I’ve been a big critic of Obama’s policies on taxes, spending, regulation, and intervention, so you won’t be surprised that I argued on CNBC that his policies have made the economy worse. Here are two graphs, which I posted earlier this month, that make my point. The red lines show the economy is finally – […]

The new unemployment numbers show a joblessness rate of 8.3 percent. From a political perspective, this is good news for the White House. Even though the Obama Administration projected that the unemployment rate today would be about 2-percentage points lower if the so-called stimulus was adopted, most people aren’t looking at the numbers analytically. Instead, […]

On this day last year, I posted two charts that I developed using the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank’s interactive website. Those two charts showed that the current recovery was very weak compared to the boom of the early 1980s. But perhaps that was an unfair comparison. Maybe the Reagan recovery started strong and then hit […]

The White House doubtlessly is happy that the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.5 percent, in part because the President is much more likely to get reelected if voters think the economy is heading in the right direction. My political predictions have a mixed track record, so take this for what it’s worth, but I’ve […]

Even though leftist economists such as Paul Krugman and Larry Summers have admitted that unemployment insurance benefits are a recipe for more joblessness, the White House is arguing that Congress should enact legislation to further subsidize unemployment. It’s understandable that the Obama Administration is concerned about the issue. These four charts show that the labor […]