FoxNews informs that “The 20-year-old Oil Pollution Act would make BP responsible for paying for the cleanup costs [of the gushing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico]. There have been questions raised about another part of the law that caps their liability at $75 million for other economic damages. … the damages could easily top $75 million. A handful of senators, though, have introduced a bill to raise the cap to $10 billion, which the administration supported.”
State regulation works to the advantage of offenders, as the state and its corporate donors invariably come to an agreement about what constitutes reasonable damages—agreements that usually disadvantage harmed parties.
Leave injured parties to sue for damages. However, for a just tort system to work one needs … private property. Private property rights in waterways, or riparian rights in water that abuts private property—this is the best way to protect the ocean and other hitherto state-controlled expanses of water from being destroyed.
Charles Krauthammer points out that BHO’s financial-reform bill is a move toward a further increase in the overweening powers of the Executive branch, which will now be able to seize a firm it designates as systemically risky. Where was Krauthammer during the Bush administration? It invented the doctrine of an overreaching executive. Still, he is right.
Michele Bachmann sums up the impetus of the bill: privatizing profits; socializing losses. (By the way, Bachmann is infinitely superior in intelligence to Palin who’s only growing more ignorant with notoriety. The more I see of Bachmann, the more impressed I grow with her demeanor and unshakable command of the facts.
Update I (April 27): As Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano has been pointing out, the bogus lawsuit against Goldman-Sachs, a major donor of Obama and the beneficiary of a bailout, is political theater designed to prepare the public for the passage of enormously intrusive financial regulation.
“Congressional Democrats and the Obama Administration want to create a permanent bailout mechanism all [the] while spouting their rhetoric of getting tough on Wall Street, but if you look at who is already lining up to support their ‘reform’ measure it’s a who’s who of the big banks that have already received the taxpayer bailout the first time.” … “Wall Street supports this measure. Why? Because big investment houses realize they’ll get bailed out and would have less reason to worry about risky behavior.”
“Sen. Chris Dodd (D.-Conn.) crafted the Senate version of so-called ‘Financial Reform’ with the support of the President. The procedure used to date resembles the non-transparent and secretive tactics used to pass ObamaCare. The Senate Banking committee marked up the bill in 22 minutes, with no amendments offered and no debate allowed. …
“There are two specific problems with the Senate approach to ‘reform.'”:
“First, this legislation would create a new $50-billion bailout slush fund controlled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Very big banks and other ‘eligible financial companies’ would be taxed by the FDIC to build up this fund. As with any tax, though, it’s consumers–you and me–who would eventually pay this levy.
The Obama Administration this weekend requested that the $50 billion pre-funded bailout money be removed from the bill. But according to Foxnews.com, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner advocated last year that any bailout funding should be addressed post bailout through a tax on big Wall Street firms. If Senate Democrats only take out the $50 billion slush fund and leave the bailout authority intact, then the taxpayers will still be on the hook for any future bailouts.
Another problem with this bill is that it would bail out the creditors of companies and wouldn’t require any creditor to take a loss after a company starts to fail. If the bailout slush fund is tapped, the FDIC would have the power to reimburse creditors. That could allow the FDIC to pay creditors more than they invested (pursuant to Section 210 of the Dodd bill).
Think about that. If creditors know they aren’t likely take a loss, and risk has been eliminated from an investment, its taxpayers who are assuming all the risk. Of course, taxpayers get none of the rewards if the investments pay off–we would simply be on the hook if they fail. Taxpayers could expect no reward for having insured transactions and protected wealthy investors from any risk. The AIG bailout is a great example of this model.”
Update II: BUDDING BUREAUCRACIES. Senate Republicans are, so far, blocking debate, and thus a vote, on The Bill, which makes them look like obstructionists to a moronic populace.
“Republicans say the bill would set up a permanent bailout of Wall Street banks and create bureaucracies … Dodd’s legislation would create a consumer financial protection bureau at the Federal Reserve with authority to write rules and enforce them at banks and credit unions with more than $10 billion in assets. … The bill would limit the Fed’s regulatory authority to banks with assets of at least $50 billion, transferring its powers to monitor smaller lenders to other regulators. It would also set up a council of regulators to monitor the economy for systemic risk and ban proprietary trading at U.S. banks.”
“Argentina did not become relatively poor because of having been involved in destructive conflicts. It became poor because it has had a series of both democratically elected leaders and non-elected dictators who never missed an opportunity to make the wrong economic decisions,” writes Richard W. Rahn of the Cato Institute.
