I recently took some flak from Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown for saying in a speech at the Heartland Institute several years ago that the "only place to live in the midwest is Chicago." He was particularly upset that I took a tongue-in-cheek swipe at Cleveland and Cincinnati as "armpits." This was supposedly evidence that I hate Ohio.
I'm disappointed I had to withdraw from the nomination to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board because I do believe the Fed needs to change the way it operates. In the last month, I started investigating how it makes its decisions, which have such a dramatic impact on jobs, wages, interest rates and the overall well-being of the country. How does the Fed make its monetary policy decisions on setting interest rates, buying bonds and regulating our financial institutions?
Every time a reporter asks me if I would support a carbon tax, I always say that I might if it led to a dollar-for-dollar reduction in income or payroll tax rates. And the new energy tax would have to replace onerous greenhouse gas regulations. And every time I say this, the next day a headline reads, "Steve Moore Is for a Carbon Tax."
Of all America's immigrant visa programs, arguably the most successful for the U.S. economy has been the H-1B program. This program admits highly skilled foreign workers who fill vital employment niches to make our Made in America businesses more successful in international markets. Larry Kudlow, the director of President Donald Trump's National Economic Council, calls these immigrants the "brainiacs."
If you want one number that encapsulates the enormity of the economic turnaround under President Donald Trump, it is this: In America, as of the end of February, there were 7.1 million unfilled jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This number is larger than the entire population of the state of Indiana. That is how powerful and relentless the hiring spree has been under Trump policies.
What caused the financial crisis and Great Recession? A decade later, economists still don't have a good answer. Of course, the financial bubble in the housing market was the proximate cause, but this begs the question of what inflated the bubble that burst in the first place.
The seething anger Americans feel over the college admission scandal with wealthy and well-connected families using money, influence and cheating to bump their kids up in line so they get accepted into elite schools is well justified. Yet this scheme is small potatoes compared to the real scandal on college campuses from coast to coast. That scam is how much universities are charging families once they do get in.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal has been widely ridiculed for its massive disruption to the economy and a price tag of tens of trillions of dollars.
Remember when Democrats complained that $5.7 billion for a border wall was too expensive? Well, that's chump change compared to what many of the congressional Democrats and nearly all of those 15 declared Democrats in the presidential race are now rallying behind.
In almost every case, whenever a tariff or quota is imposed on imports, that tax is strongly supported by the domestic industry getting the protective shield from lower-priced foreign competition. The sugar industry supports sugar tariffs; textile mills lobby for tariffs on foreign clothing. The steel industry and the aluminum makers are getting rich off of the high taxes on imported metals.
President Trump gave one of his most memorable and impactful speeches two weeks ago, when he systematically dismantled the case for socialism. In that speech, he recalled the economic harm and destruction in nations that have adopted socialism, communism or Stalinism. "America will never be a socialist country," Trump pledged in his speech in Florida.
"This is the flip side (of) tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich. The rich leave, and now what do you do?" said New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo on Feb. 4.
Does anyone know where all those free trade Democrats went?
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, has released her Green New Deal plan to the nation -- and to great applause from the Democratic Party.
Well, what do you know! It turns out that amateur economist Donald J. Trump knows more about sound monetary policy than Fed chairman Jerome Powell and his team of hundreds of Ph.D. economists.
The government shutdown is over -- for now -- but the political ramifications are still being sorted out. The media has been chortling that Donald Trump "caved," and he may well have lost this battle with congressional Democrats. Their "victory," such as it is, is to notify American voters that they are so opposed to a wall and a secure border that they were willing to keep the government shut down for four weeks to ensure it doesn't happen.
On Saturday, Donald Trump shrewdly flipped the table on Nancy Pelosi in the government shutdown standoff. He has now proposed a grand bargain on immigration: legalization of some 1 million so-called Dreamers -- the foreigners who were brought into the U.S. illegally by their parents -- and an immediate end to the shutdown, if she agrees to expand funding to $5.7 billion for the wall.
Oh how far the Democratic Party has fallen. In recent days, we've seen the new darling of the Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, crusading for a 70 percent income tax rate.
In the months after the election of Donald Trump, there was a mini-political movement in California to get the Golden State to secede from the Union.
In one of the most remarkable Abbott and Costello routines in modern times, the economic wizards at the Fed again raised interest rates on Tuesday. Their crackerjack logic for doing so is to steer America on a course toward recession so they have the tools in hand to end the recession that they themselves created. Can anyone tell us who's on first?
