Tag: economy

Biden Migrant Policy Has Exacerbated Affordability Crisis In Housing — Contributing To 30% Price Hikes In Major American Cities

A recent working paper released by two economists working for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has suggested that illegal migration over the Biden years contributed to as much as a 20% growth in recent years and a whopping 30% increase in housing prices over the last five years.

The paper, titled “The Impacts of Unauthorized Immigration on U.S. Labor and Housing Markets: New Evidence from Administrative Microdata,” provides strong evidence to support the claim that illegal migration has not only worsened an affordability crisis in America, but is one of its key drivers.

For years, America has faced a chronic shortage of housing, a problem that is most acute in metropolitan areas where the number of new homes being built has severely lagged the skyrocketing demand.

In the years Biden occupied the Oval Office, hordes of illegals – to the tune of, at least, 15 million – entered the homeland.  This placed severe pressure on an already tight and inelastic housing market.

The paper concluded that every 1% addition of illegal aliens to a local area’s initial employment raised rents in that area by 1.4%, while increasing housing prices by 2.2%.

In certain key metro areas, such as Houston, Miami, New York, and Minneapolis, where the concentration of illegal migrant inflows was disproportionate to the national average, those housing markets would experience an especially pronounced uptick.

The result of this distressing trend was that ordinary Americans, particularly new homebuyers and young people, were literally being squeezed out of housing altogether because of the seismic pressures introduced by illegal aliens.

In past generations, Americans would only have to compete among themselves for housing.  Housing followed a typical supply and demand relationship – where greater demand was often manageable because new housing could be easily built, without encumbering supply chains too much.

In recent years, that logic has been totally upended.  First, loose monetary policy has expanded the money supply.  The effect of quantitative easing has driven up housing prices far beyond the demand.

The inflation this caused has been exacerbated further by a restricted housing supply, which has been slow to rebound since the COVID-19 pandemic devastated supply chains nationwide.

This in turn further worsened a problem that had been ongoing for years due to burdensome regulations, red-tape, and excess bureaucracy in the housing market.

The effect of opening America’s borders and letting in the third world during an already unmanageable housing crisis was like adding gasoline to the fire.

The market effects have been catastrophic: new home buyers have been potentially delayed from purchasing their first home by decades.  Many have been forced out of the market entirely.

The problems arising from illegal aliens do not just stop at the supply and demand curve: more people cause more strains on local infrastructure, resulting in setbacks and unintended deterioration of said supply.

Local and state governments, rather than allocating limited resources to build new housing, must now reallocate precious time, money, and manpower to improving the infrastructure already available.

This has the double effect of reducing the resources available for new housing while contributing more delays to a market grossly in short supply already.

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The Wish List Of The New York City Council For The City Budget

The deadline for the New York City deadline for the first budget negotiation cycle is looming for June 30, 2026. The elephant in the china shop is how to close the city’s budget gap projected to reach into the multi-billions of dollars. Thanks to Albany’s bailout which mitigated the impending financial disaster, Mayor Zhoran Mamdani was able to avoid raising property taxes. Nonetheless, the City Council giddily advocates significant NEW spending initiatives. Taxpayers from New York State have facilitated Mamdani’s proposing a $124.7 billion dollar executive budget.

Will the Big Apple expand its Rental Voucher program? Currently the 2023 eligibility rules are in force, although some council members desire an expansion. The mayor already campaigned on expansion but dropped that promise when he realized the prohibitive costs. Any expansion would necessarily exceed the current almost $1.8 billion budget. This contentious issue promises to be a potential sticking point in budget negotiations.

Low income public transportation riders already enjoy a 50% discount, but some council members are proposing up to $135 Million dollar more to make those fares free. Were this initiative to be passed the standing $96 Million dollar would double. However, the IBO (Independent Budget Office) underscores that a Fair Fare expansion would still be cheaper than “Fast and Free” buses.

In what seems to many as counterintuitive, the council, charged with living within budget constraints, still envisions staff increases rather than staff reductions which would add $32 Million over the next three years.

