The Week in Economics and Finance

The Treasury Department sold 20 year debt earlier in the week in a modestly successful auction, with good demand and an interest rate right around what was expected.  But again, this was a relatively small auction.  It appears that Treasury is trying to minimize the size of longer-term auctions to avoid bad results, but they can only do this for so long, and it means more short-term debt, which is carrying a higher interest rate and has to be rolled over fairly quickly.  The Federal Reserve meeting suggested interest rate cuts are still coming this year, but it is clear that inflation not only isn’t conquered but may be on the upswing again.  The Federal Reserve claims it isn’t political, but generally speaking it seems to act in ways that enhance the ability of the current regime to stay in power.

Meanwhile Congress continues with massive deficit spending, much of it completely wasteful.  Earmarks are back in style, including one to help pay for transgender nonsense being pimped to children by the pathetic Sen. Baldwin from Wisconsin.  And while private sector workers struggle to see wages keep up with rising costs of necessities like food, electricity, shelter, cars, medical care; government workers are getting huge pay increases.  This chart has been posted in numerous places but see this post to get some details on how much the gap has grown.  Not only do these generally incompetent and unproductive Dem party operatives (and the federal workforce is 90% Dems) get paid more, they get better benefits as well.  (ZH Post)  The obvious solution is to fire at least half of them and to enact a law saying that no government employee at any level can get higher pay or better benefits than the average of what the same occupation gets in the private sector.

And people who think the renewable energy scam will result in lower prices or reliable power need to look only at California.  Already with the highest prices in the country, by far, the renewable fantasy is requiring huge amounts of spending that will cause these already high bills to double or triple.  Here is an excellent explanation of what a disaster the state is and will become.   Minnesota is heading down the same road as fast as it can, facilitated by the usual lies from the world’s biggest and proudest liar, Little (Fat) Timmy Walz.  The poor get hit the worst, of course, and people are fleeing California and Minnesota as fast as they can.   (Bryce Substack) 

And finally, our friends at Zero Hedge point out the laughable economic projections from the Federal Reserve, the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Budget Management.  All of them are projecting steady economic growth, low unemployment and inflation, and somewhat moderating interest rates, with no recession in the next ten years.  This is simply delusional and facilitates Congress’ failure to address the spending issues that are the root cause of the financial mess.

Sorry to bring such sorrowful news at the end of the week, but the reality is we are in a slowly unfolding, irreversible macro-economic disaster, and all the pumped up “growth” from excessive federal spending is only going to make the end result worse.  (ZH Post)