Posted by Alan Reynolds on July 30, 2010
By Alan Reynolds
From January 2009 to the present, President Obama and his team have repeatedly made grandiose claims about the economic benefits of shoveling money at shovel-ready projects or green jobs. “It is largely thanks to the Recovery Act that a second Depression is no longer a possibility,” said the President. He also claimed that lavish spending [...]
Categories: Politics, Tax and Budget Policy |
Tags: Federal Reserve, federal spending, Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy, GDP, gdp growth, Government and Politics, recession, stimulus bill, unemployment rate | 
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Posted by Daniel J. Mitchell on July 29, 2010
By Daniel J. Mitchell
The “appearance of impropriety” is often considered the Washington standard for corruption and misbehavior. With that in mind, alarm bells began ringing in my head when I read this Washington Times report about Jacob Lew, Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. A snippet:
President Obama’s choice to be the government’s chief budget officer [...]
Categories: Politics, Tax and Budget Policy |
Tags: Beltway Elite, big government, corruption, Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy, Government and Politics, government intervention, government spending, Health, Welfare & Entitlements, lobbying, Political Philosophy, regulation, Regulatory Studies, Sleaze, taxation, Washington Insiders | No Comments »
Posted by Alan Reynolds on July 27, 2010
By Alan Reynolds
The Washington Post published “5 Myths about unemployment” by Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute. The article is indeed full of myths, though not in the intended sense.
“There are now roughly five unemployed people for every available job,” says Ms. Shierholz, adding “there literally aren’t jobs for four of every five unemployed workers.” That [...]
Categories: Politics, Tax and Budget Policy |
Tags: Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy, General, Government and Politics, Health, Welfare & Entitlements | No Comments »
Posted by David Boaz on July 21, 2010
By David Boaz
The New York Times reports:
President Obama signed into law on Wednesday a sweeping expansion of federal financial regulation….
A number of the details have been left for regulators to work out, inevitably setting off complicated tangles down the road that could last for years…complex legislation, with its dense pages on derivatives practices….
“If you’ve ever applied for a [...]
Categories: Politics |
Tags: Barack Obama, complexity, Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy, financial regulation, fine print, Government and Politics, regulation, Regulatory Studies | No Comments »
Posted by Daniel J. Mitchell on July 18, 2010
By Daniel J. Mitchell
The Financial Times reports that the number of Americans giving up their citizenship to protect their families from America’s onerous worldwide tax system has jumped rapidly. Even relatively high-tax nations such as the United Kingdom are attractive compared to the class-warfare system that President Obama is creating in the United States.
I run into people like this [...]
Categories: Politics, Tax and Budget Policy |
Tags: brain drain, expatriation, Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy, Global taxation, Government and Politics, International Economics and Development, International taxation, IRS, migration, obama, taxation, Worldwide Taxation | No Comments »
Posted by Walter Olson on July 16, 2010
By Walter Olson
When Congress passes major new regulatory laws, it nowadays routinely throws in provisions authorizing lawsuits on behalf of so-called whistleblowers at regulated businesses. Lawmakers do this despite frequent complaints that such provisions encourage discontented employees to seize on borderline conduct and label it fraud or rule-breaking, enrich some persons who themselves took part in questionable [...]
Categories: Politics |
Tags: finance regulation, Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy, Law and Civil Liberties, whistleblower | No Comments »
Posted by Mark A. Calabria on July 14, 2010
By Mark A. Calabria
With Majority Leader Harry Reid’s announcement that Democrats have the 60 votes needed for final passage of the Dodd-Frank financial bill, we can take a moment and remember this as the moment Congress planted the seeds of the next financial crisis.
In choosing to ignore the actual causes of the financial crisis [...]
Categories: Congress, Politics |
Tags: Democrats, Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy, financial crisis, financial risk, harry reid, market discipline, monetary policy, unemployment | No Comments »
Posted by Daniel J. Mitchell on July 13, 2010
By Daniel J. Mitchell
A number of economists have been warning about the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policy, but defenders of the central bank often ask, ”if there’s an easy money policy, why isn’t that showing up in the form of higher prices?” Thomas Sowell has an answer to this question, explaining that people and businesses are sitting on cash because anti-business [...]
Categories: Politics |
Tags: Central Bank, Easy Money, economics, Federal Reserve, Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy, monetary policy | No Comments »
