In January 2023, President Biden pledged he would not negotiate with the incoming Republican-controlled House of Representatives over the U.S. government’s statutory debt ceiling.
In a 9-0 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the property of Chantell and Mike Sackett is not the waterways of the United States containing wetlands protected by the Clean Water Act of 1972. The Idaho couple’s property, where they prepared to build a home, was near a ditch that fed into Priest Lake. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) demanded that the Sacketts restore the site, threatening to fine them $40,000 per day. The Sacketts contended that their property was not the waterways of the United States (WOTUS). In their 9-0 ruling on May 25, the court agreed. Joe Biden didn’t like it.
If one needed any more proof that rent control laws suppress investment in new housing, then it is not necessary to look any further than this recent survey from the National Apartment Association. They found that “Over 70% of housing providers say rent control impacts their investment and development plans; actions include reducing investments, shifting plans to other markets, and canceling plans altogether.”
The Biden administration threatens to invoke Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment to sidestep the longstanding federal debt ceiling in a way that would increase the power of the executive branch. Although largely responsible for the modern debt ceiling, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) would be proud. A US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case decided in FDR’s first term in office, Perry v. United States (294 U.S. 330, 1935), nevertheless brings Biden’s position into serious question.
How secure is your DNA? Even if you have never purchased an ancestry kit, your identity can easily be traced through the DNA samples of your relatives.
“More Americans benefit from public expenditures than pay income taxes,” contends Adam Mill at American Greatness, a trend accelerated by the response to COVID-19. The real national emergency is a system that “encourages people to underachieve and indulge indolence,” Mill advances a solution: you pay no taxes until you turn 30.
A raging debate is taking place in many countries about central banks, perceived by many as responsible for inflation and other monetary dislocations that are hurting ordinary folks. The United States is one of them, but there are many more. In Argentina, one of the countries with the highest price inflation, an outsider has gained traction in the polls by, among other things, promising to abolish the central bank and adopt the U.S. dollar as the national currency if he wins this year’s elections.
Although the debt ceiling debates, like the one currently taking place in Washington D.C., are nothing new, there is something unique about this one that makes it more of a cause for concern than the ones that came before.
The Federal Reserve has set a 2% target for inflation, which, if hit, would result in prices doubling in about 36 years. Is this the “best” inflation rate in some sense?
“First Republic Seized, Sold to JPMorgan,” reads the headline on page A1 of May 2’s Wall Street Journal. First Republic’s collapse—the second largest bank failure in U.S. history, according to the story’s authors, Rachel Louise Ensign and Ben Eisen—quickly lost half of its deposits ($100 billion) in the wake of the unraveling of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March.
