U.S. Economic Growth Was Weaker than Expected in Third Quarter

Office Work

The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 2.8% in the third quarter of 2024, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) statistics released Wednesday.

The growth in the third quarter comes after a better-than-expected 3.0% growth rate in the second quarter of 2024, according to the BEA. Economists forecast that GDP would increase by about 3.0% in the third quarter, according to Forecast.com.

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Economic Growth, Consumer Spending Rises Three Percent in Second Quarter

People Shopping

Gross domestic product rose at an annual rate of 3% in the second quarter of 2024, showing economic growth and increased consumer spending, according to a report.

The report, released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, shows gross domestic product over the last five years.

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Commentary: Massive Tax Hikes Coming Without GOP Sweep in 2024 Elections

Woman doing paperwork at her desk

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) signed into law by President Donald Trump on Dec. 22, 2017, provided across-the-board income tax cuts for all income levels as well as significant tax relief for American taxpayers.  However, most of the tax relief expires on Dec. 31, 2025, which will result in significant tax hikes for most Americans in 2026.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are calling for new legislation in 2025 to make the TCJA tax cuts permanent. But this will only be possible with three election results this November: (1) Trump wins the presidency; (2) Republicans gain majority control of the Senate; and (3) Republicans maintain majority control of the House of Representatives. Failure to achieve a victory sweep for the presidency and both houses of Congress would be devastating for Americans’ pocketbooks, given Democrat animus towards extending the TCJA tax cuts.

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Commentary: Energy Innovation Is Key to Prosperity

Nuclear Power Plant

In a recent report, “Powering Human Advancement,” The Heritage Foundation laid bare the truth that the driving force behind wealth creation and raising human development standards is the innovative harnessing of energy.

As historian Vaclav Smil sees it, “Energy is the only universal currency.”

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Economist: ‘True’ Federal Debt Masked by Draining U.S. Treasury

Janet Yellen

The federal debt continues to climb to unprecedented levels, but the “actual, true” debt is higher if the Treasury weren’t being drained, a national economist says.

Citing Bureau of the Fiscal Service data, E. J. Antoni, Ph.D., an economist at the Heritage Foundation, argues that as the federal debt increases, the “true daily deficit” is being masked by the amount of cash being drained from the U.S. Treasury by Treasury Department Secretary Janet Yellen.

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Americans are Getting Poorer While Prices Keep Going Up

Shopping

Americans’ real weekly earnings dropped sharply in April and still remain well below their level when President Joe Biden first took office, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Real average weekly earnings fell to $1,191.93 in April, declining by 0.4% in the month and 4.8% compared to the start of Biden’s term in January 2021, according to data calculated by the Daily Caller News Foundation from the BLS. Prices have risen over 19% since Biden first took office and 3.4% in the last year, degrading the value of Americans’ wages.

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Inflation Stays High as Rising Prices Continue to Squeeze Americans

Grocery Shopping

Inflation ticked down slightly year-over-year in April but still remained high as rising prices continue to take a toll on average Americans’ finances, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release on Tuesday.

The consumer price index (CPI), a broad measure of the prices of everyday goods, increased 3.4% on an annual basis in April and 0.3% month-over-month, compared to 3.5% in March, according to the BLS. Core CPI, which excludes the volatile categories of energy and food, remained higher, rising 3.6% year-over-year in April, compared to 3.8% in February.

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Mass Migration Not Delivering Economic Benefits, Study Finds

Illegal Immigrants

Mass migration has not delivered significant GDP growth per capita for the United Kingdom, but it has increased strain on the country, according to a new study.

While illegal immigration recently hit record highs in the United States, legal immigration poses a significant issue for the U.K., where legal migration levels are more than 25 times the level of illegal levels, according to a report Wednesday from the Centre for Policy Studies, a U.K. think tank and advocacy group.

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Americans Less Confident About Economy, Poll Shows

Stressed Workers

Americans are less confident about the economy, according to a new survey.

