Econ desk: New York’s ‘Abysmal’ Recovery
“The pace of New York state’s pandemic economic recovery has been abysmal by almost any standard,” laments the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon. “Seasonally adjusted private employment in New York as of August was still 9.8 percent below the state’s February 2020 level, compared to a net decrease of just 3.6 percent for the US as a whole during the same period” — placing the Empire State next to last among all states. Unemployment here was stuck at 7.4 percent, versus 5.4 percent nationally; only two states, California (7.5 percent) and Nevada (7.7 percent), posted worse joblessness figures. On top of all that, “the number of New Yorkers in the labor force declined, as did the labor-force participation rate. In two words: not good.”
Culture critic: Hunter’s Rich Rewards
“The president’s 51-year-old son has been fulsome in his decrepitude and finds ever more depraved ways to express it,” snarks James Panero at Spectator World. Hunter Biden “luxuriates in foreign-influence money, through which he hires prostitutes, with whom he freebases cocaine in orgies, in which he records himself and them, whereupon he misplaces the files. And that’s just on Monday.” He is “an exhibitionist of his own wickedness,” and for “oversharing his debasement, he is rewarded with glossy profiles, a Simon & Schuster book deal memorializing his decay, all that foreign-influence money and the backing of those institutions, from the Secret Service to Twitter, that surround him.” He is without “vision, training or talent,” but his art gets plenty of press, “an easy tell of the elite press trolling the rest of us.”
Foreign desk: Sparks at the UN
Speakers at this year’s UN General Assembly “peppered much of their oratory with clichés about uniting the world to combat common threats like COVID and climate change,” but one “used those themes to sneak in a subversive, even heretical message,” reports Benny Avni at The New York Sun. “At Turtle Bay, even whispering the word Taiwan is verboten.” So Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr. threw “a rhetorical petard” by urging the UN to accept Taiwan’s participation. “Taiwan, the world’s top maker of computer chips and semiconductors, does business with a lot of countries, but they treat the democratic Asian country like a concubine: She’s nice to hang out with and have a secret rendezvous now and then, but god forbid if you’re shown together in public.”
Fed watch: Squad’s Foolish Call To Can Powell
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s record (10 percent growth, a rapid recovery from the pandemic) “has earned him” reappointment, cheers Tom Spencer at National Review. Yet three members of The Squad — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley — want President Biden to replace him, because he hasn’t done enough on climate change and racial inequality. Yes, “these are important issues,” but “adding them to the Fed’s mandate” would “spur more partisan involvement in monetary policy, the consequence of which would be a severe blow to its independence.” Expanding the Fed’s portfolio would also lend it more discretion, leading to less accountability and greater “monetary instability.” Indeed, the “best way for these representatives to achieve their objectives is through legislation” — and to let Powell “continue his fine work.”
Localist: Cheers for America’s Petty Gentry
A recent Atlantic essay grumbled that “local grandees at the country-club bar” in places like Odessa, Texas, or Knoxville, Tenn., hold the real power in the United States — nonsense, counters The American Conservative’s Declan Leary: “Civic and business leaders with deep personal ties to a particular place and community have not been the dominant political power here for quite some time; but things would almost certainly be better if they were.” Most political power now rests in Washington, far from the concerns of ordinary Americans, while “economically, power is disproportionately held by multinational organizations.” If the American underclass is to check the “predations” of the national-global elite, it needs overclass “allies,” and it is most likely to find them among local elites who care about “physical, local property and [are] less influenced by the progressive institutions.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board