In a point of contention, Mayor Mamdani had initially proposed to cut 100 positions for Parks Enforcement Patrol officers. The council, on the other hand, desires to employ 200 new officers which would raise the budget allocation by about $40 Million.

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Not Just the Dollar: Every Major Currency Has Lost Most of Its Value Since 1971

People predicting the collapse of the dollar often point to inflation and argue that the U.S. dollar has lost much of its purchasing power since 1971, when the United States went off the gold standard. That loss of purchasing power is absolutely true and quantifiable. Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI data, $100 in 1971 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $822 today, a cumulative loss of roughly 87%.

Inflation, while not good, does not necessarily mean that people are poorer. Inflation means that each dollar purchases less than it did in the past. However, people have dramatically more dollars today than they did in 1971. Nominal wages are dramatically higher today than in 1971. After adjusting for inflation, today’s average hourly wage has about the same purchasing power it did in 1978, but falls short of 1971 levels.

The decline in the dollar’s purchasing power is therefore real, but it does not by itself prove that the dollar is destined to collapse. A collapsing currency produces hyperinflation and a flight out of the currency. Zimbabwe’s inflation peaked at an estimated 89.7 sextillion percent annually in November 2008, with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe issuing a $100 trillion note that could barely cover a bus fare. The government legalized foreign currencies, primarily the U.S. dollar, South African rand, and Botswana pula, for transactions, though successive versions of the Zimbabwean dollar continued to exist in various forms alongside them.

Venezuela’s peak annual inflation reached 1.37 million percent in 2018, according to the IMF, and the country had not recovered to anything resembling monetary stability before President Maduro was removed from office by the United States military.

The U.S. case is nowhere near this. Not only does the dollar persist, but it also remains the world’s preferred currency for trade settlement, foreign exchange reserves, and currency trading, and for good reason, because every major currency has experienced inflation and loss of purchasing power since 1971.

The British pound has lost roughly 95% of its purchasing power between 1971 and today, with £100 in 1971 equivalent to about £1,835 now, according to the Office for National Statistics’ composite price index data. Italy is even worse. The lira, which was Italy’s currency until 2002, depreciated so severely through the 1970s and 1980s oil-shock decades that prices in Italy today are roughly 20 times higher than in the late 1960s.

The euro, which replaced the lira, has itself lost purchasing power: €100 in 1997, the year the ECB’s Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices series begins, is equivalent to about €184 today, a loss of 46% in under three decades.

The ruble is the most extreme case among major economies, though a direct 1971 comparison is not possible because the Soviet ruble and the post-1992 Russian Federation ruble are effectively different currencies. From 1993 alone, the ruble lost over 99.9% of its purchasing power, per OECD and World Bank data.

In addition to the gold standard exit, U.S. debt is frequently cited as evidence of dollar decline, which is only partly valid. The underlying assumption that other countries carry little or no debt is false.

Japan’s government debt stands at 230% of GDP, making it the most indebted nation. The U.S. ranks 11th globally at 125%. China’s overall non-financial debt reached 312% of GDP in 2024, placing it among the most indebted countries in the world.

Countries with lower government debt-to-GDP ratios than the U.S. experienced similar declines in their currencies while paying substantially lower wages. This means their citizens are poorer than Americans despite their governments practicing greater fiscal austerity.

The UK’s government debt stood at 94.3% of GDP in 2025. The UNECE puts the UK’s average gross wage at roughly $57,260 annually, compared with a U.S. figure of approximately $82,900.

South Korea’s government debt was 46.8% of GDP in 2024. That is less than half the U.S. ratio. Yet the average gross wage in South Korea was $40,320, less than half the U.S. figure.

Canada’s government net debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 110% in 2024-25. Yet the Canadian dollar has lost roughly 87% of its purchasing power since 1971. Canada’s gross average wages came to roughly $60,680.

