Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Who Can Blame Them?

5 Comments

The Treasury department sees slim demand for five-year debt.

The socialists may be about to run out of other peoples’ money. Or at least they (and sadly, we) will have to pay a lot more for it.

And as a Californian, this is cheery news:

“Compared to California, I’d rather bet on Iraq,’’ Daher said. “Iraq is a country where there are still bombs going off and people getting murdered, but they are less indebted than the United States. California is likely to have more demands on its resources, and there is no miracle where California is going to have more revenue coming out of the sky. Iraq has prospects for tremendously higher revenues, if they can manage to get their act halfway together, which they seem to be doing.’’

Of course, they don’t have a dysfunctional government.

Economics, Political Commentary

Greece

13 Comments

…and California. There is only one solution: to cut spending:

That is why, together with Mike Pence and John Campbell, I have offered H.J. Res 79, a Spending Limit Amendment to the Constitution of the United States that would limit spending to one fifth of the economy — our historical spending average since World War II. The limit could only be waived by a declaration of war or by a two-thirds congressional vote.

I hate to put an arbitrary percentage like that in the Constitution, but we have to do something to do get this under control. But it would have to include entitlements, too. There can no longer be such a thing as “non-discretionary” spending.

[Update a few minutes later]

Bruce Bartlett thinks it’s an awful idea, for many reasons (including the one I mentioned). I think that Pence and Hensarling are going to have to go back to the drawing board.

Economics, Political Commentary

Three Reasons

9 Comments

Health-care deform won’t cut the deficit by one thin dime:

And here’s more from Chris Edwards:

And they’re doing such a bang-up job with TARP:

Barofsky’s report said it is possible the program only benefits half of the three or four million homeowners originally envisioned. Among other data, the program measures trial modifications, a metric Barofsky faulted for being, “essentially meaningless.” The number of permanent modifications could wind up being a small share of the millions of foreclosures filed in this year and during the past two years.

So let’s put them in charge of our health!

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, War Commentary

Faith-Based Deficit Reduction

30 Comments

Note: I’ve been continually updating this post, and will probably continue to do so all day, and keep it at the top. New posts are below it.

Thoughts on the health-care deform by Jimmy Pethokoukis.

[Update a few minutes later]

Nationalizing health care by proxie:

Insurance companies are now heavily regulated government contractors. Way to get big business out of Washington! They will clear a small, government-approved profit on top of their government-approved fees. Then, when healthcare costs rise — and they will — Democrats will insist, yet again, that the profit motive is to blame and out from this Obamacare Trojan horse will pour another army of liberals demanding a more honest version of single-payer.

The Obama administration has turned the insurance industry into the Blackwater of socialized medicine.

Like the financial crisis, it’s right out of the standard fascist playbook. Screw up the market with government regulations, then claim that government regulations are required to fix it. Rinse, repeat, until they control every aspect of our lives.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Is the tax power infinite?

Americans today are not bound to meekly accept the most far-ranging assertions of congressional power based on large extrapolations from Supreme Court cases that themselves come from a short period (the late 1930s and early 1940s) when the Court was more supine and submissive to claims about centralized power than was any other Supreme Court before or after in our history. American citizens, in the political process and in their personal lives, will ultimately have the final word on the Constitution.

Let’s hope that ultimately comes soon.

[Update a while later]

“Every power grab is the base camp for the next power grab.”

[Update a while later]

Ten Obama promises that reached their expiration date this morning.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Americans: the health care debate wasn’t about health care at all.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, but not all of them.

[Update mid morning]

Dennis Prager: the Cold Civil War has begun:

Thank God this civil war is non-violent. But the fact is that the Left and the rest of the country share almost no values. The American value system and the leftist value system are irreconcilable. If the Left wins, American values lose. If American values win, the Left loses.

I like his idea of calling the Democrats “Social Democrats.”

And Mark Steyn has some depressing thoughts on our accelerating journey to Declinistan.

[Update a while later]

Awakening a sleeping giant:

Instead of being discouraged by passage of health care reform, tea party activists across the country say the defeat is a rallying cry that makes them more focused than ever on voting out any lawmaker who supported the measure.

“We’re not going to stop. Obviously, the whole tea party movement started because we’re about smaller government and less spending and less taxes. There is absolutely no way we can pay for this,” said Denise Cattoni, state coordinator for Illinois Tea Party, an umbrella group for about 50 groups from around Illinois.

