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FNC’s Carlson: Biden Economic Policy Giving Big Business Advantage, Will Force Small Businesses to Go Under

JEFF POOR

8 May 2021141

11:36

Friday on FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson reacted to the “bizarre” circumstances of the U.S. economy, including a lackluster jobs report for April that came out on Friday.

Carlson speculated that as the federal government is paying out so-called stimulus benefits, there is a shortage in the labor market, forcing wages to increase. However, he said if that continued to be the case, it would be a net benefit for big companies that can absorb the added cost of paying higher wages.

Transcript as follows:

CARLSON: So what would happen if you gave a group of angry ignorant ideologues, the same people who tell you that all lives don’t matter? What would happen if you gave them the keys to the U.S. economy? We don’t need to guess about that, we are finding out now because all around us, there are signs that under this White House, things are getting dangerously flaky in our economy.

Here’s one example.

The official government jobs numbers came out today. Unemployment is up, far higher than expected. Close to 14 million Americans say they want to work but cannot find a job. That’s an old story. Here’s the new twist.

At the very moment that unemployment is rising, fewer people are working, American businesses say they can’t find employees and it is obvious they can’t, go to the nearest strip mall and count the “Help Wanted” signs on the doors. They’re everywhere.

Restaurants are closing because they can’t find anyone to hire or manufacturing plants. That means American now has far too many workers, but simultaneously, far too few workers. How can that be?

Another question: what happened to all the consumer products? Many of the things that you buy and need to buy are more expensive than they’ve ever been. Inflation is real, it’s galloping. Yet at the same time, a lot of products seem to have gone missing completely.

The United States is currently experiencing shortages of chicken, generators, roofing materials, lumber, ketchup, bicycles, diapers, ammunition, automobiles, plastics, appliances, chlorine, pork, propane tanks, among many other things.

Keep in mind, this is peacetime. We haven’t mobilized for a foreign war. Yet, we’re now getting reports that we should brace for a gas shortage this summer. Why is this all happening? Well, because things are so great in the economy. That’s what they’re telling us on television.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This week, there were more signs that the U.S. economy is roaring back to life and they come as President Biden is proposing trillions of dollars in new government spending.

JILL SCHLESINGER, CBS NEWS BUSINESS ANALYST: It’s really good news, this week, we found out that in the first quarter of this year, the economy expanded at a 6.4 percent annualized rate. That is huge.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Could we see a great economy and a lousy return for the stock market?

KATIE KOCH, GOLDMAN SACHS ASSET MANAGEMENT: I think the good news for everybody is that we’re actually probably going to see both, that we’re going to continue to see a strong economy and we also are set up actually for some great equity market returns here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: There’s an awful lot of lying in financial journalism. No one ever says that, but it is self-evident.

But they are telling us things are great. Why are they telling us that? Well, because the stock market is way, way up. Could it be overvalued? I don’t know. Take a look at those price-to-earnings ratios. Can they continue? Is that reality-based? Should we be worried?

Oh, just relax, but be sure to stock up on gasoline and diapers if you can. We could be looking at Soviet grocery shelves soon.

And whatever you do, keep ignoring the inflation right in front of you. Oil prices, for example, they’ve risen 12 percent in a single month. Steel prices have tripled since last year, chicken breast prices have doubled just since Biden became President.

The price of eggs has increased by almost five percent. Major appliances up almost 15. Ground beef and fresh fruits both up almost six percent. The median sales price of existing-home sales shot up by 16 percent.

And then there’s lumber. Have you noticed lumber? Since last year, the price of dimensional lumber has gone up by almost 300 percent. Want a thousand board feet? That’ll cost you $1,359.00. That price has never been higher.

According to the National Association of Homebuilders, the cost of building materials adds more than $35,000.00 to the price of an average new home. Why is this happening? Well, there’s too much cash in the system. That’s a big reason for it.

When you print too much fake money, the value of that money declines. People start to figure out that it’s not real and you get inflation. That’s always true. No one disputes it.

The White House just doesn’t care. Here’s the new Treasury Secretary telling you not to worry about inflation because it’s not a concern.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JANET YELLEN, U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY: And I think the economy is going to get back on track. I don’t anticipate that inflation is going to be a problem. But it is something that we’re watching very carefully.

I don’t think there’s going to be an inflationary problem.

You know, President Biden has also proposed further substantial spending packages we would love to see enacted into law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh, so just keep spending trillions of made-up dollars to pay off your political constituencies because there won’t be an inflationary problem. Right. Thanks, genius. How’d you get the job anyway?

They’re hoping you won’t notice you can’t afford anything anymore. You’ll be too distracted by the fact that you don’t have electricity.

