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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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All time high for the Dow. Inflation easing. Rates decreasing. Unemployment still near an all time low.
Thanks a lot, Brandon.
Half of the country doesn’t believe or care to really find out how much he has done to make this nation rebound after Orange tried to kill it!
Not only that, they’re going to reelect tfg next year so he can finish the job.
They would rather burn the country down than share it with the people they don’t like.
I'm a little more optimistic today than I was a few weeks ago that that's not gonna happen. If the fed has actually successfully softly landed this thing without us ending up in a recession, that will chip away at the main thing (other than Trump grievances) maga's are wanting to run on.
All time high for the Dow. Inflation easing. Rates decreasing. Unemployment still near an all time low.
Thanks a lot, Brandon.
Half of the country doesn’t believe or care to really find out how much he has done to make this nation rebound after Orange tried to kill it!
Not only that, they’re going to reelect tfg next year so he can finish the job.
They would rather burn the country down than share it with the people they don’t like.
All to own the liberals! Even when their own houses are burning down they’ll just keep pouring gasoline on it. Juggs I wish I could be optimistic as you but I’ve lost all confidence in the populace that has their collective heads up where the sun don’t shine!
Biden's approval rating went in the shitter when he pulled out of Afghanistan. The people want eternal war, except in Ukraine.
It would be unprecedented (I think) for a president overseeing an economy this strong to lose reelection. The economic punditry class has spent the better part of two years predicting a catastrophe that keeps on getting delayed. That negativity has bled down. Perhaps there is a chance that as gas prices continue to sink, 2024 will be the year people are finally forced to acknowledge things are actually pretty OK, and upsetting the apple cart for an orange rage-clown is probably not a super awesome idea. Perhaps ...
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Like saying Philly is near Valley Forge, so I mean I guess so? There are closer places where revolutionary war stuff happened, it would just take more work to explain. I'm guessing Washington had some history in Blue Bell...and certainly in the neighboring Fort Washington.
The new evidence was presented not by the Republican majority on Oversight but by the Democratic minority, which explains why it offers details about money received by Trump-owned companies. What’s new isn’t the mechanisms; it’s been obvious since even before Trump took office in 2017 that there would be money filtering into his pockets through properties that were part of the Trump Organization. The Washington Post has reported more than once on money paid to Trump properties while he was president — some of which almost necessarily filtered through Trump’s corporate organizations to his pockets.
In total, the Oversight Democrats allege that Trump benefited from nearly $7.9 million in foreign payments to Trump-owned properties while he was president. The bulk of that came from interests in China, which spent more than $5.5 million at his businesses, including rent paid by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) at Trump Tower in Manhattan.
ICBC is owned by the Chinese government; a source familiar with the data indicates that all of the $5.5 million included in the Democrats’ report links back to the Chinese government or state-owned entities.
Another million-plus of the $7.9 million came from interests in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. This total does not include whatever the Trump Organization gained from its partnership with LIV Golf, itself linked to the Saudi government.
What isn’t demonstrated — and probably can’t be — is how much of this money went directly to Trump or other members of his family. Unlike the allegations involving Hunter Biden, though, there is an obvious, direct path for the money to have gone from Trump Organization properties to Donald Trump, the company’s owner.
Comer and other Republicans have repeatedly touted the idea that “the Biden family” took in $20 million in foreign payments. Washington Post analysis of the presented evidence found that the actual total going to any Biden (excluding Hunter Biden’s business partners) was about $7.5 million. That included money linked to the Chinese government — but also private-sector businesses. None of it has been shown to have gone to Joe Biden, nor has any evidence emerged showing that Biden tried to boost Hunter Biden’s business for his gain. Republican arguments that Biden took official actions to benefit Hunter Biden are fatally flawed, and most of the money Hunter Biden made came after Joe Biden left office in 2017.
