Category Archives: Politics

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, October 12, 2018:

William McChesney Martin, the ninth and longest running Chairman of the Federal Reserve, said “The Federal Reserve … is in the position of the chaperone who has ordered the punch bowl removed just when the party was really warming up.” Rudi Dornbusch, the German economist who worked for most of his career in the United States, was more blunt: “None of the U.S. [economic] expansions of the past 40 years died in bed of old age; every one was murdered by the Federal Reserve.”

Is the sharp selloff in stocks following the sharp rise in interest rates last week signaling the death throes of the longest-running bull market in history, to be followed by similar expiration of the 112-month long economic expansion? On Tuesday, October 2, the key financial instrument followed by most observers — the U.S. 10 Year Treasury Note — was yielding

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, October 3, 2018:  

Amazon’s announcement on Tuesday that starting November 1 every full-time employee working in the United States, and every temporary worker hired to meet the holiday crush, will be paid at least $15 an hour is a smart political move for its owner, and it will cost the company almost nothing. The owner, anti-Trumper Jeff Bezos (also owner of the virulent anti-Trump Washington Post), is smoothing the feathers of socialist Bernie Sanders who has repeatedly criticized Bezos (whose net worth is estimated at $165 billion) for allegedly paying his employees so little. Sanders said the announced wage increase is “not only enormously important for Amazon’s hundreds of thousands of employees; it could well be, and I think it will be, a shot heard around the world.”

It also pushed forward the agenda of the union-backed Fight for $15 which has largely been languishing for the last six years.

And along the way, the move also puts pressure on Bezos’ nearest competitors,

This article appeared online at The New American on Monday, October 1, 2018:  

In the rush to include Canada in the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement), now being referred to by some in the press as NAFTA 2.0, before the witching hour of midnight Sunday, the United States “finessed” the agreement, according to various press reports. Last Friday, the liberal Toronto Star first leaked about the coming “finesse”: “The dispute resolution impasse [over sovereignty-threatening Chapter 19 in the original NAFTA] could be finessed.” (Emphasis added.)

Late Sunday afternoon, the Wall Street Journal confirmed that the United States could fold in order to keep Canada in the deal by noting that “there are still ways to finesse deadlines and processes to work Canada into the deal before NAFTA 2.0 ultimately takes effect.” (Emphasis added.)

Just before midnight Sunday, another writer at the Wall Street Journal wrote that Trump’s demand to eliminate Chapter 19 altogether from the USMCA disappeared entirely under pressure from those who wanted to keep it:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, October 1, 2018: 

As noted here [at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor] two weeks ago, Trump holds the winning hand in the trade war with China. But he can still lose the hand if he doesn’t play it. Based on China’s slowing economy that is accelerating downward thanks for his tariffs, now would be a good time – perhaps the very best time – for him to up the ante. . As Robert Carnell, Chief Asia-Pacific economist at investment banking firm ING, put it: “This is probably the best time for the U.S. to go back to the table … [this time] with a ‘take it or leave it’ type of trade demand.”

The numbers are in:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Sunday, September 30, 2018:

The latest data from China — both “official” (government) and unofficial (more reliable) — are confirming that the world’s second-largest economy is slowing, thanks in part to the first two rounds of tariffs President Trump has applied to the communist country.

It was already slowing because of increasing concern by China’s central bank about the country’s national debt. It is reported to be nearly three times the country’s total national output of goods and services, and the central bank has been taking measures to keep it from getting totally out of hand by raising capital requirements and short-term interest rates.

Two previous attempts to negotiate over President Trump’s biggest concerns

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, September 25, 2018:  

On many levels the latest poll from Gallup should give great comfort to Republicans ahead of the midterm elections now just six weeks away: Their party is enjoying its highest favorability among Americans in more than seven years. Not only is the gain from a year ago startling, it’s an improvement reflected across gender and income levels, and it even reflects Republican support from independents who are leaning in their favor.

Said Gallup:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, September 19, 2018: 

This definition of calling one’s bluff from the Free Dictionary is accurate: to call one’s bluff is “to challenge someone to act on their threat or prove that their claim or boast is true, when one believes they are making a false claim or idle threat (i.e. bluffing).”

Officials running the communist Chinese dictatorship dare not treat President Trump as an Obama by calling his bluff. Trump is holding all the cards, and they know it. And they know he is willing to play them.

On Monday, he announced his decision to impose tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese imports, explaining why in his statement:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, September 12, 2018: 

A coalition of business interests, Americans for Free Trade, launched a campaign on Wednesday targeting Republican members of the House in five states. Its strategy is to persuade those members to bring pressure on the president to back off from his tariff/trade “war” that allegedly is hurting them.

Many big names are involved, including several with Deep State connections and anti-Trump inclinations. Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Chevron, Target, Autozone, Amazon, Macy’s, Walmart, IBM, Facebook, Mattel, Hasbro, and Barnes & Noble are numbered among the more than 60 members allied behind the campaign. The group claims that its intentions aren’t political, but the ads target five key states in Trump’s camp that helped him win the presidency in 2016: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, and Tennessee. The group plans to target an additional seven states in its campaign before the end of the year.

The group was formed when it became clear that the Trump tariff strategy — a move to pressure countries dumping products into the United States or subsidizing certain industries in anti-competitive ways to come to the negotiating table — was going to take longer than they expected. A tariff is a tax, and in the short run, many of these companies are complaining that, as a result of Trump’s strategy, they are seeing their costs of imported raw materials rise. Yet the Trump-era rollback in regulations and taxation should lead to lower prices of domestic raw materials, enabling America to reduce its dangerous dependence on foreign sources for essential supplies. Such was the case with the surge in domestic oil production spurred by the fracking revolution, and America is better off for it.

One name notably missing from the list of companies complaining about Trump’s tariffs is Nucor,

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, September 7, 2018: 

Presidential candidate Donald Trump startled his audiences by predicting that, under his administration, the economy would grow by at least three percent a year, that four percent was likely, and that five percent was achievable. The latest reports appear to prove that not only was he correct, but that the economy is poised to confirm his most generous predictions.

The Conference Board has been busy taking the economy’s temperature. In a 2017 survey, it discovered that