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      Credit agency Moody’s cuts outlook on US government to negative

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      The credit ratings agency Moody’s reduced its outlook on the US government from stable to negative, citing division in Washington DC and risks to the nation’s fiscal strength.While Moody’s maintained the US’s current top-grade AAA rating, it raised the prospect that this may be cut.Moody’s warned that the US’s deficits are likely to remain “very large” in the face of higher interest rates. It also cautioned that “continued political polarization” in Congress rasies the risk that governments “will not be able to reach consensus on a fiscal plan to slow the decline in debt affordability”.The federal government is on the brink of another shutdown, with just a week left for the Republican-led House, Democratic-led Senate and Biden White House to reach a breakthrough on funding.The Biden administration said it disagreed with the decision, which comes just three months after another major agency, Fitch, downgraded its top rating for the US. Standard & Poor’s, the other leading ratings agency, had already done so.“In the context of higher interest rates, without effective fiscal policy measures to reduce government spending or increase revenues, Moody’s expects that the US’s fiscal deficits will remain very large, significantly weakening debt affordability,” the agency said in a statement.Wally Adeyemo, the US deputy treasury secretary, said: “While the statement by Moody’s maintains the United States’ AAA rating, we disagree with the shift to a negative outlook. The American economy remains strong, and treasury securities are the world’s pre-eminent safe and liquid asset.”Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary, suggested the move was “yet another consequence of congressional Republican extremism and dysfunction”. More

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      What does a US shutdown mean? Seven things you should know

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      The US stands just days from a full government shutdown amid political deadlock over demands from rightwing congressional Republicans for deep public spending cuts.Fuelled by bitter ideological divisions among the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, funding for federal agencies will run out at midnight on 30 September unless – against widespread expectation – Congress votes to pass a stopgap measure to extend government funding.It is an event with the potential to inflict disruption to a range of public services, cause delays in salaries, and wreak significant damage on the national economy if it becomes prolonged.At the heart of the looming upheaval is the uncertain status of the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who is under fire from members of his own party for agreeing spending limits with Joe Biden, that members of the GOP’s far-right “Freedom Caucus” say are too generous and want to urgently prune.What happens when a US government shutdown takes place?Thousands of federal government employees are put on furlough, meaning that they are told not to report for work and go unpaid for the period of the shutdown, although their salaries are paid retroactively when it ends.Other government workers who perform what are judged essential services, such as air traffic controllers and law enforcement officials, continue to work but do not get paid until Congress acts to end the shutdown.Depending on how long it lasts, national parks can either shut entirely or open without certain vital services such as public toilets or attendants. Passport processing can stop, as can research – at national health institutes.The Biden administration has warned that federal inspections ensuring food safety and prevention of the release of dangerous materials into drinking water could stop for the duration of the shutdown.About 10,000 children aged three and four may also lose access to Head Start, a federally funded program to promote school readiness among toddlers, especially among low-income families.What causes a shutdown?Simply put, the terms of a piece of legislation known as the Anti-Deficiency Act, first passed in 1884, prohibits federal agencies from spending or obligating funds without an act of appropriation – or some alternative form of approval – from Congress.If Congress fails to enact the 12 annual appropriations bills needed to fund the US government’s activities and associated bureaucracy, all non-essential work must cease until it does. If Congress enacts some of the bills but not others, the agencies affected by the bills not enacted are forced to cease normal functioning; this is known as a partial government shutdown.How unusual are US government shutdowns?For the first 200 years of the US’s existence, they did not happen at all. In recent decades, they have become an increasingly regular part of the political landscape, as Washington politics has become more polarised and brinkmanship a commonplace political tool. There have been 20 federal funding gaps since 1976, when the US first shifted the start of its fiscal year to 1 October.Three shutdowns in particular have entered US political lore:A 21-day partial closure in 1995 over a dispute about spending cuts between President Bill Clinton and the Republican speaker, Newt Gingrich, that is widely seen as setting the tone for later partisan congressional struggles.In 2013, when the government was partially closed for 16 days after another Republican-led Congress tried to use budget negotiations to defund Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare.A 34-day shutdown, the longest on record, lasting from December 2018 until January 2019, when Donald Trump refused to sign any appropriations bill that did not include $5.7bn funding for a wall along the US border with Mexico. The closure damaged Trump’s poll ratings.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhat is triggering the latest imminent shutdown?In large part, the crisis is being driven by the relatively weak position of McCarthy, the Republican speaker in the House of Representatives. Working with a wafer-thin majority in the 435-seat chamber, McCarthy needed a record 15 ballots to ascend to his position last January, a position earned only after tense negotiations with a minority of far-right Republicans.Those same rightwingers are now in effect holding McCarthy hostage by refusing to vote for the appropriations bills on the basis of spending guidelines the speaker previously agreed with Biden. McCarthy could, theoretically, still pass the bills with the support of Democrats across the aisle. But rightwingers, notably the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, have vowed to topple him as speaker in such a scenario.Is there a way out of the current impasse?Time is running out. McCarthy and other Republican leaders have been trying to deploy a stopgap spending measure called a continuing resolution (CR) that would keep the government open until 31 October, while efforts continue to agree to final spending bills for 2024.However, multiple attempts have failed to win approval of Freedom Caucus members, who are refusing to vote for it unless it has more radical conservative policies attached, such as language to address “woke policies” and “weaponization of the Department of Justice”. A list of amendments from the rightwing Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene includes a resolution preventing funds being used to aid Ukraine and a ban on funding for Covid-19 vaccine mandates.How could a shutdown affect the wider economy?According to the congressional budget office, the 2018-19 shutdown imposed a short-term cost of $11bn on the US economy, an estimated $3bn of which was never recovered after the stoppage ended.Economists have warned the effects now could be compounded by other unrelated events, including the lingering impact of inflationary pressures and the United Auto Workers strike against America’s three biggest car manufacturers, which union leaders have threatened to expand if their demands remain unmet.How has Joe Biden reacted?The president has tried to use the bully pulpit to put the spotlight on the GOP holdouts, emphasizing that they should be blamed if a shutdown does go ahead.“Let’s be clear. If the government shuts down that means members of the US military are going to have to continue to work but not get paid,” Biden said at a dinner hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation at the weekend. “Funding the government is one of the most basic responsibilities of Congress. It’s time for Republicans to start doing the job America elected them to do.”Fearing the worst, however, the White House has published a set of blueprints for how government agencies should operate if a shutdown ensues and funds run out. More

