Facing thousands of worried members at the annual convention of the National Education Association on July 3, the head of the nation's largest teachers' union sounded a little whiny.
Read more In Defense of Moderation C. Holland Taylor's campaign against Islamic extremism. BY Jennifer Rubin July 26, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 42C. Holland Taylor doesn't look like a man radical Muslims should fear. He is trim, unassuming, and speaks with a faint southern accent. His stylish blond haircut and trim suit give him the appearance of a fortysomething European businessman. He possesses no arsenal of weapons, holds no government post, and operates no intelligence service.
Read more Professor Blinder Shows a Blindness to the Entrepreneurial Spirit One mustn't reduce the sphere of economic activity from which entrepreneurs can draw sustenance. BY Jim Prevor Surprise: JournoList Reveals Left Uses Race as a Political Football Post-racial. BY Mary Katharine Ham Disconnecting the Dots, Part 2 The Obama administration should appeal a district judge's habeas ruling. BY Thomas Joscelyn Ground Zero Mosque Property Developer Comes Out Sharif El-Gamal speaks to CNN. BY Stephen Schwartz MORE FEATURES Paul Ryan Rules Out 2012 Presidential Run, Talks Up Mitch Daniels Still Shermanesque. BY John McCormack Easy Credit, Hard Landing The financial insights of Raghuram Rajan. BY Christopher Caldwell July 26, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 42In 2005, University of Chicago finance professor Raghuram Rajan published a paper in the proceedings of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City called "Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?" Rajan, then the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, warned bluntly that incentive structures in the banking profession were leading to reckless credit expansion, herding, and other "perverse behaviors." He was frostily received when he presented his findings at the Federal Reserve's annual summer retreat in Jackson Ho
Read more Bill Thomas's Revenge Democrats now face his magically disappearing tax cuts. BY Gary Andres July 26, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 42Bill Thomas loved schemes. The former California congressman, who chaired the House Ways and Means Committee from 2001 to 2006, practiced the arcane art of parliamentary procedure like a wizard, concocting potions that turned his political opponents into hapless frogs.
Read more document.write(''); NPR producer fantasized about watching Rush Limbaugh die on Journolist Another Journolist expose coming up -- journalists demanded FCC revoke Fox's broadcasting license during election Democrats move ahead in generic ballot Sharron Angle smeared by the most biased news story of the year (so far!) Some on the Left are rejecting Free Press media 'reform' more Wednesday,July 21, 2010 Disconnecting the Dots, Part 2 The Obama administration should appeal a district judge's habeas ruling. BY Thomas Joscelyn Happy Hour Links BY John McCormack Charlie Crist's Latest Flip Flops: Obamacare & Sotomayor BY John McCormack PA Senate Race Update: 'Israel Proxy Fight' BY Daniel Halper Quote of the Day (So Far!) Norman Podhoretz on the New Politics. BY Matthew Continetti Wednesday, July 21, 2010 Professor Blinder Shows a Blindness to the Entrepreneurial Spirit One mustn't reduce the sphere of economic activity from which entrepreneurs can draw sustenance. BY Jim Prevor July 20, 2010 1:59 PM $(document).ready(function() { fontResizer('14px','16px','18px'); }); SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: unescape(encodeURIComponent('Professor Blinder Shows a Blindness to the Entrepreneurial Spirit')), url: unescape(encodeURIComponent('http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/professor-blinder-shows-blindness-entrepreneurial-spirit')) }, {button:true} );When an economist such as Alan S. Blinder, a professor at Princeton and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, writes on the relative merits of different forms of stimulus, as he did in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled "Obama's Fiscal Priorities Are Right," isn't it reasonable to expect more than cant?
"¦consider three different ways to add a dollar to the budget deficit: increase unemployment benefits by $1, give a $1 tax cut to someone earning $50,000 a year, or give a $1 tax cut to someone earning $5 million a year.
While the immediate impacts on the budget are identical, the near-term spending impacts are not. The unemployed worker struggling to make ends meet will likely spend the entire dollar right away. The $50,000 earner probably will spend the lion's share of it, saving just a bit "” that's what most Americans do. But the $5,000,000 earner probably will save most of the new-found dollar.
The impacts on economy-wide demand will therefore be quite different. Paying more in unemployment benefits offers the most spending "bang" for the budgetary "buck." Extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy offers the least.
This point "“ that we need the money to be spent if it is to help boost our economy "“ seems perfectly logical, provided that one lives in a world where the customary savings method is to stuff one's savings in a mattress or to store one's coins in the counting house in the backyard.
document.write('');In a world where savings are virtually immediately placed into financial instruments, the relevance of this insight is unclear. After all, those savings either go directly into businesses as equity or debt, or the funds go to support existing equity or debt markets, providing the umbrella under which new issues can be made, or the savings go into financial intermediaries, such as hedge funds or bank accounts, from which they are also placed into various investments or they go to buy government debt. In any case the money saved, winds up as money invested, which winds up as money spent. The issue is whether it will be spent on consumer goods or business purchases or government expenditures.
