Free Republic

This is like the Samuel Beckett play “Waiting For Godot.” Except we are waiting for Jerome Powell and The Federal Reserve to do something. December’s consumer price index (CPI) is out and its a doozy, though expected. The CPI year-over-year (YoY) rose 7% in December. If we exclude food and energy, CPI rose by 5.5% YoY. Thanks to Biden’s assault on the energy sector, energy prices are up nearly 50% YoY. REAL average hourly earnings YoY? It has crashed to -2.32%. And with 7% inflation, the Taylor Rule model suggests a Fed Funds Target rate of … 17.84%. Bear in...

The snowball effect of cumulative inflation is going to be on display tomorrow when the BLS inflation data from December is released. We have previously discussed the unavoidable price increases as noted within the November data Here, and within the producer price data Here. While the data being released tomorrow is backward looking, we are in the eye of the inflation storm right now. The consumer prices at end of January and through February are all reflecting new purchase order prices and contract prices to wholesalers, buyers and retailers. As a result, the December reports will be the precursor to...

Inquiring minds want to know how Joe Biden garnered 81 million votes in 2020. I voted for Trump because he was smart, courageous, loved the country and had extensive economic expertise. Trump graduated from the school of hard knocks and actually built something. Hidin Biden campaigned from his basement, sitting next to his furnace while folding clothes. The rest is history and apparently, I underestimated Biden's value to this country. Behind his persona of bumbling, incompetent, incoherent, buffoonery, Joe magically addressed the nation from his fake office in the fake room with the fake windows. The president offered these pearls...

The United States December jobs report shows that the labor market remains weak. The headline 3.9% unemployment rate looks positive, but job creation fell significantly below consensus, at 199,000 in December versus a consensus estimate of 450,000. The weak jobs figure should be viewed in the context of the largest stimulus plan in recent history. With massive monetary and fiscal support and a government deficit of $2.77 trillion, the second highest on record, job creation falls significantly short of previous recoveries and the employment situation is significantly worse than it was in 2019. The most alarming datapoint is that real...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) deemed the United States’ economy as the world’s largest in 2021, producing an estimated $22.94 trillion or 24.4% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The number is especially impressive when considering the population of the United States is just over 333 million and it has a per capita GDP of roughly $68,700. Many public policy concerns While many public policy issues are greatly concerning – from COVID-19 to the crisis at our southern border to education gaps relative to our ability to compete economically – in our opinion, the following three are paramount for the...

Joe Biden and the Democrats need to give up the ghost on Build Back Better already. But the Democrats just don’t seem to be able to quit it. I guess the bottom line is that they don’t have much to promote themselves for re-election with, as we go into the midterms. They don’t have much that they can pitch to their base that they’ve done that’s positive. Not that BBB would be positive, but the leftist base would like it.But if the last word from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) wasn’t enough on Tuesday saying it’s not happening, now there’s more.On...

Of course, this is not making headlines but in the next two weeks Joe Biden is planning on shutting down a significant portion of the trade pipeline with Canada. According to government figures U.S. goods and services trade with Canada totaled an estimated $718.4 billion in 2019. Exports were $360.4 billion; imports were $358.0 billion. Canada was the largest goods export market in 2019. Canada was the United States’ 3rd largest supplier of goods imports in 2019. U.S. goods imports from Canada totaled $319.4 billion. 70% of that trade is moved by truck. In about a week the Joe Biden’s...

Inflation continues to skyrocket nationwide, biting into the slight wage gains American workers have experienced so far this year. Prices for food, energy, and other essentials have all surged since the enactment of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill earlier this year. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like these price increases are on pace to subside anytime soon. It’s possible inflation could even get worse, particularly as it relates to energy prices, if congressional Democrats get their way and enact their multi-trillion dollar reconciliation bill. Although the details of their bill change on a near daily basis, one thing remains constant:...

President Biden on Friday shrugged off the worst jobs report of his presidency as the U.S. economy added less than half the number of jobs expected in December amid a massive surge in COVID-19 cases. Mr. Biden showed up about an hour late for his speech and emphasized the report’s lone bright spot, that unemployment dropped slightly to 3.9% in December from 4.2% in November, even though economists say that reflects fewer people seeking work. “Today is a historic day for economic recovery,” Mr. Biden said, calling the drop the sharpest one-year drop in U.S. history. “I would argue that...

