Real GDP 2007-2023, 16 years, compound annual growth rate: 1.905%.
All the other years, 1929-2007: 3.448%.
We're behind that by almost 45%.
Compare the 16 years of The Great Depression and WWII, 1929-1945: 4.743%.
Or the 16 years prior to The Great Recession, 1991-2007: 3.253%.
This is bad, but you knew that.
Gold raced past the $2,700 mark for the first time on Friday . . .. Spot gold rose 0.7% to $2,711.75 per ounce, having hit an all-time high of $2,714.00 earlier in the session. Bullion has gained over 2% so far this week. U.S. gold futures gained 0.7% to $2,726.90.
More.
Updated:
Spot gold was up 1% at $2,720.05 per ounce by 02:58 p.m. ET (1858 GMT) and has risen 2.4% so far this week.
U.S. gold futures settled 0.8% higher to $2,730.
Kamala Harris famously warned Israel of consequences from the US in March if Israel went into Rafah.
It's great to be a College Democrat.
CNN reports that if your home was destroyed in the hurricane your "current maximum amount for home repair assistance, for example, is $42,500."
What was that about equity, Kamala Harris?
President Joe Biden, who has forgiven more education debt than any other president in U.S history, said that the number of borrowers to benefit from the program under his administration now exceeded 1 million. ...
The average student loan balance forgiven under PSLF is around $70,000, according to a rough estimate by higher education expert Mark Kantowitz.
Gold hits record highs on US election uncertainty, more policy easing
Gold prices hit record highs on Thursday as uncertainty surrounding the U.S. presidential elections and the war in the Middle East prompted investors to seek out the safe-haven asset, while easing monetary policy environment kept prices elevated.
Spot gold last rose 0.83% to $2,695.39 per ounce. U.S. gold futures gained 0.75% to $2,711.40.
Gold has seen a surge of over 30% this year, surpassing record levels, driven by prospects of further Federal Reserve rate cuts after a half percentage point rate cut last month and ongoing geopolitical uncertainties.
Reported on Friday, October 11th, 2024:
The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults. The Bureau – which has been at the center of partisan storms – made no mention of these revisions in its September 2024 press release. ...
It’s been over three weeks since the FBI released the revised data. The Bureau’s lack of acknowledgment or explanation about the significant change concerns researchers. ...
The updated data for 2022 report that there were 80,029 more violent crimes than in 2021. There were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies, and 37,091 aggravated assaults. The question naturally arises: should the FBI’s 2023 numbers be believed? ...
While the FBI claims that serious violent crime has fallen by 5.8% since Biden took office, the NCVS numbers [from the U.S. Department of Justice] show that total violent crime has risen by 55.4%. Rapes are up by 42%, robbery by 63%, and aggravated assault by 55% during Biden’s term. Since the NCVS started, the largest previous increase over three years was 27% in 2006, so the increase under Biden was slightly more than twice as large. ...
At the beginning of this year, the media was running headlines like National Public Radio’s: “Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don’t believe it.” “At some point in 2022 … there was just a tipping point where violence started to fall and it just continued to fall,” NPR claimed. But now the FBI has itself admitted its violent crime numbers were way off. ...
A Gallup survey late last year found that 92% of Republicans and 58% of Democrats thought crime was increasing. A February Rasmussen Reports survey found that, by a 4.7-to-1 margin, likely voters say violent crime in the U.S. is getting worse (61%), not better (13%). A Gallup poll found in March that “crime and violence” was Americans’ second biggest concern, after inflation. But the media and politicians used the inaccurate FBI data to try to convince people that they were wrong.
Read the full story here.
Mexico is struggling to stamp out a homophobic soccer chant ahead of the World Cup
GUADALAJARA, México (AP) — Guadalajara is the capital of a Mexican state that is home to tequila and Mariachi music. It is also considered the birthplace of a less flattering tradition – a homophobic soccer chant that has cost Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines over the past two decades.
It’s no wild guess that the chant, a one-word slur which literally means male prostitute in Spanish, will be heard from the crowd in Guadalajara’s Akron stadium when Mexico hosts the United States in a friendly on Tuesday. Multiple sanctions from FIFA and campaigns by Mexican soccer officials to educate fans have not been able to stamp it out. ...
