Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

China Reports Its Economy Growing at Slowest Pace Since 1992

Monday, 15 July 2019 13:29
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, July 15, 2019: 

The “official” numbers released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday show the world’s second-largest economy “growing at its slowest pace since at least 1992,” as the Wall Street Journal expressed it. But real numbers from the real world — not those reported by the communist government for public consumption — show that the world’s second-largest economy may not be growing at all, and in fact may be shrinking.

NBS spokesman Mao Shengyong all but admitted it: “Economic conditions are still severe both at home and abroad, global economic growth is slowing down and the external instabilities and uncertainties [read: trade dispute with President Donald Trump] are increasing. The [Chinese] economy is under new downward pressure.”

The statement from the NBS accompanying its press release was just as blunt: “The Chinese economy is still in a complex and grave situation.”

Officially, NBS said

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Pressure Building on Congress to Raise Debt Limit Before Summer Recess

Monday, 15 July 2019 08:03
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, July 15, 2019:

It was inevitable. A blind man could see it coming. With the federal government increasingly outspending its income, it was just a matter of time before the Treasury Department bumped up against the debt ceiling.

It happened on March 2. Secretary Treasury Steven Mnuchin immediately engaged “extraordinary measures” to keep the bills of Congress paid, and on May 23, he wrote the first of two warning letters to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “By reason of the statutory debt limit I will … be unable to fully invest the portion of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund (CSRDF) not immediately required to pay beneficiaries.…The Treasury Department will also continue to suspend additional investments for … the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund (PSRHBF).”

He added:

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The Coming Angst About Raising the Debt Ceiling Will Be Pure Kabuki Theater

Monday, 15 July 2019 07:58
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This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, July 15, 2019: 

Watch for it. It’s coming. A blind man could see it. It’s that moment in time when Treasury runs out of bookkeeping gimmicks and machinations, and finally admits that it has run out of money.

Treasury hit the debt ceiling ($22 trillion and change) on March 2. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin informed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in May that he was engaging in “extraordinary measures” to keep the government afloat. Last week he announced that he was running out of bookkeeping manipulations and would be forced to delay paying some of the government’s bills, probably – and inconveniently for Congress – during summer recess.

That’s the very last thing a politician wants. He (or she) will be out on the hustings defending his voting record. A vote to raise the debt ceiling is the very last thing he wants to be forced to explain to those he hopes will keep him in office.

It looked for a while as though Congress was going to luck out.

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FBI Reports that Firearm Background Checks Continue to Set New Highs

Saturday, 13 July 2019 05:37
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This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, July 12, 2019:

When the National Instant Criminal Background Check System – NICS – was inflicted on the American people as part of the Brady Bill passed under President Clinton in 1993, it was sold as a means to reduce gun violence by keeping firearms out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them.

But now it turns out that another force – a profound cultural change – has been quietly at work accomplishing what the NICS demonstrably didn’t: the increasing freedom being enjoyed by law-abiding citizens “to keep and bear arms.”

Whenever the FBI updates its monthly report on NICS firearm background checks (BGCs) it notes that the numbers “do not represent the number of firearms sold.” That’s because the BGCs are performed on people attempting to purchase a firearm and not on the number he or she might be buying at that moment in time.

So, a fair question to ask, in light of the record-setting two million background checks every month for the first six months of 2019, is:

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Another Gun-buyback Failure, This Time in New Zealand

Wednesday, 10 July 2019 14:12
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, July 10, 2019: 

Following the Christchurch mass shootings at two mosques, New Zealand politicians reacted just as the shooter hoped they would. In the manifesto he filed just before beginning his rampage on March 15, the shooter, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, wrote: “I chose [those particular] firearms for the effect it would have on social discourse. The gun owners of New Zealand are a beaten, miserable bunch of baby boomers who have long since given up the fight. When was the last time they won increased rights? Their loss was inevitable. I just accelerated things a bit.”

Indeed, he did. Within weeks,

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What Are the Real Costs if the Federal Minimum Wage Is Increased?

