Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

WHICH DOES THE BIBLE SUPPORT: PROPERTY RIGHTS OR REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH?

Wintery Knight offers a fine excerpt from an article by David Puller, "Is Scripture Statist?"

Wintery Knight also links to a short First Things review of  Jay W.  Richards' Money, Greed And God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem  of which George Gilder wrote:

"In Money, Greed, and God, Jay Richards has written the definitive case for capitalism, a crisply written and incisive discourse on wealth and poverty, money and morality for the 21st Century."

WHY MONOPOLIES ARE BAD, AND WHY SCHOOL CHOICE MAKES SENSE

Ed Morrissey writes   

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity released another of its Econ 101 video series today, this time with Isabel Santa of Cato discussing the problems of monopolies — especially in regard to school choice. The government-imposed school monopoly squelches innovation and provides an inefficient model for education, Santo argues, much as monopolies in other areas make inefficient use of capital. [more . . .]

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON - "IS GREECE OUR FUTURE?"

If your eyes glaze over when following abstract, academic arguments concerning socialism (which Democrats favor, by the way), the following anecdote puts things in vivid perspective.  VDH says:

I lived in Greece for more than two years, and one of my best memories is of a small hotelier at a seaside resort. He checked you in; he cooked; he did the landscaping at night; he did all the maintenance during the day. I asked him why he didn't hire more help, since his hotel wasn't all that small and he seemed to be going 24/7. What followed was a harangue about the cost of hiring a permanent worker in Greece, the difficulty of ever firing him if he proved worthless, and why he preferred to do everything himself rather than fill out all sorts of forms and hire unmotivated but tenured employees. Besides, he said, almost everyone was on some sort of pension, disability, or government benefit, and was unwilling to work, so his choices were either illegal immigrants or broke foreign students. Then he launched into a blast against socialism, and explained how he was forced to become an expert tax dodger, how he would barter for all the transactions he could, and why he hated the government. He finished by sighing that in Greece, the people spend their time either devising ways to get government money or scheming to avoid the tax collectors — or, preferably, both.

ECONOMIST ARTHUR LAFFER PREDICTS AN ECONOMIC 'TRAIN WRECK' AHEAD

- Update 1/30/10 - Wintery Knight has produced a MUST READ post on Friday's 5.7% GDP growth announcement.  Don't be fooled.  Read WK's post to understand why the numbers need to be seen as disappointing.

- (Original post) - A friend called my attention to Donald Lambro's article: "Laffer: Obama's 'Train Wreck' Ahead."

The famed economist, whose supply-side, tax-cutting policies enacted by President Reagan in 1981 put the economy on a record-breaking, 25-year economic trajectory of growth and prosperity, is telling Americans not to be lulled by sporadic signs of growth this year, because the economy is headed for a sharper decline next year when tax rates are expected to jump sharply, sending the economy into a new tailspin.

“It will make the decline in U.S. output from 2010 to 2011 worse than the decline in output in 2008 and 2009 which will catastrophic,” Laffer said in an interview with HUMAN EVENTS.

THE BRITISH LEGACY OF LIBERTY AND PROSPERITY

Mark Steyn posts:

Look at those Heritage rankings of economic freedom . . .

1) Hong Kong
2) Singapore
3) Australia
4) New Zealand
5) Ireland
6) Switzerland
7) Canada
8) United States
9) Denmark
10) Chile
11) United Kingdom
12) Mauritius

Nine out of the Top Twelve jurisdictions are current or former realms of the British Crown — and the Top Five are a clean sweep. Given its contribution to liberty and prosperity in the world, the self-loathing of modern England and its disdain for its own inheritance is perverse and, ultimately, crippling.

Me: Spot on! (As they say..)

THE PROLONGED RECESSION THE RESULT OF OBAMA'S FOOLISH ECONOMIC POLICIES

As Ed Morrissey says:

The economic policies of the Obama administration have lengthened the recession and delayed what would be the normal recovery process, mainly by signaling to investors and businesses that costs will go up in taxes and energy prices, as well as burdensome mandates on health insurance.  As a result, people are not investing their money into job-creating risk but are sheltering their cash instead.

Morrissey posts the following chart which shows employment figures by months after the start of recessions.  He credits the Minneapolis Federal Reserve and King Banaian for the chart.

