Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Awesome: Obama proposal would allow debt collectors to robo-call cellphones

It seems that Americans just can't get enough of the Obama Democrats' policies.

Seriously, consumers are reveling in new regulations that force banks to dramatically hike fees and ban credit cards for stay-at-home parents.

No, Americans want more regulations. So President Obama is happily obliging by suggesting that debt collectors be allowed to robo-call consumers' cellphones:

To the dismay of consumer groups and the discomfort of Democrats, President Barack Obama wants Congress to make it easier for private debt collectors to call the cellphones of consumers delinquent on student loans and other billions owed the federal government...

...The little-noticed recommendation would apply only to cases in which money is owed the government, and is tucked into the mammoth $3 trillion deficit-reduction plan the president submitted to Congress.

Despite the claim, the administration has not yet developed an estimate of how much the government would collect, and critics reject the logic behind the recommendation.

"Enabling robo-calls (to cellphones) is just going to lead to more harassment and abuse, and it's not going to help the government collect more money," said Lauren Saunders of the Boston-based National Consumer Law Center. "People aren't paying their student loans because they can't find a job."

President Subprime McDowngrade is really doing a bang-up job: not only is he killing jobs with out-of-control bureaucracies like the NLRB and the EPA, he's letting new swarms of debt collectors run wild on the little people.

Now I know this comes as quite a shock for liberals, but here's the real headline: Inexperienced, un-vetted community organizer makes surprisingly lousy president.


Monday, October 03, 2011

Another success story for central planning: Fed rule will ban credit cards for many stay-at-home parents

Isn't it amazing how everything the Obama administration touches -- aside from our military and intelligence communities -- turns to crap?

A federal rule kicked in Saturday that will prevent many applicants from qualifying for new credit card accounts.

The Federal Reserve's rule told credit card companies that they no longer can consider household income when assessing the creditworthiness of an individual who applies for his or her own card. Under the rule, only an individual's own salary or other income -- rather than combined household income -- can be considered.

One major effect of the new regulation: Stay-at-home moms (or dads) without significant outside income no longer will be able to open their own credit card accounts -- and establish their own credit histories to build their credit scores. Compliance with the rule became mandatory Oct. 1, 2011.

"From an economic standpoint, this is a whopper," said Manisha Thakor, founder of the Women's Financial Literacy Initiative, a financial fellow at Wellesley College and a Houston-based financial analyst. "Not only will be harder to build a credit score, but this ruling is tantamount to assigning a zero dollar value to the work stay-at-home parents do day in and day out to keep households running."

...Previously, an individual member of a household could qualify for a credit card account by pointing to the combined income of several members of that household. For instance, in the case of a married couple, a stay-at-home wife without any independent income could qualify for and obtain a credit card under only her own name -- and establish her own credit history -- by pointing to the salary of her husband.

That no longer will be the case. Now, she must prove that she can make the payments with only her own resources, a nearly impossible hurdle for many homemakers to overcome.

"They're going to be stuck, really stuck," said Barbara Shapiro, a Boston-area registered investment adviser, vice president of the HMS Financial Group and a certified divorce financial analyst. "It makes these people completely unable to buy an airline ticket, rent a car or do anything that requires a credit card.

"We're becoming a cashless society," Shapiro said. "What are these people supposed to do?"

What indeed?

Maybe they can survive on hope, change, pink ponies and unicorn dreams.


Hat tip: Laughing Conservative.

Sunday, October 02, 2011

Ominous Tweet o' the Day

The invaluable James Pethokoukis:

It's a theme echoed by Jim Gallagher in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch entitled "Horror show: the European debt crisis":

Right now, the European financial system is giving off signs of the apocalypse.

There's an under-the-table run on European banks. American money-market mutual funds, long a main source of dollar funding for the Europeans, are fleeing the Continent. Other sources of bank funding are getting clunky or drying up.

There's a run on the bonds of Spain and Italy, too, even though those two countries are quite solvent.

Worldwide, money is running for safety, mainly to the U.S. dollar. All that money is driving yield on the 10-year Treasury bond to the lowest levels since the 1940s. The euro is down 8 percent against the dollar since August. The Chinese yuan is weakening.

The American stock market is bouncing up and down, lately in synch with news from Europe. The memory Lehman Brothers haunts Wall Street...

Two economists quoted in the article thinks things will work out: after all, Europe simply has to come to its senses and resolve the crisis.

