Category Archives: Economy

UPDATED: GOP Babe On Things That Bounce Back

Democrats, Economy, Elections, Media, Republicans, The State

“How do you know there is going to be an economic recovery,” Greta Van Susteren asked GOP dummy, Dana Perino. “There always is; these things go in cycles,” squeaked the Heidi Klum of the commentariat in a voice reminiscent of the super model’s.

Dana, who was once spokesperson to a man who could not speak, is not working with much gray matter. She always smiles ever so smugly and proudly when her boss’s “modest” government expansion is hearkened back to nostalgically on FoxNews. Dana also thinks the economy is like a menstrual cycle. But even that thing stops when the hormones run out, Dana.

Another lightweight, who only sounds weightier, is Liz Cheney. The two will often form the Fox-panel staple when super dumb chicks, such as CE Cupp, are unavailable to gesture wildly and grimace while regurgitating Carl Rove’s talking points.

Liz repeated the Republican refrain, the other day, about the Democrats’ stimulus “not working.” As if it could work—the premise of that statement is that such confiscation might have worked, if only, if only…

Yes: the GOPiers’ line, for the midterm elections, is that there is a smart, economically stimulating way for the state to spend money it has stolen from the private economy. Time and again Repbulicans have explained that the stimuli consisted of misguided spending, so typical of Democrtats, instead of REAL stimulus, which is the hallmark of Republikeynesian “thought.”

No Republikeynesian heard on cable will refute the bogus notion that government is able to create jobs out of funds it has forcibly removed from the private economy, or by printing paper in the basement of the Fed. The beef the likes of dodo Perino, Newt, Dick, Carl et. al., will invariably voice is: The Dems didn’t apply the stolen funds the way one ought to have; the way we would have.

Just a friendly reminded, as we near the midterms.

UPDATE: Thanks, Myron, for the Jack Hunt article:

“If conservatives want to know how Obama and his party are currently able to get away with creating colossal debt and an even more monstrous government they should look no further than the last administration. Where was the Right — as the Left often asks, and justifiably so — when Bush doubled the size of government and the national debt during his eight year term? Where was the caller who is so angry about Michelle Obama’s vacation when Bush created the largest entitlement expansion since Lyndon Johnson, with Medicare Part D? What was Limbaugh complaining about the same week Dubya was enacting the federally intrusive education disaster ‘No Child Left Behind’?”

I can tell you where today’s Republican House Minority Leader and Obama-critic John Boehner was — the man whose party winning in 2010 might prevent ‘riots’ — he was standing right next to Bush as he signed NCLB, heartily endorsing the legislation as one of his ‘proudest achievements.’ It has been reported that some Republican outfit, apparently nostalgic for pre-Obama America, has erected a billboard featuring Bush with the caption, ‘Miss me yet?’ Are they kidding? Hell no, I don’t miss him — and any serious conservative shouldn’t either, as our current president simply continues to build upon the last one’s statist achievements.”

“And ‘building’ is exactly what it is — regardless of which party is in control, when was the last time a president departed office, leaving behind a federal government smaller than he found it? Not even Ronald Reagan did this, as each successive administration piles on new and massive bureaucracy.”

[SNIP]

Read “Obama And Bush: Partners In Government Giganticism.”

Send Us Your Cameron; We’re Tired Of Our Crazyman

Britain, Debt, Economy, Government, Inflation, Political Economy, Socialism, The State

He has “unveiled 23 bills (and one draft bill) detailing ambitious plans for major reform of schools, welfare, the police and the political system. Every week brings another policy, proposal or white paper,” and all ­aim at “dismantling the British welfare system and rolling back the state; to make changes which … ‘will affect [that country’s] economy, [its] society – indeed, [its] whole way of life.'” He is David Cameron, Britain’s Prime Minister. And he is making the Fabian socialists at the New Statesman furious for not being more like FDR.

The Keynesians at TNS consider Tony Blair and Gordon Brown proponents of the free market. In this essay, the argument for the continuation of deficit spending, state-sector growth and endless stims and bailouts—until the English economic Eden is restored (not)—takes the form of The Complaint. Mehdi Hasan believes that he need not argue his case for the merit of FDR-like government growth, massive public works, regulation of banking and Wall Street, and subsidies for agriculture and labor. These “proven” state initiatives are good on their face.

On the other hand, doesn’t everyone know that living within your means is a dangerous gamble, the province of reckless high rollers?

In his zeal to cut an already falling deficit and “balance the books”, for example, Cameron and his Chancellor, George Osborne, have delivered £40bn of tax rises and public spending cuts on top of the £73bn target they inherited from Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling. In the US, cutting the deficit may be a medium-term challenge, but here in the UK, for the Cameron-led coalition, it has become an obsession – “the most urgent issue facing Britain”, according to a letter sent by Cameron and Clegg to their cabinet colleagues on 2 August.
Inside the space of 50 days, and behind the cover of an “emergency” and “unavoidable” Budget, Cameron and Osborne have taken one of the biggest macroeconomic gambles of any prime minister and chancellor to have entered Downing Street.