The point here isn’t the hypocrisy on the part of Republicans allied with Donald Trump (including people such as Fox News host Sean Hannity). It would have been impossible for Comer and others to not recognize how their accusations against Hunter Biden potentially looped in Trump and his family. By focusing relentlessly on trying to impugn Hunter Biden, though — including deliberately spacing out accusations to heighten a sense of wrongdoing — Republicans have effectively blunted Trump’s foreign profits as something akin to business as usual. Polling released by YouGov in August showed that Americans were only slightly more likely to say that Trump and his family were corrupt than said the same of Biden.
The idea that Joe Biden must have benefited from Hunter Biden’s work is central to Republican arguments for impeachment. Comer and others, such as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), have pointed to circuitous loan repayments made to the president from his son and brother as evidence that Biden benefited from foreign money, a demonstration of how important this idea is to their case.
If these tenuous links, this desperately weak argument suggest that Biden is unfit to serve as president, what should we think of Trump’s in-office receipt of money from foreign governments?
SO MUCH WINNING! But sure, vote POOTWH, he'll fix the economy.
Labor market added 216,000 jobs in December, capping year of big gains
The unemployment rate held at 3.7 percent
Employers added 216,000 jobs to their payrolls in December, capping a year of exceptional gains for American workers despite substantial cooling in the labor market.
The unemployment rate held at 3.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Overall, the labor market added 2.7 million jobs in 2023, with an average monthly gain of 225,000 jobs. That’s a smaller annual gain than 2022 or 2021, but more than each of the four years leading up to the pandemic.
The unemployment rate has now remained below 4 percent for 25 months, a stretch last accomplished in the 1960s. Average hourly wage growth accelerated slightly in December continuing to outpace inflation, boosting workers’ spending power, especially among the lowest earners.
“In many ways the labor market is at its best place it has been, not only since [before covid], but by some measures in decades,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at accounting giant KPMG.
Employment in service-based sectors, including government, health care and social assistance, as well as construction, continued to buoy the labor market in December. Government added 52,000 jobs, mostly at the local and federal level and in education, as the sector has finally been able to catch up with the private hiring and attract new workers with improved wages.
Average hourly wage growth accelerated slightly in December, rising by 4.1 percent over the previous 12 months to $34.27 an hour. That’s one percentage point above inflation, which was at 3.1 percent in November, a divergence that should boost consumer spending in the new year.
The Black unemployment rate hit an all-time low in the spring at 4.7 percent. The labor force participation rate for women ages 25 to 54 reached a record high.
These gains were accomplished even as job creation softened substantially in 2023 from the labor market’s peak coming out of covid-19 lockdowns.
That ongoing cooling is the result of fight inflation by raising the cost of borrowing. So far, those rate hikes appear to have successfully brought down inflation without triggering widespread job losses. And easing inflation has helped improve dour consumer sentiment in the United States, which rose to a five-month high in December, according to one survey.
But layoffs remain lower than pre-pandemic levels, with new unemployment claims falling to a two-month low last week, according to data released Thursday by the Labor Department. Joe Brusuelas, chief economist for the accounting firm RSM US, said that employers are “very carefully managing their workforces and are not willing to unload workers, even as the economy cools.”
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Oh I didn't realize he was at the Blue Bell Inn. We love that spot.
When people ask where I live now, I will just say NEAR Valley Forge.
my point, which I thought obvious, was the story stated near. You initially said AT.
carry on.
Yeah. My point is for people who live here, though, NOBODY says "Oh I'm near Valley Forge" when they're in fucking Blue Bell. lol.
If he wants to make it seem like he was honoring the Revolutionary War or something, there's plenty of spots in Valley Forge or right around it he could've chosen. It's not a big deal, just seems dumb to me.
And FME, looks like he was actually at Montco Community College.
Oh I didn't realize he was at the Blue Bell Inn. We love that spot.
When people ask where I live now, I will just say NEAR Valley Forge.
my point, which I thought obvious, was the story stated near. You initially said AT.
carry on.
Yeah. My point is for people who live here, though, NOBODY says "Oh I'm near Valley Forge" when they're in fucking Blue Bell. lol.
