Douglas Holtz-Eakin

The Small Business Administration (SBA) would like to change the definition of a small business. The summary of its proposal in the Federal Register is matter-of-fact in tone:

Readers will recall that during the Iran War preseason, the Trump Administration seized Venezuela. It was far from obvious how this fit into the administration's strategic plan, but there was a lot of happy (and unrealistic ) talk about oil supplies for the United States. Now there are reports of an actual plan. The news, as usual, came from the president's Truth Social account:

Treasury watchers are probably aware of the fact that the department said it would increase “by at least double” (to $4 billion) the size of buybacks of longer-dated securities. Secretary Bessent attributed the move to liquidity issues — the need to ensure orderly trading in a “thin” summer market. They are probably also aware of the drama that ensued, in which Bessent mentor and veteran investor Stanley Druckenmiller took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal to sharply criticize the move:

The United States has an affordable housing issue, problem, or crisis. Which of these depends on how optimistic one is. (If you are at all optimistic Torsten Slok's Daily Spark from Tuesday will cure you.) In the course of any discussion about “what to do,” however, the point is inevitably made that most of the policy levers are in the hands of local governments. This was brought home vividly by a paper entitled How NYC Council Legislation Impacts Affordable Housing (hat tip: Thomas Kingsley) prepared for the New York Housing Conference (NYHC).

The opinions expressed herein are mine alone and do not represent the position of the American Action Forum. I am grateful to Dan Goldbeck, Brian Faughnan, Angela Kuck, and Sarah Smith for their assistance. All errors are my own.

The failure of the popular press to appreciate the magnitude of the Trump Administration's regulatory accomplishments (both now and in the president's first term) has been a frustration. Eakinomics finds the burden cost reductions catalogued in Regulation Rodeo ( regrodeo.com ) utterly compelling. Particularly when it comes to deregulation issues, however, most people seem to presume that any reduction in regulation or its costs must mean that some apocalypse has been unleashed.

Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the employment report for August. Taken at face value, it was a blockbuster. The establishment survey featured creation of 162,000 jobs. The household survey showed an unemployment rate at 4.1 percent, a rise of 683,00 in the labor force due to a 0.2-percentage-point rise in the participation rate, and an increase in 569,000 in employment.

The Trump administration is evidently preparing a rulemaking that would permit married couples with a stay-at-home spouse to receive taxpayer funds as a “child care subsidy,” thereby creating the only federal subsidy to pay parents to stay home to raise children. This is bad policy, an abuse of the process, and, ultimately, bad politics

Regular readers of Eakinomics are aware that the federal debt has breached the $40 trillion threshold. And the attention that surrounded that event brought home to the general public the fact that Uncle Sam is far from flush; in fact, for all practical purposes he's walking around in his skivvies. This is why

The president made news on the first night of the newly launched Republican midterm convention. As reported by The Wall Street Journal