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      A meat processer killed a 16-year-old. Yet US lawmakers want more child labor | Akin Olla

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      This July the body of 16-year-old Duvan Tomas Perez “became entangled” in meat processing machinery in Mississippi, according to a statement from Mar-Jac Poultry, the company where the boy was working. Perez was too young to be working there, according to Mar-Jac, which blamed an outside staffing company for failing to verify Perez’s age and identity. Perez was not the first worker to die at the plant in recent years, and he was not the first 16-year-old to die at work in the US this summer.American legislators should be working to crack down on child labor, here and abroad, but instead, politicians – including Democrats – in at least 11 states have introduced or passed bills that weaken child labor laws. At a time when adult workers are demanding a fairer slice of the increasingly behemoth pie of corporate profits, child labor is a capitalist work-around to increase the labor pool and lower the wages of all those who have to work for a living.I’m embarrassed to be writing an anti-child labor article in the year 2023, as if this is some Charles Dickens novel leaking gruel and cruel men. It is not as if child labor had ever disappeared, of course; children around the world toil in fast-fashion sweatshops and among the mountains of garbage in other countries but produced by Silicon Valley. This is unfortunately where capitalism is heading, and has always been heading: children competing with their parents for jobs amid the ruins of societies we sacrificed for profit. But for awhile it seemed like child labor might have escaped the empire to live primarily in its colonial subjects.Child labor was once as rampant in the US as it is in the countries of the developing world. In 1900, one out of five American children – including children as young as 10 – were employed. A quarter of textile workers in the American south were under the age of 16. In the north, factories relied on child labor so heavily that some areas suffered from “boy shortages” that led to corporate agents traveling the country in search of orphaned children to put to work.It is difficult to calculate the total number of legal and illegal child workers in the US today. In the agricultural industry alone, there are likely hundreds of thousands of children, largely from Central America. A New York Times investigation earlier this year found that many US brands directly or indirectly use child labor, including Lucky Charms, Nature Valley, Ford and J Crew. While some of that work is legal, the federal government, at least, has been cracking down on illegal child labor. The number of minors in child labor violations has increased by 283% since 2015, according to the Economic Policy Institute. According to the US Department of Labor, over 800 companies illegally employed children in the past fiscal year, and one meatpacking company was fined for employing children across 13 different plants.Legal child labor may seem like an odd turn of phrase but child labor isn’t at all banned in the US. The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act created a federal minimum wage and banned children under 16 from “hazardous” work, but left agricultural workers out of many of its reforms. This is why so many children are “legally” employed, and why many agricultural workers in the US do not have a right to a minimum wage.These policies allowed the US to maintain its long history of relying on slavery and near slavery for its agricultural wealth and give companies the ability to replace adult workers with children when adult workers demand decent pay – an increasingly common occurrence since Covid reminded workers of how important they are, and how little they are valued.The pandemic killed over a million Americans, many of them workers or potential workers, and brought on a wave of retirements that left an even larger hole in the labor market. Holes like this can increase the value of individual workers and allow them to negotiate for higher wages, a trend that followed the bubonic plague in Europe. The meat-processing company where Duvan was working alluded to the underlying conditions that landed the company with child workers: “Due to an unprecedentedly tight labor market, Mar-Jac MS relies on staffing companies to fill positions at its facility,” a statement the company issued in July said.While some companies are turning towards automation, others are turning towards taking our teens from schools and into factories. Instead of cutting CEOs’ record salaries, corporate leaders – and their political allies – are fighting to maintain low wages by any means necessary.Iowa has moved to allow children as young as 14 to work in industrial laundries and meat coolers, as well as created a special license to allow some 14-year-olds to drive up to 50 miles for work between 5am and 10pm. Nebraska has moved to join other states in allowing employers to pay people under 20 less than minimum wage – as low as $4.25 an hour. These laws are being pushed by groups such as Americans for Prosperity, various chambers of commerce, and restaurant associations aiming to hire younger bartenders.Some legislators characterize the work that killed Duvan as potential sources of revenue for struggling immigrant families. But this is a macabre policy solution birthed by a sanguinary system. Instead of putting children to work, we ought to ask ourselves if a system that cannot rid itself of child labor is worth keeping.
