Banking/Finance
Already a biased journalist on the environment based on his December 30 Meet the Press stunt, MTP Daily host Chuck Todd brought on socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for Thursday’s show to discuss how she views the 2020 field, the Green New Deal, and socialism. Not surprisingly, he operated on her turf and didn’t pressure her on any of the outlandish, Soviet-style proposals outlined hours earlier in the Green New Deal.
Poverty is no mystery, and it's easily avoidable. The poverty line that the Census Bureau used in 2016 for a single person was an income of $12,486 that year. For a two-person household, it was $16,072, and for a four-person household, it was $24,755. To beat those poverty thresholds is fairly simple. Here's the road map: Complete high school; get a job, any kind of a job; get married before having children; and be a law-abiding citizen.
Several recent polls, plus the popularity of Sen. Bernie Sanders, demonstrate that young people prefer socialism to free market capitalism. That, I believe, is a result of their ignorance and indoctrination during their school years, from kindergarten through college. For the most part, neither they nor many of their teachers and professors know what free market capitalism is.
“Budget Hawk” Mick Mulvaney is the latest conservative in the crosshairs of the New York Times. The front of Wednesday’s edition featured a very long, quite hostile profile by Glenn Thrush and Alan Rappeport of Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director and current head of the Obama-era agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: “Budget Hawk Hones Claws at Consumer Bureau.” When he wasn't a ravenous hawk, he was an excitable dog: "...he sprung to life like a Jack Russell terrier off leash."
The Federal Reserve and the Conference Board both issued positive progress reports about the U.S. economy last week. Neither got a peep from the broadcast networks on those days. In fact, on April 18 and 19, the evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC included just one economic story — and it wasn’t about either of those positive economic updates
When World War II ended, Washington, D.C.'s population was about 900,000; today it's about 700,000. In 1950, Baltimore's population was almost 950,000; today it's around 614,000. Detroit's 1950 population was close to 1.85 million; today it's down to 673,000. Camden, New Jersey's 1950 population was nearly 125,000; today it has fallen to 77,000. St. Louis' 1950 population was more than 856,000; today it's less than 309,000.
Some people have called for a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution as a means of reining in a big-spending Congress. That's a misguided vision, for the simple reason that in any real economic sense, as opposed to an accounting sense, the federal budget is always balanced. The value of what we produced in 2017 -- our gross domestic product -- totaled about $19 trillion.
With the Dow Jones Industrial Average taking another nosedive on Monday, the MRC’s Rich Noyes joined Neil Cavuto’s eponymous Fox Business Network program to discuss the findings of a study by MRC Business’s Julia Seymour that found a massive double standard from the major broadcast networks on stock market increases vs. tumbles.
We are a nation of 325 million people. We have a bit of control over the behavior of our 535 elected representatives in Congress, the president and the vice president. But there are seven unelected people who have life-and-death control over our economy and hence our lives -- the seven governors of the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve Board controls our money supply. Its governors are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate and serve 14-year staggered terms.
My recent columns have focused on the extremely poor educational outcomes for black students. There's enough blame for all involved to have their fair share. That includes students who are hostile and alien to the educational process and have derelict, uninterested home environments. After all, if there is not someone in the home to ensure that a youngster does his homework, has wholesome meals, gets eight to 10 hours of sleep and behaves in school, educational dollars won't produce much.
CBS’s Superior Donuts tried to get into the Christmas spirit with their Monday, December 11, episode “Homeless for the Holidays,” but their outright disdain for capitalism and businesses quickly put a damper on things. Of course, the show known for its extremist liberal views can’t go one episode without being a Scrooge to its conservative viewers (if there are any left).
The largest threat to our prosperity is government spending that far exceeds the authority enumerated in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Federal spending in 2017 will top $4 trillion. Social Security, at $1 trillion, will take up most of it. Medicare ($582 billion) and Medicaid ($404 billion) are the next-largest expenditures. Other federal social spending includes food stamps, unemployment compensation, child nutrition, child tax credits, supplemental security income and student loans, all of which total roughly $550 billion.