While running for president in 1960, John F. Kennedy campaigned against the moderate growth economy (2.5% annual GDP rise) in the last years of the Eisenhower administration. He appealed to Americans' highest aspirations by saying in his typical Boston drawl: "We can do bettah." JFK promised 4% and 5% rates of annual economic progress for the nation -- and he delivered.
A friend of mine's third grade daughter came home from school a few weeks ago with tears streaming down her cheeks. "My teacher says we only have 10 years before the oceans rise and we are underwater," she moaned. "Are we all going to die?"
The decline of American mining and production of critical minerals in recent decades is a self-inflicted wound that could imperil our economy and national security.
The recent threats by Beijing to cut off American access to critical mineral imports has many Americans wondering why our politicians have allowed the United States to become so overly dependent on China for these valued resources in the first place.
Is the left once again embracing Malthusian population control in order to save the planet?
One of the many idiocies of the "Green New Deal" and other such anti-fossil fuel crusades is that all of this arrives on the political scene at a time when the price of producing energy from fossil fuels is lower than at any time before in human history.
Last week, I gave a talk to high-wealth investors in San Francisco -- not exactly an audience of left-wing activists -- and people kept asking me the question of the day: "Will there be a recession?" My reply: I'd never say never, but I don't see a recession in 2020. And if we get a trade deal with China, the economy is going to soar.
Recently, two major railroad operators, CSX and Union Pacific, reported a significant drop in earnings, in part due to declining rail shipments. This was partially due to the impact of ongoing trade disputes. While we generally support a better trade relationship with China (hopefully with fewer tariffs and nontariff barriers), we need to see strong freight rail traffic if the economic expansion is going to roll on.
To keep the economy from a further growth slowdown, the Fed must inject more dollar liquidity into the global economy -- immediately.
Do we want the U.S. Federal Reserve Board to operate as a commercial bank -- and compete with our private banking system? The Fed apparently wants to, and it's a policy shift that could greatly expand the mission of the Fed.
Suddenly, nearly everyone wants the Federal Reserve Board to cut interest rates. I've been arguing for this for nine months, so it's nice to see the economic intelligentsia is finally persuaded. The Fed has become a restraint on growth since last August thanks to ill-advised interest rate increases (and promises to raise rates more in 2019), which slowly squeezed out of the economy dollar liquidity and tanked the stock market.
Finally, we seem to have a bipartisan consensus in Washington. Both parties are terrified of new private money, and they want to regulate it out of existence. The near universal fear and loathing by government officials of these so-called cryptocurrencies is all the more reason they should exist.
It's official. President Donald Trump wants to index capital gains taxes for inflation. This would be a big stimulus boost for the U.S. economy immediately and over time and could get us back to 3% to 4% growth by liberating potentially hundreds of billions of dollars for new capital investment. My sources tell me that the president has told his White House team that if he can get his legal counsel to give him a ruling that he has the right to make this change administratively, he will do exactly that.
In the first Democratic presidential debates, Sen. Kamala Harris of California defended forced busing back in the 1970s as a civil rights triumph and criticized former Vice President Joe Biden for racial insensitivity for once opposing the policy.
The Congressional Budget Office has just released its mid-year update on the federal fiscal situation, and it portends a debt avalanche. But don't bother to tell Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren that. They're busy advocating tens of trillions of dollars in new federal spending.
Several years ago, I had a shoulder injury, and the doctor told me I might need surgery to fix the small tear in my rotator cuff. So, I asked, "Doctor, if I have this surgery, about how much will it cost?"
The recent threats by Beijing to cut off American access to critical mineral imports have many Americans wondering why our politicians have allowed the United States to become so overly dependent on China for these valued resources in the first place.
I've been shouting from the rooftops for six months that the Federal Reserve is too tight on money and that this lack of dollar liquidity has cut into growth. So it is somewhat vindicating that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell seems to be finally coming around to that idea. The betting markets are now predicting at least one rate cut this year -- and perhaps two.
Almost all of the economic discussion of late has been on the "wage gap" between men and women. A case in point: California Sen. Kamala Harris wants to create a federal bureaucracy that will ensure the government has more influence over workers' pay than workers and employers themselves. This will open up a Pandora's box for trial lawyers as employers find themselves deluged with lawsuits over pay "gaps" real and imagined.
There's no question that many farmers are struggling this year with incomes down and bankruptcies up. Though some of the more dire reports on the farm sector recorded in the media are exaggerated, what is indisputable is that prices for major commodities such as corn are on a downward trend and are significantly lower than they were less than a decade ago, when prices were at or near record highs.
