The federal budget has ballooned to an obese $7 trillion and the government is expected to borrow another $1.5 trillion this year.
What accounts for this Pacific Ocean of red ink? If you say that the fastest growing programs are Social Security, Medicare or food stamps - you’d be close - but wrong. Here is a headline from a just-released House Budget Committee report:
The study finds that under President Biden, spending on interest on the debt has grown by an astonishing 152%. That’s about five times faster than any other major program. That means we are borrowing to pay for our borrowing. This doesn’t sound wise.
Anyone who thinks we have turned the corner on Bidenflation - and we know that includes at least half the economist in Washington - should have their head examined.
According to the website Trading Economics, the index of commodities - from corn to copper to heating oil and a good forward looking indicator on consumer prices - just hit its highest level in 13 years!
The CRB Commodity Index rose to 350 Tuesday reaching May 2011 levels, driven by heightened geopolitical tensions in the middle east and crude oil supply constraints from OPEC+ production cuts. Additionally, demand for gold, copper and silver is rising, while supply is tightening.
Economists anticipate a “super bull” phase for commodities and that will keep its prices elevated for the next 12 months. Among some of the index components, gold was up by 15% year-to-date, silver by 36%, crude oil by 10% and wheat by 16% YTD.
Commodity prices flow inevitably down the supply chain to higher consumer prices. Our best bet is that 2024 could end up with an inflation rate of 4.5 to 5%.
Our second bet is that Biden will blame this on Trump or corporate greed.
3) Even Dems Admitting the Economy Was Better Under Trump
Politico made some waves on Tuesday with this headline:
It described the "pervasive sense of fear (that) has settled in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects."
Pete Giangreco, a longtime Democratic strategist who’s worked on multiple presidential campaigns, nailed the problem:
"If the frame of this race is, 'What was better, the 3.5 years under Biden or four years under Trump,' we lose that every day of the week and twice on Sunday."
For many years, Germany has led the world in climate craziness. It shut down gas and nuclear plants while offering a gusher of subsidies for wind and solar power.
The result: Germans now pay electricity prices 70% higher than the European average. Germany has been deindustrializing ever since.
Last year lawmakers adopted an experimental policy requiring all new heating systems to use at least 65% renewable energy.
Public outcry has forced Robert Habeck, the Green Party minister behind the plan, to retreat.
He told a town hall this month that the original law "was honestly a test of how far society is prepared to go in terms of climate protection when it becomes a reality. And I went too far."
He says the plan’s mandates will be eased because public anger "would probably have ended up knocking the entire climate protection program off its feet."
Amazingly, all of these mandates and the attendant public backlash were for a policy that will reduce German carbon dioxide emissions over the next six years by the same amount as China emits in a single day.
We noted earlier this week that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg sounded a little flummoxed last weekend when a network TV reporter asked him why a $7.5 billion federal program in the Biden Infrastructure Bill that passed three years ago (!) has only so far built "seven or eight" chargers.
We're not sure why they can't give an exact count when the number is small enough to use their fingers.
Thank God Pete wasn’t in charge of the Normandy landing.
Pete’s non-explanation was that “the president's goal is to have half a million chargers up by the end of this decade. Now, in order to do a charger, it's more than just plunking a small device into the ground. There's utility work and this is also a new category of federal investment.”
Sure it is, Pete.
One of our mathematically inclined readers did the extrapolation and at $1 billion per charger, the program could cost $500 trillion. Now if THAT doesn’t stimulate the economy, nothing will.
Did we mention that some of our liberal friends want to replace Joe with Pete at the top of the Dem ticket?
Even third world countries with long histories of political corruption have concluded that mail-in-balloting is prone to cheating. But the U.S. still allows it. Our ace election integrity expert John Fund confirms this is all true
