Category Archives: Economics

Dear Patients

A waiting-room letter. From this doctor.

I don’t think the donkeys realized just how high the voltage was on that rail. But they’re going to find out in two months.

Remember all of the fools on the left who said that the reason that the Republicans took over in 1994 wasn’t because of the attempt to pass health care, but because the attempt failed? Well, we’re about to see if their latest experiment confirms, or falsifies that absurd theory. Some myths die hard, but it will be interesting to see if this one survives.

The First Kiss And Tell

Rattner rats out Obama:

– Rattner describes presidential political adviser David Axelrod coming to car meetings armed with poll data to support the takeover and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel identify Congressmen in whose districts large Chrysler facilities were located.

– “[Obama’s economic team] veered dangerously close to having the government take control of the two most troubled banks, Bank of America and Citigroup.”

Rats will be rats.

Health-Care “Reform”

…and the endangered Democrat majority:

It was during the health care debate that the essential building block of the Democratic majority – Independent voters – began to crumble. It was evident in the generic ballot. It was evident in the President’s job approval numbers. It was evident in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

What’s really amazing is the ongoing delusion (notoriously assisted by Bill Clinton) that once they passed it, it would magically become popular.

They used to say that Social Security is the third-rail of American politics, but given 1994 and this year, I think that health-care “reform” (at least democratic socialist style) is. And this time, the donkeys jumped on it with all four feet.

Treasury Bonds

They’re not a bubble — they’re just “frothy:”

How much foam is there on top of this fiscal frappe? Treasury bond yields are down about 40 percent in the past six months, as Gross also notes — a frothy market indeed. But I do not think Gross is showing much guts in his proposed wager: True, the U.S. government probably is not going to default on its debt in the near future. (Probably.) And, sure, he’s right that the values of the bonds will fluctuate but “won’t double, and they won’t go to zero.” But here’s the thing: They don’t have to. The government doesn’t have to default, and the value of the bonds doesn’t have to double or go to zero to cause all sorts of havoc in U.S. finances. Interest rates are very, very low — but even as low as they are, we’re still piling on debt so quickly that any serious uptick in the government’s cost of borrowing — and no, it does not have to double — could send us into a Greek-style fiscal crisis, especially if it should coincide with, say, the second and even more painful decline in a double-dip recession. Or a financial shock caused by an international crisis in, oh, Iran. Those are the kinds of risks that the Leviathan-on-a-leash guys never really account for: “Oh, everything will be fine, so long as everything is fine.”

Goody.

Change!

…but not much hope:

The situation is a striking turnabout from 2007, when more babies were born in the United States than in any other year in the nation’s history. The recession began that fall, dragging down stocks, jobs and births.

“When the economy is bad and people are uncomfortable about their financial future, they tend to postpone having children,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University. “We saw that in the Great Depression the 1930s, and we’re seeing that in the Great Recession today.”

“It could take a few years to turn this around,” he added.

Then again, it might turn around on November 3rd.

Five Things We’ve Learned

from the Lightworker:

We know that when it comes to the high life, Democrats believe in partying hardy, sending taxpayers every bill they can while living lives of luxury the rest of us can ill-afford. We know, too, that Democrats cheat on their taxes and wrangle government deals for their relatives with a feeling of entitlement that is sure to put the term “public servant” in disrepute for the next century. Thanks to the growth of government on the Lightworker’s watch, we have seen public employees now eclipse the earnings and benefits of private workers, with the only end in sight the fate of Greece.

Praise to the Lightworker and his fellow Democrats for teaching us these essential lessons, which reinforce our will to throw them all on the unemployment lines posthaste.

I’m hoping that in a few weeks, we’ll be taking them to school.