The production numbers look similar:

CORNWALL ALLIANCE - THE BEST WAY TO KEEP UP WITH WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON IN COPENHAGEN AND THE "GLOBAL WARMING CROWD"

E. Calvin Beisner is live blogging in Copenhagen.  See the Cornwall Alliance's website and note in particular "An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming which has been signed by scores of Evangelical leaders.  About the Cornwall Alliance:

The Cornwall Alliance is a coalition of clergy, theologians, religious leaders, scientists, academics, and policy experts committed to bringing a balanced Biblical view of stewardship to the critical issues of environment and development. The Cornwall Alliance fully supports the principles espoused in the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, and is seeking to promote those principles in the discussion of various public policy issues including population and poverty, food, energy, water, endangered species, habitat, and other related topics.

So far as I can tell, the Cornwall Alliance is strongly concerned about how global policies will affect the poor -- which is often quite different from what major media outlets would have us believe.  Also, an often overlooked or hidden agenda of the Global Warming crowd is to dramatically reduce world population.  The Cornwall Alliance gets behind the "alleged facts" to the truth.  This is definitely a website to consult often.

FORBES MAG: "THE WEST'S GOALS IN COPENHAGEN ARE TANTAMOUNT TO SUICIDE"

Forbes magazine published an important article, The West's Goals in Copenhagen are tantamount to Suicide." (HT: HotAir)  A few paragraphs near the end especially caught my eye:

Hegemony-seeking communist capitalists in China might fancy seeing America and the West decline to the point that they can no longer compete or fund their militaries. A weakened European Union or U.S. also won't be able provide a model of a more democratic version of capitalism to counter China’s ultra-authoritarian version.

The Chinese may win a victory in Copenhagen greater than anything accomplished so far in the marketplace--and our leaders will likely thank them for it. Forget bowing to the emperor in Tokyo; like vassal states at the height of the old Middle Kingdom, the new requisite diplomatic skill for Westerners will be kow-towing to Beijing.

PRIVATE SECTOR EXPERIENCE IN U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CABINETS COMPARED

I found Nick Schultz's graph and commentary mind-blowing.   It goes a long way towards explaining the ignorance and goofiness the Obama administration exhibits. (HT:  Jonah Goldberg at The Corner)  Here's the graph:

Here's the commentary:

A friend sends along the following chart from a J.P. Morgan research report. It examines the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900 that one might expect a president to turn to in seeking advice about helping the economy. It includes secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security—432 cabinet members in all.

When one considers that public sector employment has ranged since the 1950s at between 15 percent and 19 percent of the population, the makeup of the current cabinet—over 90 percent of its prior experience was in the public sector—is remarkable.

THE ECONOMIC TRAIN WRECK COMETH

Ian Murray calls attention to Martin Hutchinson's latest column at the Prudent Bear website.  Murray introduces Hutchinson saying:

Martin was business editor of UPI while John O'Sullivan was in charge, and was one of the few financial journalists to see the crash coming well in advance.

Me: I'm not going to produce any excerpts.  If you are concerned about the price of gold and what it portends,  you should be sufficiently motivated to read Hutchinson's column, "Waiting for the Train Wreck."    It sobered me, and it will you also.   Of course Hutchinson could be wrong.  Then again, he could be right.  Hutchinson assigns the probability of a train wreck as close to 100%.

E-MAIL FROM A FRIEND ON BASIC ECONOMICS

1* "You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity."

2* "What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving."

3* The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else."

4* When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for is the beginning of the end of any nation.

5* You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it..."

OBAMA: THE STIMULUS IS WORKING [FILE UNDER BALD-FACED OBAMA LIES]

Update: Nouriel Roubini over at Forbes magazine offers an exceptionally gloomy outlook: "Brown Manure, Not Green Shoots.  He subheads his article, "The jobs situation is even worse than the headlines."

(Original post) - Ed Morrissey provides the details.  Click here.  The man in the White House doesn't lack chutzpah.

WHAT DOES A TRILLION DOLLARS LOOK LIKE?

Click here.

OBAMA STIMULUS: PREDICTIONS VS. REALITY

Click here for a short (under 1 minute, 35 second) video (from the Political Math blog) that helps visualize Obama's "horrifically, disastrously wrong" predictions  (HT: The Corner).  A short commentary accompanies the video:

. . . The president’s predictions have been shown to be completely off the mark… almost laughably so. And yet he acts as if he alone knows what would have happened if we hadn’t passed the stimulus because he keeps making statements like “we’ve saved 150,000 jobs“.