Germany is the most instructive example. Even Germany, the country most celebrated for monetary discipline and whose Bundesbank is often considered the gold standard of central banking, saw the Deutsche mark lose roughly 76% of its purchasing power between 1971 and 2002, when it was absorbed into the euro. Germany’s government debt stood at 63.5% of GDP in 2025, making it one of the least-indebted G7 economies. Despite that record, Germany still has the highest average wages among the major eurozone economies. Yet even those wages, at $69,433 annually, remain well below the U.S. figure of $82,933.

In short, while the U.S. government’s legendary debt is not good and inflation has taken a bite out of purchasing power, all countries have inflation, and all currencies have lost significant value over the past 50 years. The U.S. dollar is no closer to collapse than the euro, the pound, or any other major currency. On the contrary, the dollar remains the world’s currency of choice.

America remains the world’s largest economy by GDP and the eighth-richest country by GDP per capita, while maintaining one of the lowest inflation rates and unemployment rates among major economies.

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Trump’s Iran War Slowing Global Economic Growth to Lowest Level Since Pandemic: World Bank

The World Bank on Thursday lowered its global growth forecast for the remainder of 2026 as the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran drives up energy prices, inflation, and the cost of debt.

“The global economy is facing another major shock,” the World Bank’s latest biannual Global Economic Prospects report states. “The conflict in the Middle East has triggered sharp increases in energy prices, renewed inflationary pressures, and fueled expectations of tighter monetary policy.”

“Global growth is projected to slow to 2.5% in 2026, from 2.9% in 2025 – the lowest rate since the Covid-19 pandemic – amid weaker prospects for economies dependent on energy imports and those directly affected by hostilities,” the report continues. “Activity is expected to firm in 2027-28 as energy supplies recover, monetary easing resumes, and trade strengthens.”

The Iran War has resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 30% of the world’s fertilizer and 20% of its oil previously passed. In addition to increasing the risk of a global food crisis, the strait’s closure has sent fuel and fertilizer prices soaring, with US farm diesel costing nearly 50% more than it did on the war’s eve in February and various fertilizer products spiking by between one-quarter and one-half.

The war has affected the economies of countries far removed from Iran, as the World Bank reports forecasts that “growth in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) is expected to slow to 3.6% this year.”

“The level of per capita income across EMDEs excluding China and India, relative to advanced economies, is not expected to return to the pre-pandemic level until after 2028, implying nearly a decade of lost income convergence,” the international financial institution predicted.

World Bank Group president Ajay Banga said in a statement Thursday that “developing countries have faced a series of challenges over the last decade.”

“The impact differs by country, but the basic test is the same: Protect people and preserve stability today, without giving up on growth and jobs tomorrow,” Banga added. “In response to the current shock, we are providing liquidity where it is needed now – and we are ready with additional financing, guarantees, and private-sector solutions if pressures deepen. Our job is to help countries steady the ship, keep reforms moving, and emerge stronger on the other side.”

The bank said in April that up to $100 billion would be made available over the next 15 months for nations suffering the most acute economic shocks caused by the war.

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Inflation Reaches 4.2% as Prices Outpace Paychecks

There is a lot of political discourse about “affordability,” but the meaning of the term can be difficult to pin down.

Is it just a jargony way of talking about high nominal prices? Is it really all about housing? Could it be, as President Donald Trump has suggested, a “con job” invented by Democrats to make his administration look bad? Different people will have different answers, and I suspect we will continue to debate those questions through the midterms and into the 2028 presidential cycle.

But probably the most straightforward way to think about the “affordability” question is the relationship between two figures published monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS): average hourly earnings and the consumer price index. When the former is rising at a faster rate than the latter, the pay for the average worker is rising faster than prices. For that worker, life is getting more affordable.

When inflation is rising faster than wages, however, the opposite is true. And that’s what is happening now.

Wages grew by 3.4 percent over the past year, the BLS reported last week. On Wednesday morning, the BLS reported that inflation has climbed by 4.2 percent over the past 12 months, thanks in large part to a sharp increase in prices (fuel prices, in particular) since the start of the Iran war in March.

With prices rising faster than wages, the BLS also reported on Wednesday that “real average hourly earnings”—that is, wage growth once you account for inflation—were down by 0.3 percent in May.

