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US president Biden's 2024 Budget places great emphasis on aid to workers and families in the US and shores up the Medicare hospital-insurance trust fund. He will do this by raising taxes on the wages, investment gains and self-employment income of people making more than $400,000 a year. Additional savings come from increasing the drugs on which Medicare can negotiate prices from 20 to 50 drugs.  Childcare- families making less than $200,000 a year will get subsidized child health care, the lowest income families paying nothing. Housing- Building and preserving 2 million housing units. Series of tax credits to make buying homes more affordable. College education- Reducing the cost of going to education with $12 billion allocated for this. Offering tution free community college. Family and Medical Leave- Federal paid family and medical leave program. Retirees- a $2000 cap on out of pocket cost of prescription drugs for retirees. Reduced taxes for under $400,000 income households- This would be done without increasing the deficits to extend the tax reduction from the 2017 tax cuts to households making less than $400,000 a year.     ...

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The median income in the US in 2024 is where it was in 2019 before the pandemic at about $83,000 with the upper 10% of the population making about $200,000 having a 5% increase. Median income means 50% of the US population makes above $83,000 and 50% below that. In 2024 compared to 2023 slight increase of about 4% for men compared to women, no change for white households, a drop of 3% for Black households, gains of 5% for Hispanic and Asian households, Census Bureau Report shows.

Overall cost of living prices at grocery stores, for automobiles, and housing rental, is what is impacting people the most and has left people in the lower half of the population with considerable anxieties about making ends meet. At $100,000-$150,000 incomes in the upper third of the population there is saving for colleges that have costs going through the roof and cost of child care that is causing anxiety.

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Apple, Microsoft, Merck, Nike and other U.S. companies raised about $27 billion in the early part of 2013 with bonds yielding about one percentage point above U.S. government bonds. With the increase in yields in Treasury bonds following positive news from the housing sector, an improving U.S. economy and improving share prices in the stock market, corporate bond prices are declining. Apple's 10 year bond declined by 1.15% to 95.85 cents on the dollar. Analysis from William Blair shows Apple's 10 year bonds trading at 97 cents to the dollar if rates on 10 year Treasury bonds were 2%. At rates rising to 3% the Apple bond price would decline to 88.88 cents to the dollar, and a loss of 8.37%.

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Rachel Ensign's WSJ report shows huge disparity in incomes and spending that has happened in the US even with the best efforts and intentions of the Biden administration in 2020-2024. US cumulative excess savings by income for the bottom 90% are a mere $291 billion compared to $1.2 trillion for the top 10%, 4 times as large. As a result about half of consumer spending comes from the top 10% in incomes says the WSJ. (Moody's Analytics). It provides clues on why Biden and even less so Harris failed to convince Americans, the middle class, blue collar workers, and others that large social gaps, income disparities and wealth disparities gap were being bridged under Democrats. And makes it harder for Republicans and Democrats alike to address such huge gaps built up over time by outshoring jobs and manufacturing, the 2009 financial crisis from banks speculation, the pandemic and supply shock cost of living crisis. As the $2.6 trillion in pandemic assistance from Biden faded people in the bottom 80% dipped into savings to pay for rising cost of living as supply chain bottlenecks and price gouging sent prices of groceries, housing, apartment rentals, cars up significantly. This has'nt happened to the top 10% or even the top 20% who continue to spend in the same way as before prices went up. Something like this is also happening in Europe and in China, India fueling and anti-incumbency mood, and dissatisfaction with governments. The Net Worth of the top 20% has grown by 45% or $35 trillion since 2019 compared to $14 trillion for the bottom 80%. (Moody's Analytics) ...

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19 percent of China's exports went to the US in 2017, in 2024 this is 15%, but wait, the difference of 4 percent it is simply coming back to the US but through Southeast Asia. As a result some of the same issues that puzzled Trump negotiators exist today. China's exports surged 12.7% in October 2024 over the prior year. Biden was facing this situation and had yet to respond to the surge in exports to US. These exports were sent to Mexico and to Southeast Asia to circumvent the tariffs. It is the same situation revisited in 2024 with two other aspects of the Chinese economy-economic stimulus gets smaller and the housing and construction industry has imploded, the economy has slower growth. The overall price level in the US with a 60% tariff plus 10% for all countries would be 0.72 addition to the price level of 1.10 percent today- that is when including the depreciation of China's yuan by 10%. as it did last time. The result would be price level in the US at 1.82%, according to J.P. Morgan. Drag on China's GDP of the Trump tariffs in first term was 0.65% according to one investment bank GS, with 60% tariffs it would be 2%. Trump secured a return of $116 billion or 58% of the $200 billion China said it would buy of US exports. The other 42%- the deal was not completed in the end. ...