      Akin Olla is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian US More

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      McCarthy says hard-right Republicans ‘want to burn whole place down’

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      The House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, was dealt his second humiliating defeat of the week on Thursday, when his conference again failed to approve a procedural motion as members continued to clash over government spending levels with just days left to avert a federal shutdown.With no clear path forward in Republicans’ negotiations, the House concluded its work on Thursday without any stated plan to reconvene on Friday.“Discussions related to [fiscal year 2024] appropriations are ongoing,” Congressman Tom Emmer, the House Republican whip, said in a statement. “Members are advised that ample notice will be given ahead of any potential votes tomorrow or this weekend.”A proposal to take up House Republicans’ defense spending bill failed in a vote of 216 to 212, with five hard-right members joining Democrats in opposing the motion. The vote marked the second time this week that the motion had failed, after members of the House Freedom caucus first blocked the bill on Tuesday.The defeat was interpreted as a dismal sign for House Republicans’ prospects of approving a separate stopgap spending bill before government funding runs out at the end of the month.McCarthy had projected optimism heading into the Thursday vote, saying he and his allies had made substantial progress in their talks with the holdout Republicans on Wednesday. But five members of the House Freedom caucus – Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Eli Crane of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – still opposed the procedural motion on Thursday.Leaving the floor on Thursday, McCarthy voiced exasperation with his critics within the Republican conference.“I don’t understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea and having the debate,” McCarthy told reporters. “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. That doesn’t work.”The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, chastised his Republican colleagues over their internal divisions, accusing them of jeopardizing Americans’ wellbeing for the sake of a political stunt.Given that the defense spending bill is usually one of the least contentious spending measures in the House, the second failed vote spelled major trouble for the spending talks. If no agreement is reached on a series of funding bills, the federal government will shutter on 30 September. In the event of a shutdown, starting 1 October, hundreds of thousands of federal workers would likely go without pay and key healthcare and other public programs would be affected.“House Republicans continue to be held captive by the most extreme element of their conference, and it’s hurting the American people,” Jeffries said at a press conference. “Why are the American people facing down another manufactured GOP crisis? They need to end their civil war.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere are several unknowns still hanging over McCarthy’s effort, which, as the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has pointed out, could be politically damaging to the party.The first is whether hard-right members of the House Freedom caucus – who have capitalized on McCarthy’s narrow majority – will eventually abandon their blockade as the shutdown deadline approaches.The second is if whatever bill Republicans do pass will include the Ukraine aid and disaster relief funding the Democratic-led Senate is demanding. Without Senate agreement, any measure cannot be enacted.Explaining her vote against advancing the defense bill on Thursday, Greene said she wanted to send a message about the need to end funding for Ukraine. “I just voted NO to the rule for the Defense bill because they refused to take the war money for Ukraine out and put it in a separate bill,” Greene said on X, formerly known as Twitter.McCarthy has made clear to his party that he will approach Biden’s pending request for an additional $24bn in support for Ukraine with considerable scepticism – taking into consideration extremist members, like Greene and Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, who have signaled that their stance against Ukraine funding is non-negotiable.“Is [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy elected to Congress? Is he our president? I don’t think I have to commit anything and I think I have questions for him,” McCarthy told ABC News, as the Ukrainian president prepared to meet Joe Biden at the White House.Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has complicated matters from the sidelines, urging Republicans to use government funding as leverage for his own personal gains.“A very important deadline is approaching at the end of the month,” Trump posted on Truth Social, his own social media platform. “Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government that refuses to close the Border, and treats half the Country as Enemies of the State.”The former president, who faces 91 criminal charges over election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments, as well as assorted civil lawsuits, added: “This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other patriots.” More

