White House National Economic Council Director, Kevin Hassett, made two appearances today to discuss economics and ongoing Trump policy.
As noted by Hassett earlier today (bottom video), the October unemployment numbers will be generally unknown when reported because during the shutdown the BLS household survey was not completed. All other data will likely have an asterisk as the NEC calculates that roughly 60,000 private sector workers were impacted during the shutdown. Two Short Videos Below:
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The morning video recap is below.
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New buzz word being weaponized- Affordability.
MM could have cared less the past 4 years.
Not so much now.
Too predictable. Yawn.
The Media actively suppressed information about inflation under Biden. They lied and denied.
I love Hassett. He’s the happiest chipmunk. Can’t get sad watching him.
So true. He must have been a complete joy as a little kid!
As Hassett notes, interest rates need to be lowered. Inflation, thanks to the fake Covid cash money-printing infusion, is at the root.
Covid: stolen election, stolen freedoms, massive wealth transfer, surveillance on steroids, health care and health choice decimated, a bioweapon masking as a vaccine, crashed economy. Whether you got a covid infection or not, we’re ALL suffering from “long covid”.
When is Powell out the door?
June-ish I think.
The Fed is a private corporation. The president can nominate its leader but he can’t fire him, is my understanding.
Or, Congress could repeal the Federal Reserve Act.
Yes! I asked Santa for that very thing. Well, some other stuff too 😉…
The “China virus” hit Santa’s business harder than a mom and pop diner. Mr. and Mrs. Clause had to sell their family business to Blackrock who sold the reindeer to a dog food manufacturer and contracted with a Chinese stated controlled company to make cheap presents and deliver them by drone. Merry Christmas.
I’ll tell ya, given the wild swings that I’ve witnessed now in this country, I wouldn’t commit to a 30 year mortgage if you gave it to me.
Stay home and save, attempt to stay debt free.
This is critical for young people.
Debt Free=Freedom and that Freedom may save you.
Yes, let’s ravage the return on people’s pension savings, like the ZIRP period did. Worked great.
Howie Carr in Boston is not happy that Donald Trump goes on and on about his big beautiful economy when we can’t afford to make a meatloaf.
Things may be great at the top, we all know the rich are getting richer, but it’s not working its way down to us.
Howie said that it’s one thing to be positive, but at a certain point you look disconnected.
He mentioned Joe Biden always bragging about Bidenomics and how ridiculous that all looked and was..
WELL, says Howie, Trump isn’t far from that because people are in trouble out here and he goes on about how great it all is- it’s NOT.
A lot of the callers agreed.
Ya know, I’ve seen some stuff come down at the grocery store, but it’s still high.
It went from being crazy to high, yes that is down, yes I’m happy that it’s not crazy, but things are still expensive.
I’m in ME and a regular caller into the Howie Carr show since before Obowmao. I agree with Howie as for fuel here in ME, has only ever reached $2.799 and then shortly thereafter, it shoots right back over $3. I just ordered heating oil and its no less expensive than last heating season.
Yes stuff has moderated but I am holding out hope that SD’s early predictions (and knowledge of the grocery industry) prove true that we would not see significant price decreases until later this year or into next. It is now “later this year” so hope tends to fade.
Trump needs to call in a favor, and get oil down to $50/bbl. Then gas will get closer to $2.00/gal and heating oil similarly low.
Hopefully he’s got that worked out and is just waiting on the timing when it’s best to pull the trigger for the mid terms. Problem is that below $60 is bad for domestic producers.
Unfortunately, $60/bbl is the new target to maintain; $2.50/gal is probably the best we’ll ever see again. It’s about $2.99 where I am.
Makes sense and frankly, the gas and oil don’t bother me as much as the general household and grocery items that are killer week to week. We are nearing retirement age and are fairly consistent consumers of standard utilities (and only have fears of the prices experienced during Obama when heating oil was what, $5-7 bucks a gallon).
My mom went from heating oil to gas 50 years ago in Ohio. They have whole house wood furnaces now (wood pellets).
Most producers today need $55/bbl to just break even. Between excise, state, severance tax, regulatory compliance, etc., plus basic operating expenses, that’s a minimum.
The cheap oil is gone now. Don’t think we’ll ever see $2.50/gallon ever again.
Hey Mainah *waving*
I agree.. I’m not happy but I’m not freaked out either, things are at least moving in the right direction.