Problem is, no one has explained how the crisis can be resolved. Greece owes creditors hundreds of billions of Euros and can never, ever pay those debts off. The idiotic lenders who underwrote and levered up these loans include some of the most august banking institutions in all of Europe.

So short of Germany and the United States flooding the international banks with cash -- which would be a handy form of political suicide back at home -- there don't appear to be many credible options for salvaging the Euro.

Prepare accordingly.


Friday, September 30, 2011

Van Jones: Dude, Like 80% of Americans Are Marxist Crackpots Ready to Launch an "October Offensive" Against the Man

Runner-up headline:

Rabid Communist Van Jones: 80% of Americans Are Rabid Communists Willing to Fight for the Quintessentially American Cause of Rabid Communism

* * * * * * * * *

I think it's safe to say that President Obama's "green jobs advisor" Van Jones majored in Soviet History and not mathematics.

Consider the recent interview of "Conversion Van" on MSNBC (that's the nickname he prefers, I hear) regarding the massive grassroots movement for oppression and tyranny:

We are going to build a progressive counterbalance to the tea party. Eighty percent of Americans agree with everything that you say on this show, but we have no voice. We know that jobs are more important, and this phony, made-up deficit stuff they talk about. We know that people who have done well in America should do well by America and start paying America back in the form of more fair taxes.

Hey, schmuck: here's the phony and made-up deficit, courtesy of Barack Obama, which just happens to have resulted in the first downgrade of United States debt in history:


Here's more of WebVan's wisdom:

People who benefited from the bailouts and from the tax breaks should start paying America back. They're doing great.

Everybody else is suffering. That is 80 percent of the majority. And we're going to now have a voice.

Say, iVan: last time I checked, self-identified conservatives outnumbered progressives two-to-one. And with centrists included, liberals are outgunned nearly four-to-one.

But let's not clutter this post with facts, let's go back to TranVan:

"And you're going to see an American fall, an American autumn, just like we saw the Arab spring. You can see it right now with these young people on Wall Street. Hold onto your hats. We're going to have an October offensive to take back the American dream and to rescue America's middle class."

Arab Spring? So you're gonna start killing Christians?

Or you're gonna take over Wall Street? Like the 33 losers that got pepper-sprayed, tased, stripped nekkid and covered in powdered sugar*?

Dude: let me lay it down real simple for you.

We outnumber you.

Say goodnight, Van. Because in 2012, we're going to flush all of you Marxist crackpots out of office. And you can go back to being the fringe Leftist kook you were before 2008.

And may I be the first to say: buh-bye.


* Obscure Super Troopers reference

MSM Does Damage Control for Michelle Obama: 'She Has a Fondness for Affordable Clothes'

"...it wasn't until I stepped away from the corporate track and worked in city government and eventually helped to found the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program, a national service program, that I realized how important public service and community service was to my own development... And now that the two of us have moved to Washington, our new home -- (applause) -- we both have continued to stress the value of national and community service..." --Michelle Obama, 17 March 2009


This morning's Today Show devoted an entire segment reconnecting First Lady Michelle Obama with the little people. It featured FLOTUS "stealth"-shopping at Target in breathless terms:

Check this out. Behind those dark glasses, tucked under that Nike cap, one of the world's most famous women. Yes, that is the First Lady of the United States at Target...

...Like any mom, except her aide was juggling not one, but two Blackberries. Secret Service agents were blending in, dressed down in casual clothes. Mrs. Obama spent 40 minutes in the store Thursday afternoon, apparently unnoticed by other shoppers. Sources say she was recognized only by the cashier and a photographer from the Associated Press who worked sources to find out she was there. [Ed: heh!]

[She has a] fondness for affordable clothes.

Oh, my.

Michelle Obama is the very model of selfless public service.

For Michelle Obama, everyday life translates to spending $10 million of the taxpayers' money on vacations in only a single year's time and living like, well, a millionaire or billionaire.


Responding to the President's exhortations to "pass this jobs bill now", Senate Democrats oblige by taking a pass

Chicago's powerhouse WLS-AM radio station has confirmed what Mark Levin surmised last week: when it comes to President Obama's "Jobs Bill", Democrats are running from Obama as fast as they possibly can.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama tried to keep the pressure on Congress to consider his nearly $450 billion jobs bill, saying it had been two weeks since he sent the bill to Capitol Hill "and now I want it back."