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      US House Republicans pitch short-term spending deal as shutdown looms

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      With a possible partial US government shutdown looming in two weeks, Kevin McCarthy on Sunday said he would bring a defense spending bill to a vote “win or lose” this week, despite resistance from hardline fellow Republicans.The House speaker is struggling to bring fiscal 2024 spending legislation to the floor, with Republicans fractured by conservative demands for spending to be cut to a 2022 level of $1.47tn – $120bn below the spending on which McCarthy agreed with Joe Biden in May.Late on Sunday, members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus and the more moderate Main Street Caucus announced a deal on a short-term stopgap bill to keep the government open until 31 October, but with a spending cut of more than 8% on agencies apart from the defense and veterans affairs departments.The measure, which is unlikely to become law, also includes conservative restrictions on immigration and the US border with Mexico.Republicans have said that such a deal could allow the House to move forward on the defense spending bill this week.But it was unclear whether the measure had sufficient Republican support to pass the chamber. The spending cuts were also likely to draw opposition from Democrats in the House and Senate, who reject the immigration provisions.Republicans hold a narrow 221-212 majority in the chamber as they bicker over spending and pursue a new impeachment drive against Joe Biden while the United States faces a possible fourth partial government shutdown in a decade.McCarthy has begun to face calls for floor action seeking his ouster from hardline conservatives and others who have accused him of failing to keep promises he made to become speaker in January after a revolt from some of the most conservative Republicans in the House.The Republican-controlled House and Democratic-led Senate have until 1 October to avoid a partial shutdown by enacting appropriations bills that Biden, a Democrat, can sign into law, or by passing a short-term stopgap spending measure to give lawmakers more time for debate.McCarthy signaled a tougher stand with hardliners, telling the Fox News Sunday Morning Futures program that he would bring the stalled defense bill to the floor this week. The House last week postponed a vote on beginning debate on the defense appropriations bill due to opposition from the hardliners.“We’ll bring it to the floor, win or lose, and show the American public who’s for the department of defense, who’s for our military,” McCarthy said.McCarthy also said he wants to make sure there is no shutdown on 1 October, saying: “A shutdown would only give strength to the Democrats.”McCarthy has held closed-door discussions over the weekend aimed at overcoming a roadblock by the conservative hardliners to spending legislation. They want assurances that legislation will include their deep spending cuts, as well as conservative policy priorities including provisions related to tighter border security that are unlikely to secure Democratic votes.“We made some good progress,” McCarthy said.Elise Stefanik, the number four House Republican, told the Fox News Sunday program that she was optimistic about moving forward on appropriations after closed-door discussions.But Republican representative Nancy Mace told ABC’s This Week that she expects a shutdown and did not rule out support for a vote to oust McCarthy’s ouster. Mace complained that the speaker has not made good on promises to her involving action on women’s issues and gun violence.“Everything’s on the table at this point for me,” Mace said.Mace played down the consequences of a shutdown, saying much of the government would remain in operation and that the hiatus would give government workers time off with back pay at a later date.Democratic former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a shutdown would risk harming the most vulnerable members of society who depend on government assistance.“We’re talking about diminishing even something as simple and fundamental as feeding the children,” Pelosi told MSNBC. “We have to try to avoid it.“ More

