Americans are worried about the safety of their money in the banking system after multiple banks have collapsed in recent weeks, according to a new poll.
Gallup released the survey data, which showed that 19% are “very” worried about the safety of their money in banks and another 29% are “moderately” worried.
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The latest in a series of new Biden administration rule changes that charge higher fees to certain home buyers with good credit and lower fees for buyers with worse credit went into effect this week despite pushback from Republicans and many financial experts.
A group of U.S. House and Senate Republicans as well as state officials were unable to stop the rule, which a Biden administration official confirmed went into effect as planned Monday.
A coalition of Senate Republicans recently sent a letter to Sandra Thompson, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the latest in several policy changes from the group. The agency implemented the rule change this week.
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Gov. Glenn Youngkin joined Virginia education leaders and Google executives in announcing a new cybersecurity training program with Northern Virginia Community College.
The announcement was made at an event Thursday at the NOVA campus in Alexandria. The new program will offer a Google Career Certificate in cybersecurity, which is proponents say is an emerging technical field.
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The unemployment rate still remains at historic lows of 3.4 percent in April, according to the latest data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, amid other worrying signs for the U.S. economy including a continued collapse of job openings, a string of bank failure and an overall slowing Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
In the survey, as the population increased by 171,000, those not in the labor force increased by 214,000 as labor participation dipped slightly by 43,000. Those who said they had a job increased by 139,000 after a 577,000 increase in March. As a result, the unemployment rate has actually ticked downward for two consecutive months from 3.6 percent in February, to 3.5 percent in March and now 3.4 percent in April.
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President Joe Biden is set to meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other Congressional leaders on May 9 to discuss the looming the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling. It’s about time.
So far, Biden’s only plan has been for Congress to simply increase it into perpetuity or else threaten to default, never bothering to address the dismal fiscal outlook facing the nation, even as regional banks continue to fail because of the unsustainable burden caused by taking on U.S. treasuries — a problem that will only grow as the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) projects the national debt will rise to $50.7 trillion by 2033.
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Federal regulators sold recently failed regional lender First Republic Bank to JPMorgan Chase on Monday, enabling America’s largest bank to expand even more and spurring concerns about consolidation in the industry, economists told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
JPMorgan Chase agreed to take on all of First Republic’s $92 billion in deposits and is additionally purchasing the vast majority of the failed bank’s assets, including roughly $173 billion in loans and $30 billion in securities, according to a JPMorgan Chase press release. The giant had $3.7 trillion in assets and $2.4 trillion in deposits as of March 31.
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Even as Democratic governors such as California’s Gavin Newsom and Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker slam red state policies, their residents are fleeing in droves for Republican-controlled states.
IRS migration data released late last week shows that California lost more residents than any other state, with a net loss of nearly 332,000 people and more than $29 billion in adjusted gross income in 2021. The state with the second largest population loss is New York, which saw a net loss of over 262,000 residents and $24.5 billion in income. Illinois, meanwhile, suffered a net loss of 105,000 people in 2021 and $10.8 billion in income.
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The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation put the $229.1 billion California-based First Republic Bank into receivership today on May 1, while the FDIC also entered into a “purchase and assumption agreement” with JP Morgan-Chase Bank for the nation’s largest bank to assume First Republic’s assets as well as its $103.9 billion of deposits.
Another one bites the dust.
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Federal regulators took ownership of the First Republic Bank and sold it to JPMorgan Chase on Monday, marking the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.
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Moderna is under fire after financial records showed the biotech company’s CEO Stephane Bancel earned around $393 million in 2022 from stock options he exercised as he received a 50% raise.
Bancel, whose firm is known for producing the COVID-19 vaccine, received $1.5 million in 2022, an increase of 50% from 2021, and Moderna increased his target cash bonus, a March securities and exchange commission filing shows.
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While U.S. oil and gas deals slowed considerably in the first quarter of 2023, industry players are poised to make significant investments in shale over the next year, according to Axios.
Oil and gas mergers and acquisitions fell to $14.8 billion in the first quarter, down 47% from the fourth quarter of 2022, according to a report from accounting firm KPMG. However, after a record-breaking year left companies flush with cash, producers will be incentivized to “secure inventory, create operational efficiencies and put their capital to work,” Mike Harling, energy sector lead partner at KPMG, told Axios.
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A new federal rule that would charge higher fees to home buyers with good credit to help subsidize those with poor credit goes into effect Monday.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced in January it would increase Loan-Level Price Adjustment fees for mortgage borrowers with higher credit scores to help keep fees lower for those with worse credit.
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A closer look at the months leading up to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the second-largest bank collapse in history, shows that regulators saw the warning signs since last year but did not step in.