“The Sacramento Bee” reported a few days ago that California energy officials quote, ” … can’t promise they’ll be able to keep the lights on this summer.” Oh, no lights in your home. Big deal. Just use candles and dig a pit latrine.

Meanwhile, in Texas, which is supposed to be saying that, they always say they are, “The Dallas Morning News” is telling us that, quote, “inefficient homes” are to blame for the state’s massive power outages this winter. So, it was your fault the power went out. You have the wrong kind of house.

It definitely was not the fault of stupid and corrupt renewable energy schemes, the ones that were forced the entire state to roll in and windmills, which froze when it got cold. No, it wasn’t their fault, it was your fault. Your house did it, so get a better house. Too bad lumber is so expensive.

But the question is, even if you can afford the lumber, who’s going to do the construction? As we said, in the middle of rising unemployment, somehow we don’t have enough workers.

There is, they keep telling us in Washington, a labor shortage and that presumably is why we need to open the borders and let in millions of new foreign workers immediately.

So what is going on here? Probably a lot of things; it is a huge country and a pretty complicated country, but here’s one reason behind what we’re seeing. The government is paying people to stay home. Thanks to Joe Biden’s $2 trillion Coronavirus Relief Bill everything, by the way, done on the justification of the pandemic, some people in this country are getting checks for up to $700.00 a month not to work.

This is true across the country, even in Louisiana, and that’s the state with the lowest weekly unemployment benefits, you can still make almost 500 bucks a week for not working. For a 40-hour workweek that works out to about 12 bucks an hour, a little more actually. That’s above the minimum wage.

In the states with the highest unemployment assistance, you can be making close to $20.00 an hour for not working. And we’re not attacking anyone or calling anyone lazy, it is pretty easy to see why people aren’t working. They’re not nuts. They’re rational.

So no wonder the economy is sputtering in bizarre ways. America created just 266,000 jobs last month, that’s in a nation of 350 million people. Economists, the people who predict these things very often incorrectly were expecting four times that number. The result, the unemployment numbers were so shockingly bad that even CNBC didn’t believe them at first, they had to double-check those numbers on the air.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks like 266,000. It looks like it was a big disappointment at 266, but maybe I have that wrong. Let me double-check the bureau website here. One second. Yes, 266 is correct. Unemployment change, a little change, it is 6.1 percent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So there’s not, to restate, an actual shortage of American workers, citizens who could fill jobs. They’re just telling you that so they can justify opening the borders and changing the electorate, so they never lose another election, and no one ever takes their power away.

But that’s not true. What is true once again, is that the government is paying people more not to work than to work, and so why would they work? Would you?

The question is, what do you do if you’re an employer and at some point when we devalue the currency so completely that printing more dollars won’t help, we are going to need actual employers in this country, and what do they do?

Well, a reporter called Nate Doughty, at The Pittsburgh Business Times looked into this question. He talked to businesses around Pittsburgh that had managed to hire people. How do they do it? What was their secret? Well, they just had to double the wages.

A place called Klavon’s Ice Cream Parlor had been around since 1923, hiked it starting wage from $7.25 to 15 bucks an hour. They more than doubled it; a nearby Sports Bar now guarantees waiters and bartenders 20 bucks an hour. That’s happening in a ton of places around the country.

And big companies, needless to say, could compete more effectively because they have more money.

A Burger King in Washington, Pennsylvania is offering a $1,500 bonus to new workers. A McDonald’s in Florida is giving people 50 bucks just for showing up to a job interview. A company called Sisu Energy in Texas is offering new truck drivers $14,000 a week.

Walmart, the largest private employer in the United States has raised wages for nearly half a million employees in February. The company’s average wages now over 15 bucks an hour.

In some ways, that is good news. You want to see people make more. Of course, you want dollars to be worth more and now they’re worth less.

But there are effects of this that we could be living with for a long time. There are millions of small businesses that cannot afford to compete, they’re not Walmart, and many of them will go under, because of the pressure applied by the U.S. government on the labor market.

And when those small businesses do go under, what will be left? Amazon.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

No Labor Shortage: 16.4M Americans Remain Jobless But Want a Full-Time Job

Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

JOHN BINDER

7 May 202152

3:53

Despite efforts by President Joe Biden’s administration to pack the United States workforce with more foreign labor, there remain about 16.4 million Americans who are jobless but want a full-time job and millions more who are underemployed.

In April, 9.8 million Americans were unemployed. About 12.3 percent of those unemployed were teenagers who are most likely to take minimum wage, entry-level work. In addition, about 9.7 percent of those unemployed are black Americans, while 7.9 percent are Hispanics, 5.7 percent are Asian Americans, and 5.3 percent are white Americans.