...So why have Democrats delayed action in the U.S. Senate on President Obama’s stimulus bill?

WLS Radio’s Bill Cameron reports his own party has delayed action in the Senate and talked with Senator Dick Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate, about the reason why.

RUN AWAY!!!

The oil-producing state senators don’t like eliminating or reducing the subsidy for oil companies, “ Durbin tells WLS Radio, “There are some senators who are up for election who say I’m never gonna vote for a tax increase while I’m up for election, even on the wealthiest people. So, we’re not gonna have 100% Democratic senators. That’s why it needs to be bi-partisan and I hope we can find some Republicans who will join us to make it happen.”

But so far, Durbin concedes Democrats don’t have the votes in the senate to pass it, “Not at the moment, I don’t think we do but, uh, we can work on it."

Liberalism is most assuredly a mental affliction, but the survival instinct is strong in these drones. So we'll have to pry each and everyone from their white-knuckled grip on power using a crowbar and a taser.

Politically speaking, of course.


Tuesday, September 27, 2011

'The Mother Of All European Bailout Flowcharts'

Tim Geithner hardest hit.

At some point in the very near future (emphasis on the word near) the grand experiment in Keynesian economics will come to a rapid and ugly end.

The laws of mathematics can't be defied any more than can the law of gravity.

As Mike Shedlock patiently explains (for the umpteenth time):

European leaders have their heads in the sand, or perhaps up Treasury Secretary Tim Geithners' a$$ as it was Geithner who actually hatched the ballyhooed leveraged bailout scheme.

Yes, they have hatched a plan to use leverage, but that plan has enormous risks. Moreover, it is questionable at best the German supreme court will allow that plan to stand.

Even if the plan does stand, throwing trillions of Euros around just to prevent Greece from defaulting hardly seems like a sensible policy. The sensible policy would have been to let Greece default two years ago.

Yes, that's what I would recommend for the world's most difficult financial engineering task: rely on the schemes of a man -- Tim Geithner -- who couldn't figure out how to use TurboTax.


Heart-Stopping Chart o' the Day

From IceCap Asset Management, courtesy of the invaluable Zero Hedge:

Fully 20% of all disposable personal income comes from government redistribution of wealth.

It is this money -- borrowed from future generations by the Obama Democrats -- that has fueled the modest rise in consumer spending over the last three years.

It should come as no surprise that this level of wealth transfer is unsustainable.

As for what comes next, rent the movie Road Warrior.


Monday, September 26, 2011

Oops! Illinois Budget Deficit to Hit $8 Billion Despite Huge Tax Hike

Yes, it's another success story for Democrat leadership!

Illinois budget deficit to hit $8 billion despite tax increase

Despite a major income tax increase, the state of Illinois is expected to end the budget year more than $8 billion in the red...

...In all, the state will be $8.3 billion short on June 30 if nothing is done, according to the report. The majority of that money, roughly $5.5 billion, will come in the form of unpaid bills from companies that provide everything from meals for the elderly to toilet paper for prisoners. Another $1.2 billion is composed of Medicaid payments the state will push off until the next budget year, while the remaining $1.6 billion is owed to companies for tax returns and health insurance bills for state workers.

...Msall is calling on lawmakers to rein in pension costs by limiting benefits for current employees. It's an effort led by House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego that has been met with skepticism from some leading Democrats, including [Democrat Governor] Quinn.

...Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Frank Mautino of downstate Spring Valley said lawmakers can ease some of the budget burden by borrowing to pay off the backlog of bills... More borrowing is an idea the Civic Federation has opposed, contending that the state's reliance on loans leads to higher debt payments that ultimately means less money to spend on daily operations.

This is also the Democrats' plan at the federal level in microcosm. Rather than living within their means, these reprehensible hacks instead want to fight the growing budget deficit by... borrowing more money.

But I can understand their reluctance to slash: there's nothing to cut!

Law gives huge pension perks to union leaders: "All it took to give nearly two dozen labor leaders from Chicago a windfall worth millions was a few tweaks to a handful of sentences in the state's lengthy pension code... The changes became law with no public debate among state legislators and, more importantly, no cost analysis...

Twenty years later, 23 retired union officials from Chicago stand to collect about $56 million from two ailing city pension funds thanks to the changes."