I think that the problem is that things have been so screwed up since Barry Soetoro, that is when life truly changed for the worse, the far worse -and we’ve never recovered. We’ve never had a chance to catch our breath.
I know life as we knew it came to a screeching halt and it never really got back there again.
If you lost everything back in ’08, well many of those people never recovered.
It’s been down and down and then the Covid scam happened and it’s been really a mess since.
So what I see around me is all my friends in their 50s really beaten down and tired.
They’ve busted their assess for a good thirty years and not gotten very far- although it’s further than young people today will get, it’s still not as well as what our own parents have done and for the price of your back, it’s not gone over well.
So when people complain about stuff, it’s because for millions of Americans, that clock is ticking, we’re running out of time to get it all done before it’s done and over.
I’m rootin’ for ya up there. We’re devasted at what has happened to Maine since Paul LePage was term limited out.
Maine was plan B for plenty of NH folks if it all fell apart here, well now Maine is worse off than we are !!
Lets pray we’ve got the strength to turn it around.. even Vermont has made progress.
This part of the country has been forced onto the California plan of destruction but we ain’t wired like the Californians on this side of the country, so I’m hopeful.
There is hope. Paul LePage is going to be running against Jared Golden for Maine’s second Congressional district house seat in 2026.
As for who’s going to run for Senator Susan Collin’s seat, I’m not so sure who is going to win over that harpy Janet Mills.
Yup, I’m thrilled about Paul LePage running again.
I think he’s got a good chance at winning..
We were told fall. Unfortunately the greed and opposition is drawing it out. We will have to wait and it’s getting to a lot of us.
Because ME is so far away from refineries. We have the same problem here in lower Florida. At least there haven’t been any covered gas nozzles (meaning no gas.). I got a car that gets 30 mi/gal. Went from $75 a fill up to $25 a fill up.
Maine has one of the deepest water ports in the entire country and could be a goldmine with cheap energy and cheap everything-yet none of this is allowed to happen and instead it’s the complete opposite.
Now why do think this all is?
Probably the same reasons that Appalachia as a whole gets so neglected.
Better question maybe is what the heritage of these Americans who’ve lived there for many generations has to do with it.
I just purchased propane at $1.80 gallon. Way better than when Obama was President and it shot up to $6.xx gallon. Luckily I burned wood at that time. Still have outside wood boiler in place, but getting to old to cut and split wood which now costs $120. a cord for 14 cord delivery of 101 inch logs that I still have to process. I burn 14 cord in the winter, so with my labor, cutting and splitting wood, It’s way more economical to buy propane at these prices.
I suggest switching to Propane. Fuel oil systems were and are expensive to operate.
Check your state fuel tax. I’ve been reading about states that have surreptitiously raised theirs without a vote of their legislatures. Greedy bastards.
Does Howie have any suggestions or is he just there knocking Trump? Where does he get his money from? You need to be a bit less gullible over these fake ‘good guys’ who knock Trump for being positive.
Lol, we know Howie around here, there is nothing fake about Howie, he’s one of us, born in Maine-he’s been friends with Donald Trump for many years.
We call it as we see it up here Mimi and it doesn’t mean we don’t love The Donald.
Yeah, I see it as Howie trying to help PDJT see the view from the other side. The deals he’s working out to bring jobs to America are nice, but will take 1-3 yrs to have an impact. He needs to do something to lower the burdens on the middle to lower classes and the young people trying to start their lives.
Knowing that Howie does actually spend some time at Mara Lago with his friend Donald, we should consider ourselves very lucky that Howie has his finger so on the pulse of where the people are actually at.
Howie is, at heart and frugal New Englander. He shops at the Market Basket where we all shop, he really knows what is going on- he’s not some rich elite living a life far removed from the reality the rest of us live.
He’s still working even though he’s at retirement age, presumably because he has to- like all the rest of us.
Eggs are under $2 a dozen here and this week the supermarket brand has their frozen turkeys at 49 cents a pound.
Maybe Howie could make some turkey loaf.
I didn’t check the prices of crackers and cheese to go along with his whine.
Gimme a break.
We’re not blind followers, our brains work and we know how to do math.
Did you see Stephen Miller recently talking about how Donald Trump knows this economy still has a whole lot of people in trouble and this is frustrating him???
It’s okay to criticize the President and still support him- yes we are capable of doing both.
No negative vibes! Quit acting like President Trump is living under a rock!
Hey Joan, how many times has Sundance told us to stop the Pretending?
Aren’t we supposed to be the truth tellers here?
It’s not honest to live in an alternative universe as the entire machine works quite hard to create and keep us contained in, it’s our jobs to inform the people of what is really going on out here to end that power and control they have over us.
This is not negative vibes at all, it’s doing what we all should be doing.
I don’t know if you live in a rich neighborhood but I don’t.
I am surrounded by deep and generational poverty and despite what I’m told, I don’t see their lives improving at all to any measurable degree.
This is a big problem and I’m not going to sit on my ass and pretend this isn’t happening.
To say this, to talk about this isn’t spreading negative vibes it’s what informs the people running this country of what is really happening out here on the ground so that they can then do something about it.
If you’ve read the Constitution, you’d understand that it’s WE THE PEOPLE that are supposed to be running this country, you can’t do that and then live in a bubble only chatting about happy things that make everyone feel good.
Yeah, let’s talk about the price of lobster!
I love Howie !! His column is in The Boston Herald newspaper 3 times/week (Sun/Wed/Fri) and is almost always a must-read. He calls out those who need to be called out and calls ’em like he sees ’em, unlike almost all in the mainstream media.
PDJT is one man battling the forces of Evil and has done a bang-up job, considering the absolute mess the Brain-Dead Wonder and Crew left him. I think PDJT and his team will get more prices down. Sh*t, whether good or bad, almost never happens overnight.
The sky is not falling yet…
It’s crazy where I live. I’m trying to stay optimistic but it’s tough. We had money to spend under his first administration but our economy was destroyed after 2020. It takes time to right the ship but it seems like forever for those of us living paycheck to paycheck. Blue state blues is a real phenomenon.
I totally understand your situation.
I know plenty of Vermonters and Mainers and they are people like us, they voted, did their part, work very hard, some live on family land that leaving isn’t an option- and yet they are in deep and serious trouble because of the politics that have fully captured those states, the fallout is squeezing them into deep crisis that frankly, few have the knowledge to even know how to navigate, take peace in knowing that I fully understand.
Have faith, build a community around yourself so that you can all work as a team to try and cover all your needs.
It’s what we must do now at this point, and this isn’t easy to do for people who don’t particularly like other people.
But there is no choice now, team work in a supportive group of friends, or a church, something, it will help you.
You are not alone, go find your people!
Here’s the positive spin for Trump’s “affordability” moves. This lawyer’s blog is a great follow too…
DELIVERING “AFFORDABILITY”
–Get the JOBS back; RAISE wages, WITHOUT inflation; and it takes TIME.
[…Biden and the Autopen printed so much money that it TRIPLED(!) the amount of circulating currency.
Something like that is going to smart. There’s no avoiding it.
Inflation is inconvenient; nobody likes having to carry cash around in buckets. But it is PAINFUL only because of a three-word economic law: “Wages are sticky.” It means that, in a time of hyperinflation, people’s salaries increase MUCH slower than consumer goods prices. Wages get STUCK. Prices are the hare, and wages are the tortoise…Whenever wages finally do increase, groceries and electricity and insurance don’t get cheaper. They just get more “affordable.”
The most difficult news is that prices will NEVER return to pre-Biden levels. There’s too much cash sloshing around. A president can indeed ease the pain, in the short term. For instance, this week, the Administration…
…🔥 Anyone not legally blind can easily see the all-of-government effort to keep a lid on grocery prices and prune them wherever possible. But the only REAL long-term fix to the “affordability crisis” is to RAISE WAGES. That takes TIME. And Democrats are convinced Trump can’t possibly do it fast enough for politics. That’s why, having just been spanked silly with it, Dems are trying to turn the affordability argument back against the President.
It’s a conundrum. Trump can juice the economy with loads of new jobs, but if the economy warms up TOO fast, it can overheat and burn to a crisp. In other words: MORE inflation. Most economists think it is outright impossible for government policy to raise wages (the “price” of labor) without also raising the price of everything else, too, which ultimately pegs the problem at an even higher price point.
We need higher wages WITHOUT inflation. Which means it must be solved without government subsidies or interventions. For example, they can order fast-food minimum wages to be increased, but that just increases the price of hamburgers, too. You can cap rents, but that causes a shortage of apartments.