It is clear that, if he is referring to the chart we were presented with above, such a claim is absurd. . .

I am not a very anti-Obama person. Predicting the future is tricky business and I think his team should get some leeway on this.  However…

Their predictions were not just kinda wrong. They were horrifically, disasterously wrong. If President Obama is going to use statistics and charts to push nearly $800 billion in spending, I think we should be able to expect his numbers to at least kinda match the reality that comes out of his policies.

At the very least, I’d like to know how his team got those numbers. More importantly, I’d like to know how they have changed their method of prediction. President Obama is fond of saying that we tried tax cuts and they didn’t work, so we should try something else. In that same vein, his team tried predicting the effect of the stimulus and that didn’t work. So I would like to know if they are using the same failed methods they used before or if they are doing something different.

WHY ONE EMPLOYER PLANS TO HIRE PEOPLE FROM OUTSIDE AMERICA

Jim Russell plans to hire new employees in Panama rather than America.  It turns out he has some good reasons:

I am about to add a few employees to my computer services company to assist me in providing on  line programs for busy executives called PowerTool Calendar, Contact Manager and Eas2File filing system. I AM NOT GOING TO HIRE AN AMERICAN. INSTEAD I AM HIRING PEOPLE IN PANAMA. WHY? Because having been in business in America since 1955, I see my obligations and legal responsibilities growing almost yearly. Now when I view an employee, I see a potential law suit, government agency complaint investigation for labor practices or whatever and a potential new burden requiring me to pay for his health insurance and an American who has an “I’m entitled” attitude and unwillingness to work hard at really pleasing my customers. In the past, my employees were my assets. Now they are my enemies. All thanks to the government. And as the government continues to “help people” which inevitably means either more taxes for me to pay or more inefficiency for me to manage, I have decided I’ve had enough. There are millions of well educated and willing to work hard employees all over the world who can do my jobs well, be appreciative for the job and willing to learn more to be advanced. All at a cost of about 50% of what I pay in the USA. I can compete against anyone now. Tell me one more time how the government can create jobs in America by adding regulations, laws and increasing taxes. Somewhere along the line I must have missed a memo.

FELDSTEIN: THE COMING TAX REGIME THAT WILL KILL AMERICAN PRODUCTIVITY

Ed Morrissey summarizes and comments on Martin Feldstein's outlook.  The result is a failure to heed Economics 101, a class Obama apparently couldn't work into his schedule.  The nation will reap the consequences.  There's no glee in my soul, only sadness. Concluding paragraph:

Obamanomics is a disaster, and it couldn’t come at a worse time.  Four years ago, the country may have been resilient enough to shake off the worst effects of Obama’s policies, but with our economy already reeling, his taxes will kill any chance at recovery.  We will spend years running up massive deficits — which will prompt Obama to impose higher and broader taxes.  Get ready for one of the most vicious of all vicious cycles.

THE WORLD'S BIGGEST DEBTOR NATIONS

  Click here.   I was really surprised!  I'll bet you'll be also.   

A useful measure of how a country's debt position is by comparing gross external debt to GDP, which offers a direct relation of a country's debt to the size of its economy. In this report, all countries are among the world's 50 largest economies, and are ranked by current external debt as a percentage of 2008 GDP.   [Click through for a slide show of debtor nations]

U.N. 'Climate Change' Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy

Oh, brother.  As in World Big Brother controlling the world economy!  Click here for the Fox news report.  (HT: Drudge) Ed Morrissey offers analysis and commentary and concludes:

If one tried to get as many foolish ideas into one 16-page document as the UN does here, they’d be hard pressed to do so.  If Obama cooperates with this, we will have willingly traded American sovereignty for rule by thieves and knaves.  Republicans need to win some seats back in the Senate to ensure this treaty never gets ratified.

- Speaking of the UN, Another Day, Another Scandal

SKILLED IMMIGRANTS LEAVING THE UNITED STATES

This news is ominous to me (bolding mine):

At the end of 2006, more than 1 million skilled professionals (engineers, scientists, doctors, researchers) and their families were in line for a yearly allotment of only 120,000 permanent resident visas. The wait time for some people ran longer than a decade. In the meantime, these workers were trapped in "immigration limbo." If they changed jobs or even took a promotion, they risked being pushed to the back of the permanent residency queue. We predicted that skilled foreign workers would increasingly get fed up and return to countries like India and China where the economies were booming.

