Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Miners Were Saved

17 Comments

…by capitalism:

Getting a nation’s economics right is more important than at any time since the end of World War II. Chile, Colombia, Peru and Brazil are pulling away from the rest of their hapless South American neighbors. China, India and others are simply copying or buying the West’s accomplishments.

The U.S. has a government led by a mindset obsessed with 250K-a-year “millionaires” and given to mocking “our blind faith in the market.” In a fast-moving world filled with nations intent on catching up with or passing us, this policy path is a waste of time.

There’s something you’re not going to hear the president say.

[Update a few minutes later]

This seems related somehow. Obama is worse than Carter:

“For the last couple of years, President Obama keeps claiming that the recession was the worst economy since the Great Depression. But this is not correct. This is the worst ‘recovery’ since the Great Depression.” The extended stagnation, high unemployment, and the troubling potential for a double dip recession is starting to look more like the Depression itself now.

But the indictment of Obamanomics goes beyond the actual performance so far. Even worse is that the economic policies have been so illogical, so transparently doomed to failure, and so threatening to America’s future.

And he’ll continue them as long as we let him. We can start to fix it in nineteen days. Read the whole thing. I agree with all of it, except the “President Newt Gingrich” part.

[Update a while later]

Comparing two recoveries:


This is why those saying that Obama’s OK, because Reagan’s approval was bad at this point, are whistling in the dark.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

The Latest Government-Caused Crisis

4 Comments

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.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

In Which I Agree With Bob Zubrin

32 Comments

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.