If he wants to make it seem like he was honoring the Revolutionary War or something, there's plenty of spots in Valley Forge or right around it he could've chosen. It's not a big deal, just seems dumb to me.
And FME, looks like he was actually at Montco Community College.
Article stated a visit to valley forge then on to the campaign stop.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Oh I didn't realize he was at the Blue Bell Inn. We love that spot.
When people ask where I live now, I will just say NEAR Valley Forge.
my point, which I thought obvious, was the story stated near. You initially said AT.
carry on.
Yeah. My point is for people who live here, though, NOBODY says "Oh I'm near Valley Forge" when they're in fucking Blue Bell. lol.
If he wants to make it seem like he was honoring the Revolutionary War or something, there's plenty of spots in Valley Forge or right around it he could've chosen. It's not a big deal, just seems dumb to me.
And FME, looks like he was actually at Montco Community College.
Article stated a visit to valley forge then on to the campaign stop.
Oh I didn't realize he was at the Blue Bell Inn. We love that spot.
When people ask where I live now, I will just say NEAR Valley Forge.
my point, which I thought obvious, was the story stated near. You initially said AT.
carry on.
Yeah. My point is for people who live here, though, NOBODY says "Oh I'm near Valley Forge" when they're in fucking Blue Bell. lol.
If he wants to make it seem like he was honoring the Revolutionary War or something, there's plenty of spots in Valley Forge or right around it he could've chosen. It's not a big deal, just seems dumb to me.
And FME, looks like he was actually at Montco Community College.
Ah, right down the road from the Merck empire local HQ.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The European economy, hobbled by unfamiliar weakness in Germany, is barely growing. China is struggling to recapture its sizzle. And Japan continues to disappoint.
But in the United States, it’s a different story. Here, despite lingering consumer angst over inflation, the surprisingly strong economy is outperforming all of its major trading partners.
Since 2020, the United States has powered through a once-in-a-century pandemic, the highest inflation in 40 years and fallout from two foreign wars. Now, after posting faster annual growth last year than in 2022, the U.S. economy is quashing fears of a new recession while offering lessons for future crisis-fighting.
“The U.S. has really come out of this into a place of strength and is moving forward like covid never happened,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist who now runs an eponymous consulting firm. “We earned this; it wasn’t just a fluke.”
On Friday, President Biden hailed fresh government data showing that annual inflation over the second half of 2023 fell back to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target. Coupled with Thursday’s news that the economy grew by 3.1 percent over the past 12 months, the Commerce Department report showed that the United States appears to have achieved an economic soft landing.
The post-pandemic recovery challenged long-standing economic beliefs, such as the idea of an inverse relationship between unemployment and inflation. (As one rose, the other was expected to fall.) Expressed in what economists call the Phillips curve, this nostrum proved nearly useless in explaining the economy’s recent behavior.
Washington’s success in reviving the economy also suggests a new approach to future downturns, one that relies more on the government’s power of the purse and less on the Federal Reserve’s control of the cost of credit.
“Putting money in people’s hands vs. moving around interest rates, which is monetary policy, fiscal policy is going to be stronger,” Sahm said. “We cannot go into the next crisis being, like, ‘Oh, the Fed’s got this.’”
Consumer spending is driving the economy: Real consumption rose by 0.5 percent in December, its fastest pace since last January. Pending home sales jumped, too. Following the flurry of good news, JPMorgan Chase economists said they raised their first-quarter growth forecast.
IBM, Visa and General Electric last week each reported earnings that topped analysts’ expectations, another sign of the economy’s continued health.
The $28 trillion U.S. economy weathered multiple shocks over the past year and returned to the growth path it was on before the pandemic. The size of the economy, adjusted for inflation, regained its pre-pandemic peak in early 2021. Through the end of September, it was more than 7 percent larger than before the pandemic. That was more than twice Japan’s gain and far better than Germany’s anemic 0.3 percent increase, according to British Parliament data.