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      Does Wile E Coyote explain US voters’ gloom amid buoyant economy?

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      Strolling past the colorfully restored Victorian homes of the Fourth Ward, watching the barman hand-carve blocks of ice for old fashioneds at the jam-packed bar of The Crunkleton, it’s easy to fall for Charlotte’s ample southern charms. And yet, people are not happy – at least according to the polls.Consumer sentiment in North Carolina is now lower than it was at the height of the pandemic, according to High Point University’s confidence tracker. “People are just not feeling particularly good,” said Martin Kifer, director of the university’s survey research center.North Carolina is not alone. Official figures suggest the US pulled off an astonishing recovery from the Covid pandemic and recession.More than 20 million people in the US lost their jobs in April 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered the world’s largest economy. The unemployment rate rose to 14.7%. But the rebound was just as dramatic. Unemployment has hovered near 50-year lows since January 2022 and is now 3.8%. In North Carolina, it’s just 3.3%. More than 100 people are moving to the city every day.But as an exclusive Guardian/Harris Poll survey found this week, two-thirds (68%) of Americans report it’s difficult to be happy about positive economic news when they feel financially squeezed each month.Across the country, poll after poll shows people are not feeling it. That’s not good news for the Biden administration, particularly in a potential swing state where the perceived success – or failure – of “Bidenomics”, as Biden has dubbed his economic strategy, will be one of the key issues in next year’s election.The election is still a way out, and Biden has proven pollsters wrong in the past. Nevertheless, the economy – or voters’ perception of it – will be a defining issue in one of the most consequential elections in US history.Americans are deeply divided on the economy. The Harris poll shows over half (53%) of Americans believe the economy is getting worse. Some 72% of Republicans share that view compared with 32% of Democrats. But the unhappiness runs deep on both sides. Only a third of Democrats believe that the economy is getting better.Even when Americans say they are doing OK financially, they believe the economy is in trouble. According to the Federal Reserve’s annual survey of economic wellbeing, 73% of households said that they were “at least doing OK financially” at the end of 2022. In 2019, that figure was 75% of households. But back then, 50% said the national economy was good or excellent. By 2022, that number had fallen to just 18%.Some heavyweight voices share the gloom. Both the former Treasury secretary Larry Summers and Bill Dudley, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, have speculated that having shot out of the pandemic like a coyote chasing a roadrunner, the US may be in a “Wile E Coyote” economy and, like Warner Brother’s cartoon canine, the US economy may be heading off a cliff. “Falling back to earth will not be a pleasant experience,” Dudley has warned.Partisanship explains much of the seeming disconnect between economic data and sentiment. But not all of it. Large forces are reshaping the US economy and may explain the nation’s vertigo.Many low-wage workers, have been living with that fear of falling for a long time.Ieisha Franceis’s wages have shot up from $12.50 to $17 since the Durham, North Carolina, resident made the shift from working in fast food to a job at a senior living facility. Wages are – finally – running ahead of inflation overall but for Franceis, “everything looks the same. Inflation’s not gone down, it’s just not going up,” she said. “These days $17 an hour is looking a lot like $12.50,” said the low-wage activist.Franceis used to buy her family’s side dishes, boxes of macaroni and cheese, mashed potato, at Dollar General. The Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (“the good stuff”) has gone. “Now they only carry a cheaper brand with the powdered cheese.” At the average grocery store, that Kraft Mac and Cheese is over $2.“The Dollar Tree went from everything being $1 to everything being $1.25. Now they even have a $5 section and a $10 section. Huh? This was a dollar store,” she said. “Bidenomics” means little to Franceis. “What we need is higher wages and more unions,” she said.Even entrepreneurs are finding the new, post-Covid economy taxing.Cocktail queen Tamu Curtis saw her business boom during lockdown. A Los Angeles transplant, she started giving cocktail classes online and saved enough to open her bricks-and-mortar shop. The Cocktailery – nestled between an Anthropologie and Warby Parker inside an old streetcar station – opened in September 2021 when the vaccines started rolling out. “I thought, OK everybody is going to run and get the vaccines. We are saved! Of course, it didn’t work out that way,” she said ruefully. “That was a plot twist.”Up and running now for over a year, business has been strange. “This has been the craziest summer. It’s so slow,” she said.Retail sales have collapsed but classes have boomed. “People will spend money on experiences. On travel. We spent two years filling our houses with stuff. Maybe we just don’t need that any more.”On top of that, she said, “inflation is killing me.” An order of cocktail bitters that used to cost her $700 shot up to $1,500. “There’s only so much you can pass on. I can’t sell a bitter for $42. There’s a max people will pay.”At the same time, rent is high and financing is getting tougher as interest rates rise. “It’s difficult,” she said. And more so for a minority, woman-owned business. She hasn’t been able to get a traditional bank loan yet or a line of credit from her bank, Charlotte-based Bank of America. “Now the banks aren’t lending the way they were.”Post-Covid has been an easier ride for other local