Cattoni says the health care defeat doesn’t deflate tea party activists. “We couldn’t stop it because of the shenanigans that went on in Washington,” Cattoni said. “People are definitely more driven today than they were yesterday without a doubt.”

Actually, the giant awoke last year, as we saw in Virginia, New Jersey and (most of all) Massachusetts. And it’s not going back to sleep any time soon, contra the fantasies of the Democrats. It’s not only awake, now — it’s enraged. The retribution in November will be huge.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I just noticed this quote at the end of the article from an idiot:

While tea party activists have made themselves heard, University of North Florida political science professor Matthew Corrigan said the movement alone won’t be enough to oust incumbents.

“Do they have energy? Yes. Have they been getting into the media? Yes, but they still haven’t sold me on the fact that they can swing elections,” Corrigan said.

Tell it to Martha Coakley. If I were one of his students, I’d want my course tuition back.

[Update a few minutes later]

Kevin Williamson says that ObamaCare will never happen. Unfortunately, it’s not as good a news as it sounds:

Our budget deficit is currently about 10 percent of GDP and going higher. Greece’s is 12.7 percent of GDP — significantly higher, sure, but not outrageously so. At the end of fiscal 2009, U.S. federal government debt equaled 83 percent of GDP, 53 percent of which is held by the public. (Another 30 percent is “intra-government” debt, meaning money owed to the mythical Social Security trust fund and the like. The usual approach is to talk only about publicly held debt and to pretend that the rest does not represent real obligations, which is malarkey.) But even that does not tell the whole story: Official government debt figures do not account for the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac obligations taken on by the government, and those amount to $5 trillion, i.e. more than all 2009 federal spending. They also don’t count remaining liabilities related to the Wall Street bailout.

So here’s a prediction for you: Obamacare is not going to happen, regardless of the fact that the president is going to sign it into law today, regardless of what happens in the 2010 and 2012 elections, and regardless of any speech given anywhere in Washington. The government’s ability to simply say “Make it so!” and ignore economic reality is coming up against its limit. If Nancy Pelosi thinks the Republicans are obstructionists, wait until she wants to borrow money from people who don’t want to lend it to her and don’t have to run for reelection.

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

State Socialists In Space

25 Comments

I use the “s” word because the “f” word seems to really upset people, even though it’s more accurate. It’s a shame that Hitler gave it such a bad name.

Anyway, Jeff Foust has an article today on the irrational antipathy of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, to private enterprise. Well, OK, it’s not all irrational. Some of it just typical rent seeking. Congressman Culberson comes off as particularly foolish, and not just for his Marine analogy:

“If the private sector exclusively owns access to space, who owns the technology? They’d have the right to sell it to any nation on the face of the Earth?” (Not easily, thanks to the export control regime that covers space technology in the US today.)

“Imagine if America had to hitch a ride on a commercial vehicle,” he continued. “If the private sector and the Chinese and Russians control access to space, they could charge us whatever they want.”

Yes. Whatever they want. As long as the price wasn’t higher than their competitors.

Why does this so-called fiscal conservative either not understand, or not believe in, how markets work?

You know who really charges “whatever they want”? A monopoly cost-plus contractor for NASA. Which is why Ares I has already cost about twenty times as much as Falcon 9, for similar capability (if it’s ever completed), with first flight for the former still years away, versus weeks away for the latter.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Obama’s Middle-Class Squeeze

83 Comments

I’m shocked, shocked:

The hardest hit won’t be those earning more than $250,000 a year–the group that he says needs to “pay their fair share.” Rather, it’s families whose combined annual income is around $100,000 who could be crushed under this plan.
Many of these middle-class families will probably opt to pay the federal fine, and go without health insurance until they get sick.

These folks will be too “rich” to qualify for ObamaCare’s subsidies, but probably too poor to easily afford the pricey insurance that the president’s plan forces them to buy.

Many of these $100K families will be obliged to buy a policy costing an average of $14,700 for the mid-level, “silver” health plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates. After income taxes, they’ll be spending almost a quarter of their net income for health insurance.

I think that if you pass a law that requires you to purchase something, and it’s enforced by the IRS, it’s not unfair to call it a tax. And it’s another demonstration that every one of Obama’s statements (this one about no raising taxes on people making less than a quarter million) has an expiration date.

[Late afternoon update]

A commenter asks what he can do to fight this in the final hours. This looks like a good place to start. Whatever your political affiliation, if you want to stop this, it’s all up to the Republicans at this point, and you’re going to have to help them this weekend, if not in the future. Don’t look for any help from the Democrats.