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Nagourney and Dougherty of the NYT give this report on the housing crisis in California by 2017 with the median cost of a home skyrocketing to twice the figure for the U.S. This price is now $500,000. The result is longer commutes even for people with incomes over $150,000 a year, stretching to as much as 2 hours one way. It means people lacking housing stay in vans with improvised kitchens and other sleeping arrangements. Not enough homes are being built because of strict zoning and planning regulations that are kept in place by neighborhood groups, effectively excluding outsiders. Now its not just the coastal areas that are affected but the whole state. Governor Brown of California tried to pass a measure in 2016 that would push communities to build more affordable housing, and ran into opposition from local officials and environmentalists. Now the opinion in the state is changing with younger people denied a chance at decent housing at the forefront and some elected officials such as the Mayor of Los Angeles, Mr. Eric Garcetti. A new bill in the state legislature would make it harder for cities that are falling behind in building housing to lose the right for City Council to hold back on approval of new construction, effectively bypassing it. California's law capping property taxes after Proposition 13 was passed in 1978 has also held back construction. Other factors are the building of new offices for  companies in the tech boom around San Francisco without a corresponding effort to build new homes for these new office workers. California was slow to respond to housing needs for young people, with only 311,000 housing units built since 2006. ...

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U.S. housing firm Fannie Mae reported a loss of $6.5 billon for 1st quarter 2011. Home price declines pose an added risk for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as the firms have a large number of foreclosed homes. Fannie and Freddie had 218,000 homes at the end of March that have to be resold, a 33% increase from 2010. Fannie Mae has about $206 billion of delinquent loans on its books. Both firms are on government life support. Fannie said it would ask for $6.2 billion in new funds from the U.S. government.

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Values of St Augustine are to be celebrated with Vance, and of Mohandas Gandhi with Harris. Then why the discord? End wars (Biden ending the war in Afghanistan). End migrant incursions Harris pledge to sign the Lankford-Biden legislation into law that fixes asylum entry and Closes the Border with Mexico. Cost of living that hurts the needy and middle class the most. As Applebaum writes about Housing costs Trump has no plan, Harris is willing to put government resources into it. Republicans have their hands tied by a hands off government that is supposed to do nothing and hope everything will work out. That is without corporate housing company greed in a system that doesn/t work -they set the prices too high. As Kristof writes about in the NYT the Republicans will not support paid marital leave, will not support child care assistance, will not support cuts to high pharmaceutical costs, making healthcare unaffordable even to the middle class not to speak of the lower income working class. And will not support investment in the infrastructure that is crumbling around us even as the infrastructure is crumbling around us, like the bridge in Baltimore that went down in minutes. Trump used infrastructure issue in 2016 and rightly so, and talked about it being Infrastructure Week every week, yet did nothing for infrastructure, nothing serious until Biden in 2016-2020. This a continuing project for Harris. Part of this is to end the wars (Biden's efforts in Afghanistan ending it). And end the migrants incursions, Harris 's pledge to sign the Lankford-Biden immigration bill that fixes asylum entry and closes the US Border with Mexico. ...

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Scientific American says 8-11% impact larger emissions under the One Big Beautiful Act than the 61%-66% emissions cut under Biden IRA in 2035 over 2005. What is the reasoning behind DJT Republicans approach? 

Remember that the wealthiest House districts are now in the Democratic party and the working class, rural and poorer districts are now in the Republican party as shown in the recent WSJ analysis.  In this situation after  30-40 increase in the price of groceries, new and used cars, and housing costs 2019-2024 the argument is that American working families need relief. Another factor was the grasp of the fact that for climate change action to work China could not be allowed to build one coal plant a week (95GW of coal electricity capacity in 2024). In 2024 US represented only 12% of global emissions and EU only 6%, China, Russia, India, Brazil etc emitting the rest of 82%. 

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Interview with Robert Shiller of Yale University, by Simon Constable of the Wall Street Journal. Shiller tells Constable that the second dip recession is imminent. Shiller senses that when the National Bureau of Economic Research looks at third quarter data for 2010, it will find that the second dip of the recession started here. In other comments Shiller said that the U.S. is standing at the edge of deflation. The view on housing markets of Shiller, who is one of the creators of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, is that housing prices could decline for the next 5 years. Shiller sees the US's chief concern as unemployment. He suggests that local governments and the federal government create jobs. One idea is to have a teacher's aide in each classroom.

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The part of the tax law that limits state and property tax deductions to $10,000 and limits deduction of mortgage interest is likely to slow the rise of housing values in 2018. Much of the effect is psychological as the impact is felt on the East Coast, California, Midwest and the D.C. area. The median U.S. county will see a decline of 0.8%, and some counties in New York could see declines of 10%, according to Moody's analysis. The impact is greater for higher priced homes, and where incomes are higher with big mortgages and big tax bills.