For most Americans, the growth paid off in the form of higher wages. Over the four years through September, the most recent comparison available, U.S. wages — after inflation — grew 2.8 percent.
Most other countries in the Group of Seven industrial democracies saw a decline, according to Treasury Department data. Italian wages sank by more than 9 percent over that period, while German workers earned 7.2 percent less than they had before the pandemic.
“The U.S. has seen a particularly strong GDP recovery and inflation has cooled sooner and more quickly than in other large, advanced economies. And the increase in real wages is unique to our country’s recovery,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a Chicago speech last week.
The origins of this doom-defying performance can be traced to lawmakers’ swift response to the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. Before the month had ended, Congress approved more than $2 trillion in help for the economy as businesses closed and 17 million Americans lost their jobs.
That was just the start of Washington’s spare-no-expense response to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Congress eventually approved roughly $6 trillion to save the economy from the pandemic; Presidents Donald Trump and Biden both took administrative actions, such as a pause of student loan payments, that added another $875 billion to the rescue tab, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
The Fed helped by cutting borrowing costs for consumers and businesses and by buying trillions of dollars’ worth of government and mortgage-backed securities to goose the economy.
But the principal force behind today’s robust economy lies in fiscal policy, the use of government spending and taxation to boost growth. Under two presidents — one Republican and one Democrat — lawmakers opted to bathe the economy in cash to ward off the coronavirus.
All of that government spending — the stimulus checks, the loans to small businesses and the expanded unemployment benefits — added up to an astonishing 25.5 percent of gross domestic product, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Major European and Asian nations spent significantly less. In Germany, the government devoted 15.3 percent of GDP to battling the pandemic. France spent 9.6 percent and Italy 10.9 percent. Even Britain, which comes closest to American economic views, lagged far behind the United States with 19.3 percent of GDP.
“The scale of fiscal support for the U.S. economy was an order of magnitude greater than in Europe,” said Neil Shearing, chief economist for Capital Economics in London.
To be sure, the American response to the crisis was not without blemishes. Determined to avoid the policy failures that led to the anemic recovery after the 2008 financial crisis, Biden may have overcompensated.
The final burst of coronavirus relief, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in early 2021, while boosting growth, is widely regarded as having contributed to the surge in prices that lifted inflation to a 40-year high of 9.1 percent.
The rescue plan included $1,400 stimulus checks for most Americans, enhanced unemployment benefits, and aid to state and local governments. Coming on top of a separate $900 billion program in December 2020, the American Rescue Plan was responsible for two to four percentage points of the inflationary surge, according to several studies by economists.
Emergency help for the battered economy also pushed the national debt to a new high of $34 trillion, or more than 120 percent of annual economic output, aggravating a long-term threat to the nation’s prosperity, some economists say.
As the pandemic eased, Biden secured other legislative wins on infrastructure, semiconductor industry subsidies and clean energy projects. These were not designed as stimulus programs, but by sending additional rivers of money into the economy, they had that effect, according to Dean Baker, an economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
“These began to kick in last year as the effect of the initial stimulus was waning. I realize this was largely luck, but it was incredibly good timing,” he said.
The United States benefited from free-spending, fast-moving policy. But Europe suffered from being closer to the front lines of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Before the conflict erupted in February 2022, countries such as Germany depended on Russia for much of their natural gas needs. The war caused a huge spike in prices for food, fuel and fertilizer, causing inflation in the euro area to rocket.
Europe’s response to the economic crisis generally required businesses that received government help to keep their workers on the payroll. Whereas Americans were laid off, but then aided by unemployment and stimulus checks, Europeans were kept on the job.
That spared them the uncertainty of labor market limbo but often locked them into jobs that were not needed in the post-pandemic world.
For years after the 2008 crisis, President Barack Obama — under pressure from a Republican Congress — accepted a need to reduce federal spending. That left the Fed to fight economic weakness on its own. Next time, thanks to the pandemic experience, the nation’s eyes may turn to Capitol Hill.