One-day rehiring nets former Chicago labor leader a $158,000 city pension: "Gannon is eligible for the lucrative pension deal only because City Hall rehired the former Streets and Sanitation Department worker for a single day in 1994, then granted him an indefinite leave of absence... State law allowed Gannon to retire from the city in 2004, the year he turned 50; since then, he has received about $1 million from his city pension. He stands to collect approximately $5 million during his lifetime...

...Until last year, that pension came on top of Gannon's union salary, which had grown to more than $240,000. He now draws the pension while working for a hedge fund, Grosvenor Capital Management, that does work with public pensions, including the Teachers Retirement System of Illinois. The firm also was one of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's largest campaign contributors."

I'm just wondering at what point the electorate revolts. Or do they just surrender and let Illinois collapse without a fight?


Third World Starvation, Brought to You by Ethanol and the Global Warming Scam Artists™

The "Arab Spring" -- violent revolts in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen -- can be traced back to rising food prices, food shortages and imminent starvation. Prior to the Yemeni uprising, for example, seven million citizens "were forced to reduce their number of daily meals from three to one."

And what caused these rising food prices?

You guessed it: the global warming scam, which forces otherwise edible crops to be burned as inefficient fuels like ethanol. A new research paper models food prices and arrives at statistical proof that the global warming scam is, in great part, helping starve children in the third world.

The Food Crises: A quantitative model of food prices including speculators and ethanol conversion

Recent increases in basic food prices are severely impacting vulnerable populations worldwide. Proposed causes such as shortages of grain due to adverse weather, increasing meat consumption in China and India, conversion of corn to ethanol in the US, and investor speculation on commodity markets lead to widely differing implications for policy. A lack of clarity about which factors are responsible reinforces policy inaction...

Here, for the first time, we construct a dynamic model that quantitatively agrees with food prices. The results show that the dominant causes of price increases are investor speculation [Ed: market forces, i.e., supply-and-demand] and ethanol conversion. Models that just treat supply and demand are not consistent with the actual price dynamics...

...Both causes of price increase, speculative investment and ethanol conversion, are promoted by recent regulatory changes—deregulation of the commodity markets, and policies promoting the conversion of corn to ethanol. Rapid action is needed to reduce the impacts of the price increases on global hunger.

It's time for the government to get out of the fuel business. It's time to stop subsidizing ethanol; to disband the regulatory state that prevents exploitation of our natural resources; and to let the free market dictate what we use to power our society.

Because the destruction wrought by the environmental, flat-earth, no-growth Marxist left must be stopped.

If for no other reason than to save the children who today starve to death thanks to the likes of Al Gore and the climate grifters.


Related: In the name of global warming, 20,000 Ugandan villagers burned out of their homes.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

California's Version of the 'Buffet Rule' Working Out Beautifully. Oh, Wait: It's Actually an Unmitigated Disaster.

'Progressive' left hardest hit.

The state's over-reliance on taxing the rich has been a disaster during bad times


If President Obama really wants to see the "Buffett Rule" in action, he should look at California's tax system. The state has been plagued by it for years.

The revenue stream is unstable and the state budget has been a deficit disaster... In California, we've got what you could call a Buffett Rule-Plus. There's an extra tax bracket — at 10.3% — for income exceeding $1 million.

...California relies heavily on rich investors for its income tax revenue, which fuels half of the general fund... Some examples of this over-dependence, based on the 2009 tax year:

• The top 1% earned 18% of California's income but paid 37% of the income tax.

Illustrating the volatility of the California income tax, however, the top 1% paid 48% of the total take in 2007 before the stock market collapsed. In the next two years, the state's income tax revenue fell 25%.

• The top 10% earned 45% of the income but paid 72% of the taxes.

During the recession, the middle class paid a slightly larger share of the declining income tax take. Those earning between $45,000 and $84,000 kicked in 11% of the total revenue in 2009, compared to 9% two years earlier. But one could argue they still were under-taxed. They earned 19% of the income.

"The real people who don't get taxed enough in California are the middle-income folks," says Steve Levy, director of the left-leaning Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy...

...Meanwhile, if Buffett really wanted to live by his own rule, he could leave Nebraska, move to California and pay our state taxes.

The math is actually pretty simple, unless you're a Democrat:

• If you punish success, you drive successful people away.

• If you reward sloth, you get more sloth.

• If you promote illegal behavior (such as illegal immigration), you get more illegal behavior.