Averages only get you so far, of course. Some Americans are feeling the sting of inflation more than others, depending on their purchasing habits and lifestyles, and wages are never rising for all workers equally. Still, there’s no getting around it: Life is less affordable now than it was a few months ago—before the Trump administration steered the country into a war of choice in the Middle East.

And, yes, the runaway inflation that America experienced during the first part of President Joe Biden’s term in office was a lot worse than what the country is seeing now. But since early 2023, wage growth had consistently outpaced inflation even as inflation remained above the Federal Reserve’s target annual rate of 2 percent.

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Oil Execs Warn Trump Gas Prices Are About to Get Hell of a Lot Worse

Gas prices could climb even higher in the coming months.

Industry officials have already warned the White House that the prices could spike yet again due to rapidly diminishing inventories, reported The Washington Post Thursday.

Since the beginning of the Iran war, commercial and government inventories have supplemented gas consumption across the U.S. The reserves have allowed prices to hover around $4.50 per gallon for the last four months—but that could change very quickly, according to oil and gas executives, who are often loath to make such alarming predictions.

“We’re sounding the alarm on these inventories going to record lows,” American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers told Fox Business. “We have to solve this problem in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Some inventories could be wiped out in a matter of weeks, according to the Post—just in time for summer holidays.

“I have absolutely no doubt the White House—from the president on down—is fully aware of the nearly universal alarm among oil companies and analysts about the direction of travel for oil prices this summer,” Bob McNally, a former Bush administration energy adviser, told the Post.

Yet Trump has been remarkably cavalier about the rising costs. With inflation at a three-year high, Trump stunned reporters, lawmakers, and voters alike on Wednesday with just four words: “I love the inflation,” he said.

“I love it,” he insisted, pledging that oil prices will drop “like a rock” when the war ends.

But the end of the war seems to be nowhere in sight. U.S. forces bombed Iran through two nights this week, part of the White House’s latest strategy to force Tehran to make a deal, despite the obvious risks of escalation.

“If we need to negotiate with bombs, we will negotiate with bombs,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday. “We will strike them hard tonight and hopefully Iran makes a good decision.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s allies aren’t so sure that their political movement will weather the brewing economic storm. The far-right populist rode the 2024 campaign on vehement promises of affordability; through his presidency, he swore that Americans would see lower utility bills, cheaper groceries, and more American-based jobs. But that hasn’t been the case.

Instead, as millions of Americans struggle with the rising cost of living and companies contend with rattled supply chains, the president’s inner circle fear that it might be too late to fix the problem for Trump’s midterm-dependent acolytes.

“Whether it’s peak inflation or not, it doesn’t matter,” one former Trump administration official told Politico. “The die has been cast in terms of how people are looking at the economy.”

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NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani Announces Multi-Million ‘Investment’ in Gender Affirming Care, Weeks After Claiming City is in ‘Historic’ Budget Crisis

Back in April, New York City’s new Democratic Socialist (communist) Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared that the city was in the midst of an ‘historic’ budget crisis. He framed it as a very serious problem and even claimed that unless new sources of revenue were found, people would be denied various services.

Now, the mayor is announcing that his administration is making a $15 million ‘investment’ in providing ‘gender affirming care’ a term that is flowery language used to describe genital mutilation and the prescribing of hormones.

So which is it? Is the city really that broke, or is there really enough money to spend a cool $15 million on trans drugs and surgeries? And since when was it the responsibility of a city government to provide ANY of this to the people who live there?

Mamdani made the comments at a ‘Pride’ party at city hall.

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An Unwarranted War, a Global Economic Drag

When the US-Iran conflict escalated earlier this year, the immediate concern centered on oil prices and the Strait of Hormuz.

But the real danger was never confined to crude oil. The crisis has evolved into a broader energy, logistics, fertilizer, food and financial shock.

What began as a regional conflict has become a structural drag on the global economy.

Prolonged pain

Recent warnings by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank underscore the same point.