One lesson from the pandemic recovery is the power of the government’s ability to tax and spend, economists said. Congressional actions can affect the economy faster than the lagged impact of a change in borrowing costs and are more certain than the results of other, less conventional Fed policies designed to spur growth.
“Government, through fiscal policy, really can affect the speed of recovering from a downturn,” said former Fed economist Michael Strain, now with the American Enterprise Institute. “Now, there are a million caveats to that.”
Every dip in the economy does not require massive government intervention, and whatever programs are implemented should be well-designed and carefully policed. In the rush to release covid aid, for example, the Small Business Administration disbursed more than $200 billion in potentially fraudulent business loans and related assistance, the agency’s inspector general reported last year.
That is more than the Transportation Department’s annual budget.
Some economists see more than government policy behind the U.S. recovery. As the pandemic made millions of Americans jobless almost overnight in the spring of 2020, many responded by launching new business ventures.
That trend has continued for four years. In December, 457,316 applications for tax identification numbers were lodged with the Internal Revenue Service, compared with 314,337 in December 2019.
“I think we’re seeing something about the American spirit and the kind of economic dynamism that — for whatever reason — doesn’t exist in other high-income countries to the extent that it exists here,” Strain said. “One of the most interesting things happening in the economy right now, and over the last few years, is the big boom in entrepreneurship.”
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Giant jobs numbers for January...GOP better get busy on those caravans and Hunter's laptop outrages. Oh and Taylor Swift, wokeness, etc.
Taylor Swift only toured so she could generate billions in economic activity, creating jobs and thereby helping Joe Biden's election. She is the very definition of the deep state and election "rigger".
Giant jobs numbers for January...GOP better get busy on those caravans and Hunter's laptop outrages. Oh and Taylor Swift, wokeness, etc.
Taylor Swift only toured so she could generate billions in economic activity, creating jobs and thereby helping Joe Biden's election. She is the very definition of the deep state and election "rigger".
Plus she is a communist marxist facist who is Mike Obama's secret lover.
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville 2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
Comments
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
chaos party
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
It would be unprecedented (I think) for a president overseeing an economy this strong to lose reelection. The economic punditry class has spent the better part of two years predicting a catastrophe that keeps on getting delayed. That negativity has bled down. Perhaps there is a chance that as gas prices continue to sink, 2024 will be the year people are finally forced to acknowledge things are actually pretty OK, and upsetting the apple cart for an orange rage-clown is probably not a super awesome idea. Perhaps ...
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
so, NEAR Valley Forge?
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
There are closer places where revolutionary war stuff happened, it would just take more work to explain. I'm guessing Washington had some history in Blue Bell...and certainly in the neighboring Fort Washington.
The new evidence was presented not by the Republican majority on Oversight but by the Democratic minority, which explains why it offers details about money received by Trump-owned companies. What’s new isn’t the mechanisms; it’s been obvious since even before Trump took office in 2017 that there would be money filtering into his pockets through properties that were part of the Trump Organization. The Washington Post has reported more than once on money paid to Trump properties while he was president — some of which almost necessarily filtered through Trump’s corporate organizations to his pockets.
In total, the Oversight Democrats allege that Trump benefited from nearly $7.9 million in foreign payments to Trump-owned properties while he was president. The bulk of that came from interests in China, which spent more than $5.5 million at his businesses, including rent paid by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) at Trump Tower in Manhattan.
ICBC is owned by the Chinese government; a source familiar with the data indicates that all of the $5.5 million included in the Democrats’ report links back to the Chinese government or state-owned entities.
Another million-plus of the $7.9 million came from interests in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. This total does not include whatever the Trump Organization gained from its partnership with LIV Golf, itself linked to the Saudi government.
What isn’t demonstrated — and probably can’t be — is how much of this money went directly to Trump or other members of his family. Unlike the allegations involving Hunter Biden, though, there is an obvious, direct path for the money to have gone from Trump Organization properties to Donald Trump, the company’s owner.
