The Presidential and Vice Presidential debates thus far feature weak moderators asking lame questions. For example, there are still 97 hostages stll held by Hamas and what would the candidates do to get them released? (Hint: Trump/Vance would have sensible responses. Harris would just laugh and say she was raised in a middle class family and Walz would look like a deer in the headlights. Then we have national debt of $36 trillion, $271K per taxpayer.
But the hidden bomb that will never be discussed is unfunded liabilities (entitlements) such as Social Security and Medicare. Currently, unfunded liabilities are $219 TRILLION or $650K per citizen.
Of course, Biden/Harris have let the southern border wide open to criminals and uneducated Democrat voters who will voter for MORE entitlements.
So, when will the lame debate moderators ask HARD questions? And can Harris attempt to answer one hard question without laughing or falling back on lame “I was raised in a middle-class household.” etc.
It turns out that Powell’s “emergency” 50bps rate cut was – drumroll – another major policy mistake by the Fed. Or it is Presidential election interference by The Biden/Harris Administration giving Cacklin’ Kamala as talking point?
Moments ago, the BLS reported that at a time when prevailing consensus was for jobs to continue their recent downward slide sparked by the near-record annual jobs revision and several months of downbeat jobs reports, in September the US unexpectedly added a whopping 254K jobs, the biggest monthly increase since March…
There’s more: unlike previous months where we saw repeat downward job revisions, the BLS said that both prior months were revised up, to wit: the change in total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised up by 55,000, from +89,000 to +144,000, and the change for August was revised up by 17,000, from +142,000 to +159,000. With these revisions, employment in July and August combined is 72,000 higher than previously reported.
Some context: as UBS notes, the moving six-month average on nonfarm payrolls is 167k. The estimate is that 150k is about consistent with a return of the economy to trend growth. Which means that inflation is about to come back with a vengeance, just as the Fed launches its easing cycle.
Remarkably, while payrolls jumped by the most in half a year, the number of employed people also surged, rising by a whopping 430K, also the biggest one-month jump since March.
It wasn’t just the payrolls, however, which came in far stronger than estimates: the unemployment rate also came in stronger than expected, and thanks to the jump in employed workers coupled with the decline in unemployed workers (from 7.115MM to 6.834MM), it dropped from 4.2% to 4.1% (and down from 4.3% two months ago which spared the entire recession panic).
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult men (3.7 percent) decreased in September. The jobless rates for adult women (3.6 percent), teenagers (14.3 percent), Whites (3.6 percent), Blacks (5.7 percent), Asians (4.1 percent), and Hispanics (5.1 percent) showed little or no change over the month.
And here is the rub, because in a vacuum the super strong jobs numbers would have been fantastic, the only issue is that the September blowout comes as the Fed launches an easing cycle and as wages are once again rising as we have warned for the past 3 months. Indeed, in September, the average hourly earnings rose 0.4% sequentially, beating the estimate of 0.3%, while on an annual basis, wage growth was 4.0%, up from an upward revised 3.9% and beating the 3.8% estimate.
One note here: the average workweek for all employees edged down by 0.1 hour to 34.2 hours in September, which means the hourly earnings increase is not “pure” but rather a function of denominator adjustments. In manufacturing, the average workweek was unchanged at 40.0 hours, and overtime edged down by 0.1 hour to 2.9 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls remained at 33.7 hours.
What sector had the biggest growth? UNPRODUCTIVE government workers! A record 785,000 government workers were added in September, pushing total govt workers also to a new record high.
The Biden/Harris Administration has given away billions of dollars to foreign nations (like Ukraine) and illegal immigrants so far this year,
– $24,400,000,000 to Ukraine.
– $11,300,000,000 to Israel.
– $1,950,000,000 to Ethiopia.
– $1,600,000,000 to Jordan.
– $1,400,000,000 to Egypt.
– $1,100,000,000 to Afghanistan.