SVB’s collapse sent shockwaves through the markets, destabilized the economy, and raised fears of a domino effect of other banks. Seemingly backing those fears, other banks have recently collapsed as well.
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The U.S. economy is growing at a slower pace, newly released economic data shows.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis released Gross Domestic Product Data Thursday that showed the size of the U.S. economy increased by 1.1% in the first quarter of 2023, more slowly than the previous quarter.
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As President Biden embarks on his reelection campaign, a majority of American voters are dissatisfied with his stewardship of the U.S. economy. Aware of the general angst among the electorate, Biden is threading the needle by saying he’s running on the strength of his overall record, while vowing to “finish the job” that he started when he stepped into the Oval Office. It’s a daunting task, with an overwhelming majority of registered voters expressing deep pessimism about the economy: 40.2% say the United States is currently in a recession, 17% call it a general state of stagnation, and 10.4% believe the country is in an outright depression.
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Virginia has shattered a record with more than 4.5 million people in the commonwealth’s workforce, Gov. Glenn Youngkin says.
The workforce was recorded at 65.9 percent in March, which is over 1 percent higher than it was before the beginning of the pandemic. Virginia eclipsed the national average by 3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin took historic steps by signing an executive order establishing a foreign trade office while meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan in Taipei earlier today, kicking off his Asian tour.
This will be the commonwealth’s fourth international office; others are in Japan, South Korea and Germany. Youngkin is scheduled to visit Japan and South Korea during his Asian trip.
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the House Republican majority have unveiled their spending plan for the next decade, the Limit, Save, Grow Act, that will be tied to a $1.5 trillion increase in the $31.4 trillion national debt ceiling, the centerpiece of which imposes discretionary budget caps beginning in 2024, but which will be set at 2022 levels, which could save more than $3.2 trillion over the next decade, according to an estimate by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
While an official score still has not come in from the Congressional Budget Office, the proposal stands out as a promise kept on McCarthy’s part to use the must-pass debt ceiling to restore some semblance of fiscal sanity to the out-of-control federal budget and national debt, the latter of which the White House Office of Management and Budget projects will rise to a gargantuan $50.7 trillion by 2033.
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Fox News host Tucker Carlson is leaving the network, Fox announced Monday.
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A group of Democratic lawmakers and the Patriotic Millionaires, an organization of high-income and high net worth individuals favoring higher taxes on the wealthy, are calling on Congress to pass a 90% income tax on incomes above $100 million as fears of a recession are growing.
Abigail Disney, a documentary filmmaker who is the granddaughter of Roy Disney, cofounder of The Walt Disney Company, joined the lawmakers to call for higher taxes on “extremely high income.”
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Benjamin Franklin famously wrote in 1789 that “our new Constitution is now established and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Death and taxes are fated. However, are enormous tax hikes also a fait accompli? Is it a certainty – ‘an accomplished fact’ – that the White House and Congress will repeal tax reforms that worked? Tax breaks that helped small business owners and families.
For the past several days Americans have been scrambling to make the deadline to complete their 2022 tax returns. Most taxpayers will be relieved once the ordeal is done. However, here’s an unfortunate reality: if Washington fails to act, the federal tax code is headed for major changes in just a couple of years, including massive tax hikes on families and small businesses.
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The European Parliament finalized legislation Tuesday that will impose taxes on imports based on the greenhouse gas emissions made during their production, despite the objections raised by companies in the U.S. and China.
The European Union’s (E.U.) Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) would first take effect in 2026, and first cover emissions from companies producing iron, steel, cement, aluminum, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen, according to the European Parliament. The taxes have been criticized by firms in the U.S., who are concerned about unnecessary regulation and red tape, and firms in China and the developing world, who use less green sources of energy than competitors in the U.S. and E.U., according to the Wall Street Journal.
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Acute shortages of orally delivered amoxicillin, penicillin and other children’s antibiotics throughout the 2022 and 2023 cold and flu season have made it difficult for doctors to treat normal childhood illnesses like ear infections, bronchitis, strep throat and rarer cases of infections caused after suffering Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), and also sickle cell disease—for months.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning about the amoxicillin shortage in Oct. 2022 just at the start of the cold and flu season. But since then, no statement has been issued by President Joe Biden about what appears to be an underreported public health crisis.
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CVS Health’s “gender transition guidelines” for employees shows the drugstore chain catering to transgender employees by allowing them to use whichever sex’s restroom they prefer, insisting all others use their preferred pronouns, and providing medical leave for their gender transition, a Fox Business report says.
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Southwest Airlines shut down on Tuesday due to what it says is “intermittent technology issues,” just months after the airline suffered from a major meltdown over the holiday season.
