Live from Music Row, Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
Michael, there was an interesting article in The Epoch Times and the headline: First Quarter Job Cuts Jumped by Nearly 400 Percent as Companies Struggle With Economic Conditions. And then I saw a story where Indeed.com is cutting 15 percent of its labor force and Indeed.com is a jobs board.
And so if they’re cutting employment as one one of these leading-edge types of companies then it means that the number of people seeking jobs and the number of employers who are looking for employees is getting smaller.
There is great consternation and debate across the country and over all of the social unrest and social issues. But the economic issues seem to have taken a backseat, so it’s worth reviewing that. I think we have Liz Peek coming up, so she may be able to shed some light on this.
But when I look at all the different areas of thinking about the economy I see that the repayment of student debt has not yet restarted. So people with student loans have gone close to three years without having to make a payment. Somewhere in here, they have to start doing that. The Biden administration is not forcing it.
At some point maybe the courts will impose that upon the Biden administration. One thing we’ve learned is Biden administration doesn’t do anything that it thinks is politically unpopular no matter whether it’s lawful or not. They just simply don’t care.
Then you have credit card debt. Consumer credit card debt is very high I think the highest it’s been in 20 years. Then you have car loan defaults, which are also at a very high level. And these are all signs of stress. Savings rates are at a 20-year low.
And so I look at the economy and I don’t see much that is good. The biggest problem that we have is this gnawing level of inflation and these giant deficits that continue. And so we have within the next 90 days, Washington will have to make a decision on increasing the size of the debt or decreasing the size of spending.
At this point, McCarthy is calling for some cuts in spending, certainly not balancing the budget, but reducing some spending in exchange for the House’s support for raising the debt ceiling. Biden says he won’t negotiate a penny, and apparently, so far he’s not negotiated at all.
And so we’ll just have to see what is going to happen. But the next election will likely hinge on pocketbook issues. What we learned in Wisconsin is if we have a very weak economy, whether or not paying people to vote will continue. And it is apparently legal because it happened and nobody’s challenged it.
And so if it’s legal, the question is whether or not Republicans are going to respond in kind with that kind of technology and that kind of ground game. We’ll have to see. I don’t know. But so far there’s no indication that Republicans are going to adopt what was a very successful strategy to get out the vote in Wisconsin.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this Crommentary:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Grocery Shopping” by Kampus Production.
