No one can say that the Federal Reserve can't do the impossible. At long last observers from across the political spectrum agree on one thing – that Jerome Powell and the Fed are well behind the inflation curve and have a lot of catching up to do. These days, that's virtually impossible. Consumer prices are [...]
They say the truth is the first casualty of war...so, here we are about one week into the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the fog of war is still very thick. Over the past few weeks, it has been conventional wisdom that Russia would take parts of Ukraine (maybe all) and then things would settle [...]
Consumer prices rose 7.0% in 2021, the largest increase for any calendar year since 1981. As a result, politicians across the political spectrum are working overtime to find someone to blame and attack. Some politicians on the left are blaming "greedy" businesses for inflation. But we find this explanation completely ridiculous. Of course, businesses are [...]
When the scientists said "15 days to slow the spread," some of us actually believed that by Easter the shutdowns would end. That was last year. Now, a full year, and $5 trillion in government spending later, we may finally be getting our wish. On Good Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the March [...]
The COVID-19 Recession is the weirdest we've ever had. There is no way anyone could have forecast it. It did not happen because the Fed was too tight. It did not happen because of a trade war. It was self-inflicted, caused by COVID shutdowns. And, in spite of a V-shaped bounce off the bottom – [...]
While the election is still not certified, and court battles will drag on, it appears that we can draw two firm conclusions from the 2020 election. First, the pollsters were horribly wrong again. Secondly, American voters do not want a radical shift in economic policy. While Vice President Biden declared victory based on statistical evidence [...]
If you pay close attention to our stock market forecasts, the title of this piece will look familiar. At the end of 2019 we made the same exact forecast for the end of 2020 — the strangest year in our lifetimes, and it's not even over. Compared to most analysts, this was a very bullish [...]
Thursday's initial report on real GDP growth in the second quarter is going to break records, and not in a good way. Right now, it looks like the US economy shrank at a 35% annual rate in Q2. To put that in perspective, the worst quarter we've ever had since the military wind-down immediately following [...]
Total deaths in the US from COVID19 look like they'll hit at least 3,000 by the end of March. A potentially brutal April lies ahead. In the meantime, the measures taken to limit deaths have temporarily tanked the US economy. Initial claims for jobless benefits soared to 3.283 million per week, easily the highest ever. [...]