After Trump, Then What?

2024-01-13

According to a new report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics last Friday, the US economy added 216,000 jobs for the month while the unemployment rate held at 3.7%. NBC news was sure to tell us that this "beat expectations."  Market estimates suggested total jobs added at 170,000 with the unemployment rate at 3.8%.  The media’s general consensus on the report is that the jobs economy is "robust" and everything is heading on schedule toward a "soft landing" as predicted by Federal Reserve economists. 
What are we to make of this report? Well, the jobs market looks pretty good so long as one doesn’t dig any deeper than the first paragraph of the press release. But once we look more carefully as numerous indicators of employment as found in part time jobs,

2024-01-11

Whenever an economy falls into a recession, many economists point out that the economic slump means there will be idle capital and labor. Resources that could be employed are now unemployed because the economic slump has softened aggregate demand for goods and services.
So-called experts believe the government must increase the overall demand in the economy since stronger demand will permit idle resources to be employed again. Hence, many economists recommend that the central bank adopt an easy monetary stance to strengthen aggregate demand.
It appears to be quite simple: boost expenditure on goods and services and this, in turn, will strengthen the overall output in the economy by the multiple of the expenditure, thanks to the Keynesian multiplier. According to Ludwig von Mises,
Here,