But you can be sure that none of the tautological facts describing human behavior will ever influence a single progressive. Because for drones, ideology always trumps facts, logic, history and reason.


Image: HillBuzz.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Health care premiums to leap as much as 85% in Ohio; HHS response: spend $100MM investigating insurers

In states like Ohio -- "the heart of it all", if its license plate is to be believed -- health care premiums are slated to leap by as much as eighty-freaking-five percent:

At the request of the Ohio Department of Insurance, benefit consultants Milliman, Inc. prepared an estimate of the impact on coverage and rates of ObamaCare when major provisions take effect in 2014... 660,000 are forecast to lose their group coverage from employers... The percentage of all covered with some type of government coverage is forecast to increase to 31% from 20% in 2010.

Although the percentage of residents with coverage could rise by about 7.9%, the price of individual health insurance coverage might rise about 55% to 85%, excluding the impact of medical inflation, the Milliman consultants predict.

Just in time to combat the negative publicity, our beloved Department of Health and Human Services has cut checks worth $109 million (thankfully, only one-fifth of what the feds spent on Solyndra) to help states "fight unreasonable premium increases and protect consumers."

As of Sept. 1, the Affordable Care Act requires health insurers seeking rate hikes of 10% or more in the individual and small group market to submit their request to experts to determine whether the rates are unreasonable... ACA also requires insurance companies to publicly justify unreasonable premium rate increases...

...Another provision of ACA requires health insurers to spend at least 80% of premium dollars on healthcare and quality-improvement activities as opposed to overhead, advertising, and executive bonuses. If they don't they must reduce premiums or pay rebates to consumers and employers.... Also in 2014, insurance exchanges created by ACA supposedly will use competition and transparency, including information on unjustified premium increases, to help make insurance more affordable, HHS said.

I can save them some money. The root cause of these massive premium increases is a bunch of Statist, totalitarian masterminds trying to centrally plan a full one-sixth of the economy.

This is akin to the task of the Soviet Politburo, circa the sixties, announcing yet another successful wheat-growing season when, in fact, a large portion of the population was starving to death.

• When they said, "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it" -- they lied.

• When they said, "On average, families will see their health care premiums drop by $2,500 a year" -- they lied.

• When they said, "My health care plan will be one of the greatest job-creating programs ever" -- they lied.

Everyone rational citizen -- which excludes you drones and other irregular Americans -- knew the Democrats were lying and said so at the time.

Central planning can't work, won't work and, in fact, has never worked in all of world history. That is why we need a GOP candidate with the backbone and drive to repeal Obamacare, soup to nuts. And a personal aside: Mitt Romney doesn't strike me as that person.


Related: Good news: 83% of Obamacare Grants Awarded to Local Health Centers In States That Supported Obama in 2008

Thursday, September 22, 2011

As America Struggles to Survive, Michelle Obama Models a $42K Bracelet

Empathy: that's what I see when I look admiringly at Michelle Obama:

That was no ordinary bling on the wrist of First Lady Michelle Obama at the DNC fundraiser in New York Tuesday night. Those fancy diamond cuffs were the creation of 23-year-old Katie Decker, whose namesake jewelry line has been making a serious splash since her graduation from Texas A&M two years ago.

...If you've been saving your nickels and dimes, the cuffs are available locally at Judith Ann Jewels. The First Lady wore Katie's Lotus cuff priced at $15,000 with 2.9 carats of diamonds, her Gothic cuff at $15,350 with 2.17 carats in diamonds and the Quatrefoil bracelet at $11,800 with 1.73 carats in diamonds.

As one wag headlined the news: Barack "Middle Class Warrior" Obama brings Michelle to fundraiser wearing $42,398 worth of jewelry.

In unrelated news, a global meltdown is underway.

Thank heavens we can watch FLOTUS from our hovels and dream of better days.


Hat tip: Dan Riehl.

Ben Bernanke issued a death sentence on the PBGC yesterday

If Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was trying to accelerate the collapse of public and private pension systems, it looks like he succeeded yesterday.

The Federal Reserve's 'Operation Twist' to bring down bond yields and stimulate the economy is likely to cause pain for the nation's largest pension funds, already struggling with funding shortfalls from the recent stock market decline.

Hit both by falling stock prices and falling bond yields, the 100 largest pension plans of public U.S. companies have assets covering only 79 percent of their liabilities as of the end of August, down from 86 percent at the end of 2010, according to consulting firm Milliman Inc...