business people but still, existential questions remain, ones that may point to a wider national malaise.Desmond Wiggan and his partner Aubrey Yeboah launched their business, BatteryXchange, in 2019, just before the pandemic. The company sets up battery charging stations for mobile devices and the idea had originally been to target people at conferences or out on the town. “Suddenly there were no people,” said Wiggan.BatteryXChange retooled and now rents its equipment to healthcare providers and others who use the service to help keep their customers online. It worked and business is booming, as is Wiggan’s profile. He has just returned from a business symposium on swanky Martha’s Vineyard. A copy of Propel, a local Black business magazine, sits on his office table. Wiggan’s headshot is above a message from Michelle Obama: “Success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make.”But Wiggan has some wider concerns. He spent two years living in China and has seen firsthand that other countries think on a longer timescale. Back in the US, he said, it’s all about the next election cycle. On top of that another likely hot election issue worries him. “The age gap of our leaders. They are old. The torch has got to be passed.“These other countries are starting to sniff us out,” he said. Foreign students were getting their education in the US then going home because they see their country looking to the future, he said. “They are thinking 2060 not every four, eight years when we go back and forth.”****Why people feel so bad about an economy that – technically – appears strong is a question that is vexing not just the White House but Nobel economic laureates. Historians will have a better answer. For now, the reasons look manifold.As HPU’s Kifer points out “the perception of the economy is not the economy.” The disconnect between the official figures and how people feel may be temporary. Nor is it unusual for the hangover of a recession to outlast what looks like the beginning of a recovery. High Point’s own consumer confidence index started in 2010, two years after the peak of the 2008/2009 recession. It wasn’t until September 2011 that confidence started rising.The US’s pandemic recession began in February 2020 and ended two months later, making it the shortest recession on record. The body blow it dealt to confidence is, however, proving hard to shift. And things are different this time. For one, there is relatively high inflation – something never directly experienced by Americans under 40. Slowing increases have done little to calm people’s nerves and most people in North Carolina expect inflation to get worse next year, according to another HPU poll.The mood of economic despondency is fueled by other fires, too, illustrated by life in North Carolina and felt across the country.Politics plays a huge role. The University of Michigan’s national consumer confidence index shows Republican confidence soared under Trump and dropped under Biden while Democrats’ did the opposite.But it’s not the only factor. While people may not have lost their jobs, America’s middle class has lost $2tn in wealth since 2020 thanks to inflation and the fastest increase in interest rates since the 1980s, according to data compiled by economists at the University of California, Berkeley.That fall comes after outsized gains from stimulus cheques, rising house prices and other assets for those who rode out the pandemic with little financial cost. Still, the psychological pain of losing is about twice the pleasure of winning, according to Nobel-winning psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman. Losses loom larger than gains.Then there are the epochal issues of our day – ones that will spread far beyond North Carolina and the Biden presidency.North Carolina has been voted the best state for business for two consecutive years and business is still good. But there are signs of a slowdown. According to the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, the Charlotte area expects businesses to invest $2.3bn in the region this year and create 7,200 jobs. That’s down from $8bn in investment and 20,000 jobs last year.Uncertainty is a large part of that drop, said Danny Chavez, chief business recruitment officer of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance. Concerns about the direction of interest rates and political change are part of it – businesses waiting to see what happens next year, a natural part of the cycle. There is also something more.The number of jobs created per investment is also decreasing as tech takes jobs. Financial services and manufacturing are extremely important to the region. They remain so, said Chavez. “But in terms of jobs, both those industries are highly vulnerable to automation and AI,” he said.While Charlotte is better positioned than most to ride out that change, Chavez said the region – and the rest of the US – is also increasingly competing with global players. India and China are challenging the US’s rank as the world’s largest economy.Biden’s economic plans are playing to the long term and America has proved resilient to big shocks before. The president also has a track record of beating expectations. If hiring stays steady and inflation keeps receding, maybe Americans will hear the good news soon. That may or may not happen before the 2024 election.But the polls may also reflect a wider anxiety about the existential challenges the US (and other economies) face. Perhaps those challenges explain some of the national mood. It’s hard to measure existential dread.Longer term, neither Bidenomics – nor Trumponomics – are likely to fix America’s broken healthcare and childcare systems or the climate crisis. Nor do they offer clear solutions to the global trade winds that threaten American exceptionalism or the challenges presented by AI and automation.Little wonder then that so many in the US feel like Wile E Coyote, running off the cliff, treading air, waiting for the fall. More