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Allan Meltzer says a Fed QE III woud be bad monetary policy. He puts several questions to Bernanke- how the Fed and Ben Bernanke can know now what is the right interest rate policy in mid 2013, and what reason can the Fed give for adding excess reserves when U.S. banks have $1.6 trillion in idle reserves at the Fed. Meltzer cautions the Fed and other policymakers not to pay attention only to short term forecasts, which can be susceptible to large errors. And calls for attention to the long term consequences of their actions. One point he emphasizes is that the unemployment problem cannot be resolved with short term policy actions nor can it be resolved in a short time. It will take population growth, falling housing prices and rising rents to create opportunities for new construction. Another change is the transition to a less consumption driven and more export oriented economy. This transition which has started will also take time. He urges the Congress and the administration to focus on: reducing corporate tax rates by closing loopholes, long-term reductions in entitlement spending, a 5 year moratatorium on new regulations, and the Fed adopting an explicit inflation target between 0% and 2%....

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This report shows an alarming trend in China which is fueling a real estate bubble similar to the one that Japan, and more recently the U.S., experienced. State owned companies are actively speculating in real estate, and are buying real estate from local governments eager to profit from the real estate boom. Local governments obtain land and build infrastructure on it to raise the price that they can get for it in an auction. In many cases one state owned company outbids another state owned company from different sectors such as oil, chemical, military, telecom and highway. Land records reveal that 82% of land auctions in Beijing in 2010 were won by state-owned companies up from 59% in 2008. The National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has estimated that land prices leaped by 750% from 2003, with half of this happening in 2008-2010. In many cities housing prices have doubled in the last 2 years. The National Bureau estimates that on average these state owned companies paid 27% more for the same piece of land than other bidders. China's $586 billion stimulus and its aggressive lending program by state owned banks may have helped in other ways after the 2008 economic crisis, but in this area it has fueled a real estate speculation boom, with the local government and state owned companies being the key participants in this speculation. Local governments earned an estimated $230 billion in land auctions in 2009. The demolition of older neighborhoods and poorly compensating residents are all part of the effort by local governments to profit from this speculative boom. The implications for the banks are serious. Local governments use other companies created for the purpose to engage in this investment in land. And off-balance sheet accounts create the danger that China's state owned banks may have enormous amounts of debt that is not showing up in the regular accounting. Analysts say that the $1.4 trillion in loans made by state banks in 2009 was twice that in 2008, and a large portion of this was diverted into real estate speculation with records set in land bids and booming prices. All this is happening as China's Ginni coefficient has deteriorated rapidly. And the simple fact remains that even as apartment prices exceeded $200,000 in Shanghai, the average disposable income is about $4000 per year. Prof. Shih of Northwesten University has followed the investment companies of the local governments closely and comes to similar conclusions about the size and implications of this real estate bubble in progress. Shih estimates LIC (local investment companies) debt owed to banks at $1.68 trillion or 34% of China's GDP. See the link to BW's Dexter Roberts. ...

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Bernanke's defense of the action of the Fed's monetary policy making committee, on November 3, 2010, (with a vote of 10-1) to buy an additional $600 billion of Treasury securities over the next 8 months. His defense focusses on the prospects of deflation- how low inflation can morph into deflation (falling prices and wages), that can create a long period of economic stagnation. In addition, with low and falling inflation, Bernanke sees spare capacity in the US that can be utilized to reduce the number of jobless people. He points to the rise in stock prices and fall in long term interest rates in anticipation of the Fed's action, as evidence that this Fed move would improve financial conditions. Lower mortgage rates would make housing more affordable, higher stock prices would increase consumer wealth, confidence and spending. Spending would lead to higher incomes and profits for economic expansion, from this viewpoint. The situation in November 2010, was a deepening housing slump anticipated for 2011, gridlock after the 2010 midterm elections and no agreement on additional stimulus for 2011, the need to rebalance the global economy lacking cooperation from China (with China increasing imports and reducing exports and the US increasing exports and reducing imports). Fed's Bernanke does not mention these factors, and only hints at the gridlock towards the end of the statement. This Fed action will push the dollar lower, just as efforts to improve exports and the trade balance are underway. The Fed's committee sees the risks of commodities inflation as an acceptable risk in the current situation, and the use of a cautious approach assessing the purchase program regularly as sufficient measure of safety. As to difficulties of the unwinding of these policies, the Fed sees present danger outweighing the risks of no action. For emerging markets such as Turkey, India, Australia and other countries seeing even more inflows of capital, the risks are left to these countries to manage. The central banks of India and Australia moved to increase interest rates at the same time that the Fed made its move....

