Seemingly every day some major university or Wall Street bank econ shop warns that Trump would crash the American economy and stock market.
Turns out this is exactly what "the experts" predicted in 2016. Here are some of those primal screams from back then from some of the most prominent economic voices:
"Donald Trump's first gift to the world will be another financial crisis." Headline in the U.K. Independent. From the article: "He gives every impression that he will soon be hustling America -- and possibly the entire world -- in the direction of another catastrophic financial crisis."
"It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight." Paul Krugman of The New York Times, the day after the election.
Here we have the sad and utterly predictable result of the Biden antitrust geniuses blocking the merger of the sixth and seventh largest air carriers:
We at Unleash have been shouting from the rooftops that this would be the inevitable result of the Biden government's moronic rejection of the merger.
Every single one of the lawyers who worked on this case at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission should be fired for economic incompetence.
We, your faithful editors are man (and woman) enough to admit when we're wrong. We predicted at the start of the year that the deficit may hit $2 trillion this year.
Oops. We undershot. The fiscal year ended on Sept 30 and the deficit was $2.3 trillion.
Our friend and scholar Sven Larson has parsed the numbers and they aren't pretty:
One reason why the budget deficit keeps growing is that the cost of the debt itself has now reached such proportions that it contributes to the erosion of the budget. In two years, the annualized interest rate on the federal debt has gone up from 1.87% to 3.25%; the cost in dollars and cents has increased from $579 billion per year in interest payments to $1,153 billion.
To put this in perspective of the federal budget, here are its largest items as estimated for 2024:
Social Security $1,457bn
Interest $1,153bn
Defense $908bn
Medicaid $858bn
Medicare $847bn
Income security $761bn
What makes us nervous is that we are now so anesthetized by these giant numbers, that few in Washington are even the slightest bit concerned. They aren't even at Step 1 of recovery for fighting an addiction.
4) Voters Are Rebelling Against Pro-Criminal Prosecutors
One major reason that crime is up: Groups linked to financier George Soros have helped elect more than 70 rogue top prosecutors across the country. One in five Americans live in one of these crime-ridden cities.
Now there are welcome signs that the Soros influence is in retreat.
These soft-on-crime prosecutors routinely refuse to prosecute most misdemeanors, claiming they are essentially harmless "quality of life" crimes. This creates a climate that encourages more serious crimes and keeps criminals on the streets.
In Chicago's Cook County, the Soros-backed incumbent Kim Fox was forced to retire as District Attorney.
In Los Angeles County, District Attorney George Gascon has become deeply unpopular after he ended cash bail for most offenses and refused to prosecute many misdemeanors such as trespassing and drug possession.
Gascon only won 21 percent of the vote in a multi-candidate field in the June nonpartisan primary, and trails challenger Nate Hochman by 24 points in the November runoff.
Then there's the recall effort against District Attorney Pamela Price of Alameda County, California, which includes Oakland. This week, the recall effort won a key endorsement from liberal Congressman Eric Swalwell. He detailed how Price "has essentially put in place pro-criminal policies where the cops catch the bad guys and she releases them back into the community, and that has made us less safe and has created anxiety among citizens."
When even liberal Democrats are saying this, we've got a big problem on our hands.
One of the four contenders to pick up the pieces of the UK Conservative Party as leader stands apart from the rest for one simple reason: Kemi Badenoch had the impeccably good judgment to cite Unleash Prosperity research in her manifesto.
The manifesto, titled "Conservatism in Crisis: Rise of the Bureaucratic Class," lays out an aggressive program of deregulation and spending reforms on the growing chasm between the elite and everyone else, which Badenoch identifies as a global phenomenon. She then cites our landmark Them v. US study for evidence of the state of play here in the US.
Badenoch writes:
There will have to be a new type of politics. To take on the bureaucratic class means to ditch radical environmental politics, unpick identity politics, focus on a strong positive national identity, limit migration, reduce the endless HR, compliance and sustainability rules, to streamline planning, to focus on bringing down the cost of the welfare state and much more.
Here's a short clip of the 44-year-old rising star:
