Forgetting Past Mistakes is to Repeat Them
In a sharply worded article the AP has finally taken notice of the Obama budget deficit and called it what it is – an economic nightmare. Moreover, Mr. Obama is identified as being part of the problem rather than the solution. Good to see a dose of reality in the morning news, even if the news is bad.
Below the jump are links to the audio I took at tonight’s Economic Leadership Forum hosted by President George Bush at the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center at the George Bush Presidential Library Center.
What do you get when you mix a major economic slump, a new president with decidedly liberal ideals, an economic plan that calls for unprecedented levels of spending and debt, and at least 4000 Texans concerned about the situation? Call it a Texas Tea Party!
Economist Dr. Arnold Kling made a short, sweet distinction between government taxation/wealth redistribution and charity, saying “if you want to tax me in order to give my money to charity, that does not make you generous.” This fact is lost on the editors of the NY Times, who bemoaned a cut in estate taxes for the wealthiest American families.
Nate Silver’s picture is worth at least a thousand words when it comes to communicating how long GM’s financial troubles have been brewing. Silver also gets the reason behind the company’s demise right: the costs of GM’s retiree pension and health care programs. On one hand it’s easy to look back to 1950 and second-guess…
NY Times editorialist Paul Krugman won a Nobel Price in Economics in 2008 but the swipe he took at Republican Bobby Jindal leaves a lot to be desired from the economy perspective. Writing about the role of government, Krugman defended the inclusion of volcano monitoring in the Democrats’ stimulus plan thusly: … knowing when a…
Matthew Yglesias has his doubts about whether homeowners who default on their home loans bear any responsibility whatsoever for the financial mess they have caused. Certainly lenders deserve a share of the blame for failing to run their businesses, well, like businesses. The federal government played a huge part in the fiasco as well, as…
Nouriel Roubini, a professor at the Stern Business School at New York University, says that the current fiscal crisis was caused by the failure of “the laissez-faire, unregulated (or aggressively deregulated), Wild West model of free market capitalism” and that nationalization of financial institutions and heavy regulation is a requirement of a stable economy. Evidently…
A sardonic congratulations must go out to Congressional Democrats who, after some years in minority exile, have made up for lost time by bringing home $800B worth of bacon. The massive spending bill, equivalent to around 25% of the total annual federal budget, was passed with no Republican votes in the House and only 3…
Andrew Sullivan says that conservatives are being intellectually dishonest by opposing the Democrats’ $800B spending plan because of the deficits the nation ran under the Bush administration. There’s a grain of truth in what Andrew says – both Reagan and Bush 43 were big spenders whose policies have contributed substantially to the problems our children…