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President Joe Biden’s push to boost “green” U.S. manufacturing is facing headwinds from a lack of available real estate, Reuters reported Thursday, citing development experts and local government officials.
Roughly half of all megasite projects — typically defined as large factories spanning more than 1,000 acres — announced since 2004 were announced in the past five years, Reuters reported. While the U.S. has a significant amount of available land, most of it is not ready for the large multibillion dollar projects companies are looking to develop before tax credits under Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, begin to phase out at the end of the decade.
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Federal Reserve economists project that the recent bank collapses will create a “mild recession” later this year, posing potential problems for President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The Fed’s projection “included a mild recession starting later this year, with a recovery over the subsequent two years,” according to minutes released Wednesday from the central bank’s March 21-22 meeting.
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Amazon applied for economic development incentives from Virginia for its new HQ2 campus in Arlington, requesting the state pay $152 million to the company by 2026.
Arlington was chosen as the site for Amazon’s second quarters four years ago – a move the company said would bring 25,000 jobs to the area by 2030. The tech giant has roughly 8,400 employees assigned to HQ2, and the average wage of these jobs must meet or exceed $156,800, according to Amazon spokesperson Rachael Lightly.
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“We are probably not going to be able to do anything to stop, slow down, disrupt, interdict, or destroy the Chinese nuclear development program that they have projected out over the next 10 to 20 years,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley on March 29 at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. “They’re going to do that in accordance with their own plan.”
Milley is wrong about China’s nuclear weapons ambitions. He is, unfortunately, expressing the same pessimism that pervaded the Nixon, Ford and Carter years, when the American foreign policy establishment took the Soviet Union as a given and therefore promoted détente.
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A new report ranks all 50 states from best to worst for economic conditions, showing which states have improved, and worsened, in creating an economic climate where businesses want to invest.
The American Legislative Exchange Council released the state analysis, which ranks Utah as the number one state, North Carolina as second, and Arizona as third. Idaho and Oklahoma fill out the top five spots, ranking fourth and fifth, respectively.
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Inflation rose again in March, but at a slower pace than previous months, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics latest consumer pricing data shows.
The Consumer Price Index rose 0.1% in March, contributing to a 5% rise over the last 12 months, about double what economists say is a healthy inflation rate. Price changes varied by the respective good and service.
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The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced what is being considered its strongest-ever proposed pollution standards for gas-powered vehicles – which if enacted would effectively mandate that 67 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2032 must be zero-emission ones.
The rule has been expected for weeks and is a dramatic, proposed increase from President Biden’s stated goal of 50 percent zero-emission passenger car sales – including battery-powered electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell vehicles – by 2030. It would also likely and dramatically increase EV sales, which accounted for just 5.6 percent of new car sales in the U.S. last year, according to Road & Track.com.
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Virginia’s agricultural and forestry exports soared to a value of more than $5.1 billion in 2022, according to new data released this week by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
China is the state’s top export destination by far, purchasing $1.45 billion in agricultural and forestry products in 2022. Egypt, Taiwan, Venezuela and Canada are also in the top five destinations for Virginia’s agricultural exports. Soybeans and soybean meal are the state’s top exports, followed by pork, poultry and tobacco, according to data from VDACS.
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Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy sparred with New York City Comptroller Brad Lander on Tuesday over considering green investments for pension plans.
“I am frankly worried about the pension plan participants in the funds because fossil fuel companies dramatically outperform the S&P by almost 80 percent and they outperformed the very ESG funds that divested from fossil fuel companies by nearly 100 percent,” Ramaswamy said during an appearance on CNBC’s “Last Call.”
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Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson says the Chinese-American financial institution Cathay Bank has given Senate Republicans records showing millions of dollars going from Chinese companies to President Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
Republicans and others started raising concerns during President Biden’s successful 2020 White House campaign, if not earlier, that Hunter Biden used the family name and influence while his father was vice president to make millions in overseas business deals, which also could have compromised U.S. national security.
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Last month, President Joe Biden unveiled his proposed 10-year budget plan. The dollar figures are eye-popping: $17 trillion dollars in additional debt.
The previous 10-year period, 2013 through 2022, saw the national debt rise by an unprecedented $14 trillion, an amount that was turbo-boosted by the over-the-top COVID spending blowout. Yet, instead of a return to the bad-enough normalcy of an annual debt increase measured in the hundreds of billions rather than trillions, Biden wants to set a new record for debt accumulated in a decade, with an average annual deficit of $1.7 trillion being his “new normal.”
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Small businesses are less optimistic about the future, a newly released survey shows.
