In cheerleading President Biden’s massive budget stimulus proposal , the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is doing a disservice not only to the United States but also to the rest of its 190 member countries. That’s because the Biden stimulus is likely to result in a disruptive emerging market capital flow reversal and a considerable worsening in international payment imbalances. In contrast to naysayers such as former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers , the IMF is giving its full backing to Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion budget stimulus package. Kristalina Georgieva , the IMF’s managing director, is urging the U.S. to use its fiscal space to go big. Meanwhile, Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s chief economist, is assuring us that it is highly unlikely that the Biden stimulus will cause U.S. inflation to rise beyond the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent inflation target. It does not seem to faze the IMF that, coming on top of December’s $900 billion budget stimulus, the $1.9 trillion Biden budget stimulus would be several times larger than the degree to which U.S. output currently falls short of the country’s potential. Nor does the IMF seem to be concerned by either the considerable pent up consumer demand that now characterizes the U.S. economy or by the fact that the U.S. budget stimulus would come at a time of extraordinary monetary policy ease. ADVERTISEMENT In particular, it seems to have escaped the IMF’s notice that the U.S. broad money supply is now growing at 30 percent, or at around three times its previous highest rate in the past 60 years. With the Federal Reserve emphasizing that it won’t raise interest rates or slow the pace of its bond buying, there is every prospect that the U.S. money supply will keep growing at its unusually fast pace. How quickly we seem to forget Milton Friedman’s famous dictum that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. While the IMF might not be fazed by the extraordinary U.S. fiscal and monetary ...
Biden today show
Biden’s Pro-Union Video Is a Big Deal
President Joe Biden delivers remarks in the East Room of the White House. Photo: Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images President Joe Biden has a message for Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama: You have the right to organize. In a video statement released on his official Twitter account, Biden explained the National Labor Relations Act in clear, precise terms and condemned strong-arm tactics from employers who oppose unionization: There is likely no historical precedent for Biden’s statement, which explicitly frames unionization as a material and social good. Unions are good at electing Democratic presidents, but the presidents themselves don’t always reciprocate the effort. Biden’s public defense of the NLRA is more robust than anything his old boss, Barack Obama, said about collective-bargaining rights during his entire eight years in power. The Bessemer workers could use the boost, too. As they vote on whether to organize with the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, they’ve run afoul of the intimidation tactics Biden criticized in his video. Since the RWDSU publicly announced its organizing drive last year, Amazon has lobbied workers hard to get them to reject a union. Amazon’s anti-union campaign is as manipulative as these campaigns usually tend to be; the company even went to the National Labor Relations Board to try to force workers to vote in person amid a pandemic. The NLRB shot the company down. (In a previous statement to Intelligencer, Amazon insisted that it merely wanted to be sure that it got “as many of our employees as possible to vote and we’re disappointed by the decision by the NLRB not to provide the most fair and effective format to achieve maximum employee participation.”) Amazon’s campaign has also strayed at times into potentially unlawful territory. As Vice reported in February, Amazon recently bombarded workers with mailings and texts urging them to vote no by today, March 1 — over three weeks before the ...
Critics Correct WaPo Fact Checker for Attempt to Absolve Joe Biden of Blame for Schools Being Closed
Glenn Kessler fact-checks Republicans for a living at the Washington Post , but on Sunday, he got a fact-checked for improperly accusing former President Trump of being dishonest about President Joe Biden’s inability to reopen schools. During the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Sunday, Kessler tried to hold Trump responsible for the school closures. “Trump complaining about kids not back in schools yet. Who was president a month ago?” Kessler tweeted. Fact check: today is Feb. 28th. a month ago was Jan. 28th. Joe Biden was sworn in to office on Jan. 20th. So, Joe Biden was president a month ago. ✍nominated✍for✍the✍List✍ pic.twitter.com/RSKMCzBnCZ — Siraj Hashmi in Gitmo (@SirajAHashmi) February 28, 2021 Trump, who has called for schools to reopen since the summer of 2020, ripped Biden at CPAC for failing to deliver on the issue in the face of powerful, Democratic-aligned teachers unions. “Joe Biden has shamefully betrayed America’s youth and he is cruelly keeping our children locked in their homes, no reason for it whatsoever,” Trump said. President Trump: “Joe Biden sold out America’s children to the teachers union” pic.twitter.com/9oPDp5UIF6 — Mona Salama (@MonaSalama_) February 28, 2021 During a CBS Evening News interview aired on February 8, 2021, Biden said teachers’ unions “want to go back to school.” But the unions “need some guidance.” Meanwhile, the head of a California teachers union was blasted on Monday as a hypocrite after he was caught dropping off his 2-year-old daughter at her private preschool — despite saying it was unsafe for children to be back in classrooms, according to a report . “Meet Matt Meyer. White man with dreads and president of the local teachers’ union. He’s been saying it is unsafe for *your kid* to be back at school, all the while dropping his kid off at private school,” a group known as Guerilla Momz said on Twitter. ...
