This is the Breitbart Business Digest weekly wrap, where we review a selection of the economic and financial events of the past week without incurring any unnecessary labor costs or burning excess petroleum.
Americans’ concerns about energy costs have not increased since the start of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, even as gas prices have jumped nearly a dollar a gallon, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent excoriated the Financial Times on Thursday, calling the British newspaper “tabloid trash” and accusing its journalists of fabricating a story claiming he had praised the Bank of England’s governance structure as a model for tightening oversight
The March survey also suggests some political trouble for the Trump administration and Republicans eight months ahead of the mid-term elections. The index tracking expectations among Republicans fell sharply, from a reading of 100.3 to 94.2.
Rebalancing of America’s international accounts should have been a central policy objective of any presidential administration over the past three decades. The Trump administration, however, is the first to recognize this.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cast the confrontation with Iran as a two-front war on Thursday, telling President Trump that American economic strength has been as critical to the campaign as the military operation unfolding across the Persian Gulf.
While the OECD sees higher headline inflation from rising energy prices, this doesn’t mean higher underlying inflation for the U.S.
Without the assurance of millions of new workers arriving—three million arrived on average in each of President Biden’s final two years in office—employers are deciding to keep current jobholders in place.
Although this week brought what looked like bad news on productivity, the underlying story was much milder than the initial diagnosis suggested.
A swing in investment income drove the largest quarterly improvement in two years.
Mainstream macroeconomists argue endlessly about why America runs trade deficits. The answers they give are deeply unsatisfactory because they are so far removed reality.
U.S. business activity growth slowed to its weakest pace in nearly a year in March as the war with Iran sent energy prices surging and rattled consumer and business confidence, according to a closely watched survey released Tuesday.
The mood on the political right in America has dimmed fast in the early weeks of the war with Iran.
David Simon, who died Sunday at 64 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, was the last of a kind: a builder in an age of talkers, a dealmaker who let the deals speak for themselves, a billionaire who never confused running a great company with saving the world.
Talk of Iran deal sparked a major market rally Monday morning.
This week, we saw Jerome Powell insist that he can be Fed chairman forever or at least until his successor is confirmed, whichever comes first, we guess.
Jerome Powell can stay on the Federal Reserve board. He cannot stay as chairman. And on that question, the law does not give him the choice.
What looked this week like a fresh sign of rising inflation may have sprouted months earlier in the desert around Yuma, Arizona.
Brent crude spiked to nearly $120 a barrel Thursday morning before retreating, as the Iran conflict expanded to threaten major energy hubs across the Middle East. A drone struck a Saudi refinery, and President Trump issued a stark warning that
Stocks at U.S. wholesalers shrank in January, the second consecutive monthly decline, Commerce Department data showed Thursday. Inventories at merchant wholesalers were down 0.5 percent compared with the prior month, according to the seasonally adjusted figures. In December, inventories contracted
Somewhere between the economics department and the checkout line, the great tariff inflation failed to arrive.
“I have no intention of leaving the board until the investigation is well and truly over with transparency and finality. I would refer you to the statement that was in the Fed’s brief that you all have seen. I won’t have anything more for you on that,” Powell said.
The Federal Reserve left its short-term interest rate target unchanged on Wednesday. The decision to hold the benchmark federal-funds rate steady in a range between 3.5 percent and 3.75 percent was approved on an 11 to 1 vote. Fed governor
The producer price index for final demand, which measures prices received by U.S. businesses selling both goods and services to consumers and other end-users, rose 0.7 percent in February.
Saint Patrick’s Day is a $7.7 billion consumer event that is driven by consumption in the most literal sense: eating, drinking, dressing up, and going out.
Global investors turned sharply bearish in March as the ongoing war with Iran and mounting concerns about private credit markets ended months of “frothy optimism.”
Homebuyers signed far more contracts to buy homes in February than expected, the latest sign that the housing market staged a comeback at the start of the year.
We have argued since the opening days of Operation Epic Fury that the economic consequences of the Iran war depend less on the price of oil this week than on one question: how long does this last?
U.S. industrial production expanded in February, the fourth straight month of increases, beating economist forecasts as manufacturing and mining output both grew for the second consecutive month, the Federal Reserve reported Monday. The headline number understates the strength of the
This is the Breitbart Business Digest weekly wrap, which has decided that we’re never going to die in Zohran Mamdani’s New York because it is too unaffordable.
A federal judge has quashed two Justice Department subpoenas targeting the Federal Reserve, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, delivering a significant legal victory to the central bank and a serious setback to the criminal probe that U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro had opened into Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
U.S. job openings rose in January while layoffs declined and workers continued to quit jobs at a steady pace, pointing to firm labor demand even as hiring remained restrained.
Sentiment started to improve until the U.S. attacked Iran this month.
New orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods were unchanged in January, a sign that factory demand remained sluggish at the start of the first quarter.
U.S. economic growth in the fourth quarter was much weaker than first reported, with revised data Friday showing gross domestic product rose at a 0.7 percent annual rate instead of the previously estimated 1.4 percent.
Americans’ disposable income surged in January as the Trump tax cuts began flowing through paychecks, boosting the personal saving rate while consumers held back on spending, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The establishment case against tariffs got a polished restatement this week. It is worth examining carefully because it gets the problem wrong, gets the causation wrong, and offers wishes in place of solutions.
The Commerce Department said Thursday that the goods and services deficit fell to $54.5 billion in January, down from $128.4 billion in the same month a year ago. That marked a decline of $73.9 billion, or 57.6 percent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 500 points in midday trading.
On the 250th anniversary of “The Wealth of Nations,” it is worth noting that Adam Smith defended the policy mix now advanced by President Trump.