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      US economy going strong under Biden – Americans don’t believe it

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      Americans do not trust the government’s economic news – or the media’s reporting of it – according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian that presents the White House with a major hurdle as it pushes Biden’s economic record ahead of next year’s election.The US has roared back from the Covid recession by official measures. But two-thirds of Americans are unhappy about the economy despite consistent reports that inflation is easing and unemployment is close to a 50-year low. And the poll suggests many are unaware of or don’t believe the positive economic news the government has reported.The results illustrate a dramatic political split on economic views – with Republicans far more pessimistic than Democrats. But unhappiness about the economy is widespread.
      Two-thirds of respondents (68%) reported it’s difficult to be happy about positive economic news when they feel financially squeezed each month (Republicans: 69%, Democrats: 68%).
      Two-thirds of Americans (65%) believe that the economy is worse than the media makes it out to be rather than better (35%).
      In August the unemployment rate was 3.8%, close to a 50-year low. But the poll found that 51% wrongly believe that unemployment is nearing a 50-year high rather than those who believe it’s actually low (49%).
      The lack of confidence in the economy has many academics and politicians puzzled. Some have blamed the US’s polarized politics and this was illustrated in the poll. But Harris’s data also shows that fears are widespread – and reinforced by disbelief of or ignorance about official figures and a mistrust of the media’s reporting of them.Some 82% of Republicans and 66% of independents believe the economy is worse than the media’s portrayal. But nearly half of Democrats (49%) also said the media viewed the economy too favorably.Overall, the poll found widespread despondency about the state of the economy. More than half of Americans (53%) believe the economy is getting worse instead of better or staying the same. Republicans and independents are more likely to think it’s getting worse (72% and 58%, respectively, v Democrats: 32%), while more Democrats think it’s getting better (32% v Republicans: 8%, independents: 13%).The results paint a difficult picture for Joe Biden, who is making “Bidenomics” – his economic policy record – a central plank of his re-election platform.The views of those familiar with Bidenomics showed a perhaps unsurprising party split. Some 60% of Democrats believe his plans are improving the US economy overall compared with 12% of Republicans.There is a widespread belief that Bidenomics is good in theory but isn’t being implemented well – something both Democrats and Republicans agree with (62% v 58%).Biden supporters have just launched a $13m advertising campaign extolling the president’s economic achievements, which include a landmark $1.2tn infrastructure and climate bill, massive investment in domestic microchips production and green energy solutions. His legislative actions are predicted to create 1.5m jobs per year for the next decade.That message may be hard to sell given the widespread disbelief of and ignorance about the health of the US economy highlighted by the poll.As well as being wrong about the unemployment data, respondents were unaware of, or chose to mischaracterize, other major economic data points.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe widest measure of economic growth – gross domestic product – increased at a 2.1% annualized rate last quarter and has been steadily improving since the Covid downturn. But more respondents (59%) believe that the US economy is shrinking this year than those who believe it is growing (41%). More Republicans (72%) and independents (63%) believe the economy is shrinking than do Democrats. But still, a sizeable 44% of Democrats believe the economy is shrinking.The S&P 500 stock market index is up 16% so far this year. But 59% of respondents wrongly said they believe the S&P is down for the year compared with those who said they believe it is up (41%). The majority of all those asked said the S&P was down whether Republican (66%), independent (60%) or Democrat (52%).US wages are, finally, growing faster than inflation. But 75% of those polled wrongfully believe that wages aren’t keeping up with inflation. That view is held by the majority of Republicans (84%), independents (75%) and Democrats (67%).There was some good news for Biden. The poll found that 75% of respondents support at least one of the four main branches of Bidenomics: improving infrastructure, attracting high-tech electronics manufacturing, building clean energy manufacturing facilities and attracting more high-paying union jobs.Still, 51% of Americans believe that government spending under the current administration is having a negative impact on the US economy (Republicans: 72%, independents: 54%, Democrats: 30%) rather than a positive impact (21%) or no impact (28%). And only just over a third of Democrats (35%) believe it’s having a positive impact (Republicans: 11%, independents: 16%).“All these perceptual-reality gaps underscore Biden’s difficulty in claiming credit for economic gains. Americans either view the economy through their politics or aren’t feeling it in real life, or both,” said John Gerzema, the CEO of Harris Poll.
      This survey was conducted online within the US by the Harris Poll from 1 to 3 September among a nationally representative sample of 2,055 US adults, where 1,063 were familiar with Bidenomics. More