Comer and other Republicans have repeatedly touted the idea that “the Biden family” took in $20 million in foreign payments. Washington Post analysis of the presented evidence found that the actual total going to any Biden (excluding Hunter Biden’s business partners) was about $7.5 million. That included money linked to the Chinese government — but also private-sector businesses. None of it has been shown to have gone to Joe Biden, nor has any evidence emerged showing that Biden tried to boost Hunter Biden’s business for his gain. Republican arguments that Biden took official actions to benefit Hunter Biden are fatally flawed, and most of the money Hunter Biden made came after Joe Biden left office in 2017.
The point here isn’t the hypocrisy on the part of Republicans allied with Donald Trump (including people such as Fox News host Sean Hannity). It would have been impossible for Comer and others to not recognize how their accusations against Hunter Biden potentially looped in Trump and his family. By focusing relentlessly on trying to impugn Hunter Biden, though — including deliberately spacing out accusations to heighten a sense of wrongdoing — Republicans have effectively blunted Trump’s foreign profits as something akin to business as usual. Polling released by YouGov in August showed that Americans were only slightly more likely to say that Trump and his family were corrupt than said the same of Biden.
The idea that Joe Biden must have benefited from Hunter Biden’s work is central to Republican arguments for impeachment. Comer and others, such as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), have pointed to circuitous loan repayments made to the president from his son and brother as evidence that Biden benefited from foreign money, a demonstration of how important this idea is to their case.
If these tenuous links, this desperately weak argument suggest that Biden is unfit to serve as president, what should we think of Trump’s in-office receipt of money from foreign governments?
There’s new evidence of foreign money going to a president: Trump - The Washington Post
SO MUCH WINNING! But sure, vote POOTWH, he'll fix the economy.
Labor market added 216,000 jobs in December, capping year of big gains
The unemployment rate held at 3.7 percent
The unemployment rate held at 3.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Overall, the labor market added 2.7 million jobs in 2023, with an average monthly gain of 225,000 jobs. That’s a smaller annual gain than 2022 or 2021, but more than each of the four years leading up to the pandemic.
The unemployment rate has now remained below 4 percent for 25 months, a stretch last accomplished in the 1960s. Average hourly wage growth accelerated slightly in December continuing to outpace inflation, boosting workers’ spending power, especially among the lowest earners.
“In many ways the labor market is at its best place it has been, not only since [before covid], but by some measures in decades,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at accounting giant KPMG.
Employment in service-based sectors, including government, health care and social assistance, as well as construction, continued to buoy the labor market in December. Government added 52,000 jobs, mostly at the local and federal level and in education, as the sector has finally been able to catch up with the private hiring and attract new workers with improved wages.
Average hourly wage growth accelerated slightly in December, rising by 4.1 percent over the previous 12 months to $34.27 an hour. That’s one percentage point above inflation, which was at 3.1 percent in November, a divergence that should boost consumer spending in the new year.
The Black unemployment rate hit an all-time low in the spring at 4.7 percent. The labor force participation rate for women ages 25 to 54 reached a record high.
These gains were accomplished even as job creation softened substantially in 2023 from the labor market’s peak coming out of covid-19 lockdowns.
That ongoing cooling is the result of fight inflation by raising the cost of borrowing. So far, those rate hikes appear to have successfully brought down inflation without triggering widespread job losses. And easing inflation has helped improve dour consumer sentiment in the United States, which rose to a five-month high in December, according to one survey.
But layoffs remain lower than pre-pandemic levels, with new unemployment claims falling to a two-month low last week, according to data released Thursday by the Labor Department. Joe Brusuelas, chief economist for the accounting firm RSM US, said that employers are “very carefully managing their workforces and are not willing to unload workers, even as the economy cools.”
Economy added 216,000 jobs in December, capping off a year’s worth of solid gains - The Washington Post
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
When people ask where I live now, I will just say NEAR Valley Forge.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
If he wants to make it seem like he was honoring the Revolutionary War or something, there's plenty of spots in Valley Forge or right around it he could've chosen. It's not a big deal, just seems dumb to me.