How are the dollars and cents of your life changing as we move into 2022? Peter Schiff joined University of Miami Business School Dean John Quelch and host Holland Cooke on RT’s “Big Picture” to talk about the year ahead. Peter left us with an ominous warning. 2022 will be worse than 2021 as inflation continues to mount. The first question posed to Peter was have Americans’ prospects for prosperity become less likely? Peter said he thinks they’ve diminished dramatically and will get even worse as the decade progresses. He pointed out that in the 50s, Americans had much more...

The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting should have a Lawrence Welk bubble machine operating, particularly for their announcements. When we look at the Buffett Indicator, we can see how The Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policies (or follycies) are driving up stocks to unsustainable levels that may not survive without The Fed’s “Do Ho Big Bubble Policies.” How about the Shiller CAPE (Cyclically-adjusted Price/Earnings) ratio? While not up to dot.com levels yet, the Shiller CAPE ratio is climbing with the assistance of The Fed and their insane money printing. How about house prices? The Case-Shiller National home price index is...

Inflation is skyrocketing, so let’s make matters worse! That seems to be the logic behind the “price controls” New York Magazine is promoting as a serious idea to fight off inflation. In a piece headlined, “Who’s Afraid of Price Controls?,” author Eric Levitz made the argument that the “widespread tendency to dismiss price controls of any kind as economically illiterate, while defending interest-rate hikes as economically wise, reflects custom more than reason.” But Levitz spent a major portion of his argument undercutting himself. He noted that a similar case made recently in The Guardian was considered “tantamount to a declaration...

Growth in U.S. manufacturing slowed in December to an 11-month low with companies still combating supply chain problems. The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers...

The Hill has a misleading piece entitled “Biden is delivering the fastest economic recovery in history. Why hasn’t anyone noticed?” Even crooner Barbra Streisand agrees. A good quote from The Hill story: “Under Biden, the American economy has recovered from its Trump-era lows with remarkable speed.” As Leslie Knope said “That seems like an unfair phrasing.” Hmm. Well, here is a chart that best explains the “Biden Miracle.” It shows the growth in Federal expenditures from the previous year during the banking crisis and then the COVID crisis. During the banking crisis, the increase in Federal expenditures (red) was normal....

On Dec. 23, 2021, a reader sent me a link to a video (It is apparently a few weeks old) produced by Ryland Media in association with The Irish Inquiry. In the video, a lady named Sara Haboubi is interviewing a woman named Melissa Ciummei Iconoclast, and it is titled “Great Reset passport to economic slavery.” Here are some important points from the video. *The real purpose of so-called “Vaccine Passports” is not the vaccination history or medical records of the vaccinated. *The real purpose is getting the data that will be required of those that want to function in...

Illinois keeps losing people it can ill afford to lose. I recently checked in on a prospective donor who I met in Chicago three years ago. I didn’t know him at all back then, but it was easy to get a sense he cared deeply about Illinois. His passion for fixing Chicago’s problems was obvious from the moment I met him. He was everything Chicago should want from someone in the business community. An engaged and highly successful investor, tech entrepreneur and C-suite executive. Politically active yet still willing to get his hands dirty on real policy issues. Not scared...

I have warned that Europe is the epic center for the decline and fall of Western Culture and economic strength. While the US has not yet joined Europe, the Democrats are licking their lips and trying desperately to figure out how to kill cash forcing everything to be digital in search of cash. In Europe, 18 EU countries are now restricting the use of cash and they are desperately trying to terminate cash all for control and taxes. Now it is just presumed that paying in cash means you are engaged in money laundering for that definition has been expanded...

Central banks around the globe are ending 2021 with the highest gold holdings in 31 years. Yet the real story as monetary authorities recalibrate foreign-exchange reserve holdings is how the US dollar is on the losing end of these shifts. And in the year ahead, this trend could become a systemic problem. True, the dollar’s value versus gold has been falling for more than a decade now. That’s a product of ultraloose Federal Reserve policies flooding the globe with record liquidity. Now, even as the Fed moves to tighten the credit spigot a bit, other monetary powers are pivoting to...

"The illegitimate Biden regime has got things so out of control, and spinning out of control..."

U.S. Economy12/30/2021Frank ShostakBy popular thinking, the key driver of economic growth is increases in the total demand for goods and services. It is also held that the overall output increases by a multiple of the increase in expenditure by government, consumers and businesses.Following this way of thinking it is not surprising that most commentators are of the view that by means of fiscal and monetary stimulus it is possible to prevent the US economy falling into a recession. For instance, by increasing government spending and central bank monetary pumping it is held that this is going to strengthen the production...