Even if the particular dollars saved as a result of a tax cut are held in a bank reserve or go into working capital at a company, they are typically invested and thus spent, plus the existence of these reserves is what frees up other dollars for investment activities.
Adequate investment is particularly important in an economic environment such as today, during which a primary restraint on hiring is a restricted availability of credit and investment.
There is nothing in this op-ed to indicate that the news has reached Princeton, but as a small businessman operating in the current business environment over the past two years, I've found that restraint on credit and investment has been the single most important restraint on our expansion.
Businesses have to maintain a margin of financial flexibility in case they hit hard times, experience business reversals, or have financing sources withdrawn. So when you are sitting in your office and you get hit every day by credit withdrawals "“ the tendency is to pull back. Suddenly the price of a temporary setback could be catastrophic. The whole dynamic of hiring and expanding changes: If an expansion works, one makes a little more money; if it doesn't, there will be no investment or credit available to tide the business over to greater success in the future. So one better be ultra-cautious: One loses, as has been said, one's "animal spirits."
And those "spirits" will be unlikely to be revived by anything the government does to help the big banks or to make Small Business Administration loans more accessible or any other machination of the financial system.
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C. Holland Taylor doesn't look like a man radical Muslims should fear. He is trim, unassuming, and speaks with a faint southern accent. His stylish blond haircut and trim suit give him the appearance of a fortysomething European businessman. He possesses no arsenal of weapons, holds no government post, and operates no intelligence service.
In 2005, University of Chicago finance professor Raghuram Rajan published a paper in the proceedings of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City called "Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?" Rajan, then the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, warned bluntly that incentive structures in the banking profession were leading to reckless credit expansion, herding, and other "perverse behaviors." He was frostily received when he presented his findings at the Federal Reserve's annual summer retreat in Jackson Ho
Bill Thomas loved schemes. The former California congressman, who chaired the House Ways and Means Committee from 2001 to 2006, practiced the arcane art of parliamentary procedure like a wizard, concocting potions that turned his political opponents into hapless frogs.
When an economist such as Alan S. Blinder, a professor at Princeton and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, writes on the relative merits of different forms of stimulus, as he did in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled "Obama's Fiscal Priorities Are Right," isn't it reasonable to expect more than cant?
"¦consider three different ways to add a dollar to the budget deficit: increase unemployment benefits by $1, give a $1 tax cut to someone earning $50,000 a year, or give a $1 tax cut to someone earning $5 million a year.
While the immediate impacts on the budget are identical, the near-term spending impacts are not. The unemployed worker struggling to make ends meet will likely spend the entire dollar right away. The $50,000 earner probably will spend the lion's share of it, saving just a bit "” that's what most Americans do. But the $5,000,000 earner probably will save most of the new-found dollar.
The impacts on economy-wide demand will therefore be quite different. Paying more in unemployment benefits offers the most spending "bang" for the budgetary "buck." Extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy offers the least.
This point "“ that we need the money to be spent if it is to help boost our economy "“ seems perfectly logical, provided that one lives in a world where the customary savings method is to stuff one's savings in a mattress or to store one's coins in the counting house in the backyard.
In a world where savings are virtually immediately placed into financial instruments, the relevance of this insight is unclear. After all, those savings either go directly into businesses as equity or debt, or the funds go to support existing equity or debt markets, providing the umbrella under which new issues can be made, or the savings go into financial intermediaries, such as hedge funds or bank accounts, from which they are also placed into various investments or they go to buy government debt. In any case the money saved, winds up as money invested, which winds up as money spent. The issue is whether it will be spent on consumer goods or business purchases or government expenditures.
Even if the particular dollars saved as a result of a tax cut are held in a bank reserve or go into working capital at a company, they are typically invested and thus spent, plus the existence of these reserves is what frees up other dollars for investment activities.
Adequate investment is particularly important in an economic environment such as today, during which a primary restraint on hiring is a restricted availability of credit and investment.
There is nothing in this op-ed to indicate that the news has reached Princeton, but as a small businessman operating in the current business environment over the past two years, I've found that restraint on credit and investment has been the single most important restraint on our expansion.
Businesses have to maintain a margin of financial flexibility in case they hit hard times, experience business reversals, or have financing sources withdrawn. So when you are sitting in your office and you get hit every day by credit withdrawals "“ the tendency is to pull back. Suddenly the price of a temporary setback could be catastrophic. The whole dynamic of hiring and expanding changes: If an expansion works, one makes a little more money; if it doesn't, there will be no investment or credit available to tide the business over to greater success in the future. So one better be ultra-cautious: One loses, as has been said, one's "animal spirits."
And those "spirits" will be unlikely to be revived by anything the government does to help the big banks or to make Small Business Administration loans more accessible or any other machination of the financial system.
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