http://www.realclearmarkets.com/ en Copyright 2008 Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:03:43 -0600 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.33 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss The Job Report: Another month, another drop in payrolls. Will it ever occur to our leaders in Washington that what they're doing isn't working - and may actually be damaging our economy? News that the unemployment rate jumped to 10.2% in October, its highest level since 1983, as the economy shed 190,000 nonfarm jobs, underscores the spectacular failure of the so-called fiscal stimulus to stimulate anything other than economic misery. Since the $787 billion stimulus was passed in February, the economy has lost 2.9 million jobs - for a total of 4.3 million since the end of 2008. The... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/07/stimulating_failure__97495.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/07/stimulating_failure__97495.html Investor's Business Daily Investor's Business Daily 2009/11 11/07/2009/00/00/00 Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:03:39 -0600 According to the congressional forecasters, Democrats have succeeded in turning water into wine, proposing health care legislation that will simultaneously expand the welfare state with new entitlements while also reducing budget deficits. This is big news, at least from a political perspective, since proponents hope so-called deficit hawks will have an excuse to support bigger government. Moderate Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats should not be deluded by rosy-scenario estimates. Government-run health care will be a budget buster. First, new subsidies and handouts will cost more than... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/07/obamacare_will_balloon_future_budget_deficits_97494.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/07/obamacare_will_balloon_future_budget_deficits_97494.html Dan Mitchell Dan Mitchell 2009/11 11/07/2009/00/00/00 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:16:15 -0600 "It is important where taxpayers have made a central contribution to make sure that taxpayer interests are being put first rather than those of shareholders and certainly rather than those of incumbent management and that's why Ken Feinberg is involved in reviewing compensation levels at the companies where the TARP has made the most major investments."---Larry SummersWhen Congress doled out the Troubled Asset Relief Program money in last fall's crisis, it attached strings giving the government numerous ways to control the entities that were getting the money. At first, it... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/06/of_assets_elevators_and_money_velocity_97493.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/06/of_assets_elevators_and_money_velocity_97493.html Eric Singer Eric Singer 2009/11 11/06/2009/00/00/00 Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:13:07 -0600 With the Bureau of Labor Statistics set to announce presumably another dire unemployment figure tomorrow, it's a certainty that politicians from both sides of the aisle will issue all manner of statements suggesting if we just let them make more laws and spend more money, jobs will be plentiful. Politicians bloviate about numerous things, but none more than job creation. "Job creation" is the altar at which politicians worship. Last spring President Obama defended his administration's near trillion dollar... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/05/politicians_and_the_peculiar_worship_of_full_employment_97492.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/05/politicians_and_the_peculiar_worship_of_full_employment_97492.html John Tamny John Tamny 2009/11 11/05/2009/00/00/00 Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:31:31 -0600 The stock market has enjoyed a significant rally since the end of the first quarter. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported last week that the economy grew at a 3.5% annual rate in the third quarter--a figure they achieved by that claiming inflation was running at only a 0.8% annual rate, despite a sharp drop in the dollar, a spike in commodity prices and record highs for gold. The cyclical bull market in stocks and positive print on GDP has caused some on Wall Street and in Washington to claim the recession has ended. Despite all the good economic news, an end to fiscal and monetary... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/05/the_feds_have_no_faith_in_recovery_97491.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/05/the_feds_have_no_faith_in_recovery_97491.html Michael Pento Michael Pento 2009/11 11/05/2009/00/00/00 Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:42:51 -0600 The following statement was released by the FOMC on Wednesday. Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September suggests that economic activity has continued to pick up. Conditions in financial markets were roughly unchanged, on balance, over the intermeeting period. Activity in the housing sector has increased over recent months. Household spending appears to be expanding but remains constrained by ongoing job losses, sluggish income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Businesses are still cutting back on fixed investment and staffing, though at a... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/04/text_of_fomc_statement_97490.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/04/text_of_fomc_statement_97490.html Federal Reserve Federal Reserve 2009/11 11/04/2009/00/00/00 Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:46:16 -0600 Junk Science: The oracle of climate disaster has a new book out on global warming that should be on the fiction list. He asks us to commit economic suicide while he rakes in millions from his green investments. 