Why should we care? Because immigrants are critical to the country's long-term economic health. Despite the fact that they constitute only 12% of the U.S. population, immigrants have started 52% of Silicon Valley's technology companies and contributed to more than 25% of our global patents. They make up 24% of the U.S. science and engineering workforce holding bachelor's degrees and 47% of science and engineering workers who have PhDs. Immigrants have co-founded firms such as Google, Intel, eBay, and Yahoo!  

(more ...)

Chuck Colson Lambasts Congress for "Earmarking" and "Pork"

Colson offers a hard-hitting commentary:

In one sense, earmarking is nothing but pure bribery in reverse. It’s a congressman’s or senator’s way of buying votes from the constituents back home.

The practice is an abomination. It violates the biblical understanding of the limited role of government—which is to preserve order and to promote justice—and it also rejects the principles on which our representative democracy was built.

Read the whole thing.

Milton Friedman - Greed...

If you've got an extra 2 minutes and 23 seconds, you couldn't do better than click through to watch this exchange between the conservative economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006) and liberal Phil Donahue.  I can't remember when I have heard such exacting clarity of perspective and analysis stated so succinctly.

"BIG GOVERNMENT IS WHERE ONCE SUCCESSFUL NATIONS GO TO DIE." - MARK STEYN

From Mark Steyn:

If you're wondering where the "stimulus" will lead in the long run, consider this story from The Times of London:

PARTS of the United Kingdom have become so heavily dependent on government spending that the private sector is generating less than a third of the regional economy, a new analysis has found.

The study of “Soviet Britain” has found the government’s share of output and expenditure has now surged to more than 60% in some areas of England and over 70% elsewhere.

Across the UK as a whole, government spending now accounts for 49% of the economy. And look at these regional variations:

Southern England: a mere 36% of the economy is government spending;
Northeast England: 66.4%;
Wales: 71.6%;
Northern Ireland: 77.6%.

As The Times notes:

The state now looms far larger in many parts of Britain than it did in former Soviet satellite states such as Hungary and Slovakia as they emerged from communism in the 1990s, when state spending accounted for about 60% of their economies.

Big government is where once successful nations go to die.

Me: Sad, oh so sad...

Peter Schiff - "The U.S. Debt Bubble Will End Badly"

So says the man who called the subprime crisis well in advance.  See his current Wall Street Journal article here.

Shoring Up Conservative Intellectual Defenses

Update 1/14/09 - In following up yesterday's post and in response to requests for specific help in explaining the financial mess we are in, John Hood suggests:  " read, copy, and distribute University of Missouri Professor Lawrence White's briefing paper for the Cato Institute, published a couple of months ago. It's concise, straightforward, and persuasive. A key graf:

The actual causes of our financial troubles were unusual monetary policy moves and novel federal regulatory interventions. These poorly chosen policies distorted interest rates and asset prices, diverted loanable funds into the wrong investments, and twisted normally robust financial institutions into unsustainable positions.

- (Original post) -John Hood posted  important observations:

A likely feature of the political debate of the next few years will look something like this. Conservatives will make a specific argument about a specific public-policy dispute — say, NR's editorial today questioning the need and wisdom of appropriating the second half of the TARP funds — and liberals will then respond not with a meaningful rebuttal of the specific argument but instead with a general attack on conservative credibility. "Your free-market ideology led to the worst recession since the Great Depression," they will assert. "Why should we believe anything you say now?"

Getting ready for this tactic means mastering the details of the bipartisan economic policy mistakes that have led us to the present moment, including excessive money creation, coddling of Fannie and Freddie, whipsaw imposition of post-Enron accounting rules, and regulatory constraints on production and investment. But it also means shoring up the intellectual defense of our basic conservative principles. The process will need to include

Euphemisms vs. Reality

Victor Davis Hanson throws cold water in our face to wake us up:

For just one week we should ban the verb "stimulate" and the noun "stimulus" — and substitute instead the more honest "borrow," or "print," or "debt"; as in "The government plans to borrow another $1 trillion for the economy," or "The administration today decided to print another $300 billion in cash." Or "Congress met to consider a $1 trillion debt program." But as it is now, the euphemisms only take us ever more distant from reality, as trillions of dollars are bandied about as if they were mere five and tens in the government wallet.  [my emphases]

Well said.

