The United States economy recovered at a 6.5% annualized rate in the second quarter of 2021, and gross domestic product (GDP) is now above the pre-pandemic level. This should be viewed as good news until we put it in the context of the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus in recent history.

With the Federal Reserve purchasing $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and $80 billion in Treasuries every month, and the deficit expected to run above $2 trillion, one thing is clear: The diminishing effect of the stimulus is not just staggering, the increasingly short impact of these programs is alarming.

Cuba is a dictatorship that uses terror and propaganda to repress its people. It locks citizens, strips them of the most basic human rights, silences them, and confronts families using extortion and threats. The regime’s constant practices of illegal detention, the personal ruin of political dissidents, and limitation of fundamental rights have nothing to do with any blockade or embargo but everything to do with the totalitarian communist dictatorship.

All the propaganda that whitewashes the Cuban dictatorship is based on two lies: the inexistent “blockade” and the allegedly excellent “public health”.

Central Banks should know by now that you cannot have negative interest rates with low bond yields and strong growth. One or the other.

Central banks have chosen low bond yields at any cost, despite all the evidence of stagnation ahead. This creates enormous problems and perverse incentives.

The United States’ jobs recovery is extremely poor, especially if we consider the size of the monetary and fiscal stimulus and the spectacular upgrade to GDP estimates. After a massive consensus increase in GDP recovery estimates to 6.5% in 2021, no one should be cheering a 5.9% unemployment rate, 58% employment to population ratio, and, even worse, a 61.6% labor force participation rate that has remained stagnant for ten months. Furthermore, Bloomberg Economics shows that the United States unemployment rate would be 8.4% excluding the participation decline.