Gallup’s recently released economic confidence rating dropped from March to April as inflation remains elevated. Just after the polling was conducted from April 1-22, the federal government released underperforming Gross Domestic Product data.

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CBO Reports Grim Long-Term Outlook for Federal Government

Couple paying bills

The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday released a bleak outlook for the federal government with new projections that show debt levels will reach their highest levels ever in five years.

“Debt held by the public, boosted by the large deficits, reaches its highest level ever in 2029 (measured as a percentage of GDP) and then continues to grow, reaching 166 percent of GDP in 2054 and remaining on track to increase thereafter,” according to the CBO report. “That mounting debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of U.S. debt, and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook; it could also cause lawmakers to feel more constrained in their policy choices.”

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Watchdog: Biden’s 2025 Budget Would Drive National Debt to $45 Trillion in 10 Years, 106 Percent of GDP

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) a budget watchdog group, found that President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2025 budget would drive the national debt to $45.1 trillion or 106 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2034, from $27.4 trillion or about 97 percent of GDP at the present time.

The organization noted that those calculations are based on the Biden administration’s own internal figures. The current $27.4 trillion debt figure is the debt held by the public, not the total national debt including intragovernmental holdings.

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Commentary: Trump Says No More ‘Free Milk’ for NATO Free Loaders

Trump NATO

The mainstream media and political establishment are outraged over Donald Trump’s latest comments about NATO. Instead of all the dramatic pearl-clutching, they should be embracing his position.

Trump recently issued a stern warning to America’s NATO allies, specifically those who are still failing to uphold their commitment to spending at least 2 percent of GDP on defense. Recounting a conversation he had with the leader of a delinquent NATO member who sought reassurance that America would defend their country from Russian attack, Trump declared that he would let Russia do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries that refuse to make minimum expenditures toward their own defense.

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Commentary: Biden Gaslights America on the Economy

Biden Speaking

Joe Biden is gaslighting America on the economy. His administration is trying to oversell what has underperformed for several reasons: First, the economy is the one issue that affects most Americans most significantly. Second, Biden is doing worse on virtually every other issue. Finally, time is short: the economy is about to get worse, and the election is close. The administration’s strategy is to get Americans to believe what they hear and doubt what they see.

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U.S. Economic Growth Exceeds Expectations with Rate Cuts on the Horizon

Blue Collar

The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 3.3% in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to gross domestic product (GDP) statistics released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on Thursday.

In the third quarter of 2023, real GDP rose 4.9%, down from the second estimate of 5.2%, but in line with initial estimates. Economists expected that GDP growth would be around 2% for the fourth quarter of 2023, in line with typical U.S. growth rates.

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Commentary: Five More Stupid Things the Left Demands You Believe

It wasn’t the last column in this space — that one took a detour because somebody had to address the manifest awfulness of Nikki Haley — but the one before that introduced you, dear reader, to what might become an ongoing series.

Because the Left in America is now built on the failed proposition that magical thinking, the imagination of a human race that acts nothing like the current one does, can reflect reality if only enough time, money, and effort (and blood, because it always comes down to blood) are poured into the mix.

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Economy Shows Huge Growth in Third Quarter as Fed Struggles to Rein in Inflation

The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 4.9% in the third quarter of 2023, according to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) statistics released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on Thursday morning.

In the second quarter of 2023, real GDP rose 2.1% after being revised down from an initial estimate of 2.4%. Economists expected that GDP would be around 4.7% for the third quarter of 2023, far higher than the 2% to 3% that is common for the U.S.

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Americans Are Burning Through Savings to Keep Biden’s Economy Afloat, Experts Say

Under President Joe Biden, economic growth has been partly sustained by Americans spending through their savings on everyday goods, according to experts who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measure of economic growth, has remained persistently high, coming in at 2.1 percent for the second quarter of 2023, even as the Federal Reserve has attempted to tame growth through hikes of its federal funds rate. The main contributor to U.S. GDP is consumer spending, which has managed to notch consistent increases at the expense of the savings of average Americans, experts told the DCNF.

