KUDLOW: Biden's massive spending is a real inflationary problem

 The Trump agenda is not inflationary. The New York Times in a long piece has now officially decided that the real inflation threat is Donald Trump and his policies. They are wrong. So, let’s review the bidding for a moment. Over Trump's four-year term, the level of consumer prices rose by a scant 7.7% for his whole term, which comes to 1.9% annually. 

Meanwhile, during Joe Biden's nearly completed term so far, the level of consumer prices rose 20% – or 6.1% annually. President Trump is pledging to essentially reprise his successful first-term economic policies of "drill, baby, drill," tax cuts, deregulation, and punishing unfair trade policies. So, ask yourself: if those same policies didn't generate high inflation in his first term, why would they in a second? Of course, the New York Times takes the Biden view that inflation was transitory, caused by COVID and Vladimir Putin. 

So, how about this thought? Mr. Biden is running $2 trillion budget deficits as far as the eye can see, with near-record peacetime spending as a share of GDP, all this with a relatively low 4% unemployment rate, and a still stubbornly high inflation rate. 

Even John Maynard Keynes would turn over in his grave at massive deficit spending with high inflation and low unemployment. Oops. The Times forgets to mention that. 

The article does mention that the U.S. is producing oil at roughly 13 million barrels per day, but that’s where we were under Trump five years ago and we should be running at 15 or 16 million barrels per day, but for the fact that Biden has put the clamps on federal drilling and exploration in Alaska, New Mexico and offshore. 

Were we energy dominant today, instead of relying on our enemies like Russia and Iran, oil prices would be closer to $40 than $80 and oil costs impact hundreds of everyday consumer goods and health care services, which would have a profoundly disinflationary impact on the economy, bringing down interest rates and personal borrowing costs along the way. 

The Times does concede that Trump deregulation lowers business costs. Good for them, I suppose, but their biggest mistake was on the Trump tax cuts. The fact remains: lower marginal tax rates on individuals and businesses increase the production of goods, raise real wages and enhance productivity (output per hour). Now, those are all counter-inflationary effects.  

When marginal tax rates were slashed under JFK, Reagan and Trump, inflation never uttered a serious peep. Not all tax cuts are the same.  Temporary tax credits to spur one-time consumption spending would be inflationary because there's no supply effects from business, but permanently lower tax rates create incentives to produce and invest, and that actually can lower inflation in many cases. 

Then the Times suggests that Biden's open border catastrophe is really a good thing, because it lowers wages. Well, if there's even a scintilla of truth to this, that's one heck of a price to pay for blowing up sovereign boundaries with criminality alongside sex and drug trafficking.

Plus, Joe Biden has allowed in over 10 million illegals since taking office – but inflation soared. Trump wants to deport the criminal illegals, if not more. You can’t have it both ways. 

Employment data suggests that foreign-born jobs have sky-rocketed, while native-born jobs have plunged, but with a very low employment-to-population ratio, closed borders would enhance native-born jobs, assuming government benefits don't interfere with work effort and then, on the question of tariffs, the Times continues the myth that tariffs cause higher inflation, even though the evidence shows that inflation did not rise during the Trump tariff increases on China's unfair trading practices.       

Consumers may choose to boycott tariffed goods and services if the price is too high, or China has to slash the prices of their tariffed goods. So, the marketplace provides offsets. Don't forget Trump had. Tariff reductions or tariff barrier reductions with places like South Korea, Australia and Japan that actually lowered costs. We should’ve learned that, but some old-line economists are too hide-bound to understand that solving unfair trading practices is an issue by itself unrelated to inflation. 

The principle cause of inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. Joe Biden's massive spending and the Fed's enabling of that spending is a real inflationary problem, while regulatory and tax threats have smothered small business production. Trump is suggesting his successful economic policies can be repeated if he is re-elected. There's no empirical reason to doubt him.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/larry-kudlow-bidens-massive-spending-real-inflationary-problem

The Left Knows Leftism Doesn't Work

 by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Do not expect the radical left to survey the wreckage of socialism and communism in history and accept that statism impoverishes people and erodes their freedoms. There will never be admissions by our elite that progressivism exists mainly for the acquisition of power by the utopian and virtue-signaling few, who ensure that they are never subject to the baleful implementation of their ideological agendas on the rest of us.

Still, leftists look around at what they have done to America in the last four years and implicitly know that the plan did not work, the people detested it, or both.

How do we know this?

By a variety of barometers.