Pentagon Says Biden’s Syria Strike Killed One Militant And Injured Two Others
Last week’s U.S. airstrike on Iranian-back militia facilities in Syria resulted in one militant’s death while two others were injured, the Pentagon said Monday. “We will continue to assess, as you know we do, and if that changes, we’ll certainly let you know,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a Monday briefing to reporters, according to The Hill . “But, as of today, we assess one killed and two militia members wounded.” Under orders from President Joe Biden, the military bombed stations occupied by Iran-backed Hezbollah Brigade near the Syrian border with Iraq near Boukamal, as previously reported . Militants used the bases to transport weapons, personnel and other supplies from Syria into neighboring Iraq. The U.S. airstrike was a response to three rocket strikes in Iraq on Feb. 15 that killed one non-American contractor and injured several U.S. contractors and a U.S. service member. The Pentagon blamed Iranian-back militias for the attack. TOPSHOT – A man waves at a US military Bradley Fighting Vehicle (BFV) while on patrol in the Suwaydiyah oil fields in Syria’s northeastern Hasakah province on February 13, 2021. (Photo by Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP) (Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images) On Friday, militia officials confirmed that one fighter was killed; however, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights initially reported that approximately 22 militants died, according to Voice of America . The military operation marked the first major attack ordered by Biden since becoming president in January. Some Democratic lawmakers questioned Biden’s legal authority for greenlighting the strike. (RELATED: Ilhan Omar Wants To Know Why Syrian Airstrikes Were Authorized Without Congressional Approval) “I mean, I certainly am hoping that the administration can give, you know, legal rationale on why they authorized this strike without Congressional approval. You know, we in Congress have congressional oversight in engaging ...
Why Biden can’t turn back the clock on the Iran nuclear deal
As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden Joe Biden Biden offers support to union organizing efforts Senate Democrats nix 'Plan B' on minimum wage hike Kavanaugh dismays conservatives by dodging pro-Trump election lawsuits MORE promised to “rejoin the [Iran nuclear] agreement and use our renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies to strengthen and extend it.” As president, Biden has taken the first steps to fulfilling this promise, but he may find that this pledge is not easy to keep. Not only do all of the original flaws of the agreement remain, but, more importantly, the agreement was predicated on a geopolitical context that no longer exists. Formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal avoided another unpopular Middle Eastern war by defusing a potentially explosive foreign policy issue — Iranian nuclear proliferation. Until President Trump Donald Trump Sacha Baron Cohen calls out 'danger of lies, hate and conspiracies' in Golden Globes speech Sorkin uses Abbie Hoffman quote to condemn Capitol violence: Democracy is 'something you do' Ex-Trump aide Pierson planning run for Congress MORE ’s decision to withdraw from the agreement in 2018, the agreement remained relatively popular with the American public. The deal – a meticulously negotiated, multilateral diplomatic feat – also provided a neat foil to the Trump administration’s “America first” foreign policy. While rejoining the JCPOA may make for good politics, it may not make for good policy. The JCPOA was never a long-term, or comprehensive, fix to the Iran challenge. The deal aimed to restrict, rather than end, Iran’s path to nuclear weapons for 10 to 15 years after it was enacted in 2016. Time, however, is no longer on the United States’s side. ADVERTISEMENT According to Secretary of State Antony Blinken Antony Blinken China traps the US into negotiations, then breaks its promises Overnight ...