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 tome "An Inconvenient Truth," came out Tuesday. Printed on recycled paper using low-VOC (volatile organic compound) ink, it will undoubtedly be a best-seller and on the desk of every attendee at next month's climate change conference in Copenhagen. In a press release announcing... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/04/gore_asks_us_to_commit_economic_suicide_97488.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/04/gore_asks_us_to_commit_economic_suicide_97488.html Investor's Business Daily Investor's Business Daily 2009/11 11/04/2009/00/00/00 Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:30:55 -0600 Your sales are lousy. Your biggest customer just went bankrupt owing you a few hundred thousand dollars. Your health insurance costs are rising rapidly and you're having trouble financing your accounts receivables. But that's not the half of it. There's an Internal Revenue Service auditor poring over your books in the conference room. A state sales tax agent has left you a phone message that he wants to come in for a visit, and city fire inspectors just dropped off a violations summons. With government budgets sharply constrained and likely to be under pressure for years to... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/04/the_bulls_eye_on_business_back_97486.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/04/the_bulls_eye_on_business_back_97486.html Steven Malanga Steven Malanga 2009/11 11/04/2009/00/00/00 Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:28:48 -0600 Should the Fed begin raising rates and extracting excess reserves? In late 2008, our minders diagnosed a credit crunch prescribing massive liquidity injections to make credit flow again. Unfortunately, the credit crunch was more symptom than disease and masking the symptom has only delayed the necessary surgery. The real economic infirmity was declining capital caused by inflation-induced overconsumption and malinvestment. Bernanke's Fed operates on the wrong symptom after misdiagnosing the patient. We're not suffering a crunch slowing the credit he believes to be the lifeblood of... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/04/dr_bernanke_md_or_missed_diagnosis__97487.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/04/dr_bernanke_md_or_missed_diagnosis__97487.html Bill Flax Bill Flax 2009/11 11/04/2009/00/00/00 Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:27:40 -0600 Against the backdrop of high unemployment and a public revolt against a Democratic health-care bill - which would significantly increase taxes, slash Medicare spending, and massively raise health-care spending elsewhere in a government takeover of our leading growth sector - a three-race sweep by Republicans is very much in play this Election Day. The Intrade pay-to-play betting/investment parlor shows big wins for Bob McDonnell in Virginia and Doug Hoffman in upstate New York's 23rd congressional district. The New Jersey race for governor is too close to call, with the probabilities... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/03/the_economics_of_a_three-race_gop_sweep_97485.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/03/the_economics_of_a_three-race_gop_sweep_97485.html Larry Kudlow Larry Kudlow 2009/11 11/03/2009/00/00/00 Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:24:30 -0600 During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama famously pledged not to raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 or families making less than $250,000. With this pledge, he offered over 95% of the electorate something for nothing: you'll get expanded government services, and somebody else will pay for it. The pitch worked, and he became the first winning presidential candidate in a generation whose platform explicitly contained tax hikes. Unfortunately for those who bought in, massive federal deficits will make it impossible for Obama to keep his promise. The Office of Management and... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/03/why_middle_class_tax_hikes_are_coming_97483.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/03/why_middle_class_tax_hikes_are_coming_97483.html Josh Barro Josh Barro 2009/11 11/03/2009/00/00/00 Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:38:06 -0600 The 18th century French writer Voltaire once observed that the State is "a device for taking money out of one set of pockets and putting it into another." Voltaire elegantly distilled what we're witnessing right now as Washington seeks to prop up what private investors won't: the redistribution of limited capital from the productive to the unproductive. "Stimulus" this is not. Though economic logic tells us that GMAC should never have received even one dollar of federal largesse, if the planned handout of an additional $5.6 billion is approved by Treasury, GMAC... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/03/gmacs_lifeline_is_the_economys_noose_97484.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/03/gmacs_lifeline_is_the_economys_noose_97484.html John Tamny John Tamny 2009/11 11/03/2009/00/00/00 Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:09:17 -0600 It doesn't come as big surprise that Wall Street chronicler Charlie Gasparino's greatest regret in life was not going through with the Golden Gloves boxing competition he dreamed of as a teenager. Born in the Bronx, and growing up in Westchester, where he first slipped on a pair of boxing gloves, Gasparino burnishes a hard-hitting, "I don't give a damn what you think" tough-guy image. Look quickly at him, and you might even see a hint of Rocky Marciano staring back at you. But instead of becoming an "Italian Stallion" inside the ring, Charlie chose... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/02/an_interview_with_charlie_gasparino_97480.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/02/an_interview_with_charlie_gasparino_97480.html Dan Holland Dan Holland 2009/11 11/02/2009/00/00/00 Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:24:04 -0600 The idea that the government of a major advanced country would default on its debt -- that is, tell lenders that it won't repay them all they're owed -- was, until recently, a preposterous proposition. Argentina and Russia have stiffed their creditors, but surely the likes of the United States, Japan or Britain wouldn't. Well, it's still a very, very long shot, but it's no longer entirely unimaginable. Governments of rich countries are borrowing so much that it's conceivable that one day the twin assumptions underlying their burgeoning debt (that lenders will... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/02/could_the_united_states_go_broke_97482.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/02/could_the_united_states_go_broke_97482.html Robert Samuelson Robert Samuelson 2009/11 11/02/2009/00/00/00 Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:16:56 -0600 Regardless of your tribal affiliations, were you cautiously optimistic when our new president promised to "restore science to its rightful place" in the formulation of public policy? Were you embarrassed by the prior occupant's politicization of issues that should have been decided on a more scientific basis? Did you assume that Barack Obama would surround himself with apolitical science advisors unencumbered by embarrassing anti-science baggage and free of culture-war axes to grind? To paraphrase a once famous mayor of New York - So how's he doing so far? You're... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/02/junk_science_returns_to_the_white_house_97481.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/11/02/junk_science_returns_to_the_white_house_97481.html Bill Frezza Bill Frezza 2009/11 11/02/2009/00/00/00 Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:47:23 -0600 Economy: As we said as far back as February, it was likely the U.S. economy would grow by the third quarter of this year. Well, it did - and the 3.5% rebound was better than expected. But hold the hallelujahs, at least for now. It's almost certain that the U.S. emerged from recession sometime during the summer, most likely in June. But those who want to credit the $787 billion "stimulus" package passed in February should likewise refrain from saying "I told you so." They include presidential adviser Larry Summers, who said last week that "thanks largely to the... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/30/35_percent_gdp_boost_is_wasteful_growth_97479.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/30/35_percent_gdp_boost_is_wasteful_growth_97479.html Investor's Business Daily Investor's Business Daily 2009/10 10/30/2009/00/00/00 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:51:33 -0500 Americans are outraged over bloated executive pay - and rightly so. When a Richard Fuld (Lehman Bros.), Stanley O'Neal (Merrill Lynch) or Chuck Prince (Citigroup) rakes in millions of dollars from a firm spiraling downward, employees, shareholders and lawmakers have every reason to question how public corporations are governed. The distinguished Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals nailed the problem when he wrote last year: "Executive compensation in large publicly traded firms often is excessive because of the feeble incentives of boards of directors to police... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/29/channel_anger_at_wall_st_pay_not_fund_fees__97478.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/29/channel_anger_at_wall_st_pay_not_fund_fees__97478.html Paul Schott Stevens Paul Schott Stevens 2009/10 10/29/2009/00/00/00 Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:03:49 -0500 WASHINGTON-Pity poor Harry Reid. The Senate Majority Leader has been grappling with the challenge of combining the two Senate health care plans into one, legislation that must also be palatable to Democrats in the House of Representatives. Mr. Reid's compromise is a bill with a public plan that allows individual states to opt out. That puts him squarely in the liberal camp, because few states end up opting out of federal benefits, however hard their initial resolve. The question is whether he can carry the votes of all senators of his own party and muster the 60 ayes needed to block a... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/29/the_public_option_opt-out_is_no_panacea_97477.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/29/the_public_option_opt-out_is_no_panacea_97477.html Diana Furchtgott-Roth Diana Furchtgott-Roth 2009/10 10/29/2009/00/00/00 Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:46:16 -0500 Is economic growth the highest priority in Obama's Washington? That's not a trivial question: in 1972, the Club of Rome, a global think tank whose current members include Mikhail Gorbachev, issued a report entitled The Limits to Growth, challenging the primacy of wealth creation. In arguments later taken up by President Jimmy Carter, the book's sub-text is that unbridled growth leads to population expansion, but also pollution, resource depletion, famine, and capitalist exploitation. Reacting to this critique, in the spring of 1979 economist George Reisman published a short... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/29/economic_justice_and_economic_growth_97476.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/29/economic_justice_and_economic_growth_97476.html John Chapman John Chapman 2009/10 10/29/2009/00/00/00 Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:39:11 -0500 It must be something in the water. The ruling Democrats know their tax-hiking, re-regulating, and big-spending policies have failed to rejuvenate job-creation or reduce the unemployment rate. And yet they persist in trying more of the same.A recent New York Times editorial acknowledges that the economy is weak, but it pleads for yet another federal stimulus package. The Times editors want another round of unemployment benefits (this would be the third) to subsidize non-work welfarism. They also want more federal spending on state Medicaid -- an area that already has been showered with federal... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/28/economic_freedom_fighters_must_unite_97475.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/28/economic_freedom_fighters_must_unite_97475.html Larry Kudlow Larry Kudlow 2009/10 10/28/2009/00/00/00 Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:30:03 -0500 Back in the winter when Congress was debating whether stimulus programs could get money into the economy quickly enough to make a difference, supporters of government efforts to prime the pump argued that tax credits would offer Americans a quick financial shot in the arm. After all, what else does government need to do to process a tax credit except take in applications, verify their accuracy, and then ship the money out the door? Oops. In what amounts to the most underreported story of the year, the Treasury Department's Inspector General testified last week that in an effort to get... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/28/the_irs_and_our_latest_housing_scam_97474.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/28/the_irs_and_our_latest_housing_scam_97474.html Steven Malanga Steven Malanga 2009/10 10/28/2009/00/00/00 Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:10:50 -0500 For 30 years, the Republican Party dominated American political life, winning five of the seven presidential elections before 2008. But the GOP has taken its lumps of late, culminating in its loss of Congress in 2006 and the White House last November. The party's future direction is unclear. But as America struggles to emerge from a financial crisis, any renewal of the right will require Republicans to rethink their approach to the economy. An agenda focused chiefly on tax cuts, as the Republicans' has been since Ronald Reagan's presidency, is no longer enough. In 1980, Reagan... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/27/pro-market_populism_is_gops_out_97473.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/27/pro-market_populism_is_gops_out_97473.html Luigi Zingales Luigi Zingales 2009/10 10/27/2009/00/00/00 Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:53:50 -0500 Many analysts decried the various Bush/Obama stimulus bills with the observation that deficits crowd out private investment. When Washington borrows money merely to funnel that same money back into the market via politically favored interest groups, nothing on net gets added to the economy. This is irrelevant to Keynesians who frequently disavow capital scarcity, but it matters to economists who correlate government spending with tight capital markets. Now numerous commentators bemoan that banks are borrowing from the Fed only to invest in treasuries, rather than lend those monies... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/27/the_credit_crunch_is_washingtons_creation_97471.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/27/the_credit_crunch_is_washingtons_creation_97471.html Bill Flax Bill Flax 2009/10 10/27/2009/00/00/00 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:45:00 -0500 In his brilliant 1981 book Reaganomics, economist Bruce Bartlett observed that "to the Keynesians, all tax cuts are the same." Seeking to show why that was not the case, Bartlett took readers on a masterful ride through tax policy in the 20th century. As Bartlett put it, the "individual entrepreneur is still the basic motivating force in the economy " and any "measures which suppress entrepreneurship will ultimately cause the economy to stagnate." With the top tax rate at the nosebleed level of 71 percent at the time of the book's publication,... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/27/desperately_seeking_the_bruce_bartlett_of_old_97470.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/27/desperately_seeking_the_bruce_bartlett_of_old_97470.html John Tamny John Tamny 2009/10 10/27/2009/00/00/00 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:47:56 -0500 It is 9 o'clock in the evening and the brilliant reflections of Lower Manhattan's neo-classical buildings stream through the mahogany blinds of a gargantuan office on the 29th floor of 85 Broad. They illuminate, just barely, a middle-aged man with a balding pate. He is pacing, agonizing like a present-day Hamlet about what to do with an amount of money that gives new meaning to what is, unmistakably, an embarrassment of riches. An unlit cigar dangling from the right side of his mouth (he's no Jimmy Cayne after all), Lloyd Blankfein picks up a Goldman stress ball he picked up at... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/26/why_goldman_should_pay_a_special_dividend_97472.