Free Republic

A vegan cafe owner in Milwaukee who recently spoke beside former President Trump at a Waukesha rally told Fox News that her remarks were a plea to the person she voted for in 2020 — President Biden — to understand the plight of struggling business owners like herself. Shana Gray said that since her appearance, it has been an "eventful" time, which host Laura Ingraham reported included messages of hate and at least one case of a person with differing political beliefs "storm[ing]" her cafe. "I just pretty much put a plea out there to the administration of which I...

Here at Jalopnik, we know there’s nothing wrong with keeping a beloved old beater running for mile after mile, and we regularly celebrate high mileage heroes. Now, it turns out the rest of America is catching onto this way of thinking as the savings of holding onto an old car for longer begin mounting up. Drivers across the country are increasingly holding onto their cars for longer than ever, with an increasing number hitting more than 100,000 miles in their cars, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. The trend comes as drivers realize the savings to...

On Friday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “The Hill,” White House Senior Adviser Gene Sperling discussed the recent jobs report and stated that things are “not good enough, because people are still facing too high costs in their family and personal lives. But in terms of the job market, yes, this is steady, sustainable job growth, better than even a soft landing. It’s a very steady and strong landing.”

Price inflation is no coincidence. It is a policy. Governments, along with their so-called experts, attempt to persuade you that price inflation stems from anything other than the consistent, albeit slower, rise in aggregate prices year after year. Issuing more currency than the private sector demands, thus eroding its purchasing power and creating a constant annual transfer of wealth from real wages and deposit savings to the government. Oil prices are not a cause of inflation but a consequence. Prices increase as more units of the currency used to denominate the commodity shift to relatively scarce assets. Therefore, oil prices...

(Epic Economist)—Over the past four years, many of us have had the unpleasant surprise of learning that our go-to restaurant, coffee shop, or fast food joint was closing doors for good. Thousands of well-established companies have gone out of business since the pandemic accelerated the descent of the U.S. economy, and conditions have been particularly tough in the restaurant industry. Even during the best of times, managing a restaurant comes with plenty of uncertainty. Though a brand can be incredibly popular amongst consumers, there’s a variety of factors that can result in mass closings, and in some cases, bankruptcy. We...

The Biden administration has saddled the U.S. economy with more than $1 trillion worth of final rules and regulations thus far in 2024, according to analysis conducted by the American Action Forum (AAF).The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final emissions regulations for light- and medium-duty vehicles, which some have characterized as an electric vehicle (EV) mandate, pushed the costs of the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda over the $1 trillion threshold for 2024, alone, according to AAF’s analysis. Across all agencies and regulatory actions last week, the federal government published regulations imposing $103 billion worth of total costs and 11.6 million annual...

The April pronouncements of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at Stanford University have sparked a crucial discourse about the ramifications of mass immigration on the American economy. Powell's observations emphasized the significant role of immigrants, particularly within lower-paying sectors of the labor market, prompting economists to hastily reconsider their projections. The forecasts presented by the Congressional Budget Office (C.B.O.) paint a stark panorama: an astounding 3.3 million individuals entered the United States in 2023 alone, with similar figures anticipated for 2024. While some champion these statistics as heralds of economic expansion, the underlying reality is bleak. The majority of this...

Americans have been sour on the economy since President Joe Biden was sworn into office. As we head into an election season that is likely to be a 2020 rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump, voters give Republicans and Trump an edge on economic issues. An April 12-14 poll from Echelon Insights found that 57 percent of all voters somewhat or strongly disapproved of the way Biden is handling the economy, and favored Trump on making the economy work better by 48 percent to 40 percent. That's only a recent example of what surveys have routinely shown: Voters...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Inflation showing no recent sign of slowing or narrowing in scope leaves U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers challenged this week over how to characterize their next steps even as the countdown to a contentious U.S. presidential election continues. The Fed is seen holding its benchmark interest rate steady at 5.25%-to-5.5% at its April 30-May 1 meeting, and a key judgment in the current policy statement - that inflation "remains elevated" - may have to remain in place after the pace of price increases accelerated over the first three months of the year after steadily slowing through 2023. Details...

Biden is again on a tax-raising rampage. He proposes to increase income taxes by nearly $5 trillion for corporations. Increasing the corporate income tax rate to 28% (from 21%) will be a great driver of negative effects on the U.S. economy, reducing long-run GDP by 0.9%, the capital stock by 1.7%, wages by 0.8%, and full-time jobs by 192,000. Additionally, Biden's new tax proposals include increasing the recently enacted corporate alternative minimum tax rate from 15% to 21% and denying business deductions for employee compensation above $1 million.Biden proposes an increase of the corporate income tax that's a higher tax...