Obama's Views on "Economic Justice" Examined

Andy McCarthy wrote today the following:

In this pre-election article, I took my best shot at explaining why Obama's "economic justice," which sometimes travels under the heading "Second Bill of Rights" was so flawed ... and monstrous.  Here, fwiw, are the relevant passages:

As Obama sees it, the Warren Court failed to “break free from the essential constraints that  were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution.” The judges instead clung to the hoary construction of the Constitution as “a charter of negative liberties” — one that says only what government “can’t do to you.” For Obama, economic justice demands the positive case: what government “must do on your behalf” (emphasis added).

True to form, Obama has twisted the most elementary points. First, the Framers viewed government as a necessary evil: required for a free people’s collective security but, if insufficiently checked, guaranteed to devour liberty. The purpose of the Constitution was not to make the positive case for government but for freedom. Freedom cannot exist without order, and thus implies some measure of government. But it is a limited government, vested with only the powers expressly enumerated. As the framers knew, a government that strays beyond those powers is necessarily treading on freedom’s territory. It is certain to erode the very “Blessings of Liberty” the Constitution was designed to secure.

IS "COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM" AN INSULT TO TRADITIONAL CONSERVATIVES?

Jonah Goldberg thinks so as he weighs in on the online exchange between Michael Gerson and John O'Sullivan.  Goldberg writes (and this makes sense to me):

"Compassionate" may indeed be a strong adjective, but it's an intellectually weak word. As I've said countless times before, compassionate conservatism makes perhaps the fundamental mistake of contemporary liberalism: It scores a person's moral worth by his commitment to giant government initiatives and often ineffectual or counter-productive bureaucracies. (See David Frum's review of Heroic Conservatism for more on this).

In almost everything Gerson has written about compassionate conservatism, you could replace the word "compassionate" with "Great Society" and it would make more sense. . . 

Read on . . .

REDISTRIBUTING WEALTH PRACTICALLY DEMONSTRATED

From a letter to the editor at the Chicago Tribune:

On my way to lunch recently, I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read "Vote Obama; I need   the money." I laughed. In a restaurant my server had on an "Obama 08" tie. Again I laughed. Just imagine the coincidence.

When the bill came, I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Barack-Obama-redistribution-of-wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need—the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.

  I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I've decided  he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful. At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment, I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more. I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.        —A. Hart, Forest Park    (HT: Townhall)

BEST LINE YET ON "JOE THE PLUMBER"

The best response to the MSM's fanatical desire to "take down" Joe the Plumber was given by Jim Treacher (whose whole post you've got to read!):   

 "The whole "He's not a licensed plumber!" non sequitur is really fantastic. So, if you happen to be standing in front of Obama when he publicly reveals his socialism, what does the media do? Demands to see your papers. That's just delicious, is what that is."

(HT: Mark Steyn at The Corner)

Update: Rush Limbaugh:  "The story isn't Joe, liberals.  It's what Obama said to Joe."

CONSERVATIVE REACTION TO PAUL KRUGMAN'S NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS

Click here.

Update 10/29/08 - Steve Sailor - I had not realized Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman is this stupid.

100 ECONOMISTS OPPOSE BARACK OBAMA'S ECONOMIC PROPOSALS

The list includes 5 Nobel Prize winners - Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Robert Mundell, Edward Prescott, and Vernon Smith.  All 100 names are included.  Click here.

The economists explain why Barack Obama's proposals, including "misguided tax hikes," would "decrease the number of jobs in America." The prospects of such tax rate increases under Barack Obama are already harming the economy. The economists conclude that "Barack Obama's economic proposals are wrong for the American economy." The proposals "defy both economic reason and economic experience."

Read on . . .

HOW GOVERNMENT HELPED CREATE THE CREDIT CRASH

Ian Murray lists 12 articles that show how government is a major culprit. He says

The fact is that short-sighted government policies distorted the market in the first place. Bankers were certainly to blame for responding to these signals from government in the hope of a quick buck, but at its base, much of the problem was caused by government.

DEREGULATION IS THE WRONG SCAPEGOAT

Sebastian Mallaby explains why.

