Gallup Poll: Americans have no Confidence in our Economic Leaders
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Surprise, surprise, Americans lack confidence in major economic leaders. You don’t say. In other news, sky is blue, water is wet. Gallup poll put out these numbers. Biden, Jerome Powell, Janet Yellen, Democratic leaders in Congress, Republican leaders in Congress. And the numbers suck. And why shouldn’t they? They suck. You take a look.
at inflation. You take a look on our nation’s fiscal situation. You take a look at the lack of GDP growth here in this country going back, what about 16, 17 years now? Well, that’s gonna bring confidence? No, no. I was thinking about movie Office Space and there was a scene in it when they were destroying the printer slash fax machine and they had this
song playing this rap song from the 1990s. It was called, Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangster. Damn it feels good to be an economic leader, an economist, a member of the Fed. Why does it feel good? Because no matter how big of an utter screw up you may be, it doesn’t matter. You’re a member of the club, you’re in, you’re going to the right restaurants, the right parties, you’re being interviewed on TV. When you leave your position, you’ll probably get a paid position.
showing up on CNBC and Fox Business and the other programs as well, spewing utter nonsense. But do you serve any purpose at all? No, no, not really, because you just continue to screw things up. Jay Powell, let’s talk about Jay Powell because his numbers are brutal. This is the lowest we’ve seen a central bank reserve. Chairman, this lowest approval ratings ever since they started.
basically tracking this. I think it’s tied with Ben Bernanke at one point. And why is that? Why is that? Well, for lack of a better phrase, for lack of a better phrase, I’m sorry, Jay Powell has no balls. I, guys, I had to say it, I’m sorry. There’s no other way that I could really articulate it. He doesn’t. He goes up and he gives his little chit chats. He goes in front of…
Congress and he talks about the tools that we have, the tools at our disposal. Dude, you know, you can’t be that dumb. You know, you don’t have the power over the nonsense that’s taking place in Congress and in these administrations who just spend and spend and spend at all the acronym agencies. You don’t have any control over that. You don’t have any control over the avian flu. Why don’t you just come out and say it?
Volcker did? Volcker, there we go. We’re going to Fed Chairman. We’re going to have a television show. Fed Chairman with Balls. You had Paul Volcker. Yes, yes. He would criticize Congress, the government, and spending, and regulations which drive prices up. Not anymore. Not anymore. That’s not the position of Fed Chairman. Tie it in. Tie it in is an example.
Here’s an example of inflation. Biden administration, again, regulatory onslaught. I mean, it’s just one thing after another driving the costs up for everything. I mean, the average price of a car in the United States is 48 grand. 48 grand, that’s nuts. It’s nuts. Anyway, anyway, got another one here.
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Manufactured homes, 22 million Americans live in manufactured homes. Another name for it is mobile homes. Their median household income is $35,000 a year. The average cost of a manufactured home ranges from 72 grand to 132,000. Can traditional house average about 365,000? Anyway, manufactured homes, Wall Street Journal today.
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9%, 9% of new single family homes that started in 2021. That’s 100,000 affordable homes, 100,000 of them. Now you would think we’d wanna be, obviously encouraging this, especially with the massive homeless problem that we have right now, but neither here nor there. You’ve got Jennifer Granholm, former governor of-
Michigan that somehow became energy secretary because she was well connected. She doesn’t know a damn thing about energy. I would be surprised if Janet Granholm could actually change a light bulb. Jennifer Granholm, excuse me. I would be surprised if she could change a light bulb. She has a damn thing about energy. She’s a bloody attorney. Bloody attorney. But again, you got the Department of Energy.
huge onslaught of regulations. They unveiled a rule that condensed a decade of efficiency rules, again, green rules, all at once. All at once and they gave the manufacturing, the manufactured home business one year to comply. Now, when the crazy government regulators impose regulations on, let’s say, I don’t know, your pool pump.
or hot water heater, whatever it may be, they give them usually some time to implement this. Now, one year, guess what? At a minimum, at a minimum, it’s going to raise the price of manufactured homes, all of these regulations that they’re throwing in at the minimum of $4,500. Again, is that not inflationary? Damn straight.
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Damn straight, can Jay Powell do anything about it? Well, yeah, I guess he can. One thing that Jay Powell can do about it is, just destroy the economy and put more people out on the streets and out of jobs. I guess, that’s basically it, right? That’s his tool. Yeah, it’s our tools. Your tools at your disposal, they’re blunt instruments. What’s being done right now by these other economic wizards there in Washington, DC?