...[Twist] could drive down the yields on AA-rated corporate bonds and related benchmarks used by the pension funds to calculate their liabilities.

Most private U.S. defined benefit plans, which oversee about $2 trillion, are hurt when long-term yields decline because of the way the plans must value future payouts they will make to retirees in coming decades.

Let me be the first to predict that Ben Bernanke just signed the death sentence on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). What's that you say? It's yet another masterpiece of central planning, which happens to be bankrupt. Just like Social Security, Medicare, the FDIC, the Federal Highway Trust Fund, and everything else the Statists touch.

All of this means that taxpayers -- your kids and grandkids included -- will be on the hook for yet another of the Obama Democrats' epic failures.


Wednesday, September 21, 2011

I don't ever want to hear another stinking word from you liberal drones about "infrastructure projects"!

Well, there's a couple of trillion dollars we'll never get back (not to mention our kids and grandkids).

While Obama’s out there pointing at bridges that might need repair, Orrin Hatch reveals that there were 35 states that got less stimulus money for their roads, highways, and bridges than Solyndra did in a guaranteed loan for their green jobs scam...

Here’s a chart, courtesy of PJ Tatler, that shows how much money each of these 35 states got for their ‘shovel ready’ jobs in comparison with what Solyndra got in a guaranteed loan. And notice that only three of them exceeded $500 billion.


In related news, senior Solyndra executives apparently lied to Congress when they offered to speak openly in exchange for a scheduling delay in their testimony.

The top executives at Fremont's bankrupt solar manufacturer Solyndra plan to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to answer questions when they appear at a congressional hearing Friday.

Brian Harrison, Solyndra's CEO, and W.G. "Bill" Stover, the company's chief financial officer, have voluntarily agreed to appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Friday and had previously assured congressional staffers they would testify...

...The House committee plans to go forward with Friday's hearing even though Harrison and Stover will not testify.

"Both Mr. Stover and Mr. Harrison will be sworn in under oath this Friday," said a statement issued by the committee Tuesday. "We have many questions for Solyndra's executives on their dealings with the Obama administration, their efforts to secure federal support for a project that appeared doomed from the outset, and why they made certain representations to Congress regarding their dire financial situation just two months ago. We would encourage Mr. Harrison and Mr. Stover to reconsider this effort to dodge questions under oath and hide the truth from those American taxpayers who are now on the hook for their $500 million bust."

Obviously the Obama administration has already determined that infrastructure projects aren't quite as important as enriching their crony contributors.

Therefore the administration's pleas for more infrastructure spending appears about as genuine as a Hillary Clinton $3 bill.


Note: Click image above to see an artist's depiction of Solyndra's testimony.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Let's tax the rich at 100%!

Say, let's raise the tax rate on "the rich" to 100%! That should fix the deficit, right?

...the short answer is: some, but not enough to make a dent in the deficit. If you put a floor at their current marginal tax rate of 35%, the government would obtain $37 billion more dollars. That might sound like a lot, but it amounts to just 2.5% of the 2009 $1.5 trillion deficit (which is the red line shown). If you increase the floor to the pre-Bush-tax-cut marginal rate of 39.6%, the additional revenue grows a bit — to $66 billion, or 4.5% of the year’s deficit.

...So this Buffet Rule is a great populist proposal if the president wants to score some political points, but it has little practical value. It might provide the government a little bit of additional revenue, but unless extremely aggressive, it wouldn’t make a dent in the nation’s deficit problem. To do that, you’ll need to cut entitlements and/or raise taxes much more broadly.

Or you'll need to unleash the private sector and grow the economy.


Hat tip: NRO.

Obama: my plan will "put businesses in a further hole"

John F. Kennedy, Address to the Economic Club of New York, 14 December 1962:

...next year's tax bill should reduce personal as well as corporate income taxes: for those in the lower brackets, who are certain to spend their additional take-home pay, and for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and enabled to invest more capital...

...We shall, therefore, neither postpone our tax cut plans nor cut into essential national security programs. This administration is determined to protect America's security and survival, and we are also determined to step up its economic growth. And I think we must do both...

...It should also be noted that the federal debt, as a proportion of our gross national product, has been steadily reduced in the last years... Federal civilian employment, for example, is actually lower today than it was in 1952...