“You should be really prepared to look at a serious fine or be charged with a crime,” Harris said in November 2019 when a South Carolina town hall attendee asked whether she would investigate companies such as Chevron and Shell for their role in contributing to climate change. ...
“And, not unlike the tobacco companies, after years — ’cause they’d done the research — they knew the harm that their product was causing. They were making so much money that they kept that secret — same thing with these big oil companies. And they need to pay the price,” she said. “So yes is the answer.” Harris made a similar promise when speaking with the liberal Mother Jones magazine a month earlier, saying, “Let’s get them not only in the pocketbook, but let’s make sure there are severe and serious penalties for their behaviors.” ...
Campaigning in Philadelphia last month, Harris pointed to the Biden administration’s record on increasing domestic oil production, telling voters, “We have had the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot over rely on foreign oil.” ...
Archived material from Harris’s 2020 campaign found more than a dozen mentions of prosecuting Big Oil either for pollution or climate change. Citing climate change as an urgent threat, Harris said aggressive action was imminently needed. ...
During a CNN town hall on climate change in 2019, asked whether she would sue ExxonMobil, Harris responded, “I have sued ExxonMobil.”
However, this claim was incorrect. While Harris did initiate an investigation into ExxonMobil for allegedly misleading the public and shareholders about the risks of climate change, she never filed a lawsuit against the company.
CNBC doesn't even hide the fact.
The Biden-Harris administration announced plans Tuesday to provide up to $750 million in direct funding to Wolfspeed, with the money supporting its new silicon carbide factory in North Carolina that makes the wafers used in advanced computer chips and its factory in Marcy, New York.
Wolfspeed’s use of silicon carbide enables the computer chips used in electric vehicles and other advanced technologies to be more efficient. The North Carolina-based company’s two projects are estimated to create 2,000 manufacturing jobs as part of a more than $6 billion expansion plan. ...
The new Wolfspeed facility in Siler City could be a critical symbol in this year’s election, as it opened earlier this year in a swing state county that is undergoing rapid economic expansion in large part due to incentives provided by the Biden-Harris administration. ...
Wolfspeed CEO Gregg Lowe told The Associated Press that the United States currently produces 70% of the world’s silicon carbide — and that the investments will help the country preserve its lead as China ramps up efforts in the sector.
Lowe said “we’re very happy with this grant” and that the Commerce Department staff awarding funds from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act was “terrific.”
In Cooke's telling, the three constitute a "trilogy", which is about as implausible as it is witless.
The dismissive spleen is the point of all this, because no one listens to National Review anymore. "We are the arbiters, dammit", and Kamala Harris Is An Idiot.
On the contrary, Harris is a left wing, doctrinaire ideologue, who knows her creed but clearly isn't a theoretician. On the rare occasions when she has been confronted about its content, or with deviations from that creed, she has simply reasserted it in its defense, or stressed her good intentions, eschewing reason, like any good dyed in the wool Christian would quote from the catechism, not write a new one, and stress that you too can be saved. Join us joyful followers!
It is the primary reason that her campaign representatives are tasked with saying that her well known leftist positions are old hat, from 2019, burbling something about that was then, this is the new Kamala. Maintaining silence from her is the point, and all the true believers know she hasn't changed one whit. She knows it and they know it.
Her leftism must be shielded from public view.
Lying is the modus operandi of leftism. The media, who are all on her side to one degree or another, are thus tasked with not asking any uncomfortable questions, and are practiced in the art of lying by omission. They don't probe their candidate too deeply, while it's open season on the other side.
So no, Kamala isn't simply an idiot, any more than Joe Biden is simply an asshole, or Donald Trump simply a lunatic. This "idiot" still has a very good chance of winning, which says more about the country than it does about her.
These Cooke eruptions meanwhile are Papal Bans from the Church of National Review, which is one thing which hasn't changed much since the days when William F. Buckley Jr. founded the magazine, except in their effectiveness. NR is nothing if not an excommunication machine.
Against this NeverTrump catechist, Mr. Cooke, however, because that is who he is, one commenter actually broke through and nailed some theses on his Wittenberg door for a change.
One loves to see it.