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Alarm Grows as Jobs, GDP Data Revised Downward

President Job Biden’s story about the success of Bidenomics just keeps shrinking.

The Labor Department has consistently overestimated payroll growth predictions under the 46th president and has been forced to revise the data downward to reflect slower economic growth throughout 2023.

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Economy Grew Less than Previously Thought in Second Quarter

Economic growth was revised downward for the second quarter of 2022, coming more in line with economists’ original expectations, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

Yearly real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was revised down from 2.4% to 2.1% growth in the second estimate for the second quarter of 2023, according to the BEA. The revision is more in line with original expectations from economists of around 2% growth for the second quarter, showing signs of a cooling economy.

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American Credit Card Debt Hits $1 Trillion for the First Time Ever

The end of July saw American credit card debt collectively hit $1 trillion for the first time ever.

According to Axios, the Federal Reserve Bank confirmed on Tuesday that credit card balances in the United States increased in the second quarter of 2023 by $45 billion, or 4.6 percent, to a new total of $1.03 trillion. However, the collective credit card debt still has a lower share of American gross domestic product (GDP) than it did in 2010 or pre-COVID 2020.

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Commentary: Could the Baby Boomer Retirement Wave and Labor Shortages Absorb the Recession?

The national unemployment rate dipped to 3.5 percent in July, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, once again hitting more than 50-year lows.

It’s still peak employment as far as the eye can see. Even with the past two years’ high inflation dropping dramatically and disinflation usually correlating with higher unemployment and a recession, that simply has not occurred yet, despite all the warning signs typically associated with an economic slowdown or downturn.

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U.S. Economy Grows Moderately as GDP Ticks Up

The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 2.4% in the second quarter of 2023, according to gross domestic product (GDP) statistics released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on Thursday morning.

Real GDP increased by 2.0% in the first quarter of 2022 after being revised up from an initial estimate of 1.1%, according to the BEA. Economists expected the GDP would be around 2% in the second quarter of 2023, following high inflation and an interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday.

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Commentary: As Hiring Slows Down, So Does the Economy

The U.S. economy added 209,000 jobs in June, according to the latest establishment survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than expected as 306,000 were added in May, as hiring slowed down nationwide. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate remained about the same at 3.6 percent.

Historically, when hiring slows down by establishments, that usually coincides with economic slowdowns and recessions. In the recent cycle, the 2020 and 2021 recovery from COVID notwithstanding, hiring peaked at about 5.2 percent annualized increase in Feb. 2022. Now, it’s down to 2.5 percent.

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Southern States Are Booming as Wealth Flees Democrat-Run Northeast

Six states in the south are seeing rapid growth in the share of national gross domestic product (GDP) as people flock to the region, while states in the northeast are faltering, Bloomberg reported.

Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Georgia and Tennessee are in the middle of a $100 billion wealth migration that started during the COVID-19 pandemic as businesses and people moved south, according to Bloomberg. States in the northeast lost approximately $60 billion in 2020 and 2021, falling behind the six southern states in collective GDP for the first time.

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Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson Calls on Biden to Urge NATO Allies to Meet Their Defense Spending Commitments

As President Joe Biden prepares for this weekend’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) is asking the president to hold NATO accountable.

Johnson joined 34 of his Republican colleagues in sending Biden a letter asking that he remind NATO allies to honor their commitment to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense.

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Commentary: Despite ‘Strong’ Rhetoric, Biden Administration Signals Gloomy Economic Outlook

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the now-released President’s Budget is projecting just 0.6 percent in inflation-adjusted real growth of the U.S. economy in 2023 as the unemployment rate is expected to rise to 4.3 percent in 2023 and peak at 4.6 percent in 2024 after the economy is finished overheating from the continued, elevated inflation, consumers max out on credit and spending falls off a cliff.

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Commentary: ‘Economist’ Krugman’s Accounting of the National Debt is Jailworthy

The national debt has risen at a blistering pace over recent decades and is now higher than any era of the nation’s history—even when adjusted for inflation, population growth, and economic growth (GDP).