– $1,100,000,000 to Somalia.
– $1,000,000,000 to Yemen.
– $987,000,000 to Congo.
– $896,000,000 to Syria.
– $9,000 per illegal immigrant that has entered the U.S.
And claim that FEMA has no money left for Hurricane Helene victims who have received only $750 per person. So I have plenty of reasons to have no trust or confidence in the Biden/Harris Mal-administration.
But Biden/Harris had help from their deep state partner, The Federal Reserve.
The purchasung power of the US dollar has fallen by a whopping -20% under Biden/Harris. No wonder Harris is afraid to talk to reporters about her plans.
The children in Congress went on a spending spree as a result of COVID resulting in record inflation.
The deep state’s financing arm, The Federal Reserve, certainly helped create inflation by ramping up M2 Money supply around Covid.
Of course, children in Congress and Harris/Walz will use ANY excuse to tax and spend (and borrow/spend). The most recent inflation report had CPI growng at 2.5% YoY resulting in a further decline of purchasing power of the US dollar of -2.5% YoY.
Harris/Walz fully intend to keep shoveling TRILLIONS into green energy transformation and supporting illegal immigrants.
More evidence of how destructive Biden/Harris economic policies have been.
The NAR data show existing home sales down 2.5 percent in August to a 3.86 million unit seasonally adjusted annual rate after a small upward revision to 3.96 million units in July.
US existing home sales fell in August to near 14-year lows. Pink box.
Meanwhile, pending home sales (red line) ARE at an all-time low.
If this isn’t election interference, I don’t know what is.
The Fed today slashed interest rates by the biggest amount in 16 YEARS, a whopping 50 basis points from 5.50% to 5.00%. With the economy roaring along (thanks to Covid-related massive Federal spending), there was no good reason to slash rates. Other than to get Kamala (Hyena) Harris across the finish line.
The Fed’s bloated balance sheet remains bloast at 7.115 TRILLION.
The US government now pays out on average $3bn in interest expenses per day…If the Fed cuts interest rates by 1%-point and the entire yield curve declines by 1%-point, then daily interest expenses will decline from $3bn per day to $2.5bn per day.
Even worse, unfunded Federal liabilities total $219 trillion while total US assets total only $213 trillion. In other words, if China (for example) forced us to pay off our unfunded liabilities like Social Security, Medicare, etc., we couldn’t.
Notice how NO politician ever discusses The Federal goverment spending LESS money. Particularly not Joe “The fool on the hill” Biden or Kamala “Word salad Kammie” Harris.
These are the essential pillars of “21st century socialism” and the radical left Peronism that obliterated Argentina. These are also the main elements of the economic plan presented by Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. Undoubtedly, this is the most radical socialist economic plan ever announced by the Democrats.
According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), Harris’s proposals will cost $1.95 trillion over 10 years. However, it emphasizes that if certain measures become permanent, this figure could increase to $2.25 trillion.
The Harris campaign has stated that these costs will be offset by a classic excuse of socialism in any election: “higher taxes on corporations and high earners.” This is, obviously, ludicrous, because there is no revenue measure that will cover the already bloated $2 trillion annual deficit and an added $2 trillion. The mantra of “higher taxes for the rich” always means higher taxes and more inflation, a hidden tax, for you.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has already warned of the fiscal disaster of the United States, with an annual deficit of 6% of GDP. Despite not accounting for a recession and projecting record tax revenues from 2024 to 2034, the CBO predicts an explosion in the budget deficit from $1.9 trillion to $2.8 trillion by 2034, even before factoring in Harris’s new spending plan. This means that the adjusted deficit will rise above 6.9 percent of GDP by 2034, almost twice the average of 3.7 percent over the previous 50 years.
Following the Harris plan, the United States public debt will likely increase by $24 trillion in a decade. As I have explained, there is no set of revenue measures that can bring $2 trillion per year in additional tax receipts, and tax hikes will harm both investment and growth.
