…and solve the social security problem. Thoughts from Jim Pinkerton.
Category Archives: Business
The Latest Government-Caused Crisis
The Obama administration knew about the foreclosure irregularities?
it appears that the Obama administration chose to tolerate the irregularities that now threaten the housing market and the financial industry because it preferred that banks use their limited resources to focus on giving breaks to folks who couldn’t pay their mortgages, rather than on handling foreclosures properly.
I don’t know whether the irregularities in question justify an extended moratorium on foreclosures. But if they do — or even if they don’t, and we still end up with such a moratorium — then it looks like the Obama administration will bear considerable blame for the consequences.
This is the same economically ignorant mentality that was displayed yesterday on Fox News Sunday by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, when she said that the highest priority was to “keep people in their homes.”
So the government creates the crisis by encouraging people to buy homes they couldn’t afford, and now it’s perpetuating it by insisting on keeping them in them, instead of allowing the market to finally clear. The country’s in the very best of hands.
Congratulations To Scaled
SpaceShipTwo had it first free flight today. Obviously these tests are on the critical path to first flight, but so is the engine, and we still haven’t heard much news about that lately.
[Update a while later]
Clark Lindsey has the press release.
When Unemployment Was 4.4%
October, 2006. And what was it that happened in November, 2006?
Naw, just a coincidence, I’m sure.
Prescient
Want to understand what’s wrong with the economy? Read Federalist 62.
Bigelow Business Prospects
Clark Lindsey says that he’s going to announce six customers (countries) for his orbital facilities. Right now it appears that SpaceX and Boeing/ULA are the most likely providers for transportation, but it’s unclear whether it’s enough business to close the business case for either of them, let alone both. Commercial Crew will help a lot, of Congress doesn’t screw it up. Unfortunately, screwing it up would be the way to bet.
In Which I Agree With Bob Zubrin
Mostly because it’s not about space policy: End the 1099 tyranny.
There are doubtless a lot of other horrific things in the health-care deform that we couldn’t find out about until (as Queen Nancy said) we passed it, but this is so far the most egregious, if one ignores the mandate itself on a constitutional basis. It’s not unconstitutional, thanks to the odious Sixteenth Amendment, but it’s economically devastating.
Who Cares What He Thinks?
You know, if you have questions about vehicle development costs, or propulsion issues, I guess it would be useful to have a discussion with Dave King, but I see nothing in his experience that would render him in any way knowledgable about markets for commercial spaceflight. But a lot of clueless people will read this and think that he knows what he’s talking about, and make policy and investment decisions on the basis of it. This is even worse than having Congress call Tom Young as a witness, just because he was head of Lockheed and worked at JPL, when he has no experience with human spaceflight.
Via Clark Lindsey, who has more thoughts:
I would hope that in the future, NASA’s top administrators hire human spaceflight program managers who actually believe that human spaceflight is worth buying and are devoted to lowering its cost so that more and more people can afford to buy it.
Dream on. Not part of the job description. Which is why space remains unaffordable fifty-three years after its dawn.
It’s Not The Tax-Rate Cuts
It’s the spending, stupid.
All this talk about “cost to the government of tax cuts for the rich” is just neo-Marxist class warfare and envy.
Save California
Outlaw public employee unions, the root of many of the state’s evils. It would fix the educational system, too.