Are Democrats starting to panic a little bit? Because it feels like they are panicking a little bit, and Nancy Pelosi illustrated that on Monday. Appearing on MSNBC, the former Speaker of the House flipped out on Katy Tur, accusing her of being an "apologist for Donald Trump." I don't think I have to explain how ludicrous it is to accuse anyone on television's most far-left network of being a fan of the former president. That's where we are, though. YIKES: Crazy Nancy Pelosi SNAPS at Katy Tur for reminding her that Biden's job "gains" are really jobs recovered from...

Dallas … and the US economy … after midnight. The Dallas Fed Manufacturing Outlook survey has now been in contraction (below zero) every month since May 2022, falling modestly to -14.5 in April (worse than the -11.2 expected). New Orders also remain negative (but did improve) and prices continue to rise (though at a slower pace). Labor market measures suggested flat employment and slightly shorter workweeks (hours worked index remained negative for a seventh month in a row) this month. However, wit that said, wage pressure picked up dramatically this week to a seven-month high… Source: Bloomberg However, as always,...

Joe Biden could barely eat his dinner at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. And we think he is calling the shots in The White House?? Oh well. Perhaps it is Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen or Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum. In any case, Treasury bond issuance in 2024 is expected to hit $1.9 TRILLION. Surpassing levels seen even during the 2008 financial crisis. And with inflation, the US personal saving rate is near the lowest level since Obama (2010). And with the core inflation rate still higher than anytime since 2010, households are paying more for … everything...

The U.S. economy is showing signs of stagflation as growth slumps down and prices continue to surge for average Americans, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. U.S. annual economic growth measured just 1.6% in the first quarter of 2024, following a report of persistently high inflation in March of 3.5% year-over-year. The combination of both low growth and high inflation, in conjunction with continuously high amounts of government spending and debt, has led to signs of stagflation in the U.S. economy, which wreaked havoc on U.S. consumers throughout the 1970’s, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF. “It’s...

Slower growth and rising inflation has brought back distant cries that stagflation is coming. This would force interest rates to stay higher for longer, putting pressure on US businesses and consumers. One investor says anyone looking to hedge this risk should focus on fixed income. A pair of economic reports has brought back a word no central banker ever wants to hear: stagflation. The difficult scenario occurs when inflation rises and growth stalls, a dangerous combination just experienced by the US economy. Worries emerged when Thursday's first-quarter GDP reading slumped against expectations, growing at an annualized 1.6% rate. That's a...

The US debt and Federal spending is out of control. As is entitlement spending. In 2007, the U.S. national debt was below $10 trillion, and the budget deficit was about $160 billion. Federal spending was about $3 trillion, and interest payments were approximately $400 billion. Then the numbers spiraled out of control. Yet Biden/Congress keep shoveling money to Ukraine and leave our borders unsecured. Washington’s fiscal situation has drastically changed since then; total debt has surpassed $34 trillion, the annual budget shortfall exceeds $1 trillion, and interest costs have topped $1 trillion. David Walker, the former comptroller general of the...

On Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jared Bernstein reacted to the March PCE report that showed the yearly PCE inflation rate increasing with the annual core rate holding steady along with 0.3% monthly growth in both overall and core PCE, the same as it was in February by stating that “It was nice to hit the expectations number for the PCE, both headline and core, this morning.” And said that “we expect inflation to continue a bumpy path down towards target.”

Washington -- Ex-Japanese prime minister Taro Aso has met former president Donald Trump and both the leaders discussed the enduring importance of the US-Japan alliance to their physical and economic security in the strategic Indo-Pacific region. Aso, vice president of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, met Trump on Tuesday at the Trump Tower in Manhattan. Both the leaders discussed the enduring importance of the US-Japan alliance to both countries’ physical and economic security and stability in the Indo-Pacific, according to a statement issued by the Trump Campaign on the meeting with the 83-year-old visiting Japanese leader. “They also discussed challenges...

U.S. regulators have seized Republic First Bancorp and agreed to sell it to Fulton Bank, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said on Friday, underscoring the challenges facing regional banks a year after the collapse of three peers. The Philadelphia-based bank, which had abandoned funding talks with a group of investors, was seized by the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities. The FDIC, appointed as a receiver, said Fulton Bank, a unit of Fulton Financial Corp, will assume substantially all deposits and purchase all the assets of Republic Bank to "protect depositors". Republic Bank had about $6 billion in total assets...

The Biden administration on Thursday placed the final cornerstone of its plan to tackle climate change: a regulation that would force the nation’s coal-fired power plants to virtually eliminate the planet-warming pollution they release into the air or shut down. The regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency requires coal plants in the United States to reduce 90% of their greenhouse pollution by 2039, one year earlier than the agency had initially proposed. The compressed timeline was welcomed by climate activists but condemned by coal executives who said the new standards would be impossible to meet... Taken together, the regulations could...