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/26/why_goldman_should_pay_a_special_dividend_97472.html Jason Trennert Jason Trennert 2009/10 10/26/2009/00/00/00 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:40:34 -0500 The Obama administration's New Foundation for financial regulatory reform aims to "provide the government with the tools it needs to manage financial crises." In framing the discussion in terms of "new tools" the proposal implicitly repeats the Great Lie of last year's bailouts: Namely, regulators lacked sufficient powers to manage the crises. The perversity of the proposal is evident in the enumeration of powers requested. Under the plan, regulators would be given the authority over bank holding companies to establish receivership, provide loans, purchase... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/26/washingtons_systemically_incompetent_regulators_97469.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/26/washingtons_systemically_incompetent_regulators_97469.html James Keller James Keller 2009/10 10/26/2009/00/00/00 Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:00:47 -0500 Have you ever stumbled on an oxymoron so stunning that it takes your breath away? Try coupling this with a case of chutzpah so revealing that the lack of shame on the part of those involved serves as prima fasci evidence that their elite cultural isolation has rendered them incapable of critical thinking. Behold the "Independent Journalism Tax." In order to preserve independent journalism in the age of the Internet, a national Fund for Local News should be created with money the FCC now collects from or could impose on telecom users, television and radio broadcast licensees, or... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/26/are_you_ready_to_subsidize_reporters_97468.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/26/are_you_ready_to_subsidize_reporters_97468.html Bill Frezza Bill Frezza 2009/10 10/26/2009/00/00/00 Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:44:11 -0500 Big Government: Hardly a day passes without the unveiling of some new federal intrusion into our lives. At some point Americans must say "enough's enough," or sit silently as all our precious liberties are taken away. The Democrats in Congress and the White House are pushing through the most sweeping changes toward direct government control of our economy since at least the Great Depression. Consider just a few news items from recent days: • The Senate moves to give the Food and Drug Administration huge new power over what we eat and drink, and what medicine we... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/23/nanny_state_squared__97467.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/23/nanny_state_squared__97467.html Investor's Business Daily Investor's Business Daily 2009/10 10/23/2009/00/00/00 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:12:04 -0500 In a world full of paradoxes, Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has become rich decrying what he deems "income inequality." Only in America could an individual denounce the wealth gap while becoming the very person he denounces. In that sense, it may be that polar opposites Karl Marx and Joseph Schumpeter were right: capitalism is seemingly its own worst enemy. In rich societies, commentators can become wealthy while trashing wealth creation. The irony with Krugman is that when it comes to policy prescriptions meant to elevate the living... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/22/paul_krugman_and_the_middle-class_champion_myth_97466.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/22/paul_krugman_and_the_middle-class_champion_myth_97466.html John Tamny John Tamny 2009/10 10/22/2009/00/00/00 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:46:55 -0500 WASHINGTON--With the national unemployment rate at 9.8% and over 15 million Americans out of work, students about to leave high school are wondering if they will be able to get jobs that will allow them to move up the income ladder. For many of these students their best bet is to enter programs at their local community college. A new study released by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts shows that community colleges have the potential to help students of all academic abilities and family income levels. Enrolling in a community college and earning a two-year degree or... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/22/higher_education_and_economic_mobility_97465.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/22/higher_education_and_economic_mobility_97465.html Diana Furchtgott-Roth Diana Furchtgott-Roth 2009/10 10/22/2009/00/00/00 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:04:13 -0500 As the President of Capterra, a small business that provides full health insurance benefits for its employees, I can't help but think that we are contributing to the healthcare problem in America. While I fully support our generous employee benefits, I also recognize that the single largest contributor to our country's insanely high healthcare costs is very likely the fact that most people do not pay for their own health insurance, but rather receive it as a benefit from their employer or the government. Just like with any other instance when someone else picks up the tab, it is... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/21/an_entrepreneurs_take_on_healthcare_reform_97464.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/21/an_entrepreneurs_take_on_healthcare_reform_97464.html Michael Ortner Michael Ortner 2009/10 10/21/2009/00/00/00 Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:02:09 -0500 If you live in New York State and don't have health insurance but earn too much money to qualify for subsidized state insurance, you can always reduce your costs sharply by moving to Connecticut. There, you'll pay $7,750 a year for a family policy that would cost you $12,250 in New York State. If you are in the same boat in New Jersey, you can decamp next door to Pennsylvania and reduce your insurance bite from nearly $10,500 a year for family coverage to $6,500. Or, if you prefer a bare-bones high deductible policy, you can pay a mere $800 a year in Pennsylvania for your family... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/21/to_cut_your_health_insurance_costs_move_97463.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/21/to_cut_your_health_insurance_costs_move_97463.html Steven Malanga Steven Malanga 2009/10 10/21/2009/00/00/00 Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:53:42 -0500 In a column last week for the Wall Street Journal, former Bush adviser Karl Rove suggested troubles ahead for health care legislation thanks to the Senate's Baucus Bill lacking what is termed a "public option". With the house bill including the latter, compromise might be difficult in such a way that substantial health care legislation could be imperiled. Rove's thoughts are hard to discount given his skill at reading the political tea leaves. Still, it doesn't take a health care scholar to see that the Baucus Bill is merely a backdoor path toward a government managed... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/20/the_baucus_bill_a_backdoor_path_to_the_public_option_97461.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/20/the_baucus_bill_a_backdoor_path_to_the_public_option_97461.html John Tamny John Tamny 2009/10 10/20/2009/00/00/00 Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:35:26 -0500 Global Warming: A co-sponsor of cap-and-trade legislation has tried to convince the public that the regime would cost families only "about a postage stamp a day." The real cost might be closer to next-day delivery rates. Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf, testifying before Congress last week, said the House global warming bill will slow economic growth in the next few decades and cause "significant" job losses in the fossil fuel industry. During last Wednesday's session of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Elmendorf said the... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/20/the_real_cost_of_fixing_global_warming_97462.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/20/the_real_cost_of_fixing_global_warming_97462.html Investor's Business Daily Investor's Business Daily 2009/10 10/20/2009/00/00/00 Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:54:13 -0500 Jason Trennert is the chief investment strategist at Strategas Research Partners, a Manhattan-based advisor to institutional investors, which he co-founded three years ago. Institutional Investor magazine has consistently ranked Trennert one of the top strategists on Wall Street. He's also been named to SmartMoney magazine's Power 30 list of the most influential people in the world of investing. A regular guest on CNBC, he is also widely quoted in the financial press and read by the world's top money managers where he has earned a reputation for his candid and thoughtful market... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/20/an_interview_with_jason_trennert_97460.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/20/an_interview_with_jason_trennert_97460.html Dan Holland Dan Holland 2009/10 10/20/2009/00/00/00 Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:12:19 -0500 Have you been tracking Congress's frantic search for the hundreds of billions of dollars in new tax revenues it needs to fund its spending orgy? The latest Willie-Sutton trial balloon is a tax on Wall Street transactions. This is being met by howls of protest, as is customary whenever Congress fingers a new source of wealth it would like to spread around. As tax proposals fly, enticing targeted groups to hike their campaign giving in hopes of shifting the burden elsewhere, might it make sense to examine the moral basis of these proposals? Oddly enough, there is a form of National... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/19/the_moral_basis_for_a_national_transaction_tax_97459.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/19/the_moral_basis_for_a_national_transaction_tax_97459.html Bill Frezza Bill Frezza 2009/10 10/19/2009/00/00/00 Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:24:51 -0500 Executive Pay: Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis is working for peanuts this year. No, less than peanuts - he's working for nuttin'. Why? The government says so, that's why. There's something profoundly wrong in that. The Treasury's Orwellian paymaster, bureaucrat Kenneth Feinberg, isn't happy with Lewis. BofA lost money in the third quarter, so Feinberg - like that famously fascistic dispenser of soup in "Seinfeld" - says, "No pay for you!" Some might think that's a good idea. About time those greedy CEOs got their comeuppance, right? Not so... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/17/our_new_paymaster_97458.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/17/our_new_paymaster_97458.html Investor's Business Daily Investor's Business Daily 2009/10 10/17/2009/00/00/00 Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:44:18 -0500 Social Security: The White House wants to give a special $250 payment to all 57 million recipients of retirement, disability and veteran benefits. If it does, it will destroy the last shred of fiscal control left in the system. To protect retirees from the ravages of inflation, Social Security recipients get a Cost of Living Adjustment to their basic payout each year based on consumer price changes in the preceding year. Since COLAs were introduced in the early 1970s, inflation has been so inexorable, every year has seen an increase in benefits. The string runs out next year, however. Because... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/16/250_senior_payments_are_hokey_cola_97456.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/16/250_senior_payments_are_hokey_cola_97456.html Investor's Business Daily Investor's Business Daily 2009/10 10/16/2009/00/00/00 Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:44:05 -0500 "When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results."-Warren BuffettLast night CNBC had clips of Maria Bartiromo interviewing Tim Geithner. That was quite the combo. Combining economic ignorance with the levered long leader of the willfully blind is pretty interesting Mr. Buffett, indeed!On the question of leverage, Geithner proclaimed his mystery of faith stating that "credit is the oxygen"...On the question of plans to address the Burning Buck... well... Geithner didn't have any... I couldn't make this up if I tried, but rather... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/16/are_they_bombing_out_the_buck_97457.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/16/are_they_bombing_out_the_buck_97457.html Keith McCullough Keith McCullough 2009/10 10/16/2009/00/00/00 Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:12:07 -0500 Dow Jones 10,000 arrived on Wall Street Wednesday for the first time in a year. It's a milestone of sorts, and it certainly represents a vote for investor confidence in economic recovery. Blowout profit reports from Intel and JPMorgan helped fuel the day's 145-point gain. So did a retail sales report that excluding Cash for Clunkers was actually quite strong. Profits are the mother's milk of stocks, business, and the economy. And top-line sales revenues now appear to be bolstering the corporate cost-cutting effort. As long as these earnings keep coming in strong, stocks will... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/15/dow_hits_10000_as_storm_clouds_gather__97453.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/15/dow_hits_10000_as_storm_clouds_gather__97453.html Larry Kudlow Larry Kudlow 2009/10 10/15/2009/00/00/00 Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:29:05 -0500 Last week at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Wisconsin, former Vice President Al Gore took questions from journalists about global warming for the first time in years. I attended to ask him about factual errors in his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." You wouldn't know it from the sparse media coverage, but the British High Court found so many errors in Gore's movie in 2007 that British schools no longer can show the film without the equivalent of a health warning. I asked Gore if he intends to correct the record. He dodged the question, and the... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/15/who_else_will_challenge_gores_truth__97455.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/15/who_else_will_challenge_gores_truth__97455.html Phelim McAleer Phelim McAleer 2009/10 10/15/2009/00/00/00 Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:16:53 -0500 WASHINGTON-The Senate's Health Committee holds a hearing today, Thursday, to spotlight the effect on women of pending "health reform" legislation. Some witnesses, including James Guest of Consumers Union and Marcia Greenberger of the National Women's Law Center, will argue that the Democratic health-care bills in the House and Senate would, if enacted, particularly benefit women. As another witness, I will suggest otherwise. With three Democratic bills-two in the Senate, one in the House-to be melded, no one knows all the details of the measure that will reach the... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/15/health_reform_wont_benefit_women_97454.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/15/health_reform_wont_benefit_women_97454.html Diana Furchtgott-Roth Diana Furchtgott-Roth 2009/10 10/15/2009/00/00/00 Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:22:44 -0500 As a ‘learning experience,' the current recession and its associated housing bust haven't produced many enlightening moments for our policy makers in Washington. Nothing makes that more obvious than the news that delinquencies and foreclosures are rising rapidly among mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration, whose reserves have fallen below acceptable levels. The agency's losses, which are almost entirely on loans made after problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were already apparent in the current bust, may require (guess what) a new taxpayer... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/14/driving_off_another_mortgage_cliff_97452.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/14/driving_off_another_mortgage_cliff_97452.html Steven Malanga Steven Malanga 2009/10 10/14/2009/00/00/00 Wed, 14 Oct 2009 03:09:53 -0500 Peter Morici is very correct that the dollar has served as the "reserve central banks hold to back up national currencies", and he's also correct that the amount of the gold in the world is limited. The problem lies in his assessment of relative currency values, the role of gold in shaping them, and his pre-classical view that trade is somehow harmful. First up, it is precisely because gold is limited in supply and that it has very few industrial uses that it is such a worthy measure of money. With nearly every ounce of gold ever mined still with us, there's a massive... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/13/why_peter_morici_is_wrong_about_china_gold_and_the_dollar_97449.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/13/why_peter_morici_is_wrong_about_china_gold_and_the_dollar_97449.html John Tamny John Tamny 2009/10 10/13/2009/00/00/00 Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:05:09 -0500 Climate Change: As a Colorado Rockies playoff game is snowed out, scientists report that Arctic sea ice is thickening and Antarctic snow melt is the lowest in three decades. Whatever happened to global warming? Al Gore wasn't there to throw out the first snowball, er, baseball, so he might not have noticed that Saturday's playoff game between the Colorado Rockies and the Philadelphia Phillies was snowed out - in early October. The field should have been snow-free just as the North Pole was to be ice-free this year. It seems that ice at both poles hasn't been paying attention to... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/13/three_decades_of_global_cooling_97451.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/13/three_decades_of_global_cooling_97451.html Investor's Business Daily Investor's Business Daily 2009/10 10/13/2009/00/00/00 Tue, 13 Oct 2009 03:29:20 -0500 As the dollar falls against the euro, yen and other major currencies, China and other emerging economic powers holding lots of dollars and U.S. securities are crying foul, and for an end to the dollar's central status in global commerce. If they are truly disgusted, they should look to themselves for answers. Since the end of World War II, the dollar has largely replaced gold as the reserve asset central banks hold to back up national currencies. The supply of mineable gold is too limited, and efforts to back up currency with gold would result in chronic shortages of liquidity and global... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/13/trade_with_china_explains_dollar_weakness.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/13/trade_with_china_explains_dollar_weakness.html Peter Morici Peter Morici 2009/10 10/13/2009/00/00/00 Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:20:27 -0500 Last week the Wall Street Journal published an extraordinary editorial titled "How Israel was Disarmed." It decried a UN resolution calling for a nuclear free zone in the Middle East. The key provision? Demanding that Israel surrender the nuclear arsenal it is assumed to possess. It was shocking. Only after reading it twice did I realize it was just a forecast and not reality. Yet as Nobel Peace Prize winner Barak Obama pursues his strategy of global multilateralism, the inexorable logic of reciprocal disarmament smacks one in the face.If the US refuses to acknowledge the existence... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/12/the_multilateral_peace_path_to_war_97448.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/12/the_multilateral_peace_path_to_war_97448.html Bill Frezza Bill Frezza 2009/10 10/12/2009/00/00/00 Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:43:58 -0500 One year ago, Congress responded to the chorus of Americans calling for more American energy by lifting the ban on offshore drilling. For the first time in a quarter-century, it became legal to drill for more oil and natural gas reserves offshore. This anniversary allows us to look back on how far we have come since 2008. The sad reality is we have barely moved. Earlier this year, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced he would delay the comment period for offshore energy exploration by six months. Salazar claimed that the previous comment period, which would have ended in March,... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/09/peak_oil_a_theory_running_out_of_gas__97447.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/09/peak_oil_a_theory_running_out_of_gas__97447.html Newt Gingrich and Steve Everley Newt Gingrich and Steve Everley 2009/10 10/09/2009/00/00/00 Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:58:58 -0500 Americans dominated the 2009 Nobel Prizes for the sciences. Eight of the nine winners were American citizens. What is even more striking is that five of those American winners are immigrants to the United States. Yet, in the immigration debate, the contribution of highly educated and skilled immigrants to American technology and science is often ignored. That contribution cannot be overestimated. One quarter of American Nobel Prize winners since 1901 have been immigrants. Today, a third of all the scientists and engineers in Silicon Valley are immigrants or foreign-born. Furthermore, 40... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/09/our_nobel_prize_winning_immigrants_97446.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/09/our_nobel_prize_winning_immigrants_97446.html Alex Nowrasteh Alex Nowrasteh 2009/10 10/09/2009/00/00/00 Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:42:14 -0500 From the moment it secures a health-care bill -- yes, it will get one -- right through the 2010 midterm elections, the Obama administration will be all about jobs, jobs, jobs. While official Washington and much of the media focus on the great health-care struggle, the administration's economic advisers have been busy reviewing proposals to create jobs, aware that pressure on them will grow to deal with high unemployment that threatens to persist through Election Day next year. President Obama's aides insist that they knew all along that the original stimulus, as one of them put it,... http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/08/job_creation_is_obamas_middle_name_97445.html http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/08/job_creation_is_obamas_middle_name_97445.html E.J. Dionne E.J. Dionne 2009/10 10/08/2009/00/00/00 Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:03:11 -0500