The National Federation of Independent Businesses released survey results showing their small business optimism index decreased in March, “marking the 15th consecutive month below the 49-year average of 98.”
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China is rapidly growing economically, militarily, and influentially, and none of this is good for the United States. Since diplomatic ties with China were officially established in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter, each president has done a fair job (some better than others) of keeping China in check on the international stage, despite China’s growth. All with the exception of President Joe Biden, who has allowed China to lead a global coalition and a new world order against the United States of America, which has fulfilled our worst fears.
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Over 200 former employees of federal surveillance agencies have since joined the corporate ranks of Big Tech companies in recent years, thus increasing the likelihood of systematic censorship of conservative accounts by such platforms.
According to the Daily Caller, the four social media companies Google, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok have recruited 248 former employees from the FBI, CIA, Department of Justice (DOJ), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as proven by searches of the professional job listing and networking platform LinkedIn. The bulk of these hires were made between 2017 and 2022, with some of the former federal employees moving on to top executive positions within the social media companies.
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Gross interest owed on the $31.4 trillion national debt — that is, interest owed on both the $24.9 trillion publicly traded debt and the $6.7 trillion debt in the Social Security, Medicare and other trust funds — will reach a gargantuan $1 trillion in 2024 for the first time in American history, according to the latest data gathered by the White House Office of Management and budget.
To put that into perspective, that is more than is spent on national defense related spending, currently $814 billion.
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Lawmakers are raising concerns that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which President Joe Biden has relied on heavily since taking office, is getting dangerously low.
Gas prices hit record highs last summer, surpassing $5 per gallon nationally. To curb rising prices, Biden released more than 200 million barrels from the U.S. stockpile, bringing the reserves to the lowest point since 1984.
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Gas prices continue to rise this week in the U.S., hitting the highest level in months.
Now, the concerns and political ramifications for the Biden administration are starting to rise as well.
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This week’s jobs report reveals the labor market is finally starting to crack under the weight of two years of Bidenflation and the resulting rapid increase in interest rates.
The economy created the fewest jobs last month than in any month in Biden’s presidency. The average weekly hours for employees also fell again.
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Property taxes levied on single-family homes in the United States increased 3.6 percent to $339.8 billion in 2022, according to a new report from a real estate data firm.
That’s up from $328 billion in 2021. The 2022 increase was more than double the 1.6 percent growth in 2021, but smaller than the 5.4 percent increase in 2020, according to the report from ATTOM, a property data provider.
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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in his annual shareholder letter Tuesday that the current fallout from the bank failures of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank would likely continue for years.
“As I write this letter, the current crisis is not yet over, and even when it is behind us, there will be repercussions from it for years to come,” wrote Dimon. However, in comparison to 2008, Dimon said the 2023 crisis “involves far fewer financial players and fewer issues that need to be resolved.”
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On Monday, a report revealed that, on Joe Biden’s watch, American manufacturing has reached its lowest point since the start of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index, known as PMI, hit its lowest point since May 2020, scoring just 46.3. If the extraordinary conditions of the pandemic are not taken into account, then it is the lowest level since 2009.
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The ministry founded by national pro-life leader Abby Johnson is kicking off its Exodus 2023 campaign by urging individuals who work in the abortion industry to walk out of their jobs on Good Friday.
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials investigating potential health impacts in a small Ohio town impacted by a toxic train derailment became ill during their study, CNN reported.
Seven CDC members reported sore throats, headaches, coughing and nausea while in East Palestine, Ohio, weeks after a Norfolk Southern train derailed in early February and a controlled burn leaked hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride, into the environment, the CDC told CNN on Thursday. The CDC members’ symptoms are consistent with health complaints reported by residents and first responders.
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Joe Biden is dethroning King Dollar in real time. The US dollar’s financial dominance is under siege from a uniquely bad combination of foreign and domestic policies, and Americans should be deeply concerned by the fallout if the dollar loses its 80-year reign as the world’s reserve currency.
In just the past weeks, China conducted the first major LNG sale in renminbi instead of dollars, struck a major deal with Brazil to conduct trade in their own currencies, and just announced the sale of 65,000 tons of LNG to France denominated in yuan. This dovetails with the Biden administration’s inflationary policies and ham-handed sanctions on Russia that accelerated foreigners’ flight from the dollar at the very moment the world doubts if the dollar remains a safe and reliable store of value.
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Like most polls, Gallup polls are usually paid advertisements for whomever commissions them and therefore deserving of as little attention. However, the indefatigable Sharyl Attkisson recently reported on the results of one such survey and that did draw my attention. Evidently, 47 percent of Americans say life will never go back to pre-pandemic normal. I was somewhat stunned! How could 53 percent be thinking we could go back?
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