Year: 2022

California Overtakes Germany to Become World’s Fourth-Largest Economy

Buck Banks

4th

Bloomberg: “California’s economy has proven relatively resilient, first through the pandemic and now through the current period of elevated inflation. So much so, that the Golden State’s gross domestic product is poised to overtake Germany’s as the fourth largest in the world after the US, China and Japan. It had already leapfrogged Brazil (No. 7) and France (No. 6) in 2015 and supplanted the UK (No. 5) in 2017.”

Cheney: McCarthy Is Leader of the ‘Pro-Putin’ Wing of GOP

Buck Banks

“The idea that the party is now no longer going to support the Ukrainian people. For somebody who has the picture of Ronald Reagan on his wall in his office in the Capitol, the notion that now Kevin McCarthy is going to make himself the leader of the pro-Putin wing of my party is just a stunning thing. … It’s dangerous. He knows better. But the fact that he’s willing to go down the path of suggesting that America will no longer stand for freedom, I think tells you he’s willing to sacrifice everything for his own political gain.”

— Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) branded Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) leader of the “pro-Putin” wing of the GOP after he suggested cutting U.S. funding of Ukraine’s war effort, Politico reports.

Woodward Tapes Describe Dangerous Trump

Buck Banks

“In more than 50 years of reporting, I have never disclosed the raw interviews or full transcripts of my work. But after listening again to the 20 interviews I conducted with President Donald Trump during his last year as chief executive, I have decided to take the unusual step of releasing them. I was struck by how Trump pounded in my ears in a way the printed page cannot capture.”

— Bob Woodward

Federal Budget Deficit Cut in Half on Biden’s Watch

Buck Banks

$14 trillion

“In a statement, the Treasury Department said the annual deficit had plummeted from $2.8 trillion in 2021 to roughly $1.4 trillion in 2022 — a decline driven primarily by the expiration of trillions in pandemic-era emergency spending. The gap between revenue and spending also shrunk in part due to stronger-than-expected tax receipts, as a booming U.S. economy and large corporate profits helped bring in additional funds to federal coffers,” the Washington Post reports.