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Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #1254
04/30/2025
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1) Some Good News: Government Spending Fell in Last Three Months

The U.S. GDP shrank slightly in the first quarter - something we never like to see. This data predates the last four weeks of the trade/tariff war trauma, so we are worried about the second quarter coming in negative - which would technically mean recession. If we could get the tax bill signed sealed and delivered, that would provide immediate juice for the economy. Instead, Congress dithers, and they will get blamed for the technical recession.

But there was some good news in the report. Much of the “growth” under Biden was “fake growth” driven by trillions of extra government spending and debt.

In Trump’s first quarter back in office, he managed not only to slow government purchases, but to decrease them slightly—the first time in three years. That shows up as a subtraction to GDP.

But here’s the showstopper: investment (the impetus of long-run real economic growth) soared, up 22% at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate. This is the rocket fuel for future growth that America needs. This was the opposite of tepid business investment under Biden.

On balance, a quarter with surging investment and slowing government is not bad at all.
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2) April Is the Cruelest Month – Or Not!

This was the headline in the Wall Street Journal about a stock market story written by Hannah Erin Lang:
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Here was the chart from that day:

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The story also noted: "Few think the administration's negotiations with trade partners will yield results soon enough to ease the strain."

What was strange was that this headline on the worst April in 90 years, was written with nine days left in the month!

Sure enough, the tide has shifted in a big way since then. Here is what has happened since April 21:

April 21 38,170

April 29 40,527
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All the indexes show pretty much the same 3 to 6% RISE.

We aren't singling out the WSJ. Many of the other major news outlets ripped into Trump and his tariff agenda and warned of a 1929-style crash. And who knows what comes next with this market turbulence, which we expect to continue. But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was absolutely right that the media piled on the stock sell-off story and has been pretty mum on the comeback.

Media bias? You decide.
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3) Green Energy Puts Spain and Portugal in the Dark

Another solar energy debacle - this time in Spain, Portugal, and parts of southern France.

Spanish media cheered the news that April 16 was the country's first weekday ever with 100% of its electricity supplied by renewable energy. Less than two weeks later came the biggest European blackout in memory.
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No one knows for sure the reason for the blackout, but a contributing factor was that France — which exports power to the Iberian peninsula – switched off its grid connections to these nations to stop the blackouts from spreading.

Traditional energy sources include safeguards that allow the electricity to keep running, even if there is a surge or loss of power. Solar and wind don't have such a fallback.

When will countries learn that reliance on “renewable" energy is a prescription for energy poverty?
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4) Proxy Advisory Firms Retreat from ESG

Two years ago, our landmark Pension Politics report ([link removed]) revealed that too many giant investment firms were following the terrible advice of the two major proxy voting advisory firms - ISS and Glass-Lewis. They almost always recommended "yes" votes on the most egregious ESG/DEI resolutions - a clear violation of their fiduciary duty to their clients.

This week, Glass Lewis (one of the two dominant shareholder advisory firms) has decided to get out of the moralizing business. Semafor reports that it will instead focus on helping investors in handling regulatory reporting and providing research. Glass Lewis' pivot may have been influenced by JPMorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon, who called it and ISS "incompetent" at a BlackRock event last month, and accused them of contributing to a regulatory environment that is "driving companies out of the public market."
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We at Unleash Prosperity are proud to help cast the first spotlight on the negative role that proxy firms have been playing in misadvising investment companies to go for woke shareholder resolutions instead of pursuing maximum returns for the shareholders, whose money they invest.

We've come a long way, baby.
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5) Photo of the Year? Really?

The White House Press Corps embarrassed themselves again. When they picked a picture of Joe Biden shuffling by a portrait of Abe Lincoln in the White House as their "photo of the year."

We think they chose poorly.
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6) Smart Kid

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