When you get right down to it, the political targeting and stalling of tax-exempt applications by the IRS was an effort to defund the tea party. Rick Santelli, one of the tea party founders and my CNBC colleague, was the first to make this point. I’ve taken it a step further: The IRS was taking the tea party out of play for the 2012 election, as it looked to avoid a repeat of 2010 and another tea party landslide.
4:38 PM 05/10/2013
At the end of the day, the battle over immigration reform is not about dollars and cents. It’s about the soul of a nation. President Reagan reminded us that America must remain a “beacon” and a “shining city on a hill” for immigrants who renew our great country with their energy while adding to economic growth and prosperity.
7:52 PM 05/03/2013
The really good news from April’s employment report is that all the pessimistic, end-of-the-world, spring-swoon forecasters were wrong. It wasn’t a fabulous report. But it handily beat Wall Street expectations. Stock markets soared on the news.
5:34 PM 04/15/2013
In the last two days gold has plunged so deep that it’s being called the worst drop --- at least in percentage terms --- in 30 years. That brings us back to the early Reagan period, when falling gold was regarded as a good thing.
5:44 PM 04/12/2013
No matter how you slice the Obama budget pie, the inescapable fact is that the president wants to get rid of the roughly $1 trillion budget-cutting sequester and substitute in a $1 trillion-plus tax hike. In other words, more spending, more taxing. Growth-busting. The GOP should just say no.
12:09 PM 04/08/2013
Many profound and detailed admiration pieces will be written about the late Margaret Thatcher, and they’ll be much deeper than this one. But I want to get on record with my own esteem for Mrs. Thatcher, whose character, philosophy, and achievements made her one of Britain’s greatest prime ministers.
3:07 PM 03/28/2013
Apropos of my column of a week ago --- “Has Bernanke Gotten the Story Right?” --- this week’s paltry GDP revision again backs up the actions of the Federal Reserve chairman and his market-monetarist supporters.
9:26 PM 03/21/2013
The most important point in Ben Bernanke’s Wednesday press conference was the announcement that the Fed will adjust the amount of monthly bond purchases according to economic conditions. In other words, an improving economy with stronger payrolls and lower unemployment could lead to a decline in Fed bond buying, from $85 billion a month to something gradually lower, so long as the economy keeps looking better.
7:00 PM 03/15/2013
You might not know it from the acrimonious political debate on cable and broadcast TV, or on talk radio, or on websites and blogs. But here’s a counterintuitive observation: Amidst all the negativism out there, I believe optimism is in the air.
5:52 PM 03/04/2013
President Obama may be backing away from his doomsday spending-cut predictions as the sequester goes into place. But the new party line is that while there will be no impact in the first few days, there’ll be a slow, downward slump after that.
4:32 PM 02/20/2013
The Obama administration is whipping up hysteria over the sequester budget cuts and their impact on the economy, the military, first providers, and so forth and so on. Armageddon. But if you climb into the CBO numbers for 2013, you see a much lighter and easier picture than all the worst-case scenarios being conjured up by the administration.
5:32 PM 02/14/2013
By far the best line from this week’s dueling State of the Union messages came from Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Nice and simple, and right to the point:
4:16 PM 02/12/2013
All this chatter about a so-called global currency war is utter nonsense. All that is happening is the Japanese are wisely taking steps to increase liquidity and depreciate their vastly overpriced yen. They are doing this in order to avoid deeper and deeper deflation. That deflation will sink the Japanese economy for years to come if remedial actions are not taken.
4:46 PM 01/30/2013
Today’s report of a 0.1 percent GDP decline for the fourth quarter came as a surprise to most forecasters. But it actually masks considerable strength in the private economy. Namely, housing investment in the fourth quarter jumped 15.3 percent annually, business equipment and software spiked 12.4 percent, and real private final sales rose 2.6 percent. All in all, the domestic private sector of the economy increased 3.4 percent annually --- a very respectable gain.
4:52 PM 01/25/2013
One of the least remarked upon aspects of President Obama’s inaugural speech was his attempt to co-opt the Founding Fathers’ Declaration of Independence to bolster his liberal-left agenda.
5:32 PM 01/18/2013
Okay, it’s official. According to the Treasury Department, the U.S. debt jumped to $16.1 trillion in 2012 from $14.8 trillion in 2011. That’s a $1.3 trillion deficit for the last year. Remarkable. During President Obama’s first term, the federal debt rose by roughly $6 trillion.
4:10 PM 01/11/2013
The worst part of the Jack Lew nomination for treasury secretary is not simply that he has no qualifications, standing, or experience in the financial world or international sphere (think G20 and European debt crisis). Nor is it simply that he doesn’t have any seasoned currency opinions (under Obama, the greenback has dropped 10 percent while gold has doubled).
4:25 PM 01/03/2013
One cheer out of a potential three is all anyone can logically give the fiscal-cliff deal. On the day after the bargain was clinched, the stock market gave a 300-point cheer. So be it.
6:02 PM 12/21/2012
When you lose an election, you get frustrated. When you’re sitting in a subpar 2 percent economy and are faced with tax hikes rather than marginal rate reductions, you get even more frustrated. And when you’re staring at $47 trillion in spending over the next 10 years, and $8.6 trillion in deficits, your frustration levels climb even higher.
1:24 PM 12/11/2012
Despite all the media hullabaloo about the fiscal cliff and a potential recession if none of the Bush tax cuts are extended, stock markets have behaved calmly throughout this whole period. In fact, as of this writing today, the Dow is up 100 points.