Even if military hostilities continue to ease, energy systems, shipping networks and commodity supply chains will require many months – and in some cases years – to normalize. The result is likely to be a weaker global economy in the second half of 2026 and throughout 2027.

The core issue is persistence. The IMF warns that prolonged energy disruptions could push the world toward recessionary conditions. The World Bank expects rising energy prices in 2026, while the IEA reports tightening supplies, falling inventories and continuing refinery disruptions.

The world faces a prolonged period of elevated energy costs, fragmented trade routes, higher insurance premiums, supply-chain restructuring and slower productivity growth.

US: Resilient but increasingly stagflationary

The United States is better positioned than most advanced economies because of domestic energy production and continued AI-led investment. Yet, higher fuel, petrochemical and transport costs are already feeding through the economy.

Gasoline prices remain well above pre-war levels, while energy-intensive industries face sustained cost pressures.

Growth is likely to remain positive through 2027, but below pre-conflict expectations. Inflation may prove more persistent than policymakers anticipated.

The principal risk is not recession but a stagflationary environment characterized by slower growth, elevated prices and tighter financial conditions.

By targeting Iran’s strategic capabilities while expanding military deployments across the region, the US has contributed to a prolonged risk premium in global energy markets.

At the same time, it has left Europe, Japan, South Korea and much of the developing world highly vulnerable to the resulting energy shock.

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Inflation rises to 4.2 percent in May, highest level in 3 years

The annual inflation rate increased to its highest point in three years as the cost of energy and other goods rose due to the Iran war, according to data released by the Department of Labor on Wednesday.

The consumer price index (CPI), a popular gauge of inflation, rose 4.2 percent over the past 12 months and 0.5 percent in May alone.

The CPI increase matched the Wall Street consensus and marks the first time that it has surpassed 4 percent since May, 2023, making it the highest rate since April of that year.

Energy prices rose 3.9 percent in May after having risen 3.8 percent in April and 10.9 percent in March, accounting for over 60 percent of the monthly all-items increase.

The Energy Information Administration reported that the average price for gas reached $4.49 in mid-May, compared to $4.09 in mid-April. In June, the national average has so far dropped to $4.15, according to AAA. 

The price of fuel has kept increasing as peace talks between the U.S. and Iran drag out, likely threatened by the latest exchanges, which could threaten an already fragile two-month ceasefire.

The food index also saw an increase of 3.1 percent over the past year, with a 0.2 percent rise in May. All other items saw a nearly 3-percent increase in the last year after also rising by 0.2 percent in May. 

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Americans’ Average Monthly Mortgage Payment Tops $2000 For The First Time Ever

U.S. households are being financially squeezed at a level that we have never seen before. I have often said that we are in a long-term cost of living crisis that never seems to end, and that is not an exaggeration at all. Just about everything has been getting more expensive in recent years, and as a result our standard of living has been going down. In many areas of the country, you now have to earn six figures just to live a basic middle class lifestyle. The numbers that I am going to share with you in this article may be hard to believe, but they are very real. Inflation has been out of control for many years, and hard working American families are being absolutely crushed.

For the first time in U.S. history, the average monthly mortgage payment now exceeds $2,000…

Homeowners faced a sticker shock at the end of 2025 as the average monthly mortgage payment topped $2,000 for the first time—a historic milestone reflecting the combined pressure of high home prices and elevated interest rates.

In the fourth quarter of last year, the average payment for existing mortgage holders climbed to $2,005, representing a striking 44% surge compared to 2021, according to the latest quarterly outstanding mortgage report from the Realtor.com® economic research team.

In other words, the typical homeowner saw their monthly mortgage payment jump by more than $600 in just three years, an eye-watering surge.

Take another look at those figures.

All along, federal bureaucrats have been feeding us numbers that show that the inflation rate is very low, but the average monthly mortgage payment has risen by 44 percent just since 2021.

Needless to say, someone is not telling us the truth.

But that isn’t even the worst part.

Today, what the average American family is paying for health insurance each month is even higher than the average monthly mortgage payment…

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