Ronald Reagan, signing the Economic Recovery Tax Act, 12 August 1981:

These bills that I'm about to sign represent a turnaround of almost a half a century of a course this country's been on...

...[they] mark an end to the excessive growth in government bureaucracy, government spending, government taxing...

This represents $130 billion in savings over the next 3 years...

This represents $750 billion in tax cuts over the next 5 years...

And this is only the beginning.

Barack Obama, in one of his countless speeches, 5 August 2009:

We have not proposed a tax hike for the wealthy that would take effect in the middle of a recession. Even the proposals that have come out of Congress... still wouldn't kick in until after the recession was over. The last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just suck up -- take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.

* * * * * * * * *

History, logic and reason tell us that raising taxes on the private sector -- especially America's entrepreneurs and business owners (the filthy "rich") -- will further wound the economy.

In fact, President Obama admitted as much in 2009, before he read his latest poll numbers. He is clearly panicking over deteriorating support among his crackpot, moonbat base (which is the term they prefer, I hear).

In his latest Rose Garden speech on the economy yesterday, the Demagogue-in-Chief continues to: (a) ignore the recommendations of his own deficit commission; (b) ignore his own deal extending the "Bush Tax Cuts"; and (c) reject his own counsel from 2009.

President Obama is in full campaign mode, which means that he must try to deflect blame, shape-shift, obfuscate and fabricate.

The problem is, his record is clear: he is an epic failure on every front. And there's no running away from that inconvenient truth.


Hat tip: Mark Levin.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Readers' Views: Objection from a former sailor


Hat tip: Jack is Back!.

Europe has its own SCOAMF and it's called the Eurozone: Ex-PM Gordon Brown admits that "it's an hour to midnight"

Last week's band-aids and bailing wire are wearing away as Europe's debt problems continue to multiply.

Without another infusion of cash from the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF, Greece is slated to run out of money by mid-October. And U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner rushed to Poland last week -- to urge a resolution to the crisis -- only to be openly mocked and humiliated.

Europe is digging an ever-deeper hole as it vows to resolve the eurozone crisis, experts said Sunday as Greece prepares for a pivotal week of international debt diplomacy... Plagued by "parochialism, pettiness and procrastination," according to Sony Kapoor, head of the Re-define think tank, "kill the messenger seems to be the new strategy," he told AFP en route to New York and a frantic week at International Monetary Fund, World Bank and G20 gatherings...

European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet was more upbeat of the 17-nation eurozone's debt situation, insisting that "taken as a whole, it is probably better than other major advanced economies... The United States is in a far worse position, both in terms of its annual deficit and its runaway national debts."

...Trichet's remark was seen as a pointed rebuttal to implied criticism by Geithner, who warned during talks with EU counterparts in Wroclaw, Poland that "governments and central banks need to take out the catastrophic risk to markets."

In an eloquent put-down, Trichet said he didn't quite understand precisely, a tack echoed by former French foreign minister Michel Barnier who quipped that the EU could perhaps invite China's finance minister next time out... The European Union adopted its defiant stand towards Geithner after delaying a decision on when to release blocked bailout loans for Greece.

The price to insure one-year debt issued by Greece (i.e., the one-year CDS) is currently 110 as of this writing, which means the market is still pricing in a complete default by the socialist government.

Over the last 16 hours, the price of gold has soared $50/oz., bringing it back above the $1,800 benchmark.

Yesterday the Prime Minister of Greece canceled a planned trip to the United States "because of the gravity of his country's financial crisis."

And former Prime Minister of England Gordon Brown has as much as admitted that the entire Eurozone is a SCOAMF.

...The euro cannot survive in its present form, it’s going to have to be reformed dramatically. We are I think at an hour to midnight in the way that we look at this issue...

European banks as a whole are grossly under-capitalized... In 2008, governments could intervene to sort out the problems of banks. In 2011, banks have problems, but so too do governments... We’ve now got the interplay between banks that are not properly capitalized and sovereign debt problems that have arisen partly because we’ve socialized or accepted responsibility for the banks’ liabilities.

At some point in the very near future, the world will be forced to acknowledge the failed progressive-socialist policies of centrally-planned "fairness", unlimited welfare, open immigration policies and heavy unionization.

It's unfortunate that the lesson will be learned -- once again -- by the world's poorest souls who were led down the same catastrophic, Statist path by liberals, who have never gotten a single policy right, ever.