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      in US Politics

      US inflation in August rose to 3.7% amid sharp increase in energy prices

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      US inflation in August rose for the first time since June 2022, rising to 3.7% as a sharp increase in energy prices pushed prices up toward the end of the summer.Growth in prices still remains far below the decades-high inflation rates that were seen last summer, when the rate peaked at 9.1% in June. Still, an increase in inflation means the US economy is further from the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2% and will probably make officials consider pushing interest rates up later this year.The price of energy commodities, including gas and oil, jumped up 10.5% over the last month, according to the latest Consumer Price Index data, which measures the prices of a basket of goods and services. Gas prices ticked up in August as Russia and Saudi Arabia continued aggressive cuts in supply, bringing the price of crude oil to 10-month high at $91 a barrel. Higher gas prices accounted for more than half of the increase in the overall inflation rate.Meanwhile core inflation, which measures the price of goods and services minus the volatile energy and food industries, actually decreased in August to 4.3%, down from 4.7% in July, reflecting the impact higher energy prices are having on the overall inflation rate.Even with the decrease in core inflation, which has been higher and going down at a slower rate than the 12-month inflation rate, inflation still remains far above the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%.Though price decreases have been seen in used cars and medical care services over the last few months, home prices have hit a near-record high in June, keeping core inflation stubbornly high. The median home price hit $413,80, the second-highest price ever, according to the National Association of Realtors. Home prices cooled slightly to $406,700 in July, but home prices still remain 7.3% higher than a year earlier.Even with inflation slightly up, the Fed is on track to keep interest rates the same at their next board meeting on 20 September. Economists say the Fed has had a pause planned for the meeting for a while as many officials say the economy has yet to feel the full effects of interest rates, which are at a 22-year high at 5.25% to 5.5%.But as the health of the economy continues to be hard to pin down – job growth has remained relatively stable even amid high interest rates, but inflation is still far from 2% – the Fed could still raise interest rates at future meetings. Future interest rate increases could introduce more volatility to the US economy, and potentially trigger a recession, though the Fed’s mission to bring down inflation has yet to bear dramatic consequences.The Fed chair, Jerome Powell, said last month that officials were aware of the precarity, saying they will “proceed carefully” as they decide what to do with interest rates. Powell has said the overall decline in inflation has been a “welcome development”, but it still remains high.“We are prepared to raise rates further if appropriate, and intend to hold policy at a restrictive level until we are confident that inflation is moving sustainably down toward our objective,” he said. More