Hasan takes credit for having warned his homies of the impending austerity.

We cannot say we were not warned. In his speech to the Conservative party conference, in October 2009, Cameron declared that his mission as prime minister would be to tear down so-called big government. The phrase “big government” appeared 14 times in that one speech, in which, studiously ignoring the role played by bankers in causing the worst financial crisis in living memory, he claimed: “It is more government that got us into this mess.”

AND:

“Despite appearances to the contrary, Cameron is less a Whiggish pragmatist than a radical, in the Margaret Thatcher mould. His combination of market-oriented reforms to the public sector and savage cuts to public spending – hailed by the investment bank Seymour Pierce as heralding a ‘golden age of outsourcing’ – suggests that he is intent on completing the neoliberal, state-shrinking revolution that Thatcher began and which Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did little to reverse.”

“Cameron’s right-wing instincts on the economy, however, have never been properly acknowledged by a press pack beguiled by his ‘rebranding’ of the Conservative Party and distracted by his ‘progressive’ stance on gender, sexuality and race issues, [classical-liberal like] as well as his self-professed passion for civil liberties and the environment. …

Disregard the rhetoric and image, and consider instead the record: in his first 100 days, Cameron has gone further than Thatcher – and much faster, too. His ‘modernising’ ally and minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, has said that the Tories always planned to outstrip the Iron Lady.”

[SNIP]

The nation of shopkeepers may soon leave the US in the dust.

Official Monetization Commences

Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Glenn Beck, Inflation

“The Fed,” reports Bloomberg.com, “will buy about $18 billion of Treasury securities and Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities through mid-September in the first month of purchases …”

We’re printing money to buy up our debt, because China and our other debtors won’t. Why is no one but Beck alerting our comatose countrymen to this indicator of bankruptcy, moral and material?

We are supposed to take comfort in the fact that, “While the move shows a change in policy direction away from exiting monetary stimulus, the Fed didn’t indicate it was ready to pursue larger-scale purchases of securities.”

Change in direction? How so? The policy of easy credit will continue apace, except that the Fed will be counterfeiting the country’s coin to pay down the government’s stratospheric debt. Let a private citizen try that trick. See where it’ll land him.

Brace for impact.

UPDATED: Astounding Healthcare Revelations (NOT)

Debt, Economy, Government, Healthcare, Reason, Regulation, The State

In “Heeere’s Health-Scare” I posited an absolutely revolutionary concept (NOT): that it was a mathematical improbability to expect “an expansion of government through an enormous entitlement program to drastically reduce the deficit and debt.”

Apparently that no-brainer has been recognized by an aide to the ruling Solons. Chief Medicare actuary Richard S. Foster grew a brain or got some courage, or both.

“In signing the measure last month,” writes the NYT, “President Obama said it would ‘bring down health care costs for families and businesses and governments.”

But Mr. Foster said, “Overall national health expenditures under the health reform act would increase by a total of $311 billion,” or nine-tenths of 1 percent, compared with the amounts that would otherwise be spent from 2010 to 2019.

In his report … Mr. Foster said that some provisions of the law, including cutbacks in Medicare payments to health care providers and a tax on high-cost employer-sponsored coverage, would slow the growth of health costs. But he said the savings “would be more than offset through 2019 by the higher health expenditures resulting from the coverage expansions.”

AMAZING. Why did I not think of that!? It takes an actuary to convince the country that when you cut expenses, expenses go down. And that when you steal from Peter to lavish on Paul, Paul’s expenses diminish.

Unbloody believable.

Oh, the actuary’s report also stated what I reported in another column, on August 7, 2009, where I contended that BHO was “Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured.” For less than ten percent of the population, to be precise.

Mr. Foster’s report said that “34 million uninsured people will gain coverage under the law, but that 23 million people, including 5 million illegal immigrants, will still be uninsured in 2019.”

But illegals use ER facilities liberally for free. Going by statism’s logic (read lies) there has to be some savings in there somewhere.

UPDATED (Aug. 11): Via NewsMax:

“A published report saying the Obama administration knew that its healthcare proposal would increase costs instead of reducing them is “troubling,” according to a senior House Republican leader.

Administration officials from the president downward used claims that the legislation would reduce healthcare costs to get the votes of wavering members of Congress.

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius knew about a report from Medicare’s Office of the Actuary prior to the House’s March 22 vote, indicating the bill would increase healthcare costs, according to an April 26 report appearing in The American Spectator’s Washington Prowler blog.

The bill passed by a 219-212 margin with several self-proclaimed fiscally conservative Democrats voting in favor, believing it would reduce costs.”