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In this exceptional report of the housing market in Roanoke, Virgina, Neil Irwin talks to builders, home buyers, renters and young people. San Francisco and Washington D.C. are the exception in housing markets- hundreds of America's midsize cities like Roanoke are seeing smaller rates of household formation leading to a decline in demand for single family homes and fewer homes being built. This accounts for a large part of the smaller growth in U.S. GDP. There are he points out about 2.3 million missing households as a result of a significant change in home buying patterns that is reducing demand for new construction of single family homes. During the period 2001-2006, before the 2008 global financial crisis, the rate of new U.S. household formation was about 1.35 million annually. This dropped to 569,000 in 2007-2013, as the effects of the crisis were felt in a deep recession. One result is more young people are postponing buying a house and living with their parents. Faced with large student debt- the total U.S. student debt passed $1 trillion for the first time recently- purchases of homes are becoming more dfficult. Of 18-34 year olds 27% lived with their parents before 2006, according to Labor Department data. This went up to 31% following the recession. Lack of good jobs is another factor. In 2014 March only 63% of 18-24 year olds had jobs. Even young people older than 24 with jobs felt it necessary to save money by living with their parents. More retirees too are moving into apartments....

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In a time of relative prosperity in the first months after the boom years uptil 2007, in April 2008 to be specific, it is strange but true that food crisis is overshadowing the credit and housing crisis in the USA. At the G7 meeting, World Bank president, Zoellick, made a passionate statement about the crisis that is developing across Asia and developing countries elsewhere as food prices go through the roof. The World Bank and the IMF are stepping in, but the focus at the G7 meeting was on the US dollar and the world financial system. There have been serious problems about food shortages in Philippines, Indonesia, Haiti and Egypt, and even in other countries like China and India the increase in the price of rice by 146% makes for a serious food crisis. See the link to this.

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Gordon Brown, former prime minister of Britain from 2007 to 2010, chaired the April 2009 G-20 meeting that came up with ways to tackle the global financial crisis. Brown also led the way by recapitalizing British banks, a step the U.S. followed. He comments on the volatility in financial markets in August 2007 following the S&P credit downgrade of the U.S.. Brown gives an incomplete grade to the tasks the 2009 G-20 set out to accomplish. He points to three goals the G-20 had set in the middle of the financial crisis in April 2009. The first was to prevent a recession from becoming a depression. The other two were to establish a financial stability regime, and a compact for growth. These two became paper promises says Brown. Brown sees the best approach to prevent a lost decade is for U.S. and Europe trading their way out of a downturn as the Asian market absorbs more industrial goods from Europe and the U.S. This includes policies that would keep commodity prices low and ways of coping with currency shocks. Analysts have pointed to an export led recovery as one of the solutions the U.S. was hoping to achieve with a lower value of the dollar. This has had only limited success because of deep structural problems- high consumer indebtedness, bad debt at the banks, weak housing sector following the mortgage crisis, and a rising U.S. deficit- which will take some time to clear. Brown does not come to grips with these underlying imbalances built up during the boom years of the last decade, both in Britain and in the U.S., during which he was the finance minister of Britain....

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Buyers and sellers are living in two different worlds. Sellers living in the past hoping to get a solid deal on their home, and buyers looking into the future and seeing prices declining further, making it difficult to bring them together. This only worsens the difficulties in the housing market. This reporter looks at housing sales and prices in the Washington D.C. area, and sees very cautious buyers.

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The Case-Shiller 20 city Index showed a gain of 1.6% from the prior month in July 2012, and an increase of 5.9% year to date through July 2012. Experts say some of this improvement comes from less short and foreclosure sales which boost pricing data.

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Gerard Baker in the WSJ points to issues of transgender, illegal migrants in US cities, and race in politics as issues on which the "correct" views were causing anxiety for the American public. Parental anxiety on transgender at school for their children, public anxiety on illegal migrants in American cities, and anxiety about race as a defining factor in political life. The illegal flow of fentanyl and loss of life in the US is a basic issue- how could the US as the largest advanced economy in the world become so feeble that it cannot stop illegal flows of fentanyl and human smuggling. Baker also says that he doubts that the new Department of Government Efficiency will work and eliminate waste, that he thinks imposing tariffs will depress domestic productivity and reduce living standards of the people. And that installing what he calls "oddballs" will work except to create chaos. On the issues of infrastructure, cost of  manufacturing revival in the US which were issues in 2016 and turned into the agenda of the Biden years little is said, and on cost of living nothing tangible about reversing the 20-30 percent of price increases in housing and groceries that have happened in the pandemic years 2019-2023. ...