Pennsylvania's Tea Party: Brewing for Years
For the past several weeks the tea party movement has been widely maligned as radical and dangerous. For example, former President Bill Clinton, in a speech and a New York Times op-ed, has cautioned that supporting tea parties could unleash violent militias. The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report claiming they are "shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories, and racism."...
Buzzcharts: We’re All Inflation Hawks Now
Back in 2006, when the federal-funds rate peaked at 5.25 percent, several economists writing for National Review Online argued that the Federal Reserve was too tight. We also held that the gold price, which was climbing higher at the time, was not an unerring Polaris around which all other inflation indicators (such as exchange rates, nominal interest rates, and yield curves) must revolve.
To view the entire article and the charts, click here.
Micro-Chips: Bet You Can't Buy Just One
We bought almost 3 billion dollars worth of semiconductors on average over the past three months. We've been trending up since February. This is how the economy is managing to recover despite the hostile business environment and despite a ten percent unemployment rate.
Why Isn't America Hiring?
Today we saw the release of two piece of important employment data: the Challenger, Gray & Christmas monthly survey of lay-offs and the Monster Employment Index which measures on-line want ads. The latter is an improvement over traditional want ads which were showing declines due to loss of market share to the web rather than actual job opening declines. Just because companies were not recruiting by printing their ads on dead trees doesn't mean they were not hiring. But even in the world of friction-free job recruiting, they are indeed not hiring. The index showed only on up month out of the last eight, and even now with the economic picture improving, job recruiting is still dropping. Why?
To view the entire article and charts, click here.
Jerry Bowyer speaking at Mercer County TEA Party
Jerry Bowyer spoke at a TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party in Mercer County. The approximately one hour long rally was held on the 4th of July at 10AM on the Mercer County Courthouse lawn.
The TEA Party was sponsored by the Mercer County Christian Coalition.
The Risk Of New Regulation
It's never a good sign when your Treasury Secretary announces a plan to overhaul the financial system and the market plunges 200 points that same day. But that's what happened on Monday to President Obama.
TCS Daily Video Contest on Kudlow Creed
My son, Chris Bowyer, is Managing Editor of TCS Daily, and they're running a video contest that I thought you should know about.
The theme of the contest is "The Kudlow Creed." They're looking for videos based on Larry Kudlow's axiom that "free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity." Three finalists will be judged and selected based on an even mix of of their video's substance and creativity. The prize break down is:
All you need to enter is a camera, an idea, and a YouTube account. Just upload your video to the TCS Daily YouTube group. The deadline is 11:59 PM on May 14th, 2009. Please see their contest website for more details. Best of luck!