Tag Archives: jobs

The Fed and Social Engineering

Posted on by
Reply

President Joe Biden (D) wants our Federal Reserve System to engage in economic social engineering, so he’s nominating as the Fed’s banking supervisor the climate activist Sarah Bloom Raskin. Among her lately remarks concerning credit allocation and climate change was her last-spring op-ed in The New York Times. She led off that piece with this:

Climate change poses the next big threat. Ignoring it, particularly to the benefit of fossil fuel interests, is a risk we can’t afford.

She had this, too, in the same piece:

The Fed is singularly poised to seed strategic investments in future economic stability.

And this:

The decision to bring oil and gas into the Fed’s investment portfolio not only misdirects limited recovery resources but also sends a false price signal to investors about where capital needs to be allocated[.]

Raskin had this in her September 2020 Project Syndicate op-ed, reprinted by Duke Law:

US regulators need to be encouraged to think more imaginatively about how they can engage with local transition efforts. For example, how might financial policies from diverse agencies be stitched together to produce outcomes that enable firms to hit their net-zero targets? How can financial policy be used to help accelerate a transition that redeploys workers for new jobs, or to assist households that are being asked to change their spending habits? And how can regulatory changes relating to disclosure, access to credit, and pricing of risk support a rapid and just green transition?
…
In short…[f]inancial regulators must reimagine their own role so that they can play their part in the broader reimagining of the economy.

That’s not the Federal Reserve’s role, though. The Fed’s statutorily required goals are to maximize employment, stabilize prices, and moderate long-term interest rates. There’s nothing in there about climate change, or “guiding” lending to this or that government-favored group of Americans and away from that or this government-disfavored group of Americans, or any other sort of social engineering.

One more thing. Aside from Raskin’s own altered-state understanding of the Fed, a larger problem regards the present administration’s overall attitude. That Biden-Harris actually nominated Raskin says volumes about his own view of law and his own willingness to disregard it in order to increase his administration’s power.

Out of Touch?

Posted on by
Reply

Or openly lying?

Small businesses are booming, according to the Biden-Harris administration.

President Biden’s efforts have not only helped millions of Main Street businesses keep their lights on and employees on payroll, they have enabled a remarkable rebound in small business activity, with small business demand for labor and inventories near record highs.

And

According to a leading survey of small business owners, the share of small businesses planning to create new jobs in the next three months is higher than it ever was at any point during the previous Administration. Another recent survey of small business owners found that 71 percent are optimistic about their own performance in 2022, up from 63 percent one year ago.

Carefully unidentified surveys. An openly identified survey, a Goldman Sachs survey, says otherwise.

86% of small business owners say that broader economic trends, such as supply chain issues, inflation, and workforce challenges, are having a negative impact on their small businesses

And

66% of impacted businesses say it is a problem for their business that suppliers are favoring large businesses over small businesses….

And

84% of small business owners say inflationary pressures have increased since September of 2021

And

Two-thirds of small business owners do not think the Federal government has done enough to address the economic trends

And

29% [of small business owners] think things in the US are moving in the right direction, reflecting a 38% decline since June of 2021.

That should be an embarrassing disconnect for the Biden-Harris administration, which makes me repeat my question: are the personages in this administration, from Biden-Harris on down, that far out of touch, or are they openly lying to us?

Either way, this is an incompetent administration, and it’s going to be a dangerous three years, domestically as well as globally.

Union Failure

Posted on by
Reply

The Chicago Teachers Union has decided—carefully at the last minute—to not report for work for in-person teaching. They’ve decided to reimpose remote “learning” protocols out of their fear (or so they claim) of the Omicron variant of the Wuhan Virus. And this time it’s not just union management making the decision, it’s the rank and file:

The vote was approved by 73% of the union’s members, calling for no in-class learning until “cases substantially subside” or union leaders approve an agreement for safety protocols with the district.

School district leaders—even Mayor Lori Lightfoot—are terming the CTU’s job action a “walkout” and an “illegal work stoppage.” They’re right, and the CTU needs to be decertified and the teachers who won’t teach fired for cause (which would deny them unemployment benefits, even in Illinois). Let these…persons…refuse to work on someone else’s payroll. Allocate the funds presently sent to the schools closed by this union job action instead be used for vouchers for the parents to use to send their children to other schools and to generate additional voucher and charter schools in the city.

But the CTU’s misbehavior goes far beyond this. During and after the last bout of “remote learning,” it became clear that the practice severely damages children’s social development and their mental health. With this knowledge widespread, it’s now clear that the CTU is actively engaging in child abuse, and the union managers, along with the business that is the CTU, should be prosecuted accordingly.

There’s no excuse for this.

Jobs and Unemployment

Posted on by
Reply

Good times ahead in the working stiff department. Or are there?

The Labor Department’s latest employment report, to be released Friday, is projected to show employers added 405,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%, according to economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal.

4.1%: based on what labor force participation rate? That projection is left unreported, even though it’s a Critical Item in calculating the unemployment rate.

We’ll have to wait a couple of days to find out.

A Union Strikes

Posted on by
Reply

Buzzfeed News has been struck by the union that organized many of its workers.

“BuzzFeed won’t budge on critical issues like wages—all while preparing to go public and make executives even richer,” the union said… “There is no BuzzFeed News without us, and we’re walking out today to remind management of that fact,” the union said.

Another way of saying the same thing, without changing a minim of meaning is this:

“The union won’t budge on critical issues like wages—all while the company is preparing to go public and make the company and its employees even more prosperous. There is no BuzzFeed News without us, and we’re walking out today to remind management of that fact and to pay the vig. Be too bad if something was to happen to that nice company.”