ECONOMICS

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Just like clockwork, there is talk of recession in the air. The announcement will come soon and be confirmed by summer. The Atlanta Fed just revised its output forecast for the first quarter to expect a contraction at-2.8 percent. This is very sudden. Only a week earlier, the same tools (GDPNow) had forecast a 2 percent increase in output in the first quarter.

At this point, many people are probably dismissing all these (more…)

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China’s Vice-Premier He Lifeng held a video call on Friday, kicking off crucial diplomatic efforts between the President Xi Jinping government and the new Trump administration.

As expected, the Chinese side raised "serious concerns" on the recent imposition of tariffs and other restrictive measures on Chinese goods by the Trump White House, at a moment of growing fears of a renewed trade (more…)

Submitted by OpenTheBooks

As DOGE continues searching for and flagging waste, fraud and abuse across the federal government, American taxpayers are hearing about a lot of outrageous spending – and obscure agencies and projects – for the first time.

The scandalous spending at USAID on foreign programs (think a transgender opera in Colombia) and progressive NGO’s (think The Aspen Institute) set off an explosion of headlines. Separately, our own auditors found $22 BILLION spent by the (more…)