When you get right down to it, the political targeting and stalling of tax-exempt applications by the IRS was an effort to defund the tea party. Rick Santelli, one of the tea party founders and my CNBC colleague, was the first to make this point. I'v ...

The most important point in Ben Bernanke's Wednesday press conference was the announcement that the Fed will adjust the amount of monthly bond purchases according to economic conditions. In other words, an improving economy with stronger payrolls and ...

President Obama may be backing away from his doomsday spending-cut predictions as the sequester goes into place. But the new party line is that while there will be no impact in the first few days, there'll be a slow, downward slump after that. What, ...

The Obama administration is whipping up hysteria over the sequester budget cuts and their impact on the economy, the military, first providers, and so forth and so on.  Armageddon.  But if you climb into the Congressional Budget Office numbers for 20 ...

The report of a 0.1 percent gross domestic product decline for the fourth quarter came as a surprise to most forecasters. But it actually masks considerable strength in the  private economy. Namely, housing investment in the fourth quarter jumped 15. ...

One of the least remarked upon aspects of President Obama's inaugural speech was his attempt to co-opt the Founding Fathers' Declaration of Independence to bolster his liberal-left agenda. Sure, the president quoted one of the most important sentence ...

OK, it's official. According to the Treasury Department, the U.S. debt jumped to $16.1 trillion in 2012 from $14.8 trillion in 2011. That's a $1.3 trillion deficit for the last year.  Remarkable.  During President Obama's first term, the federal debt ...

The worst part of the Jack Lew nomination for treasury secretary is not simply that he has no qualifications, standing or experience in the financial world or international sphere (think G20 and European debt crisis). Nor is it simply that he doesn't ...

One cheer out of a potential three is all anyone can logically give the fiscal-cliff deal. On the day after the bargain was clinched, the stock market gave a 300-point cheer. So be it. In the short run, extending tax cuts up to $450,000 probably save ...

Despite all the media hullabaloo about the fiscal cliff and a potential recession if none of the Bush tax cuts are extended, stock markets have behaved calmly throughout this whole period. I'm going to guess that stocks, in their wisdom, are correctl ...