None of the major Biden “achievements” - 10 million illegal aliens across a nonexistent border, key components of the cost of living 25-30 percent higher than in 2020, wars and chaos abroad, DEI racial and tribal obsessions, wars on fossil fuels - poll at even 40-45 percent. Biden’s own approval ratings, as the nominal architect of the most left-wing agenda since the Roosevelt administration, hover between 36 and 34 percent.

But most importantly, the left is not running on its record of the last three-and-a-half years but instead studiously ignoring it, at least temporarily through November.

Suddenly, we aren’t hearing so much about cancelling pipelines and freezing federal oil leases, or so much demonization of the “greedy” oil companies. Instead, Biden is further draining the strategic petroleum reserve and begging OPEC in general and the no-longer-demonized Saudi Arabia in particular to pump oil as fast as possible.

We were lied to for nearly four years that the border was “secure,” as 10 million foreign nationals flooded across. Then we were told Biden was helpless to stop the deluge since he had no legal right to enforce federal immigration law through executive orders—a ridiculous excuse that even he would soon drop. Despite their eagerness for new constituencies, no one on the left dares to openly praise the influx of the last four years, much less demand more illegal immigration.

Instead, as November looms, Biden is suddenly reinstating the very Trump executive orders that once, despite deep state and court obstruction, finally closed the border—and which Biden himself had originally overturned. Note that Biden is now partnering with the Mexican government—which terribly fears another Trump presidency endangering Mexico’s annual $60 billion in remittances from mostly illegal aliens in the United States—to curb some of the illegal immigration before the November election.

The administration’s pandering at election time is a de facto admission that its agendas did not work, permanently alienated the people they hurt, and are now being forgotten or reversed—albeit temporarily—to retain power at all costs.

Few on the left praise the disastrous COVID lockdown, the canonization of Dr. Fauci, the mask and social-distancing craze, and the gospel that endless boosters were necessary to protect Americans. Even the left, although again quietly, assumes that the lockdowns did more damage than the virus, that Dr. Fauci repeatedly lied when he swore he did not subsidize gain-of-function viral research at the Chinese top-security virology lab at Wuhan, and that the virus came not from the lab but from a wandering pangolin or errant bat.

Biden and his supporters are no longer blaming or firing the police but rather trying (albeit quietly) to get more law-enforcement officers to serve—given the predictable crime wave that followed the George Floyd riots.

Ditto for all the left-wing hysterias of the last eight years. No one any longer claims that Christopher Steele’s dossier was factual. No one insists that Hunter Biden’s laptop was likely “Russian disinformation”, or that “Anonymous” was a courageous “top-ranking” administration official. All these hysterias, it is tacitly admitted, were cooked-up left-wing canards to emasculate the Trump candidacy and presidency.

Outside of politics, leftists are quiet as their failed bromides are being undone. The idea of the FBI partnering with social media to suppress politically-dangerous news is something the left is not eager to repeat.

The same recognition is beginning to apply to the lawfare waged against Donald Trump. Jack Smith’s crusade to get Trump is undermined by prosecutorial misbehavior concerning the evidence seized at Mar-a-Lago and by the asymmetrical treatment by another special counsel accorded Biden in comparison with Trump. Smith’s efforts to speed up the trial before the election only made his persecution more politically transparent.

Fani Willis’s outrageous behavior will likely delay indefinitely her weaponized indictments. The James and Bragg convictions will likely be overturned and were intended mostly to embarrass Trump, bankrupt him, and harm his presidential campaign.

All of the left’s once-grandiose ideas of packing the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, admitting two new states to win four more liberal senators, and destroying the Electoral College have little public support and will go nowhere. Corporations like Disney, Target, and Anheuser-Busch have all begun backtracking on their money-losing, market-share-eroding woke/DEI agendas.

Universities are terrified that their endowment income is either static or in decline, given a rising drop-off in public and alumni giving. They know their race-based, non-meritocratic admissions and hiring are increasingly destroying their brand names. To accommodate their new non-meritocratic student bodies, they have variously inflated their grades to the point of parody, watered down work requirements, or introduced gut courses—and as a result, they are quickly losing their once-coveted prestige. Some campuses are already reinstating the SAT and ACT requirements that were thrown out in 2020-21 in the hysteria that followed the death of George Floyd. Harvard and Stanford aren’t boasting that the erasure of the SAT created a more competitive student body and raised standards to new levels.

The twin ideas of foreign-funded Middle-Eastern-studies centers and of admitting tens of thousands of affluent, full-tuition-paying Middle-Eastern students led to institutionalized anti-Semitism on campus and eliminationist rhetoric right out the old Klan playbook. The appeasement by university presidencies only whets the appetites of those who unlawfully occupy, vandalize, deface, and disrupt. Their pro-terrorist chants and emblems are bleeding the universities of billions of dollars in lost donations.

