Reality Check: Bidenomics Is A Bust

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Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #803
06/28/2023
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1) Reality Check: Bidenomics Is A Bust
A lot of the spin coming from the White House this week is that "Bidenomics" has been a rousing success.

Thankfully, our CTUP senior fellow EJ Antoni keeps hitting it out of the park, debunking Biden's economic fabrications. His latest myth-busting pertains to the wages and salaries of middle-class Americans.

Sorry, Joe, but no, they aren’t rising. Biden’s tall tales about wage growth are at best half-truths. The White House is quick to point out that nominal hourly earnings have risen quickly since he took office, and that part of the story is true. But as in the 1970s, when families got financially crushed, prices have risen even faster, so those larger incomes buy less. The chart below compares earnings for workers before and after inflation.

Hours worked per week have also declined, pushing weekly earnings down more than hourly earnings. For the average American family, their weekly pay has jumped about $200 but it buys about $100 less. It amounts to a $5,600 loss in annual purchasing power.

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The bottom line is this: "Bidenflation" has risen much faster than worker pay, which has translated into a $5,600 DECLINE in average family incomes in just 30 months.

It’s no wonder that half of Americans think we’re already in recession.

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2) COVID Fraud at SBA Now Exceeds $200 Billion
We know! You’ve heard this from us multiple times already. But the numbers on how much was stolen from the COVID programs keep skyrocketing.

The SBA's inspector general issued a new report yesterday finding $200 billion in potential fraud just in that agency's programs – that is, on top of the enormous known fraud in DOL-administered unemployment programs.

This estimate represents approximately 17 percent of disbursed COVID-19 EIDLs [Economic Injury Distress Loans (the "non-forgivable" loans)] and PPP funds — specifically, more than $136 billion COVID-19 EIDLs and $64 billion in PPP funds. Since SBA did not have an established strong internal control environment (why we can’t fathom!) for approving and disbursing program funds, fraudsters ran rampant, accessing funds that should have been available for eligible business owners adversely affected by the pandemic.

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This is only the documented fraud and thievery. We may never really know how much COVID money was lost to outright fraud and government mismanagement – but it was certainly well into the hundreds of billions.

Amazingly, Democrats and some Republicans too regard the COVID spending schemes as a government success story. Yes, like the Bay of Pigs and the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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3) Believe It or Not, Three Years After COVID, FDA Employees Still Not Back To Work
When government employees don’t show up for work, we’re of mixed minds. On the one hand, a busy bee regulator can have the worst impact of all on American productivity. On the other hand, we’re paying these people a lot of your and our tax dollars for not showing up.

Consider what has happened at the Food and Drug Administration – which is in charge of approving new drugs. When Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington Republican and chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, earlier this year asked FDA Commissioner Robert Califf how many people at his agency responsible for moving new and potentially lifesaving treatments into the medical supply chain were coming into the office, he cavalierly responded:

“Many of our employees aren’t in the office, to begin with, and we have not added back in-person meetings. The industry told us they like both virtual and in-person meetings,” he said.

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This is no way to win the race for the cure.

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4) BlackRock‘s Larry Fink Renounces ESG
As CTUP readers know, we’ve been pounding investment firms like BlackRock, State Street, and UBS among others – for their woke politics. Our study “Politics Over Pensions” sent some of these multi-trillion dollar colossuses reeling from the bad publicity.

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We’re proud that - as you may have heard – the leader of the corporate ESG movement, CEO Larry Fink is backing off, at least rhetorically. He says he’s done with the terminology because it has been “politically weaponized,” and he promises a change of behavior at Blackrock. And since he manages a whopping $9.5 trillion in assets he holds enormous sway in the ESG ecosystem.

How big a reversal is this? Remember, not long ago Fink lectured his fellow corporate executives that it was time for firms “to force behaviors, whether it’s gender or race.” He boasted that compensation for managers at his firm was based in part on how well they imposed ESG. Now he insists that he “never meant to be political.”

Right. That must explain why BlackRock used its 7 percent ownership of United Parcel Services to force it to report on how it planned to follow the Paris Accords' draconian demands for carbon emission cuts. We could recite many other examples of BlackRock flexing its muscle to achieve progressive policy goals.

Whether BlackRock’s retreat from ESG fanaticism is a head fake or real remains to be seen. But It’s safe to say that the spotlight that CTUP, and other groups like Consumers Research, have shined on these liberal groups is starting to change their behavior.

No one in corporate America wants to be the victim of the next Bud Light fiasco.

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5) Communist Chinese Firm Cashes in on Biden's CHIPS Boondoggle
Yesterday, we pointed out in the HOTLINE that two of the largest corporate welfare recipients of the Biden “Chips Act” are actually Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and South Korea’s Samsung. That makes a mockery of the Act’s purported aim of rebuilding America’s chip industry.

Now the Daily Caller reports that another “Chips Act” recipient is KORE Power, a U.S.-based electric battery manufacturer, which won an $850 million loan this month to open a production facility in Arizona. But KORE relies on a Chinese Communist Party-led company for its technology.

Jigar Shah, the director of loans for the Department of Energy, admitted that KORE is “using technology from a Chinese company, DFD, to manufacture battery cells.” He failed to mention that its top executives are all members of Communist Party cells. In 2016, DFD’s party secretary Han Shjiun said that it was necessary to integrate party-building work into the core aspects of the company, according to the Henan Daily.

The Chips Act was sold as a way to regain America’s once domination of the semiconductor industry and to curtail our dependence on Chinese technology. Now we’re using the money to subsidize the world’s biggest Chinese supplier of Chips.

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6) Lockdown Math

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