An economy that generates an annual deficit of 6 percent of GDP to achieve a mere 2 percent annual growth is already on a dangerous path, and Harris’ plan would make it even worse.
Kamala Harris promises to cut inflation by spending and printing more money, reducing competition, and attacking businesses. It has never worked and never will because it is upside-down economics. Welcome to the US “Peronism.”.
Imagine all those United States citizens who have escaped Latin American or European economies impoverished by interventionism to find a better opportunity in the United States only to find that the same policies will be implemented by Harris.
The narrative of price gouging and greedflation is simply false. In 2023, profit margins in the grocery industry hit the lowest level since 2019, at 1.6%, according to the IMF. Corporations, even if they were stupid and reckless, cannot make all prices rise constantly. Competition would eat away at their market share; newcomers would eliminate them, and aggregate prices would fall. Furthermore, stores and businesses cannot make aggregate prices soar, maintain the increase, and consolidate it, which is the measure of inflation (CPI) we read every month. The only thing that can make all prices rise and continue increasing at a slower pace is printing money and eroding the purchasing power of the currency.
The only thing that can make aggregate prices rise constantly is the destruction of the purchasing power of the currency, which comes from massive government spending and printing currency to disguise fiscal imbalances.
Kamala Harris and her team know that their spending plan will make the national debt soar and that price controls do not reduce prices. In fact, these should not be called “price controls” but “limits to competition.” If corporations were the cause of inflation and price controls were the solution, Peronist Argentina would have enjoyed the lowest inflation in the world in the past decades.
Harris’ proposals to forgive debt are profoundly anti-social. They do not forgive any debt; they just add it to the national debt and make you pay for it. This enormous increase in public debt will be a burden for every American, particularly the poorest, with persistent inflation and lower real wages. US citizens have already endured negative real wage growth since January 2021, when Biden took office, according to the Federal reserve of St Louis. Expect worse.
Why does Harris promote the same policies that have failed everywhere? Promising free stuff and blaming others for the negative consequences is the defining strategy of socialist politicians.
Are you surprised to see how Germany, France, and other historically rich nations slump into stagnation, high debt, persistent inflation, enormous taxes, and the destruction of the middle class? Those policies are what Harris is promising. Who benefits? The vast government and its surrounding corporations reap the benefits.
Many people hold the belief that a nation cannot be considered socialist if it contains private companies. It makes no sense. State control does not limit itself to capital ownership but also to the imposition of increasingly restrictive laws, regulations, and confiscatory taxes. In fact, the government likes to absorb most of the wealth created by the private sector without the inconvenience of managing the businesses. Huerta de Soto defines socialism as “any system of institutional, methodical aggression against the free exercise of entrepreneurship” and that is precisely what Harris promises.
Higher taxes and more debt.
The government will print money to provide subsidies in a currency that is constantly losing value. It will blame stores and businesses for inflation. Interventionist policies will continue to erode the private sector. And they will repeat.
The makers of these policies are aware that they will negatively impact the economy, yet they will also engender a substantial number of enslaved citizens who rely on the government and must abide by its decisions. Voters see an alleged tsunami of free money but ignore the fact that they will pay for it through higher inflation, lower real wages, and diminishing opportunities for small businesses and families.
Yes, under Obama/Biden, then Biden/Harris,
The Harris team believes deficits do not matter and that the Federal Reserve can always disguise any budget imbalance. However, cracks have already appeared. Persistent inflation is the consequence of years of excessive spending and monetization. The next step is the risk of losing the US dollar as the world reserve currency when the world stops accepting the ever-increasing debt.
Under Obama/Biden and Biden/Harris, we have seen massive money printing and devaluation of the US Dollar. Trump/Pence too, but they were nailed with Covid. And the Democrat shut down off schools and local economies.
But all Harris (America’s Eva Peron) wants to do is dance. And not answer serious questions.
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
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