T&B

Thank you, Joe. Donald Trump owes Joe Biden a huge debt of gratitude for whipping the economy into great shape.

Perhaps, he can give Old Joe a hug during the Inaugural Day ceremonies. That’s assuming bent-on-retribution Trump doesn’t give Biden a seat in the nose-bleed section of the viewing platform.

The US economy is projected to grow 2.5 percent in 2025, well ahead of the 0.8 percent advance in Europe, according to Goldman Sachs Research.

It will be the third year in a row that the US outpaced the growth of Europe’s developed countries. Take a bow, Joe.

And more good news: Goldman predicts the trade policy of Tariff Man will have more impact overseas than here.

The re-election of US President Donald Trump is predicted to result in higher tariffs on China and on imported cars, much lower immigration, some fresh tax cuts, and regulatory easing, wrote Goldman’s chief economist Jan Hatzius.

But he warns that the “biggest risk is a large across-the-board tariff, which would likely hit growth hard.” Let’s hope Team Trump can restrain its leader on the trade front. A global trade war would blow everything up.

Bailing out on The Chef… Conagra is willing to listen to offers to buy its iconic Chef Boyardee brand. What is it thinking? Maybe its focused on those 500M smackers that Reuters thinks Conagra would get in selling the Chef's line of traditional canned and frozen Italian favorites.

A can of Chef Boyardee beefaroni was a favorite dinner dish for my brother and me when we were kids.

I often wondered how the Chef managed to squeeze so many meatballs into his can of spaghetti & meatballs. The guy was a culinary magician.

The Chef Boyardee brand is named after Ettore “Hector" Boiardi who at the age of 16 arrived on Ellis Island from Italy in 1914.

He went on to become head chef at the New York Plaza Hotel, and catered the wedding reception of Woodrow Wilson. Did the president enjoy his steaming plate of beefaroni? Is this a great county, or not?

What’s next for Conagra, which suffered a 3.8 percent dip in fiscal Q1 revenues to $2.8B?

Will it unload Slim Jim meat sticks that are composed of spicy beef, pork and chicken, or what about Hungry-Man TV dinners, which were personal favorites during my college days?

The company apparently wants to slim down.

The opposite of aristocracy.“Kakistocracy,” which means “rule of the worst,” is The Economist’s word of the year for 2024. We have Trump to thank for that.

After his re-election on Nov. 5, Google searches for kakistocracy picked up steam.

Searches gained further momentum as Trump drove out his clown car of cabinet picks.

Those dubious nominees include Matt Gaetz (accused of sex crimes), Robert Kennedy, Jr (vaccine crackpot), Tulsi Gabbard (conspiracy theorist and buddy of Vladimir Putin and and Bashar al-Assad), and Pete Hegseth (boozy Fox News host whose mom has called “an abuser of women”).

Gaetz is now a goner. He will soon have more company as the Senate mulls and rejects these ludicrous nominees. And those who win the Senate’s approval are bound to fall out of favor with their boss and get fired.

Kakistocracy has the “crisp, hard sounds of glass breaking,” according to The Economist. Those sounds may be the shattering of America’s democracy.