Free Republic

As COVID-19 spread across the world in early 2020, economic activity froze. Entire cities in China were put on lockdown, and the lockdowns soon spread to Europe, the United States, and the whole world. With people confined to their homes, many businesses closed. The global economy came to a grinding halt. Global supply chains broke, airlines canceled flights, and an oil glut drove down petroleum prices as supply outstripped demand. The economic shock of the coronavirus hammered global markets. Bond markets went into freefall, stocks plummeted, and global trade slowed to a near stop. The abrupt impact of COVID-19 on...

The Perpetual Outrage Mob on Twitter is outraged again. – But now, in a dose of high irony, the Perpetual Outrage Mob (POM) has turned it’s ire towards the elderly Sock Puppet who was their hero just days ago. Such is the result of the POM learning that the reality of China Joe Potato Head Biden’s policy does not come close to matching the wild promises he and Kamala Lala Ding Dong made during their fake campaign. First, the POM went berserk when it discovered that the “$2,000 checks” for COVID relief that China Joe and Kamala promised during the...

WASHINGTON—U.S. manufacturing activity surged to its highest level in nearly 14 years in early January, but bottlenecks in the supply chain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are driving up prices and signaling a rise in inflation in the months ahead. Other data on Jan. 22 showed an unexpected increase in sales of previously owned homes in December. Manufacturing and the housing market are helping to anchor the economy, which is being battered by a wave of coronavirus infections. But the pandemic is causing labor shortages at construction sites and factories, which could erode some of the strength in the manufacturing...

If you like your checks from the government, you can keep your checks from the government — and on a monthly basis, provided you have children. That’s, at least if Democrats get their way. According to a report in Saturday’s Washington Post, senior Democrats are looking to craft legislation that would give tax credits of up to $3,600 per year per child. One plan being discussed — modeled on coronavirus stimulus payments — would involve the IRS sending a $300 check every month to parents for children under the age of 6, with $250 checks being disbursed for every child...

Nick Loris, an economist with the Heritage Foundation, spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Samantha Renck about President Joe Biden’s executive orders on energy and the environment, what impact they might have, and more. “The Paris Climate Accord was kind of doomed from the start” Loris, who published the report “Assessing Themes in the Biden Energy and Environment Platform,” said. “It would impose huge costs on American families and consumers and businesses in terms of higher energy prices and really be devoid of any meaningful climate benefit.” Loris also discussed how rejoining the Paris Climate Accord could impact fracking...

Joe Biden wasted no time destroying tens of thousands of jobs his first day in office by canceling the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Biden also put a 60-day moratorium on new oil and natural gas leases and drilling permits on federal lands. New Mexico’s leaders are worried that Biden’s war on the energy business will devastate the state’s economy, where education, jobs and public programs depend on funding from the industry. Joe Biden (supposedly) won New Mexico with 54.29% of the vote vs 43.50% for Trump. “During his inauguration, President Biden spoke about bringing our nation together. Eliminating...

Slow Joe Biden’s moving fast. His parade of remarkable measures is marching in double time. On Day 1 alone, the new President of the USA signed 15 executive orders and 2 executive agency directives. Surely, he got writer’s cramp. Here’s a partial summary of what all was covered…By executive order, President Biden promises to save the environment by rejoining the Paris climate accord. He also promises to weaken America’s energy security by terminating the Keystone XL pipeline.In addition, Biden’s getting America mixed up with the World Health Organization again. And to keep you safe, he’s ordered one hundred days of...

This below really struck me: A $15 federal minimum wage translates into over $36,000 per year in wages and mandated taxes and benefits paid by employers. That means that any jobs that don’t produce at least $36,000 per year in goods and services will eventually be eliminated—either because businesses close their doors, outsource their labor, or automate low-skilled jobs. That’s why even liberal economists and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office caution that a $15 federal minimum wage would lead to a survival-of-the-fittest labor market, reduce future incomes, and disproportionately harm African Americans and women.

(Note: This makes no sense! Isn't the housing market already doing well? Why not help people who lost their jobs due to COVID lockdowns?) Anyone looking to buy a home today is likely frustrated by sky-high prices and slim pickings. But President-elect Joe Biden, who takes office Wednesday, will aim to ease those issues as he gears up to implement his plans for the housing market. From home financing to home construction, Biden’s plans are focused on affordability. Here are some policies he could push for: $15,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit Urging big banks to get back into FHA lending...