(HT: Rich Lowry at the Corner)

BANKRUPTCY, NOT BAILOUT, IS THE ANSWER

Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron writes the most sensible analysis I have  come across - and he does it with amazing clarity!  Genuinely amazing.  It's a must read article.  It is short, succinct, and easily grasped.  (HT: Drudge)

THE ECONOMIC CRISIS

I've debated whether I wanted to post anything on the current economic crisis since the situation is so fluid that anything posted will probably be outdated in a matter of hours.  Be that as it may, I've decided to post a few items that give a snapshot of opinions and concerns as of Saturday night, Sept. 27th, 2008.

- William Kristol - A Genuine and Immediate Crisis  - Kristol cites the European Fortis bank crisis as ominous.  I've never seen a major commentator [Kristol] in such virtual panic mode.  - The man on the street is apparently getting scared, too. - The U.S. Mint is temporarily halting sales of its 1 oz. gold coin because of soaring demand.  A sign of how scared people are.

- Rasmussen report - Support for bailout plan now down to 24%

- Newt Gingrich wants Treasury Secretary Paulson to resign - Newt has strong words. He says Bush doesn't understand the situation; Paulson's arrogance is unending and he should resign

“But it’s probably impossible, without the president getting a new secretary of the treasury, to get to a good deal. Which I think’s just tragic, and bad for the country. We’re taking an immediate tummy ache, and we’re in danger of turning it into cancer.”

ON THE MISTAKEN IDEA THAT CREDIT IS A CIVIL RIGHT

- Update 9/24/08  - Krikorian has more...

Mark Krikorian makes sense when he says:

I have no way of judging whether the Wall Street bailout is a necessary evil or an impending disaster.  But we're in this mess, ultimately, because our political elites thought it was good social policy to encourage banks to give mortgages to uncreditworthy people, resulting in what Sailer months ago called the "Diversity Recession" (if this doesn't work, make that the Diversity Depression). In other words, if poor people in general, or blacks or Hispanics in particular, were less likely to be approved for a mortgage, the only possible reason was racism or classism or whatever. Thus "creditworthiness" was an illegitimate, dead-white-male concept, like middleclassness. Because, after all, isn't everyone entitled to credit? Therefore, I propose any bailout bill start with these words: "It is the sense of Congress that credit is not a civil right."

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FINANCIAL CRISIS?

The Democrats.  You don't believe me?  Then read this.

ECONOMICS 101 - CONSIDER THE MANUFACTURE AND AVAILABILITY OF PENCILS

 

I love it.  George Will provides the lesson.

WE CAN BLAME REP. BARNEY FRANK (D-MA) -- AMONG OTHERS -- FOR THE FREDDIE MAC/FANNIE MAE FIASCO

 This Wall Street Journal editorial explains why. Update:  Look at this:  (HT: Jonah Goldberg at The Corner)

Top recipients of Fannie/Freddie donations:

#1 Chris Dodd

#2 John Kerry

#3 Barack Obama

#4 Hillary Clinton

"For the record, that's two Democratic presidential nominees, two also-ran presidential candidates including Hillary Clinton, at least the second most significant Democrat in the country." 

Update 9/16/08 - Read this if you are seeking to affix major blame.  It belongs largely to the democrats.

HOW IS THE DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED CONGRESS DEALING WITH THE OIL CRISIS? HAVE A LOOK!

Courtesy of Hugh Hewitt:

Wherever Hewitt got this chart, I don't know, but it is way out of date.  Gas now costs $4.10 at the pump.

HUGE FINANCIAL CRISIS LOOMS: FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC IN MELTDOWN

These strange-sounding names will become more and more familiar as they are about to hit the news in a big way it seems. Andy McCarthy pens a blog post today titled "Mortgage Giants Down Again."  Here's the scoop:

Surprising how little talk there has been around here about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose shares this morning are down, respectively, to about $10 and $6 respectively.

The WSJ's editors put it in perpective yesterday:

Investors are saying that a Bear Stearns-like run on the companies is a real possibility, and they're right.... What Americans need to know is how damaging such a failure would be. This wouldn't merely be a matter of the Federal Reserve guaranteeing $29 billion in dodgy mortgage paper, a la Bear Stearns. Fannie and Freddie are among the largest financial companies in the world. Their liabilities – mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) and other debt – add up to some $5 trillion.

DANGEROUS CONSEQUENCES OF U.S. FIRMS' "SHARIA COMPLIANT FINANCE"

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. explains.

"THE EVERHOUSE" - Low Cost Affordable Coastal Housing!