Similarly, 6.6 million Americans were not in the labor force, all of whom want a full-time job. These Americans include 1.9 million who are classified as “marginally attached to the labor force” because they had looked for a job in the last 12 months but had not looked in the last four weeks.

About 565,000 Americans who are out of the labor force are considered “discouraged workers” because they do not believe that there are jobs available for them.

In addition to those millions of jobless Americans, about 5.2 million Americans remain underemployed. These Americans are working part-time jobs but want full-time employment with good wages and competitive benefits.

The nation’s actual labor shortage is being spurred by ongoing increased unemployment benefits, not a shortage of available Americans who can fill jobs, according to Breitbart News Economics Editor John Carney:

That’s because many business owners believe that enhanced unemployment benefits, which pay an extra $300 per week, are creating a labor shortage. But that labor shortage is likely to be temporary because the American Rescue Act, passed in March, extended the enhanced benefits only through September.

That means that it is likely that in just a few months, there will be millions of more Americans willing to work for less than they will work for today.

It’s not people do not want to work or do not understand that in the long-run they are better off employed than on the dole. It’s just that right now, the enhanced unemployment benefits pay so much that workers rationally choose to take the higher income for a few more months, quite reasonably expecting they will be able to find work when the enhancement expires.

The jobless totals come as Biden, cheered on by a lobbying campaign by former President George W. Bush, has implemented an immigration agenda that seeks to pack the labor market with as many foreign workers, whether illegally in the U.S. or legally on visas, as possible.

For example, tens of thousands of border crossers have been released into the U.S. interior since Biden took office, the overwhelming majority of which are provided with one-year work permits.

Biden has also restarted a number of legal immigration pipelines that funnel a continuous flow of foreign workers into U.S. jobs. For instance, Biden ended a travel ban for countries deemed state sponsors of terrorism, ended a halt on a number of green card categories. He restarted a series of work visa programs, and most recently he vowed to bring up to 62,500 refugees to the U.S.

Likely voters, meanwhile, have continued to oppose businesses importing foreign workers rather than hiring unemployed Americans. The latest Rasmussen Reports survey shows that 64 percent of voters say businesses should entice Americans into available jobs rather than importing foreign workers and 60 percent say the labor market has enough skilled Americans to fill jobs.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here. 

Joe Biden Imports Replacement Migrants as Current Migrants Go Homeless

David McNew/Getty Images

NEIL MUNRO

8 May 2021107

6:53

President Joe Biden’s progressive deputies are spending $3 billion to help many poor migrants get into U.S. cities, even as other pro-migration groups complain that current illegal migrants are going homeless in those high-rent cities.

The New York Post reported May 7 on the commercial contracts, which help U.S. officials provide the migrants with aid and legal resources so they can stay in the United States:

The federal government has awarded about $3 billion in contracts to shelter unaccompanied illegal immigrant children since February, records show.

The Department of Health and Human Services awarded the three largest federal contracts, worth over $2 billion, to two private companies and one nonprofit — as record illegal immigration surges began overwhelming authorities at the southern border.

Meanwhile, the economic turmoil has pushed many Americans out of jobs, and sometimes, into opioids.

The disruption has had an outsize effect on the labor market for illegals, many of whom have been hired by low-wage employers in the very competitive food industry. “Activists and social workers in states like New York or California say more vulnerable immigrants, whom[sic] often don’t qualify for aid, are finding themselves without a home,” said a May 4 report May 4 by the Associated Press

The AP added:

In Los Angeles, The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights has seen a “significant increase” of calls to a hotline of assistance for immigrants over the last six months, said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, the spokesman for the organization. “We have seen an increase in calls from individuals living in the street, living in cars, living in garages or often living with friends in already overcrowded conditions,” said Cabrera.

“They don’t even have money to pay for their phone bills. This is why we are saying that one of the side effects of the COVID-19 (pandemic) is in fact a complete unraveling of the safety net for undocumented immigrants,” he added. “While other communities are receiving (financial) assistance, immigrants are receiving nothing, most of the time.”

More New York-based illegals are going homeless, AP added:

I have seen an increase of [the number of] encampments of immigrants experiencing homelessness in Queens. Each has five or six tents,” said Yessenia Benitez, a 30-year-old licensed clinical social worker who helps these groups.

DocumentedNY.com reported on homeless illegals on April 8:

Eduardo is surrounded by a pile of cans and the tent where he sleeps. He worked in a restaurant for five years before losing his job during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I still had money so I was able to last about two months in my apartment. Then the money finished,” Eduardo’s voice trailed off as the sun shone in his face, “I started living here and there.” As a homeless undocumented immigrant that originally came from Mexico, Eduardo did not receive any government assistance during the pandemic. After he was forced out of the room he was informally renting, he joined an encampment in Queens.

