Oct. 8, 2019
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
With 50-year low unemployment rate at 3.5 percent, it may be time to reset any recession clock countdown until after the election
The U.S. economy
got another dose of amazing news on Oct. 4 when the national unemployment rate
dropped to a 50-year low of 3.5 percent. 6.1 million jobs have been created
since President Donald Trump took office. And that means Democrats hoping for a
recession for the 2020 election to help oust Trump might be little bit
disappointed in the coming months.
Cartoon: Witches Hunting
Double, double
toil and trouble; fire burn, and caldron bubble!
Video: If Ukraine reopened Burisma-Bidengate in 2018, how could there be a quid pro quo in July 2019?
How can there be
a quid pro quo if Ukraine initiated the Burisma-Biden investigation in 2018 and
sought U.S. assistance?
What quid pro quo? Ukraine reopened Burisma probe in 2018 and sought U.S. assistance after Biden said he had prosecutor fired
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning: “Based on public
statements to The Hill in April by then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Lutsenko
and his office that their investigation into Burisma and Joe Biden was reopened
in 2018 long before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was ever elected in
April 2019, then there could not have been a quid pro quo in the July 25, 2019
conversation between President Donald Trump and Zelensky. Ukraine says it began
its investigation in 2018 after Biden bragged to the Council on Foreign
Relations in Jan. 2018 that he had Lutsenko’s predecessor fired and wanted
Attorney General Barr to look at it.”
Stephen Moore: Democrats are wrong. Middle-class incomes surging – thanks to Trump policies
“The latest
Census Bureau Current Population Survey data now show that middle-class
incomes, after adjusting for inflation, have surged by $5,003 since Donald
Trump became president in January 2017. Median household income has now reached
$65,976 – an all-time high and up more than 8 percent in 2019 dollars under the
Trump presidency.”
With 50-year low unemployment rate at 3.5 percent, it may be time to reset any recession clock countdown until after the election
By Robert Romano
The U.S. economy got another dose of amazing news on Oct. 4 when the national unemployment rate dropped to a 50-year low of 3.5 percent.
Add to that, 6.1 million jobs have been created since President Donald Trump took office.
And that means Democrats hoping for a recession for the 2020 election to help oust Trump might be little bit disappointed in the coming months.
What makes it even more significant is that when it was that low in 1969, the Vietnam War was still at its height more or less, with hundreds of thousands of working aged males overseas and hundreds of thousands more enlisted.
Granted there are still many deployments from the ongoing War on Terror in Afghanistan and elsewhere plus securing locations in Germany and South Korea and elsewhere but not nearly on the scale seen back then.
The point is, in relative peacetime—I say, relative—that’s a really low unemployment rate. Really, really low.
And with a new low realized in this cycle — the previous low was hit in April at 3.6 percent — any recession clock has now been reset. Once peak employment has been reached for the first time in a business cycle, a recession comes on average about 11 months later, although in recent history that period has been as long as 16 months.
That might put any recession — assuming we’ve hit peak employment — anywhere from Aug. 2020 to Dec. 2020, probably too close to the election for anyone to notice or for it to turn up in the data.
But, you usually don’t know you’ve reached peak employment until after it has begun rising a bit. Many analysts probably would have bet in April that the jobless rate would not go any lower than 3.6 percent, but here we are, many months later and a new 50-year low at 3.5 percent.
Here’s the thing. Amid shifting demographics and surplus demand for labor, plus fewer high school dropouts and a greater percentage of the work force finishing college, the unemployment rate can go even lower.
And if it does, that will mean that again, the recession countdown clock will have to be reset.
Further dashing Democrat hopes for an early recession, the 10-year, 2-year spread, after briefly inverting, uninverted last month to little fanfare or reporting.
Making matters worse for the Recessionistas, It may not have inverted far enough or stayed down long enough to bake a recession into the cake. Some terms and conditions may apply. It might have been a false signal.
Something similar happened in 1998 with a month-long, shallow inversion between the 10-year, 2-year that ultimately proved to be too early to predict the March 2001 recession.
Now that could all mean nothing and those two rates could invert again tomorrow or that brief inversion we saw was in fact a recession signals. Again, you really don’t get to find out until after the fact.
It’s as much guesswork as anything else. All we’re proving here is for every analysis suggesting that the data is predictive of a recession occurring soon, there are others that say it might not happen until later.
Which is the point. On the political side, every month that goes by and the Trump economy stays strong or even just delivers consistent numbers showing economic and job growth, it dispels fears by the American people that there was any danger to the economy — and voters are going to take that into consideration in 2020, no question. They ought to.
I’d say it can’t get any better than this, but we already know it can.