A real solution requires boosting jobs the hard way. Not with easy policy sugar, but with structural protein. Trump needs to boost productivity and employment while simultaneously getting government out of the way.
I don’t know the plan. But, at the risk of oversimplifying an insanely complicated economic Rubik’s Cube, the carefully designed tariffs —coupled with smart H1B visa reforms to stop foreign workers from taking all the new jobs— appear to be the key. It’s all about GETTING THE JOBS BACK.
This may explain why Trump has been so obsessively coercing companies and countries into building new U.S.-based facilities. The government can also encourage whole new markets — such as AI, robotics, cryptocurrency, and self-driving cars — which generate more demand for workers, without requiring subsidies or interventions like green energy boondoggles. Similarly, bringing blue-collar manufacturing (i.e. jobs) back to U.S. shores also creates demand for workers, which necessarily increases wages as employers compete for labor.
Trump’s plan is vast, complex, and smart. And it is evidently working, even if not fast enough for some people. But, needless to say, Democrats HAVE NO affordability plan, nor are they capable of devising one…]
See more:
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/following-science-tuesday-november
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Say hello to the next head of the Fed. You hear me PDJT? The next head of the Fed. Wouldn’t it be a pisser to have a smiling Fed Chairman to get under the very thin skins of the Looney Left? Ha!
The Happy Warrior.
I think Trump and the GOP generally needs to get off foreign policy (where they have generally disappointed their own base of supporters) and pay a lot more attention to the many problems inside the US.
Part of the reason for the foreign policy focus probable is due to the fatc that Trump has slightly more of a free hand in that area. When it comes to the domestic sphere, Trump cannot scratch his nose without some crooked “judge” slapping an injunction on him … while the GOP Congress stands by silently.
But at the end of the day the home front is where the crucial battles must be fought.
https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1956044288573497681
The allegation is that the Deep State is keeping him busy on world tour designed to time out his presidency so fixing government corruption and the economy never occurs.
I do,not know where they are getting this data. Groceries are still high as well as gas here in pittsburgh pa. Soooo. Jus sayin,
Here’s the Economic Data from New Florida:
Expensive with a chance of Foreclosures
Been seeing some lowering of prices and there appears to be a lot more sales/coupons coming out. All in all, drip by drip President Trump is getting the job done. Hard when the sellers prefer to keep their pockets full while emptying the buyers.
BLS data will be incomplete for the shutdown period but all you have to do is read the other relevant data and the reports being produced. Though this organization has a leftist lens, they are right about this: “The richest 1% of households in the United States have accumulated almost 1,000 times more wealth than the poorest 20% over the last three and a half decades, and economic inequality is getting worse at a rapid pace.” -Oxfam “UNEQUAL: The rise of a new American oligarchy and the agenda we need” (11/03/2026).
Oxfam methodology source: https://webassets.oxfamamerica.org/media/documents/Oxfam_Unequal_US_Inequality_report_2025_Methodology_Note.pdf
The U.S. Census Bureau’s income equity section tells the story as well: https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/income-inequality.html
I don’t know what has happened but here NCC-DE in one day gas prices rose over twenty to twenty-five cents. BJ’s went from $2.43 to $2.69. Sunoco went from &2.71 to &2.97.
Affordability is a thing of the past. Years of destroying our currency at the hand of the filthy Fed and our so-called leadership (crooked politicians) has left us and many future generations holding the bag. Every attempt to “fix it” only creates a deeper hole. Our prosperity and the American dream was sold out by those who were responsible for our well being and they have enriched themselves while placing the yoke of slavery on us all. We are now left with the American nightmare and a mountain of debt. Who will pay price for this?
The White House needs to come out with Kevin Quokka stuffed toys to merchandise.
Bet they would outsell Teddy Bears!
Housing prices increased 50% during the biden term. This adds substantially to economic downforce on the middle and working class, sinking with no way back as mass immigration wage undercut, endemic DEI corrosion, and hollowed out industry/science combine with modRNA bioweapon damage. Apparently all part of the managed decline Plan.
Meanwhile, another glimpse of the nation rising in the east toward dominance of world and diminished US:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/escobar-chinas-relentless-innovation-drive-reaching-fever-pitch
Never mind. Stay fixated on shallow issues like “affordability” which are symptoms. Have a nice day.