Eduardo, who declined to share his real name, is one of about thirty homeless people living in an encampment in a quiet alley in Elmhurst, Queens that’s dotted with tents.

The elites in many U.S. cities welcome illegal migrants as cheap labor for their service sectors, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

The migration “makes life easier for the elites of cities and relieves them of the necessity of [economic] reform because when [American] people leave, other [migrant] people move in,” he said.

New York leaders rely heavily on foreign migrants to support the city’s low-wage service sector — but many of the migrants have fled their jobs and housing because of China’s coronavirus disease.

On April 1, Joseph Salvo, New York City’s chief demographer, told the New York Times why the city of eight million needs new bodies to replace the legal and illegal migrants who exited the city:

In the pandemic, [migrants] are trying to make a living and coming home and living in close proximity to other people. And they work the cash-only jobs, service jobs, services in buildings, home health aides, that we start to lose. Our growth is going to depend on giving support to these immigrants, many of whom suffered and lost family members.

…

What we pray will happen is that the city will come back with a ferocity we have never seen in food, beverage, entertainment and hotels. All of that is going to come back. And hopefully the immigrant population will prosper because of that. That’s the key.

…

The city is 37 percent foreign-born, and if you add the next generation, it’s more than 50 percent. We have more than three million immigrants. The largest groups are from China, Dominican Republic and Mexico.

If Biden does not supply the city with a new wave of needy low-wage migrants, the city’s business and government leaders will have to reform their local economy so that it can attract young Americans from interior states with offers of higher wages, cheaper real estate, and better law enforcement.

But the inflow of illegals ensures that the city’s big-government party does not have to undertake these painful reforms, Krikorian said:

One of the advantages for the left of mass immigration is that it exacerbates the social problems that the left purports to have the solutions for. So more homelessness in a sense, is good [for the left] because it means that we need more government programs, more interventions, more social workers.

In April, New York’s government allocated $2.1 billion to help preserve its population of poor migrants. The payout of up to $15,600 per migrant helps the city elites to extract wealth and political power from economically pressured blue-collar and white-collar Americans.

“The city will rise — It will rise through the power of [foreign] immigration,” Salvo said.

Overall, Biden’s open-borders policy helps elites and investors hire servile migrants instead of outspoken Americans from poor states and regions, such as Sen. Joe Manchin’s West Virginia or Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky.

GOP politicians have noticed the widening wealth gap. “For states like mine, frequently, the sharper young people go off to school in the East and find where they came from a little too slow after that,” McConnell told the Washington Examiner April 29.

But GOP leaders have done little or nothing to stop the nation’s migration system from shifting wealth from interior GOP-led states to the Democrat-run coastal states.

Two more polls show the chaos of Joe Biden's half-open/half-closed border is damaging his ratings with independents & Latinos who recognize the harms.
GOP leaders are changing their talking points to maximize their gain from the progressives' ambition https://t.co/6xPvyCdevz

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) April 15, 2021

Joe Biden Defiant in Face of Grim Economic Report: ‘Our Economy is Moving in the Right Direction’

SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

CHARLIE SPIERING

7 May 20211,062

1:54

President Joe Biden was defiant in reaction to the grim jobs and unemployment report released Friday.

“Today there is more evidence that our economy is moving in the right direction, but it’s clear we have a long way to go,” he said.

The president dismissed media commentary pointing out the disparity between the estimated job creation numbers and the jobs actually created in April.

“Listening to commentators today as I was getting dressed, you might think that we should be disappointed,” Biden said with a chuckle.

Unemployment rose to 6.1 percent in April, the report noted, the first time unemployment increased since April 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic began. Although analysts had expected up to a million jobs created in April, only 266,000 jobs were actually reported.

Biden stressed that the report was actually good news.

“Quite frankly, we’re moving more rapidly than I thought we would,” he said, arguing he always felt the recovery would be a “marathon” not a “sprint.”

Republicans questioned Biden’s decision to send expanded $300 a week checks to unemployed Americans until September 2021, arguing it was keeping workers on the sidelines during the pandemic.

But Biden said the economic news only proved the checks were necessary

“This is progress,” Biden continued. “And it’s a testament to our new strategy of growing this economy from the bottom up and the middle out.”

Biden also defended his call for $6 trillion in spending and dramatic tax hikes on businesses and the wealthy to boost the economy.

“The American people are counting on us. So, let’s get it done,” he said.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Calls For End of Additional $300 Weekly Unemployment Benefits After Joe Biden’s Poor Jobs Report

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

WENDELL HUSEBO

7 May 20214

2:08

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce called on Congress Friday to terminate the additional $300 weekly unemployment benefits after Joe Biden’s poor April jobs report.

The Chamber’s Chief Policy Officer Neil Bradley stated in a release:

The disappointing jobs report makes it clear that paying people not to work is dampening what should be a stronger jobs market. We need a comprehensive approach to dealing with our workforce issues and the very real threat unfilled positions poses to our economic recovery from the pandemic. One step policymakers should take now is ending the $300 weekly supplemental unemployment benefit. Based on the Chamber’s analysis, the $300 benefit results in approximately one in four recipients taking home more in unemployment than they earned working.

Breitbart News’s John Carney reported that the April numbers could reflect less hiring by “enhanced unemployment benefits,” as numerous businesses say “they cannot hire enough workers to fill positions because of the government’s enhanced unemployment benefits program.”

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) echoed the Chamber’s concerns in a Thursday statement:

This labor shortage is being created in large part by the supplemental unemployment payments that the federal government provides claimants on top of their state unemployment benefits. What was intended to be a short-term financial assistance for the vulnerable and displaced during the height of the pandemic has turned into a dangerous federal entitlement, incentivizing and paying workers to stay at home rather than encouraging them to return to the workplace.

The reaction to the Chamber’s demand to end the extra weekly benefits of $300 varied on Twitter:

Carney also wrote, “the U.S. economy added just 266,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate ticked up to 6.1 percent, the Labor Department said in its monthly labor assessment Friday, smashing expectations.”

Carney: Why Businesses Might Not Raise Wages Despite Labor Shortage

Getty Images

JOHN CARNEY

7 May 20219

3:30

When businesses complain they cannot find enough workers to fill open positions, the standard response is that they should raise wages to make working for them more attractive.

That might not work now.

In fact, many employers are likely to hold off on wage hikes even if that means their payrolls expand more slowly than they would like.

That’s because many business owners believe that enhanced unemployment benefits, which pay an extra $300 per week, are creating a labor shortage. But that labor shortage is likely to be temporary because the American Rescue Act, passed in March, extended the enhanced benefits only through September.

That means that it is likely that in just a few months, there will be millions of more Americans willing to work for less than they will work for today.

It’s not people do not want to work or do not understand that in the long-run they are better off employed than on the dole. It’s just that right now, the enhanced unemployment benefits pay so much that workers rationally choose to take the higher income for a few more months, quite reasonably expecting they will be able to find work when the enhancement expires.

Jobless benefits in some states top $20 per hour. Indeed, in Washington state out-of-work residents can receive as much as $28 per hour. An employer seeking to get someone getting paid that much not to work not only has to offer more—she has to offer a lot more. Many people will quite rationally choose to not have to do any work at all for a few months while getting $17 per hour than work for $20 per hour. The enhancements have raised what economists call the “reservation wage”—the amount it takes to get someone to give up an hour of their leisure—beyond what many businesses can afford to pay.

Someone getting the maximum benefit in Iowa, for example, is receiving the equivalent of close to $20 per hour. That’s amounts to an annual salary of around $41,000. For a lot of people, that’s enough not just to get by but to live well. It’s $10,000 over the median income in Iowa. At that level of unemployed income, for many people the “reservation wage” becomes almost infinite. There’s almost nothing you can do to get someone getting that much money back to work—except lower the benefits.

Remember, ultimately what controls wages is the ability and willingness of consumers to pay for the final product, whether that is a car or a meal in a restaurant. If labor is so scarce that an employer would lose money hiring at the going rate, the job will remain vacant.

So why not raise wages temporarily to bring on new workers? That’s harder than it sounds. In the first place, many businesses cannot, as a practical matter, raise wages only for new workers. A pay hike to attract sidelined workers typically must be given to the entire payroll.

More importantly, wages are sticky. Employers find it very difficult to lower wages for workers. Doing so often prompts workers to leave for other jobs and can kill employee morale. That’s probably especially true if workers are hired at one wage in the spring and told in the fall that they’re getting a pay cut.

In other words, in a situation where the labor supply is temporarily and artificially depressed by government policy, many businesses will choose to wait it out rather than irrevocably raise labor costs.

The result is that enhanced jobless benefits are likely to depress employment without raising wages for workers.

 

Hence the Biden administration has moved to set up a state-sponsored industrial police force, based on the trade unions, to carry out an organised suppression of the working class in the interests of finance capital.

Rampant Wall Street speculation: The fever chart of a terminally diseased system

Nick Beams

10 hours ago

Over the past year, the global financial system, above all Wall Street, has been in the grip of a speculative mania, the like of which has never been seen before in economic history. Two questions therefore immediately arise: how has this situation come about and what are its implications?

In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to make its effects felt and workers undertook wildcat strikes and walkouts to demand health measures to protect their lives and those of their families, the financial markets plunged.

In this Oct. 14, 2020 file photo, pedestrians pass the New York Stock Exchange in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)

Wall Street was concerned that any effective health measures to contain the spread of the pandemic would result in a collapse in the bloated price of financial assets, above all stocks, that had been boosted by the trillions of dollars poured into the financial system by the US Federal Reserve and other central banks following the crash of 2008.

The US government and the Fed rode once again to the rescue of Wall Street. The Trump administration organised a multi-billion-dollar bailout of the corporations under the CARES Act while the Fed stepped in to provide trillions of dollars of support for all areas of the financial system, including for the first time the purchase of stocks.

Since then, on the back of this $4 trillion intervention and rising, as the Fed continues to purchase financial assets at the rate of more than $1.4 trillion a year, the world has seen an unprecedented orgy of financial speculation.

Wall Street’s main stock index, the S&P 500, has risen by some 88 percent since its March 2020 lows, reaching record highs on multiple occasions throughout the past year. Margin debt, used to finance the speculation in shares, has reached record levels, and the yield on the lowest-rated corporate junk bonds—barely one step away from default—has fallen to historic lows.

But the most egregious expression of the speculation has been the rise of the cryptocurrency market. Over the past year the most prominent cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has risen by 600 percent, rising from about $7,000 per bitcoin to $54,000, reaching a high of $65,000 in the middle of last month.

Last month Coinbase, a trading exchange for cryptocurrencies, launched itself on Wall Street with a floatation that put its market value at $85 billion, compared to its valuation of $8 billion in 2018, exceeding that of some of the world’s major banks and the valuation of the NASDAQ exchange on which it was launched.

However, in recent days, even the level of bitcoin speculation has been put in the shade by another cryptocurrency, Dogecoin.

It was created in 2013 as a joke. Whereas the promoters of Bitcoin insist that it has some intrinsic value because it may be used to organise financial transactions without the intervention of a bank or some other third party via a blockchain ledger system, no such claims are made for Dogecoin.

Despite being worthless, Dogecoin has risen in price 11,000 percent this year alone. This week its market value reached $87 billion compared to $315 million a year ago. And as one cryptocurrency enjoys a rapid rise, speculators start a search for the next “big thing.”

The Dogecoin phenomenon is not an isolated event. It seems to be an expression of what could be described as a new operating principle in the world of speculation—the more worthless the so-called asset, the higher its price.

A little sandwich shop in Paulsboro, New Jersey, with sales of just $13,976, has made financial news after it was revealed that its parent company, Hometown International, achieved a market valuation of $100 million last month. Two of its biggest shareholders are Duke and Vanderbilt universities.

The rise of Dogecoin also reveals the high-level intervention of hedge funds and other financial institutions seeking to take advantage of its price momentum.

Then there is the case of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These are images of pieces of art, a sports photo, or even a tweet—the first ever tweet issued by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey was sold as an NFT for $2.9 million—that are stored on a blockchain ledger. They are like a collector’s item but are not stored physically but digitally.

The class dynamics of this speculative orgy, fuelled by the endless supply of virtually free money by the Fed, are revealed in the escalation of the wealth of the world’s billionaires.

In the last year, as COVID-19 brought untold pain, suffering and economic distress for billions of the world’s people, the combined wealth of the global billionaires rose by 60 percent, from $8 trillion to $13.1 trillion. The number of billionaires rose by 660 to 2,775—the highest rate of increase and the largest number ever.

In the US, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have wealth of $177 billion and $151 billion respectively.

The speculative frenzy has extended into the broader economy. The prices of major industrial commodities, such as steel, lumber, copper, and soybeans, which feed into inflation for workers and consumers, are rapidly rising.

But the financial authorities, having created this frenzy by the endless outflow of cheap money since the crash of 2008 and the near collapse of March 2020, are caught in a trap of their own making. They fear that any move to try to bring it under control, with even a slight tightening of the financial spigots, will set off a financial crisis.

The extreme nervousness over such an outcome was revealed earlier this week when US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, a former Fed chief, raised the prospect that the central bank may have to tighten interest rates at some point. Almost immediately, fearing market reaction, she walked back the comment saying she was neither advocating nor predicting a rise in rates.

The incident has cast a revealing light on one of the most significant developments in the US—the open advocacy of unionisation of the workforce by the Biden administration.

Last month in an executive order, Biden created a “White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment” which includes as members Yellen, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The “empowerment” of government-sponsored unions takes place under the direction of cabinet officials responsible for military operations, economic policy and domestic repression.

The administration is fearful that the pent-up anger in the working class over the pandemic and the enrichment of the financial oligarchy at the expense of hundreds of thousands of lives, will be further fuelled by the escalation of inflation, leading to an uncontrolled eruption of the class struggle that will come into headlong conflict with the institutions of the capitalist state.

In times past, the Fed would have moved to contain such an upsurge by lifting interest rates and inducing a recession. But that road is now fraught with danger because even a relatively small increase threatens to bring down the speculative financial house of cards.

Hence the Biden administration has moved to set up a state-sponsored industrial police force, based on the trade unions, to carry out an organised suppression of the working class in the interests of finance capital.

The rampant speculation of the past year and the accelerated siphoning of wealth to the upper levels of society amid death and economic devastation must be the occasion for the drawing up by the working class of a balance sheet of the experiences through which it has passed.

There is no prospect for reform of the present capitalist socio-economic order towards meeting social need—the illusion peddled by the Democrats and their ardent supporters in the pseudo-left organisations. The past year has demonstrated that everything in society—including the very right to life itself—is subordinated to the insatiable demands of finance capital.

The present speculative bubble, like all others before it, is destined to burst. The financial oligarchs have already prepared their exit plans and golden parachutes as they have done in the past. The working class, however, has no escape. The collapse will bring an even greater economic disaster on top of what has already taken place.

The only viable, realistic solution to the terminal disease that has gripped the capitalist socio-economic order is the fight for a socialist program to wrest the commanding heights of the economy and its financial system out of the hands of the present-day ruling class and begin the economic reconstruction of society to meet social needs.

 There are about 10,000 people associated with MS-13 in the United States.... Joe Biden wants to know if they're registered to vote Democrat for more?

David Limbaugh: Time for 'Moderate' Dems to Stand Up to Biden at the Border

 By David Limbaugh | May 7, 2021 | 10:26am EDT

 

Migrants from Central America make a run for it after crossing into the United States from Mexico on April 29, 2021 near Yuma, Ariz. (Photo credit: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Everyone knows President Joe Biden ran as a moderate and is governing as a leftist radical, yet we see little evidence of Democrats, including the liberal media, breaking ranks from him. Why?

I've previously written about the lack of Democrats' dissent from their party's undeniable extremism and have always been met with the response that they don't dissent because there are no longer any moderate Democrats. Yet when I talk to my Democratic friends, they vehemently deny that they personally are extremists. Are they? Or might they just as well be?

Rank-and-file Democrats can no longer blame their rank partisanship and extremism on Donald Trump, who is no longer president. It's past time for them — and never-Trump Republicans, for that matter — to answer for Biden's disastrous policies.

Let's look at Biden's border debacle as one of many flagrant examples of raging Democratic and media hypocrisy, for they're giving Biden a complete pass and even defending him on the very policies for which they berated Trump.

Biden wholly owns this border train wreck, though he disingenuously continues to blame Trump. Trump's border policies were working. We had seen major progress in sealing the border; fewer migrants were entering the United States and cartels were being stymied. But Democrats, wedded to their open-borders agenda and their faux compassion for illegal immigrants, castigated Trump as a racist and particularly zeroed in on his allegedly inhumane treatment of children. Now the cartels are flourishing, and our borders are being overrun. And we know all the hyperventilating over the children had nothing to do with any genuine concern for them but with demonizing and defeating Trump — and cynically promoting Democrats' policies to flood the borders with future Democratic voters.

We know this because the Biden administration is doing nothing to address this growing and dangerously out-of-control border situation. This crisis is a direct result of Biden's virtual invitation to migrants to come on up, his promises of amnesty and welfare for illegals, and his emasculation of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Purely for appearances' sake, as we now know, Biden put Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of this crisis, and she has done nothing except cackle when asked about her progress.

Border crossings by migrant children are way up. Children are being held, and Democrats are supplying misleading photos to dupe the public. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar accused the Department of Homeland Security of trying to create the impression that the facility in Donna, Tex. was emptying out, when the youths held there were simply moved to a nearby location.

"All they're doing is, they're moving kids from one tent to the other and saying, 'Oh, they're not in the Border Patrol [custody],' but they're right next door," said Cuellar. This is a major scandal.

A few Democratic politicians are calling Biden out, but most Democratic officeholders, Democratic voters and liberal media outlets remain entirely silent or proactively deceitful about this travesty.

Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema met with the Arizona National Guard and reported that the federal government is not doing enough to deal with the issue. She joined Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) in sending a letter to Biden to support Gov. Doug Ducey's request that the government reimburse Arizona for its expenses in deploying the Guard. Ducey had said: "It's become evidently clear that Arizona needs the National Guard, and the White House is aware of that. Yet, to this day, there has been no action from this administration, and it doesn't look like they are going to act any time soon. If this administration isn't going to do anything, then we will."

Don't overlook those charges: The White House is aware but has taken no action and is unlikely to take action.

Let's review. Democrats and the media savaged President Trump for his inhumane treatment of children, using photos of kids in cages during the Obama administration, no less. The border situation under Biden is worse in every respect, from cartels to the inhumane treatment of migrant children to the border being overrun to illegal migrants being shipped all over the nation and in some cases becoming eligible for government handouts. But Biden denies the observable facts; his administration submits bogus photos to deceive the American people; he's ignoring border-state governors' requests for assistance; he pretends to empower Harris to address the problem and she does nothing; and the crisis continues to explode. Yet (most) Democrats and the media cover and thus enable this nightmare.

No self-respecting nation can long survive without protecting its borders, and yet one of our two major political parties and its media cohorts are deliberately fanning this dangerous flame in their quest for one-party rule. It would be bad enough if Democrats and the media were pursuing these abominable policies for misguided ideological reasons, but it's worse. This is about raw power and placing their party's interests above the national interest: They advocate open borders to paint themselves as loving and tolerant and tar Republicans as racists, and then they encourage millions of illegals to flood the borders to get sanctuary and welfare and be fast-tracked for amnesty — all to magically create millions of new Democratic voters.

Time for self-styled moderate Democrats to draw the line and prove me wrong.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is "Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win." Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com.

Will Biden Ignore Both Bishops and Pew Research on Border Crisis?

 By Bill Donohue | May 6, 2021 | 12:43pm EDT

 

President Joe Biden signs executive orders in the Oval Office. (Photo credit: JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

President Joe Biden is getting high marks for his overall performance, but if there is one issue that is dogging him, it is the crisis at the border. He even refuses to call it a crisis. Indeed, neither he nor his border-in-chief vice president has shown any interest in visiting the border. 

Two new surveys spell disaster for the president on this subject. The Pew Research Center poll found that almost 7 in 10 Americans say Biden is doing a bad job dealing with the increasing number of migrants who are crashing our border. Most want more staffing and resources made available to handle the throngs of people, often unaccompanied children, who are seeking asylum. The majority also favor improving the safety and sanitary conditions facing these people. 

The public knows that the situation is worse now than before. In fact, over the past year there has been a 20% increase in the share of Americans who say illegal immigration is a "very big" national problem. 

A poll by tippinsights (TIPP), commissioned by the National Sheriffs' Association, found that 55% of Americans think the border crisis is making matters worse for migrant women, many of whom are forced into indentured servitude and prostitution. Almost 6 in 10 say that the situation is increasing preventable migrant deaths. Half believe the southern border crisis is contributing to the spread of COVID. 

Since Biden took office, he has issued almost 100 executive orders on immigration, approximately half of which reversed initiatives taken by the Trump administration. According to Rep. Scott Franklin, "What's happening on our border is unprecedented. We are on track for more illegal border crossings in 2021 than any time in the past 15 years—perhaps ever."

Biden is not only out-of-step with the public; he is at odds with the bishops as well. 

The bishops along the border of the United States and northern Mexico released a joint statement last month saying, "Undoubtedly, nations have the right to maintain their borders. This is vital to their sovereignty and self-determination. At the same time, there is a shared responsibility of all nations to preserve human life and provide for safe, orderly, and humane immigration, including the right to asylum."

The Pew survey suggests that the public and these bishops are pretty much on the same page. We need to protect our borders and improve conditions for migrants. It is Biden who is out of sync.

A Lexis-Nexis search of Donald Trump and "we must protect our borders" turned up 884 instances where his name appeared with these words in a news story. A search of Joe Biden on this measure turned up one (that was over a year ago, and it was conditional in nature). 

We need to know why. Why is there such reluctance on the part of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to speak forthrightly about this issue? Why do they seemingly want to have more illegal aliens in our country? Moreover, Harris needs to stop with talk about "root causes." It is a dodge: If we treated every problem this way, it would be a prescription for paralysis.

At the very least, Harris needs to speak directly to those who are suffering, as well as to border patrol agents who are burdened by current policies. That, however, cannot be done from Washington, D.C.

Bill Donohue is president and CEO of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the nation's largest Catholic civil rights organization. He was awarded his Ph.D. in sociology from New York University and is the author of eight books and many articles.