President Joe Biden released his 2022 budget this week. The $6 trillion spending plan offers a glimpse into Biden’s long-term fiscal strategy – borrow and spend to infinity and beyond.
The Biden budget would take the US to its highest sustained spending levels since World War II.
And here you thought the pandemic emergency was winding down and spending would go back to normal. Well apparently, this is the new normal.
As a dad, I have to confess to delivering my fair share of dad jokes. You know what I mean, right? I’m talking about those jokes that make the kids’ eyes roll into the back of their heads and elicit groans from the wife.
Let’s be honest; dad isn’t funny. And that’s what makes dad jokes so funny.
So to kick off your weekend, I bring you some dad jokes related to gold I plucked off the interwebs.
So, last Monday was tax day.
Ouch!
I don’t know about you, but I had to write a big check. But I took solace in the fact that I’m helping create a more civilized society!
America’s labor market is a mess and riddled with incongruency.
On the one hand, businesses can’t find workers. Help wanted signs hang in windows across the country. A McDonald’s franchisee in Tampa is offering bonuses just for showing up for an interview.
Meanwhile, unemployment just ticked up to 6.1%.
In what kind of world does this make sense?
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sent markets into a tizzy on Tuesday when she said interest rates may have to rise to keep the economy from overheating with all the government stimulus. But later in the day, she walked those comments back, claiming inflation isn’t going to be a problem and insisting that she wasn’t suggesting or predicting rate hikes.
Yellen’s flipflop is telling. Even if inflation is an issue (and it is), there isn’t a darn thing the Federal Reserve can do about it.
The Federal Reserve wrapped up its April meeting yesterday. Again, there were no changes in actual policy, leaving everybody to try to parse out meaning from the FOMC’s statement and Jerome Powell’s post-meeting press conference.
When you boil it all down, it was pretty much the same song and dance from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
Through the first six months of fiscal 2021, the US government ran a record $1.7 trillion budget deficit. And there is no end in sight to the borrowing and spending. Just last month, the national debt eclipsed $28 trillion for the first time. But it’s even worse than that.
A lot worse.
The other day a friend of mine asked me, tacos or burritos?
My response: why not both?
Through the first six months of fiscal 2021, the US government ran a record $1.7 trillion budget deficit. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said this is sustainable – for now.
During a webinar sponsored by the Economic Club of Washington DC, Powell said the economy can handle the current debt load. But he did warn that the long-term trajectory of the US budget is unsustainable.
Unemployment is at 6%. Tens of thousands of people apply for unemployment every week (744,000 last week alone). The US government is spending trillions of dollars to “stimulate” the economy. But restaurants in northeast Florida can’t find enough workers to open every day.
Does this sound a nutty to you as it does to me?