Wednesday, 10 July 2019 14:06
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This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, July 10, 2019: 

Having never learned, or conveniently forgotten, the “law of unintended consequences,” House Democrats are poised to pass their Raise the Wage Act next week. If passed into law, it would more than double the present federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour. It would be staged in, reaching $15 by 2024.

It’s because those workers (and Democrat voters, it is assumed) “deserve” it. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that, “Americans who work hard deserve to afford a middle-class life and deserve opportunities to get ahead and help their children get ahead.” The first fallacy immediately appears: What if they don’t? What if their work isn’t worth paying them $15 an hour? Democrat answer: Give it to them anyway.

House Democrats were doubtless overjoyed upon learning that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came to their rescue, reporting that mandating that employers pay their people at least $15 an hour, starting in 2024, would boost the pay of an estimated 17 million workers and “could” also raise the pay of 10 million more workers already earning close to $15 an hour. It would also, said the CBO, lift 1.3 million workers above the poverty level.

Ignored were the other costs, including,

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CBO Counts Cost of Raising Minimum Wage to $15

Tuesday, 09 July 2019 21:10
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, July 9, 2019:  

Just a week before the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is due to vote on its Raise the Wage Act, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) calculated its possible impact on the economy. The bill, if enacted into law (highly unlikely), would gradually raise the minimum wage in the country from its present level of $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour by 2024.

The CBO concluded that, “For most low-wage workers, earnings and family income would increase, which would lift some families out of poverty [for a single person, that level is $1,040 a month; for a family of four, it’s $2,145 a month]. But other low-wage workers would become jobless, and their family income would fall — in some cases, below the poverty level.”

The CBO did its calculations, and drew its conclusions, based on three different scenarios:

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Venezuela’s Maduro Employing Death Squads, Torture to Retain Control

Monday, 08 July 2019 21:07
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, July 8, 2019: 

The day after the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet left Caracas, Venezuelan Marxist dictator Nicolás Maduro thumbed his nose at her investigation and ordered the arrest, torture, and murder of a supporter of the opposition party. According to his family’s lawyer, Navy Captain Rafael Acosta, age 49, was healthy and in good spirits the day before he was arrested. Local media were allowed to see his body afterwards, reporting that it showed signs of having been subjected to “extreme force, had been starved of oxygen, and had suffered severe beatings and electrocution.”

He was just one of the more than 9,000 people Maduro has executed over the last 18 months. This explains how the communist thug has managed to stay in power: through threats, intimidation, torture, and murder.

That was why Bachelet was there:

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The Fed’s Impossible Task: Steering the U.S. Economy by Looking Through Its Rear-view Mirror

Monday, 08 July 2019 21:02
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This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, July 8, 2019: 

Libertarian scholar Murray Rothbard was notoriously opposed to any sort of government control over the individual, especially by central banks and central bankers. In his book, What Has Government Done to our Money?, published in 1963, he wrote:

Money … is the nerve center of the economic system. If, therefore, the state is able to gain unquestioned control over the unit of all accounts, the state will then be in a position to dominate the entire economic system, and the whole society.

The fatal flaw is this: the hubris inherent in thinking that any gaggle of economists gathered around a table – no matter how well-educated and regarded as experts, and no matter how exotic and sophisticated their formulas and algorithms designed to track and follow the economy – can do better than the economy does all by itself. These economists believe that Adam’s Smith’s “invisible hand” is inferior to their own.

A perfect example just presented itself

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Economy Surprises to the Upside: 224,000 New Jobs in June; 335,000 Re-enter the Workforce

Friday, 05 July 2019 14:40
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, July 5, 2019: 

The jobs report from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Friday morning caught Jeffry Bartash, a MarketWatch market observer, by surprise. A month ago Bartash lamented that lower-than-expected job growth in May was “a warning sign for the economy.” Friday’s jobs report changed his tune: “Even though the economy has slowed, the strongest labor market in decades is likely to extend what’s already the longest expansion on record.”

He wasn’t the only one caught by surprise:

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Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2018 Bob Adelmann