Denying this reality, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman recently wrote two columns for the New York Times in which he claimed that the debt is an “overhyped issue” and “isn’t all that unusual” from a historical perspective. His attempts to support these assertions employ the kind of fraudulent accounting that could land a corporate executive in jail.

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U.S. GDP Ticks Up, but Recession Fears Remain

The U.S. economy grew modestly in the fourth quarter of 2022, despite signs of weak domestic demand, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Thursday. In the fourth quarter, inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) grew by roughly 2.9%, down slightly from 3.2% in the third quarter, the BEA reported. Recession concerns among economists linger, however, amid fears that the Federal Reserve’s campaign of interest rate hikes — intended to reduce economic demand to slow inflation — will lead to reduced spending and layoffs, The Wall Street Journal reported.

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GDP Bounces Back with 2.6 Percent Growth After Decline Earlier This Year

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released its quarterly Gross Domestic Product data Thursday which the economy grew in the third quarter of 2022 by 2.6% at an annualized rate.

“The increase in real GDP reflected increases in exports, consumer spending, nonresidential fixed investment, federal government spending, and state and local government spending, that were partly offset by decreases in residential fixed investment and private inventory investment,” BEA said.

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U.S. Debt Will Nearly Double GDP Within 30 Years, Feds Say

Federal debt will nearly double the nation’s Gross Domestic Product by 2052 if it continues on its current trajectory, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office says in its economic and debt forecast released Wednesday.

U.S federal debt surpassed $30 trillion in February, and the most recent GDP data showed a decline of 1.6% in the first quarter of 2022. GDP second quarter data is set to be released Thursday.

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‘It’s An Absurd Argument’: Economists Take Apart One of Biden’s Favorite Talking Points

The Biden administration’s oft-touted talking point that employment has boomed under the administration is misleading and instead simply a natural recovery from pandemic losses, economists told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Facing consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth, sky-high inflation and plummeting consumer sentiment, the Biden administration has routinely cited a low unemployment rate and strong on-paper jobs creation as positive results of President Joe Biden’s economic stewardship. But the notion that these figures represent booming job creation is misleading since the economy has merely rebounded by adding back jobs that were lost during the pandemic and has still yet to reach pre-pandemic levels, economists told the DCNF.

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GDP Shows Second Consecutive Quarter of Negative Growth

U.S. gross domestic product decreased by 0.9% in the second quarter of 2022, according to new data from Bureau of Economic Analysis, signaling the start of an economic recession in the U.S.

“The decrease in real GDP reflected decreases in private inventory investment, residential fixed investment, federal government spending, state and local government spending, and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by increases in exports and personal consumption expenditures…” the BEA said Thursday.

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Biden Administration Accused of Gaslighting Nation with ‘Soviet Level Propaganda’ After Attempting to Redefine Recession

by Debra Heine   The White House is being accused of gaslighting the American people with “Soviet levels of propaganda” as Biden officials attempt to change the definition of recession amid economic data that shows the United States is entering into a recession. A recession is traditionally defined as two…

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Feds: 46 States Saw GDP Decline in First Quarter of This Year

Forty-six of the 50 U.S. states saw a decline in gross domestic product in the first quarter of 2022, newly released federal data shows.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday that only Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire and Vermont bucked the trend with increases in GDP in the first three months of this year.

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Commentary: Ukraine Has Few Options Against Putin

Even a truncated Russian Federation has four times the pre-war population of Ukraine. It enjoys well over 10 times the Ukrainian gross domestic product. Russia covers almost 30 times Ukraine’s area.

And how does Ukraine expel Russian troops from its borders when its Western allies must put particular restrictions on their life-giving military and financial aid?

The interests of Europe and the United States are not quite the same as those of a beleaguered Ukraine. NATO also wants Vladimir Putin humiliated, but only if the war can be confined within the borders of Ukraine.