In short, the policies that the left has given us over the last years—hyperinflation, spiking staple and gas prices, racial and tribal chauvinism, dangerous streets, an emasculated and politicized military, and wars abroad—did not work, and are now being masked to retain power, put on hold, or even reversed.

The reasons for the failure are ancient, given that socialism and progressivism are contrary to human nature.

Borders are essential to national sovereignty and confidence and delineate the unique values, traditions, and customs of a people, without which they revert to mere tribes without social commonalities and political cohesion. No society can pick and choose which national laws are enforced and which ignored—and still remain a nation of laws.

People obey laws because, in a cost-benefit analysis, they fear the consequences of lawbreaking. Otherwise, the laws of the wild prevail and the strongest dictate to the weaker. Citizens must be discouraged, not encouraged, from favoring their own tribe and race, tribalism being the oldest of human biases. Money is not a construct but represents the real value of capital and labor and cannot be printed into national wealth. Abroad, most nations are illiberal and their aggressiveness is deterred only through guarantees that they will lose more than they will gain through war.

We sometimes forget all that unpleasant human baggage, due to irrelevant distractions, or the utopianism that is the handmaiden of affluence and leisure. Often, the opulence and freedom arising from free-market economies and limited constitutional government create so much prosperity and liberty that its beneficiaries believe such good fortune to be their natural and commonplace birthright and so begin destroying the very system that blessed them.

But if Biden and his handlers have taught us anything, human nature cannot be fooled, and the current four-year experiment will have to end before it ends us—and soon.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/vdh-left-knows-leftism-doesnt-work

Speed Cameras In Atlanta Improperly Issued $300,000 To $500,000 Worth Of Tickets

 This is where the future is heading when we leave the police work up to big brother and AI. 

Innocent drivers in Atlanta were improperly issued $75 tickets for speeding through a school zone at times when flashing yellow lights, used to indicate a revised speed limit during school hours, were not flashing. 

FOX affiliate WAGA-TV reports that once school is dismissed and the orange lights cease flashing, the speed limit increases to 35 miles per hour, from the revised limit of 25 miles per hour.

According to follow up reporting from The Sun, Atlanta Public Schools acknowledged that cameras were mistakenly issuing tickets to drivers after hours when the orange lights were off.

As a result, drivers who received these citations, numbering nearly 4,500 since November 2023, will be refunded. The issue led to the issuance of hundreds of thousands of dollars in incorrect fines over a period of six months.

Reporters inquired why cameras weren't deactivated after hours but received no direct response. Ivan DeQuesada was fined $75 for speeding—39 mph in a 25 mph zone at nearly 5 p.m. on a Friday, despite inactive flashing lights, the report says. 

He said: "I thought about what was happening that day. I remembered what I was doing, and then I thought, ‘Man, I don’t remember that school zone light being on."

"So I asked my neighbors, and then I was shocked to find out that several neighbors also got tickets, and they were kind of unexpected for the same reasons," he continued.

His neighbor, James Murphy, called it out as a potential money grab:  "They shouldn't be raking in money from dozens of cars driving down the road when there's no light blinking."

"It really just seems like a way to try to bring in money, rather than actually increase safety," he concluded. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/speed-cameras-atlanta-improperly-issued-300000-500000-worth-tickets

US FDA grants accelerated approval to Genfit and Ipsen's liver disease drug

 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted accelerated approval to French drugmakers Ipsen and Genfit's drug to treat a chronic inflammatory liver disease, Ipsen said on Monday.

Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) causes inflammation of the small bile ducts in the liver and eventually destroys them. The disease, which primarily affects women aged 30 to 60, impacts 75,000 in the United States.

Standard approval for the drug Iqirvo may be contingent on confirmatory trials.

Intercept Pharmaceuticals' drug obeticholic acid, branded as Ocaliva, is currently approved for PBC patients in combination with ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), or as a single therapy in patients unable to tolerate UDCA.

Based on this approval, the Genfit-Ipsen drug is also to be used with UDCA or as a monotherapy in those who are unable to tolerate UDCA.

Iqirvo's approval was based on data from a 161-patient late-stage trial in which it significantly reduced levels of an enzyme called alkaline phosphatase that can lead to liver damage at high levels.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-fda-approves-genfit-ipsens-210758238.html

Eli Lilly exec says seeing out of pocket payments for obesity drug in US

 A top Eli Lilly executive said on Monday that more patients are paying the full list price of its obesity drug Zepbound than those who had paid for its predecessor Mounjaro.