And FME, looks like he was actually at Montco Community College.
Article stated a visit to valley forge then on to the campaign stop.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
even if I look and act really crazy.
The European economy, hobbled by unfamiliar weakness in Germany, is barely growing. China is struggling to recapture its sizzle. And Japan continues to disappoint.
But in the United States, it’s a different story. Here, despite lingering consumer angst over inflation, the surprisingly strong economy is outperforming all of its major trading partners.
Since 2020, the United States has powered through a once-in-a-century pandemic, the highest inflation in 40 years and fallout from two foreign wars. Now, after posting faster annual growth last year than in 2022, the U.S. economy is quashing fears of a new recession while offering lessons for future crisis-fighting.
“The U.S. has really come out of this into a place of strength and is moving forward like covid never happened,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist who now runs an eponymous consulting firm. “We earned this; it wasn’t just a fluke.”
On Friday, President Biden hailed fresh government data showing that annual inflation over the second half of 2023 fell back to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target. Coupled with Thursday’s news that the economy grew by 3.1 percent over the past 12 months, the Commerce Department report showed that the United States appears to have achieved an economic soft landing.
The post-pandemic recovery challenged long-standing economic beliefs, such as the idea of an inverse relationship between unemployment and inflation. (As one rose, the other was expected to fall.) Expressed in what economists call the Phillips curve, this nostrum proved nearly useless in explaining the economy’s recent behavior.
Washington’s success in reviving the economy also suggests a new approach to future downturns, one that relies more on the government’s power of the purse and less on the Federal Reserve’s control of the cost of credit.
“Putting money in people’s hands vs. moving around interest rates, which is monetary policy, fiscal policy is going to be stronger,” Sahm said. “We cannot go into the next crisis being, like, ‘Oh, the Fed’s got this.’”
Consumer spending is driving the economy: Real consumption rose by 0.5 percent in December, its fastest pace since last January. Pending home sales jumped, too. Following the flurry of good news, JPMorgan Chase economists said they raised their first-quarter growth forecast.
IBM, Visa and General Electric last week each reported earnings that topped analysts’ expectations, another sign of the economy’s continued health.
The $28 trillion U.S. economy weathered multiple shocks over the past year and returned to the growth path it was on before the pandemic. The size of the economy, adjusted for inflation, regained its pre-pandemic peak in early 2021. Through the end of September, it was more than 7 percent larger than before the pandemic. That was more than twice Japan’s gain and far better than Germany’s anemic 0.3 percent increase, according to British Parliament data.
For most Americans, the growth paid off in the form of higher wages. Over the four years through September, the most recent comparison available, U.S. wages — after inflation — grew 2.8 percent.
Most other countries in the Group of Seven industrial democracies saw a decline, according to Treasury Department data. Italian wages sank by more than 9 percent over that period, while German workers earned 7.2 percent less than they had before the pandemic.
“The U.S. has seen a particularly strong GDP recovery and inflation has cooled sooner and more quickly than in other large, advanced economies. And the increase in real wages is unique to our country’s recovery,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a Chicago speech last week.
The origins of this doom-defying performance can be traced to lawmakers’ swift response to the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. Before the month had ended, Congress approved more than $2 trillion in help for the economy as businesses closed and 17 million Americans lost their jobs.
That was just the start of Washington’s spare-no-expense response to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Congress eventually approved roughly $6 trillion to save the economy from the pandemic; Presidents Donald Trump and Biden both took administrative actions, such as a pause of student loan payments, that added another $875 billion to the rescue tab, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
The Fed helped by cutting borrowing costs for consumers and businesses and by buying trillions of dollars’ worth of government and mortgage-backed securities to goose the economy.
But the principal force behind today’s robust economy lies in fiscal policy, the use of government spending and taxation to boost growth. Under two presidents — one Republican and one Democrat — lawmakers opted to bathe the economy in cash to ward off the coronavirus.