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Sen. Cruz: Skyrocketing Inflation in U.S. Comparable to 1970s under Carter

Ted Cruz

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, says that skyrocketing inflation and long lines at gas stations are a result of President Joe Biden’s policies and are returning the U.S. to the days of high inflation, high cost of living and gas lines under President Jimmy Carter.

Eleven months into Biden’s term, inflation reached a 31-year high and gas prices surpassed a seven-year high.

“I’ve got to tell you the trillions that are being spent, the trillions in debt that’s being racked up, it is historic and not in a good way,” Cruz told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

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U.S. Economic Growth Slowed to Two Percent in Third Quarter as Supply Chain Worsens

The U.S. economy grew at a 2% rate in the third quarter of 2021 as supply chain issues and the delta variant slowed gains.

The U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of net services and goods produced, grew at a 2% rate during the third quarter of 2021, the slowest gain of the pandemic era, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported Thursday.

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Critics Pan Biden’s Claim $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill Costs ‘Zero’

President Joe Biden is taking fire for comments he made about his $3.5 trillion legislation just as the bill faces a deeply split Congress.

Biden made headlines for claiming the bill would cost “zero dollars,” despite media reports and members of both parties commonly naming the bill’s cost at $3.5 trillion for the last several months.

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Economy Shrank More in 2020 Than Any Year Since the End of WWII Despite Fourth Quarter Growth

The U.S. economy contracted 3.5% in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, marking the nation’s worst economic performance since the end of World War II.

The U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), which measures net services and goods produced by a country, fell 3.5% in 2020 compared to the 2.2% increase in 2019, according to a Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) report released Thursday. The overall decline came despite 4% growth in the fourth quarter, the period from October to December, and 38.3% growth in the third quarter, the period from July to September.

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Commentary: Trump Economy Grows Record 33.1 Percent in Third Quarter Amid Rapid Recovery

The U.S. economy blew the barn doors off all other past recoveries with a record, inflation-adjusted 33.1 percent gain in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — more than any other quarter in economic history — in the last major economic report before the election in November.

That is great news for the American people, and it certainly bodes well for President Donald Trump in his bid for reelection against former Vice President Joe Biden as the race for 2020 comes down to the wire. It comes as more than 14 million jobs have been recovered since labor markets bottomed in April amid the Covid state-led lockdowns, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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US Economy Surges at Record Rate, GDP Grows 33.1 Percent

The U.S. economy grew by a record 33.1% in the third quarter of 2020, as employers continue to restore jobs and the country continues to feel the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Department of Commerce figure released Wednesday reflects the rate of decline in U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) during the third quarter, from July to September. The economy plunged by 31.4% in the second quarter of 2020, a record drop caused by government measures to combat the spread of coronavirus, according to The Associated Press.

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The U.S. National Debt Has Exceeded the Total Value of the GDP

The U.S. national debt now exceeds the size of America’s total gross domestic product and the milestone may have been met as early as June, according to a Friday New York Times report.

America’s federal debt stands at around $26.6 trillion — an approximate $7 trillion increase since 2016, according to fiscal data from the Treasury Department. Total U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) was just over $19.4 trillion at the end of June, according to a July 30 release from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

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US Sees Worst-Ever Contraction for Second-Quarter GDP

The United States gross domestic product (GDP) fell 32.9% in the second quarter of 2020, the Department of Commerce reported, marking the largest decline the country has ever seen, according to CNBC.

In addition to the record drop in GDP, The Department of Labor reported Thursday that over 1.43 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment last week, marking a swift economic contraction as coronavirus cases continue to rise across the country.

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Great Economic News Bedevils Trump Detractors

by Rick Manning   The incredibly positive economic data that keeps coming out from both private and public sector sources leads to one overriding question: Will the Trump economic detractors ever get tired of being wrong? Over the course of the past six months, we have heard how tariffs against the…

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This Economy Belongs to President Trump, not Former President Obama

by Robert Romano   You got to give former President Barack Obama credit, at least he’s consistent. When he came into office, the economy was in a deep recession that began when financial markets crashed in 2008, and, he said, he was blameless for the 8 million job losses that occurred,…

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