Patrik Jonsson, President of Lilly Diabetes and Obesity, speaking at a Goldman Sachs healthcare conference, said a mid-single digit percentage of patients paid the full list price out of pocket for Zepbound in the first quarter of 2024 in the U.S., which compares to the low single digits for Mounjaro.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/eli-lilly-exec-says-seeing-203545367.html

France weighs future after far-right surge in EU vote

 As French political parties were racing on Monday to field candidates in a snap election, President Emmanuel Macron visited a site left abandoned after a massacre carried out by the Nazis during World War Two.

There, Macron and his German counterpart vowed to continue reconciliation efforts between France and Germany.

MACRON: "There is the courage of the generations who experienced it and there must be the same courage and the same determination of their grandchildren."

The engagement comes a day after European Parliament elections that saw gains by the far-right, and a shock decision by Macron to call a snap election.

It's a roll of the dice on his political future - and could offer the far right a shot at real power.

Macron's stature has been diminished since he lost his absolute majority in parliament two years ago.

Discussing the snap election call, a source close to Macron said there was a chance he could win back a majority by taking everyone by surprise.

But they added that if Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally – or RN – does take over, the gamble is that the next three years would demonstrate their incompetence to voters and undermine their bid for the presidency in 2027.

That option, the source said, is not without risk.

The vote is likely to revolve around discontent with Macron's style of power, cost of living and immigration policies.

But it will also be about whether the RN can be trusted to run a major European government.

Here's her vice-president, and the Mayor of Perpignan, Louis Aliot.

"Yes, I think we're ready. I really do. I think we're ready. And tomorrow, if the day after the 7th of July, there is a majority, either from the RN or in coalition with others, we will very quickly be able to get France moving again."

Among policies put forward by RN, the party has proposed high public spending despite already significant debt levels.

It also wants to expel more migrants, restrict childcare benefits to French citizens and give French nationals preference in access to social housing and jobs.

There is no certainty the RN will end up with enough seats to run the government.

Other scenarios include a wide-ranging coalition of mainstream parties.

But even if the RN did score a majority, Macron would remain president for three more years and still be in charge of defense and foreign policy.

He would, however, lose the power to set the domestic agenda.

Political parties in France don't have long to prepare: the election will take place in two rounds on June 30 and July 7.

The next government will take over in July.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/france-weighs-future-far-surge-203103179.html

'Biden To Offer Saudi Arabia Defense Treaty In Exchange For Official Ties With Israel'

 by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,

The White House is prepared to roll out a plan that will make Saudi Arabia a Japan-style ally in exchange for new official ties between Riyadh and Tel Aviv. While the Biden administration has invested substantial effort to get the deal inked, it is likely dead on arrival because Saudi Arabia refuses to normalize with Israel unless Tel Aviv agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state. 

According to American, Israeli, and Saudi officials speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Washington is prepared to sign an agreement to defend Saudi Arabia if Riyadh establishes regular ties with Tel Aviv. However, it would not be a ‘peace agreement,’ as the two countries are not at war. 

Several hurdles must be cleared before the deal can be finalized, and it is unlikely that will happen. While Biden is seeking to make Saudi Arabia a treaty ally, the move would require backing from two-thirds of the Senate. Additionally, the deal would require Tel Aviv to end the onslaught in Gaza and take permanent steps toward a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly refused to do either. 

Despite the obvious obstacles to the agreement, the White House has pressed forward with negotiations. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan explained last month that the administration did not want to “miss a historic opportunity to achieve the vision of a secure Israel, flanked by strong regional partners, presenting a powerful front to deter aggression and uphold regional stability.” He added, “We are pursuing this vision every day.”

If the pact went through, it would make Riyadh Washington’s only treaty ally in the Arab world, a status that even Tel Aviv does not have. The deal would also give the US access to Saudi airspace. The treaty is also part of negotiations toward a larger deal that would see the US transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.  

For President Biden, the deal could be politically problematic. As a candidate, Biden promised that he would treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah state“ for the regime-ordered murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, yet in office he has been far less critical of the repressive monarchy. 

To add to the potential domestic pushback to the agreement, there are widespread protests in the US against Biden’s support for Israel and its war on Gaza, which has now entered its eighth month.

As the treaty is a bribe to Riyadh to accept official relations with Tel Aviv, Americans may object to becoming an ally with Saudi Arabia for the sake of Israel’s regional interests. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/biden-offer-saudi-arabia-defense-treaty-exchange-official-ties-israel