“A century ago, if you had told typical citizens of Argentina (which at that time was enjoying the fourth-highest per capita income in the world) that it would decline to become just the 76th richest nation on a per capita basis in 2010, they probably would not have found it believable. They might have responded, ‘This could not happen; we are a nation rich in natural resources, with a great climate for agriculture. Our people are well educated and largely descended from European stock. We have property rights, the rule of law and an open free-market economy.’
[Ilana Aside: You’re a naughty boy, Mr. Rahn. Do you mean to infer that the fact of European extraction is an argument for economic prosperity?! What a bad boy! ]
“But the fact is, Argentina has been going downhill for eight decades, and it has the second-worst credit ranking in the entire world… the Argentine government increased its interventions in the private economy. Juan Peron took over in 1946 and ended up nationalizing the railroads, the merchant marine, public utilities, public transport and other parts of the private economy. For much of the past half-century, Argentina has engaged in a series of erratic monetary policies, often resulting in periods of very high inflation and economic stagnation. Because of their political power, the unions have been coddled, resulting in unsustainable wage-and-benefit programs. Excessive government spending has caused recurrent fiscal meltdowns, where both foreign and domestic debt-holders have lost many of their investments.
According to the Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report (published by the Fraser Institute in cooperation with the Cato Institute and others), Argentina ranks 105 out of 141 countries surveyed. Similarly, the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom (published by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal) ranks Argentina 135 out of the 179 countries surveyed. (The U.S. is No. 8 and falling.) ….”
The Upper Big Branch South Mine near Montcoal, W.Va., is where “a methane explosion killed 25 miners and left four more missing and thought dead. The mine, operated by a subsidiary of Massey Energy Co., had been cited for several violations relating to proper ventilation.” This is “the worst mining disaster in over 20 years,” reports the Hill.
A suspect source, the United Mine Workers, “said that the mine had been the subject of 450 safety violations and that the company has paid over $1 million in fines last year.”
Regulation generally works to the detriment of those it is intended to help, since a less-than-honorable company will find the fine cheaper than the fixes needed to bring the mine up to par.
Update I (April 6): Coal-mining accidents always remind me—but not other media member, it seems—that men do society’s most dangerous jobs. Poor men, especially, go underground to make a living; have done so for generations.
Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 classic How Green Was My Valley (your children should have read it) depicts this reality in an achingly beautiful way. The book haunted me for years after I had read it, as a kid. “Margaret’s Museum” achieves a good deal on celluloid.
Update II: The following is from an 1935 article, “The World’s Most Dangerous Jobs.” Since then working conditions have improved for men because of advancement is technology, among other reasons. I also believe that workers in the fishing, timber and electrical power-line fields have overtaken miners as far as death on the job goes:
“‘COME quick! There’s a man hurt!’ Almost ten times every minute, more than 4,000 times each working day, that cry resounds somewhere among America’s great mass of industrial workers.”
“Once every ten minutes that cry means death for another working man. In 1933 it sounded the death knell of 46 men a day. These dying, injured, and maimed men were following ordinary jobs in most cases. They were not stunting aviators, daredevil race drivers, or human flies. Who then has the most dangerous job?”
With an accident frequency rate of 65.28 per million man-hours of exposure, say the Safety Council figures, the coal miner works at the world’s most dangerous job.
There are approximately a million miners in this country. While these men are working just one hour of one working day, more than 65 of them will be injured at their work.
The miner then has the world’s most dangerous job.
Second to mining, is lumbering. This occupation has an accident frequency rate of 59.67 per million man-hours of work. Third in the list of most dangerous occupations is the construction industry with a rate of 55.66.
And what is the safest job? At the top of the list of some thirty industries, accounted for in the figures of the National Safety Council, stands tobacco processing with a frequency rate of only 1.43, the safest occupation in this country!
For many years coal mining has led all other employments in the annual number of fatal and permanent injuries suffered in accidents.
Update IV (April 7): What I know about rescue protocol in mining accidents is dangerous, but not nearly as hazardous as the slow speed with which the rescue at the Upper Big Branch Mine is proceeding.
How many more holes must they bore before they’ll allow searches to brave the Pit?
Presently they appear to be endlessly testing air samples. Can you imagine the time lost sending samples to the feds? Even if they do it on location, which is what I presume is happening, from the vantage point of the relatives this rescue must looks like a Ninny-State operation.
Maybe the authorities involved have decided it is no longer a rescue, but a recovery operation. How I hope this is not the case.