Joe Biden's economic policy team, led by incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, has signaled it will be the first administration in history "to construct economic policy around issues like race, gender equality and climate change, rather than around traditional indicators like gross domestic product or deficit ratios," reports Axios. The center-left site says Biden "is charting an economic policy that's visibly to the left of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama." "If he succeeds, it's going to show up not only in taxes and spending, but also in regulation." Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times has characterized Biden's upcoming policies as an...

Among the hopes: more approvals of H-1B visas, a popular vehicle for staffing IT teams Corporate technology recruiters say rolling back restrictions on immigrant work visas, a move backed by President-elect Joe Biden, will expand the pool of information technology job candidates and help ease a longstanding labor shortage. The restrictions, put in place during the Trump administration, included a clampdown on H-1B visas for foreign workers—a program especially coveted by technology firms, chief information officers and other IT employers. The H-1B visa program provides a limited number of three-year work permits to highly skilled immigrants, typically with graduate-level university...

LONDON - Analysts have raised their European carbon market average price forecasts for 2021 and 2022 after record highs this month on growing confidence in the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) and soaring gas prices that drove up the cost of carbon permits. EU Allowances (EUAs) are expected to average 39.24 euros a tonne in 2021 and 46.24 euros in 2022, according to a Reuters survey of eight analysts. That is up 3.6% and 11.1% respectively from forecasts in October. The price of EU carbon permits has risen almost 40% since the beginning of November on momentum that built ahead...

China's economy grew by 2.3 per cent in 2020, official figures revealed today, making it the only major economy to grow at all during the year of the coronavirus. The 2.3 per cent expansion was better than experts had predicted and came after China's economy bounced back from the pandemic by exporting medical equipment and seizing market share from struggling rivals. While much of the world economy is still hampered by resurgent virus outbreaks and resulting strict lockdowns, Beijing claims to have largely brought the virus under control within its own borders following the initial outbreak in Wuhan a year...

Over the past six to eight months, the U.S. has seen perhaps one of the largest migrations of people based on economic and ideological concerns in almost a century. Not since the Great Depression has there been so many Americans relocating in search of a better life. Today, however, those who relocate seem to be largely conservatives and moderates. There is a very good, multifaceted, reason for this.One of the best recent explanations for the conservative migration is visible in the near-180-degree turnaround by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on his draconian lockdown mandates. All of a sudden, Cuomo has...

This past August, on the second night of the virtual RNC, it was inspiring to see the secretary of Homeland Security swear in five new American citizens and each new citizen then recognized by President Trump. The process of obtaining American citizenship was educational. Nevertheless, the Democrats under Joe Biden seek to enable everybody who crosses our borders to do so easily, without penalty, and to quickly be given an array of benefits.Serving Citizens Comes FirstIt’s admirable when legal immigrants from other cultures influence the existing U.S. citizenry in positive ways. Concurrently, the "nation of immigrants" or "xenophobia" arguments used...

The economists found that this led to a 9% reduction in low-wage jobs. The pay increase it generated didn’t make up for the reduction in employment, and earnings fell for low-wage workers overall.

“In December, 15.8 million persons reported that they had been unable to work because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic–that is, they did not work at all or worked fewer hours at some point in the last 4 weeks due to the pandemic. This measure is 1.0 million higher than in November.”

California’s Continuing CollapseCalifornia’s rapid descent is starting to remind me of the old Hemingway line about how someone went bankrupt: “Gradually and then suddenly.”The New York Times noticed yesterday:They Can’t Leave the Bay Area Fast EnoughThe migration from the Bay Area appears real. Residential rents in San Francisco are down 27 percent from a year ago, and the office vacancy rate has spiked to 16.7 percent, a number not seen in a decade.Though prices had dropped only slightly, Zillow reported more homes for sale in San Francisco than a year ago. For more than a month last year, 90 percent...

President-elect Joe Biden's newly unveiled stimulus plan includes a federal minimum wage increase to $15 an hour, although the measure is likely to face pushback in Congress. Currently set at $7.25 an hour, Biden moved to nearly double the country's minimum wage in his $1.9 trillion economic relief package. The plan would also include the elimination of separate minimum-wage thresholds for workers who receive tips and workers with disabilities — a statement that received wide support due to its inclusivity of all workers. "No one working 40 hours a week should live below the poverty line," Biden said in a...

The Biden stimulus package is truly epic in size. It would be more than twice the size of the 2009 Obama budget stimulus and would come on top of the more than US$3 trillion in Covid-19 budget stimulus measures enacted last year. It would also be coming at a time that the U.S. registered a record budget deficit last year, which raised our public debt to GDP ratio to over 100 percent. That ratio was higher than that which prevailed after the Second World War. Mr. Biden is justifying his spending proposal on the grounds that all too many people...