All of that government spending — the stimulus checks, the loans to small businesses and the expanded unemployment benefits — added up to an astonishing 25.5 percent of gross domestic product, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Major European and Asian nations spent significantly less. In Germany, the government devoted 15.3 percent of GDP to battling the pandemic. France spent 9.6 percent and Italy 10.9 percent. Even Britain, which comes closest to American economic views, lagged far behind the United States with 19.3 percent of GDP.
“The scale of fiscal support for the U.S. economy was an order of magnitude greater than in Europe,” said Neil Shearing, chief economist for Capital Economics in London.
To be sure, the American response to the crisis was not without blemishes. Determined to avoid the policy failures that led to the anemic recovery after the 2008 financial crisis, Biden may have overcompensated.
The final burst of coronavirus relief, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in early 2021, while boosting growth, is widely regarded as having contributed to the surge in prices that lifted inflation to a 40-year high of 9.1 percent.
The rescue plan included $1,400 stimulus checks for most Americans, enhanced unemployment benefits, and aid to state and local governments. Coming on top of a separate $900 billion program in December 2020, the American Rescue Plan was responsible for two to four percentage points of the inflationary surge, according to several studies by economists.
Emergency help for the battered economy also pushed the national debt to a new high of $34 trillion, or more than 120 percent of annual economic output, aggravating a long-term threat to the nation’s prosperity, some economists say.
As the pandemic eased, Biden secured other legislative wins on infrastructure, semiconductor industry subsidies and clean energy projects. These were not designed as stimulus programs, but by sending additional rivers of money into the economy, they had that effect, according to Dean Baker, an economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
“These began to kick in last year as the effect of the initial stimulus was waning. I realize this was largely luck, but it was incredibly good timing,” he said.
The United States benefited from free-spending, fast-moving policy. But Europe suffered from being closer to the front lines of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Before the conflict erupted in February 2022, countries such as Germany depended on Russia for much of their natural gas needs. The war caused a huge spike in prices for food, fuel and fertilizer, causing inflation in the euro area to rocket.
Europe’s response to the economic crisis generally required businesses that received government help to keep their workers on the payroll. Whereas Americans were laid off, but then aided by unemployment and stimulus checks, Europeans were kept on the job.
That spared them the uncertainty of labor market limbo but often locked them into jobs that were not needed in the post-pandemic world.
For years after the 2008 crisis, President Barack Obama — under pressure from a Republican Congress — accepted a need to reduce federal spending. That left the Fed to fight economic weakness on its own. Next time, thanks to the pandemic experience, the nation’s eyes may turn to Capitol Hill.
One lesson from the pandemic recovery is the power of the government’s ability to tax and spend, economists said. Congressional actions can affect the economy faster than the lagged impact of a change in borrowing costs and are more certain than the results of other, less conventional Fed policies designed to spur growth.
“Government, through fiscal policy, really can affect the speed of recovering from a downturn,” said former Fed economist Michael Strain, now with the American Enterprise Institute. “Now, there are a million caveats to that.”
Every dip in the economy does not require massive government intervention, and whatever programs are implemented should be well-designed and carefully policed. In the rush to release covid aid, for example, the Small Business Administration disbursed more than $200 billion in potentially fraudulent business loans and related assistance, the agency’s inspector general reported last year.
That is more than the Transportation Department’s annual budget.
Some economists see more than government policy behind the U.S. recovery. As the pandemic made millions of Americans jobless almost overnight in the spring of 2020, many responded by launching new business ventures.
That trend has continued for four years. In December, 457,316 applications for tax identification numbers were lodged with the Internal Revenue Service, compared with 314,337 in December 2019.
“I think we’re seeing something about the American spirit and the kind of economic dynamism that — for whatever reason — doesn’t exist in other high-income countries to the extent that it exists here,” Strain said. “One of the most interesting things happening in the economy right now, and over the last few years, is the big boom in entrepreneurship.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/28/global-economy-gdp-inflation/
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana