By Bill Wilson — Will state and local governments add 220,000 jobs in 2013? That’s what chief economist at Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi is suggesting in a recent report by Bloomberg News . “Their payrolls in the fourth quarter will be 220,000 larger than in the same period for 2012, he projects,” states […]

By Bill Wilson — Soon, the Obama Administration will be able to borrow money to refinance and expand the $16.4 trillion national debt without any permission from Congress. That is, if House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi gets her way. On CBS’ Face the Nation on Jan. 6 , Pelosi said that if the debt ceiling […]

By Bill Wilson — From 1989 through 1992, I had the good fortune of visiting Poland to see firsthand the rapid economic transformation the country was going through in the post-Soviet era. Just a few hundred yards away from the Parliament, near the corner of Wiejska and […]

By Bill Wilson — If housing tends to lead economic recoveries, then we’re in trouble. This marks the worst post-recession home buying market since the Great Depression. Nobel laureate Professor Vernon L. Smith, who delivered the keynote address at the Cato Institute’s 30th Annual Monetary Conference on Nov. 15 , noted how housing leads both recession and recoveries. “In 11 of […]

By Bill Wilson — On Dec. 12, the Federal Reserve announced yet another open-ended round of quantitative easing — a promised $540 billion of purchases of U.S. debt every single year. Call it QE4Ever. The announcement comes atop the Fed’s $2 trillion balance sheet expansion since Aug. 2007 when the financial crisis began, plus its pledge to buy […]

By Bill Wilson — In 2013, $2.2 trillion of the $3.65 trillion budget will be on so-called “mandatory” spending — a Washingtonian euphemism for automatic spending. This is money that will be spent regardless if Congress ever votes on anything ever again — with the notable exception […]

By Bill Wilson — 122,000 fewer Americans had jobs in November than in October, yet the government reports that the unemployment rate declined to 7.7 percent.  This simple fact is why the unemployment rate has become one of the least relevant economic statistics that the federal government […]

By Bill Wilson — “If Congress in any way suggests that they’re going to tie negotiations to debt ceiling votes and take us to the brink of default once again as part of a budget negotiation — which, by the way, we had never done in our […]

By Bill Wilson — Despite higher-than-expected inventories giving the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) a seeming boost in the third quarter — being revised upward to 2.7 percent even as consumer spending was revised down — it may still be premature to pop the bottle of champagne. Average […]

By Bill Wilson — In the past 30 years, the national debt has increased 1,328 percent from $1.1 trillion to $16.3 trillion. From 1952 to 1982, it nearly quadrupled, from about $250 billion to $1 trillion. And from its 1922 level of $23 billion, it increased by […]