By Robert Romano Gina McCarthy appears to be cruising for confirmation as the next head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with a key opponent throwing in the towel on blocking her nomination with a filibuster. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) on July 9 in a statement indicated he had reached agreement with the agency on several items […]

By Robert Romano Is this the beginning of the end of the filibuster? If Senate Republicans object to a series of upcoming nominations this month, “Democrats plan to threaten to use the impasse to change the Senate rules,” eliminating the filibuster, reports the New York Times . The pending nominations include the […]

By Robert Romano Call it the Keynesian fallacy — an absurd hubris of politicians and pundits — who assume that government spending, because it is included in the measure of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is somehow a meaningful indicator of national economic well being. In Jan. […]

By Robert Romano $54 trillion. That would be the size of the economy today if regulation had remained at its 1949 level, a Jan. 2013 study on excessive federal regulations has found . The study is by Appalachian State University economics professor John Dawson and North Carolina State University economics professor John Seater and was recently highlighted by the American Enterprise Institute’s Mark J. Perry . Overall, […]

By Robert Romano 237 years ago, on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the 13 colonies to affirm that governments are constituted to secure natural, individual rights and that they “deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed.” And, that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of […]

By Robert Romano In 2009, when Pimco CEO and co-chief investment officer Mohamed El-Erian crafted the “new normal” hypothesis with colleagues, it anticipated “coming out of the financial crisis, the economy would not recover in a normal cyclical fashion,” and that “some of the recent abrupt changes to markets, households, institutions, […]

By Robert Romano There’s a saying that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and with new allegations surfacing that the National Security Agency (NSA) is indeed recording the content of every communication, it looks like the agency is on fire. It’s a tremendous distinction. Is the agency intercepting […]

By Robert Romano A recent New York Federal Reserve study has found that 11.2 percent of 39 million borrowers with student loans are 90 days-plus delinquent on making payments on the nation’s $986 billion of student loan debt. A pretty depressing statistic. That’s more than 4.4 million Americans joining a lost generation of opportunity — and counting. […]

By Robert Romano On June 20, the $939 billion so-called “farm” bill — it should really be called the food stamp bill with 80 percent of it is dedicated to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — went down in flames in the House of Representatives, failing by a vote of 195 to 234 . […]

By Robert Romano On Wednesday, June 18, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced that the central banks $85 billion of monthly bond purchases would slow down until the unemployment rate reaches 7 percent , expected sometime in 2014. At that point, he said, the program would end altogether. Investors, already concerned about rising interest rates, began a seeming panic. In the first two days since the […]