact that almost the entire difference between the CBO's and Trump's view is...

France is set to miss its 2017 deficit target by a wide margin, the country’s public accounts watchdog said on Thursday, predicting the gap between spending and revenue would exceed a eurozone limit of 3 percent of GDP. In the absence of “strong adjustment measures”, the deficit will reach 3.2 percent of GDP, the Court of Auditors said, in a warning to new President Emmanuel Macron, who will produce his first budget in the autumn. The previous Socialist government said it expected the deficit to fall from 3.4 percent last year to 2.8 percent this year, which would have brought...

Larry Hauth has a farm in Coffey County and a daughter in Wichita. Good roads are kind of important to him. So he’s disturbed by the ongoing and accelerating trend of the state taking money out of the highway fund to balance the rest of its budget. “One of the things Kansas has going for it, compared to our surrounding states, is our road system,” Hauth said. “When they built them in years past, they were thinking ahead. I don’t think we’re thinking ahead right now. We’re trying to tread water, at best.” Gov. Sam Brownback wants to take nearly...

The nation's long-term fiscal picture has grown considerably more dire over the past year, according to the latest forecast from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, driven mainly by out-of-control spending. The CBO now expects federal debt held by the public to reach 141% of the nation's GDP by 2046, assuming that current policies remain in place. That's up sharply from last year's forecast of 111%, and would be the highest level of debt in the nation's history.