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?
The first iron rule of American politics is: Follow the money. This explains, oh, about 80 percent of what goes on in Washington.
The eulogies for George H.W. Bush keep rolling in, and a great American hero's life has been given proper tribute.
Republicans need to regain the offensive on the fiscal issues. The GOP has somehow allowed big-spending Democrats to get to the right of them on the issue of financial responsibility and balanced budgets.
There's an old saying that Wall Street economists have predicted eight of the last two recessions. The bears in the economics profession keep getting paid a lot of money misreading the nation's economic weather vanes -- whether it was the power and durability of the Reagan expansion in the 1980s, the ferocious bull market of the late 1990s, the after-effects of the 9/11 attacks, or most recently the phenomenal revival of growth in President Donald Trump's first years in office.
No one understands the dysfunctions and debilitating impact of America's political system in the swamp better than Mark Melcher and Steve Soukup. For decades between them, they followed Washington for Wall Street at one of America's largest brokerage houses. For the last 16 years, the two have run their own, independent research shop, delivering political commentary and forecasting to the investment community, studying the intersection between politics and economics. This pushed them into a relentless pursuit of the new left -- measuring its deleterious impact on everything it touches -- most especially Western civilization.
Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California appears a lock to become the next chairman of the House's powerful Financial Services Committee. Waters is pledging to be a diligent watchdog for mom and pop investors, and recently told a crowd that when it comes to the big banks, investment houses and insurance companies, "We are going to do to them what they did to us." I'm not going to cry too many tears for Wall Street since they poured money behind the Democrats in these midterm elections. You get what you pay for.
I've been arguing for months that the ideal outcome in the midterm elections to set up Donald Trump for a landslide re-election in 2020 is for Republicans to hold the Senate and narrowly lose the House.
Here is Moore's rule of modern-day politics: The better the economy performs under President Donald Trump and the more successes he racks up, the more unhinged the left becomes. It's a near linear relationship. And it goes for media as well.
It seems like just yesterday that Democrats were telling us that under Obamacare, "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan."
For those on the left and right who were certain that President Donald Trump's presidency meant the end of global free trade ... think again. Though Trump's critics have dismissed the significance of the new Mexico and Canada trade deal, it's hard to deny that it is a welcome advance for the economy of the entire continent.
This month marks the 10-year anniversary of the housing market meltdown that led to the Great Recession. Is another crisis looming around the corner?
I have spent some three decades railing against faulty budgetary scoring of tax bills, but the latest charade from the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Tax Committee takes the cake. The story of fiscal phony math is so indefensible when it comes to the Trump tax cut that you may not believe it could be true. Alas, it is.
Even at this late hour, President Donald Trump can save the Republican Congress in November -- if they want to be saved. To understand how, we need to rewind back to this time last year.
Liberals love to talk about helping the poor and the middle class, and they are obsessed with reducing income inequality. So why is it that across the country they are pushing one of the most regressive taxes in modern times?
This past week I asked a friend at the White House about how the president was holding up against the onslaught of media attacks. "They didn't even deliver a glancing blow," was the response. It wasn't for a lack of trying.
Love him or hate him, you've got to hand it to Donald Trump. His trade and tariff strategy -- risky as it is -- seems to be working. The master negotiator is hammering out agreements -- first with the Europeans and now with Mexico -- that are better deals for American firms and workers.
There's an old cliche that the Federal Reserve likes to take away the punch bowl just when the party is getting going. That's what President Trump suspects that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is doing now by raising interest rates at a time of a booming economy.
Take a wild guess what country is reducing its greenhouse gas emissions the most? Canada? Britain? France? India? Germany? Japan? No, no, no, no, no and no.
From the first day Donald Trump started running for president, he has raged against America's large and persistent trade deficit. His tariff policies are designed to try to reduce these trade imbalances. It is the metric he uses to gage whether other nations are playing by the rules of our trade deals. As a pure economic accounting measure, the U.S. GDP goes down when we import and goes up when we export.