You can’t deal with. That’s why nobody has any confidence in anyone. And we got that stupid meeting today. Oh, shit. Oh my God. I’m working out early this morning. Yeah, what? CNBC, Vox Business on back and forth in the background. It started around 5 a.m. And oh, debt ceiling, meeting. We need a big meeting, big pow wow today. Biden, Biden and Mark.
Carthy and they’re gonna sit down Mitch McConnell’s gonna be there and Jeffords. It’s For what?
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For what? Again, they’ll come up eventually with some compromise and Kevin McCarthy’s proposal is not harsh by any stretch of the imagination. He had to do everything and anything to get that through the Republican caucus in the House because they felt that it didn’t go far enough. God forbid, God forbid we force people that are able-bodied to actually work.
or get some sort of job training to receive benefits. Oh, geez, heavens to Betsy, no, not that. Work, oh, come on now. Anyway, let’s take a look at some of the numbers now. Why would people feel confident here? April, April is usually the best month for, well, for the treasury because it’s tax day.
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This year, the April budget surplus fell by $135 billion from a year earlier, including adjustments for timing shifts and federal outlays. The decline was $274 billion.
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73% from 2022. So this shows that there’s gonna be bigger budget deficits for the rest of the year. Deficit for the first seven months is already 928 billion. That’s 236% higher than in 2022. 236% higher. Yet Joe Biden, that schmucko, continues to go up there and tell everybody how awesome it is and how he’s cutting the deficits and all this stuff. He’s full of shit.
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We still have an economy that’s not in a recession. It’s still growing. Unemployment is low and these numbers are this bad. Get your arms around that.
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Spending is up 12%. Spending is up 12% in the first seven months. This is Congressional Budget Office information. Congressional Budget Office, I wouldn’t say they’re very conservative when it comes to their numbers. They’re always, they’re always under, they always underestimate government spending.
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first seven months, nearly 400 billion. Entitlements are up 11%. Education spending because of student loan changes up 56%. Again, take a look at the litany of items that Congress passed through in Joe Biden’s first two years and wait for this. Again, big see I told you freaking so moment here.
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Interest on the national debt rose 40%, $107 billion. It’s already $374 billion for the first seven months. I don’t see the Fed lowering rates anytime soon. So this is going to continue to get worse instead of better. Again, again.
that interest compounds, right? And I talk about this all the time. You want compounding to work for you. Well, folks in Washington, DC, our economic leaders, Wizard of the Smart Washington, DC, have compounding working against us, we the taxpayers. Revenue is down 10%. Individual income taxes fell 18%. Oh, that’s okay, that’s okay. We’re gonna hire 80,000 IRS agents.
Sure you are. Sure you are. Yeah, we’re going to go out and beat the bushes and beat people up and try to get nickel and dime people as best we possibly can. The CBO says it’s too early to know for sure, but it suspects, suspects, which he was, could be lower than expected realizations of capital gains last year. Oh, you don’t say. You don’t say.
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Again, we have a big, big debt ceiling meeting today. Oh no, we can’t cut anything. I got full faith and credit. And again, you listen, you got Janet yelling, no confidence in her either. She’s giving a talk, talking about sky’s gonna fall, world’s going to end. If she’s gonna get the money that she needs, that debt ceiling is not raised by June 1st, it’s amazing. Nobody ever asked her.
Nobody ever asked her about the things that she could do to make good on our interest payments and our debt payments and social security and Medicare. We have more than enough money coming in for that. We just have to cut elsewhere. Those folks in Washington don’t wanna do that. Do I have any confidence in our economic leaders? No. I ain’t gonna be an honest here people. I’m equal opportunity basher. Watchdog on Wall Street, equal opportunity basher.
here on the program. I don’t have any confidence on the Republican side either. Zip, zero, zilch, nada. Until we get real business owners into positions of power, people that understand this, people that, again, are not looking to further their…
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their political careers, their position in life based upon politics, I don’t see much change. I’ve talked about this for a while, the muted economic growth that we’re gonna continue to have here in this country. Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger talked about this past weekend to some degree. It is the terrain. That’s what we’re dealing with right now.
And to be quite frank, I mean, we can deal with it. We’ve been doing it. We deal with all sorts of issues here, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.