Published by Steve Darden.

Not just Katrina recovery — but any coastal, high-risk, high insurance zone. John Sawyer’s Everhouse is exciting — manufactured housing designed for the coastal risk profile and a delivery pipeline that make sense. The hundreds of millions of your money [aka “Government Assistance”] has failed to produce affordable housing that can be insured at affordable rates. But a New England entrepreneur seems to have innovated a solution - at $68/square foot — about one-half the going rate in New Orleans. 

BJORN LOMBORG - HOW TO DO THE MOST GOOD IN THE WORLD

The actual title of his Wall Street Journal article is "How to Think About the World's Problems."  He argues that the fortune spent on reducing carbon emisions "could achieve an astounding amount of good in areas that we hear a lot less about."

He writes, for example,

. . . just $60 million spent on providing Vitamin A capsules and therapeutic Zinc supplements for under-2-year-olds would reach 80% of the infants in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with annual economic benefits (from lower mortality and improved health) of more than $1 billion. That means doing $17 worth of good for each dollar spent. Spending $1 billion on tuberculosis would avert an astonishing one million deaths, with annual benefits adding up to $30 billion. This gives $30 back on the dollar.

Heart disease represents more than a quarter of the death toll in poor countries. Developed nations treat acute heart attacks with inexpensive drugs. Spending $200 million getting these cheap drugs to poor countries would avert 300,000 deaths in a year. . . .

Thomas Sowell Offers Summer Reading Suggestions

To counter the steady diet of liberal-left indoctrination students receive in schools and colleges, Sowell recommends the following books (see his article for explanations):

     Thomas Sowell's  Economic Facts and Fallacies

     The Best-Laid Plans by Randal O’Toole

     Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg
  
     Shelby Steele’s book on Obama, titled  A Bound Man    

      Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics

U.S. HOUSING COLLAPSE SPREADS OVERSEAS

Spain and Ireland particularly hard hit, but other countries, too.  Click here  (HT: Drudge)

Quick Takes

- Sen. Bunning (R-Ky) resists housing rescue effort by the government.  Read Michelle Malkin's post about the brave, level-headed Senator from Kentucky and let your cynicism flow unimpeded towards the Senators who bring on one fiscal mess after another.  They don't even take time to read the bills they pass!

- Tony Blankley rightly warns that with news outlets pulling back from putting men and women on the field gathering news, the lights of true knowledge of events is flickering.  In the future we may not know enough about events to make rational decisions.

LARRY KUDLOW: COST OF THE IRAQ WAR MINISCULE

Larry Kudlow puts the cost of the Iraq war in perspective:

Surprise, surprise. Having failed to penetrate General Petraeus’s story about the great improvements on the ground in Iraq, liberals are now trying to make the case that the cost of the Iraq war may have somehow undermined the economy, and even caused the current slowdown. What complete and utter nonsense.

First point: The U.S. has spent roughly $750 billion for the five-year war. Sure, that’s a lot of money. But run the numbers and the total cost works out to a miniscule 1 percent of the $63 trillion GDP over that time period. It’s miniscule.

More important, the real question we ought to be asking ourselves is what is the cost of freedom? While the Left refuses to acknowledge it, the undeniable fact is that the United States homeland has not been attacked since September 11. Meanwhile, over in Iraq, al Qaeda and other extremist terrorist groups have been utterly routed by U.S. forces. It’s another fact the Left hates to acknowledge.

JIM ROGERS (LEGENDARY INVESTOR) SAYS U.S. ECONOMY PROGRESSING TO WORSE RECESSION AND INFLATION

CNBC  interview with Jim Rogers here  (on YouTube).  It is dated around March 13, 2008.

LARRY KUDLOW REMAINS OPTIMISTIC ON THE U.S. ECONOMY

He thinks the U.S. will dodge a recession. Click here .  Note this interesting paragraph:

. . .  And these companies pay a colossal fortune in taxes. Exxon Mobil is a perfect example. Over the last three years, Exxon Mobil has paid an average of $27 billion annually in taxes. $27 billion! As my friend, economist Mark Perry, points out, while corporate profits receive a lot of media attention, the corporate taxes paid on these corporate profits are largely overlooked. Dr. Perry also points out that Exxon Mobil pays as much in taxes annually as the entire bottom 50 percent of individual taxpayers — a full 65,000,000 people.