Democrats’ problem as 2020 approaches rapidly is that if they’re betting on events like a recession hitting, they’re running out of time. So while economic news remains good, it makes attempts at impeachment look even more politically motivated as voters start to wonder if the push to remove Trump before the election is because with the economy and labor markets so strong Democrats don’t think they can beat him at the ballot box.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
Cartoon: Witches Hunting
By A.F. Branco
Click here for a higher level resolution version.
Video: If Ukraine reopened Burisma-Bidengate in 2018, how could there be a quid pro quo in July 2019?
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR4MLvWtJKg
If Ukraine reopened Burisma-Bidengate in 2018, how could there be a quid pro quo in July 2019?
Oct. 7, 2019, Fairfax, Va.--Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning issued the following statement on House Democrats' impeachment inquiry in light of reporting from The Hill in April, months before the July 25 Trump-Zelensky call, saying that both Burisma and former Vice President Joe Biden were already actively under investigation and that they were requesting mutual legal assistance from the U.S.:
"Based on public statements to The Hill in April by then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Lutsenko and his office that their investigation into Burisma and Joe Biden was reopened in 2018 long before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was ever elected in April 2019, then there could not have been a quid pro quo in the July 25, 2019 conversation between President Donald Trump and Zelensky. Ukraine says it began its investigation in 2018 after Biden bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations in Jan. 2018 that he had Lutsenko's predecessor fired and wanted Attorney General Barr to look at it. While it is unclear if Biden was bragging or telling the truth, Ukraine's government well before the Trump-Zelensky call was actively investigating both Burisma and the firing to see if there was any corrupt activity. They were asking for our help, and Zelensky reaffirmed it in his conversation with Trump, asking the U.S. for mutual legal assistance in the investigation.
"Anyone who actually wants to find out what happened in the Trump-Zelensky phone call must put it into this context of the April 2019 reporting from The Hill's John Solomon, which quotes Lutsenko and his lead prosecutor on the case at the time, as requesting help from Attorney General Barr, and the transcript, which quotes Zelensky specifically requesting assistance. When put into this context, Adam Schiff can come up with as many coached, so-called whistleblowers as he likes, but the facts refute all of them and completely undermines any pretext for Nancy Pelosi's impeachment. The facts are so obvious that even Sen. Mitt Romney should be able to figure them out."
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2019/10/if-ukraine-reopened-burisma-bidengate-in-2018-how-could-there-be-a-quid-pro-quo-in-july-2019/
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured oped from Foxnews.com, Stephen Moore reports that middle class incomes are surging thanks to President Donald Trump’s policies:
Democrats are wrong. Middle-class incomes surging – thanks to Trump policies
By Stephen Moore
The latest Census Bureau Current Population Survey data now show that middle-class incomes, after adjusting for inflation, have surged by $5,003 since Donald Trump became president in January 2017. Median household income has now reached $65,976 – an all-time high and up more than 8 percent in 2019 dollars under the Trump presidency.
This data was compiled by the statisticians at Sentier Research, an economic research group whose founders have more than 30 years of experience at the Census Bureau in analyzing the monthly income numbers.
I reported last week in the Wall Street Journal that real median family income had soared by $4,146 under Trump through July 2019. The just-released August numbers from Sentier show a huge monthly gain of $857 in income per household.
These numbers contrast sharply with the 16 years prior to Trump’s presidency. In the eight years that George W. Bush was president, median income barely showed any gain, up just $401 thanks to the deep recession of 2008.
In the seven and a half years that Barack Obama was president, and not including the end of the recession, which Obama inherited, incomes inched up by $1,043 (June 2009 – January 2019). This means that in the 16 years before the Trump presidency, incomes rose by about $1,500 while in less than three years middle incomes have risen three times faster.
The contrast is even sharper when measured on a monthy basis. The monthly rise in incomes under Bush was $4. That number was $11 under Obama and $161 under Trump.
These income numbers are PRE-TAX, so they do NOT include the impact of the Trump tax cut. The Heritage Foundation estimates that the average household has saved $1,400 a year on their federal taxes from the 2017 Trump tax cut. This means many working-class families now have a $6,000 higher after-tax, and after-inflation paycheck today.
These surges in income, especially in the last several months, have occurred at exactly the time when many liberal economists and media talking heads were shouting “recession.” In reality middle-class families were enjoying a near-unprecedented income windfall and “the gains in income levels in recent months,” Sentier reports, “have been accelerating.“
These higher wage and salary incomes are no doubt related to the very tight labor market, which has given workers new bargaining power to ask for higher pay. Today there are more than seven million unfilled jobs in America – the highest number of surplus jobs in American history.
These latest income numbers also squarely contradict the claims by Democratic presidential candidates, such as former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who claim that all the gains from the Trump economy have gone to the rich and large corporations. Warren claimed earlier this year that workers had to work "two or three or four jobs" just to keep their incomes from falling.
No, this has been one of the biggest middle-class success stories in modern times, and it is a testament to the success of the Trump tax, regulatory and energy policies.
