There is scattered evidence that home prices are finally starting to slow down. But, if the phenomenon is system-wide, we’re still waiting to see the evidence in numbers. Last week, the most recent Case-Shiller national data, for example, showed that home prices in March rose an eye-popping 20 percent year over year.
Many are still repulsed by the monstrous actions of Salvador Ramos who brutally gunned down nineteen students and two teachers in the nation’s second-deadliest mass shooting. This act of barbarity has rightly aroused intense emotions, but emotional responses to mass shootings won’t make them less frequent.
While Americans angrily grit their teeth while filling their gas tanks, the very first United States special presidential envoy for climate said:
This year, we have to implement those promises and what it means is that we have to decarbonize the power sector five times faster than we are right now. We have to deploy renewables five times faster than we are right now. We have to transition to electric vehicles about 20 times faster than we are right now. And we have to fully transition to a resilient Net Zero economy faster.
According to the June 1, 2022, Financial Times, Janet Yellen, the US Treasury secretary conceded she was wrong last year about the path inflation would take. Yellen told CNN:
There have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy that have boosted energy and food prices and supply bottlenecks that have affected our economy badly that I didn’t fully understand, but we recognize that now.
President Joe Biden has unveiled a three-part plan to fight inflation — or at least make people think he is fighting inflation. One part of the plan involves having government agencies “fix” the supply chain problems that have led to shortages of numerous products. Of course, any attempt by the government to solve the supply chain problems (which were caused by prior government interventions such as shutting down the economy for over a year) will not just fail to solve the supply shortages but will create new problems.
Last week Biden sat down with Powell in a rare, but not uncommon, meeting between the Commander-in-chief and the head of America’s central bank.
Per Whitehouse transcript, Biden says:
It starts with a simple proposition: Respect the Fed and respect the Fed’s independence, which I have done and will continue to do.
Social democracy (or welfare state) may feel like the nice middle point between laissez faire capitalism and communism that many people feel comfortable with. Among the many arguments that proponents of social democracy espouse in favor of such a system there’s their concern for the poor, they ask, in a minimal state society who would help the poor?
The covid-19 pandemic featured an unprecedented fusion of the interests of large and powerful corporations with the power of the state. Democratically elected politicians in many countries failed to represent the interests of their own citizens and uphold their own constitutions and charters of rights. Specifically, they supported lockdown measures, vaccine mandates, the suppression of a variety of early treatment options, the censorship of dissenting views, propaganda, interference in the private spheres of individuals, and the suspension of various forms of freedom.
When the United States in 1982 was mired in the worst recession since the end of World War II, supporters of President Ronald Reagan were sure that they had the answer: just let Reagan be Reagan. Conservative friends of mine wore “Let Reagan Be Reagan” buttons to show that the problem at hand wasn’t the fact that the economy, fueled by massive inflation, was in the middle of a much-needed and inevitable correction. No, it was a PR problem.
