by sundance
by Allison Elyse Gualtieri
by Warner Todd Huston
{hoover.org} ~ Over the past several weeks, California has been gripped by two of the most deadly forest fires in its history... the Camp Fire north of Sacramento and the Woolsey Fire in Ventura and Los Angeles counties. At last count, the toll of this disaster includes 76 dead and hundreds missing, the destruction of nearly 10,000 homes, and unhealthy air quality—now called the “dirtiest in the world”—throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, leading to the postponement of many local events, including moving the “Big Game” between Cal and Stanford from November 17 to December 1. An enormous debate has developed over the cause of both fires. Outgoing California Governor Jerry Brown has loudly proclaimed that climate change deniers are “definitely contributing” to the onslaught of new fires. But the best evidence says otherwise. Global temperature increase has been nil over the last 20 or so years, notwithstanding the increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Similarly, the repeated claims that we have had more unstable global climate patterns within that period is likewise false. According to Professor David B. South of Auburn University, “data suggest that extremely large megafires were four-times more common before 1940” than today, even though CO2 levels were lower. Local variables have transformed California far more dramatically than climate change. Thanks to a large influx of new residents to California in recent years, new homes have been built close to the forests, as happened in the now torched town of Paradise, where the many new homes burnt to the ground were quite literally in harm’s way. On the forest floor, as explained in the Wall Street Journal, an accumulation of dead wood, coupled with too much new growth, stymied the efficient growth of healthy trees that are better able to resist fires. Every bit as important is the major change in the philosophy of land use management. Much of the forest land in California is now owned by the state and federal government. These lands have proved far more vulnerable to forest fires than properties owned by private groups. Private lands are managed with the goals of conservation and production. The management of public lands has been buffeted by legislative schemes driven by strong ideological commitments. Writing last year, Republican Congressman Tom McClintock noted that his air inspections revealed a distressing pattern: “The privately managed forests are green, healthy and thriving. The neglected federal forests are densely overcrowded and often scarred by fire because we can’t even salvage the fire-killed timber while it still has value.”... https://www.hoover.org/research/californias-forest-fire-tragedy?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTURNeVpqVXhOelZrWm1JMyIsInQiOiJ2Z2hZQzlTRUtqXC83a0pCTU9oKzlRUGJKclozZTd2blp4QkthMzBJUVA1VWI3RVwveUJFZXVhV0NrazhZUmZGODdLSzZtWExzVnZMcmd3VkZhTGJhM0ZiZUVhd29GQjZtNlVhY3FWUUxVK0FnY0hpNnhiWVRwYU0wWEJKWVZsQ1A0In0%3D
As Trump Economy Surges, the New Challenge Is Inflation
by Louis DeBroux: In December 2008, the economy was in a downward spiral thanks to the reckless policies of congressional Democrats who a decade prior demanded an expansion of the subprime loan market and then guaranteed that taxpayers would cover the risk. Naturally, the “solution” was more government interference. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke instituted the first round of Quantitative Easing (QE1), a fancy way of saying that he dumped about $1 trillion manufactured out of thin air into the economy in order to increase liquidity. The problem with QE1 was that banks held the money rather than lending it out, so it did little to help the economy. In November 2010, Bernanke announced QE2, and later QE3 and QE4. By the time all was said and done, the Fed printed more than $12 trillion, and interest rates plummeted to near zero and stayed there for years.
Barack scumbag/liar-nObama put a rotten cherry on the Keynesian dung heap of Democrat economic policy by pushing through an $800+ billion “stimulus” bill that never stimulated. In addition, he introduced drastic increases in baseline federal spending, tax increases and massive new regulations. As a result, the U.S. struggled through its worst economic recovery since the Great Depression.
And we were told by Team scumbag/liar-nObama that such economic stagnation is now the “new normal.”
But a curious thing happened on our nation’s way to becoming a global has-been. Republican Donald Trump shocked the world and foiled the political Rasputins who declared the 2016 elections to be a mere formality to the coronation of Queen scumbag/liar-Hillary.
Upon taking office, President Trump immediately began reversing scumbag/liar-nObama’s policies; he didn’t just cut regulations, he took a blowtorch to them. He ended the War on Coal and fossil fuels, introduced business-friendly policies, and topped it off with a tax reform bill (passed by Republicans without a single Democrat vote) that has hundreds of billions of dollars flooding back into the U.S., and massive new investments creating new jobs and driving up wages.
This is fantastic news for most Americans, but it creates a problem for Jerome Powell, the new Federal Reserve chairman who replaces scumbag/liar-nObama’s pick, Janet Yellen. With the sudden resurgence in economic growth, we’re also seeing rising prices, with consumer inflation rising 0.5% in January, and 2.1% over the past year.
The Federal Reserve has had a target inflation rate of 2% since 2012, but as the economy heats up — with projections of 2018 GDP growth reaching 4% — Powell must negotiate a delicate balancing act, controlling inflation without dousing the surge in economic growth.
Low inflation — usually indicating weaker wage growth — has kept down prices of food, clothing, fuel and other common expenditures. However, last week the Labor Department reported a 2.9% increase in average hourly earnings, the highest year-over-year gain since 2009 (not coincidentally the first year of the scumbag/liar-nObama administration). So what does this mean to the average American?
Well, it means the prices of goods and services rise as wages increase. Furthermore, experts are predicting two, possibly three increases in the Fed’s benchmark interest rate in 2018, hoping to manage interest rate increases so that wage growth outpaces inflationary growth in the prices of commodities and consumables.
For savers, it means they finally see a positive return on their investments. For those with high levels of debt, it means even more of their paycheck going to pay off interest on loans and credit card balances. According to Bankrate, the average annual rate for new credit cards is up about 1% over last year, to 16.4%.
These dynamics have a direct impact on businesses as well, who live and die based on how well they understand consumers. They must find a way to offset higher prices for their raw materials and labor without losing customers, an inevitable result of increasing prices.
That’s why for years food manufacturers have responded to the dilemma by simply taking advantage of consumers’ inattention to detail. That bag of Doritos you buy now has a lot more air and 20% less chips, and that half gallon of Breyer’s ice cream is now just 1.5 quarts … but you’re still paying the same price.
Consumers will almost always notice the higher price, but far fewer recognize the smaller quantities, especially when rolled out in new packaging.
Of course, this would be a moot point had we followed the wisdom of our Founding Fathers. Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton (before he became famous to Millennials as a Broadway rapper) all preached mightily against the dangers of paper money. Said Jefferson, “Paper is poverty. … It is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.” He also declared that paper money’s “abuses also are inevitable and, by breaking up the measure of value, make a lottery of all private property.”
In 1933, Democrat Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, essentially banning private citizens from holding gold. In 1971, Republican Richard Nixon severed the link between gold and the U.S. dollar, resulting in a massive expansion of the M3 money supply from $688.4 billion in 1971, to $10.3 trillion in 2006, at which point the Federal Reserve stopped publishing that number. Gee… we can’t imagine why.
When the value of money is determined by fiat instead of an objective standard, and when the government then floods the market with that money, inflation happens. And it happens either by prices rising due to lower monetary value, or because companies shrink what they’re giving you for the same price. Either way, a dollar goes a lot less far than it used to. ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/54347-as-trump-economy-surges-the-new-challenge-is-inflation
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