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Dr. Bernanke’s Fed Funds Patent Tonic with Opium

2011 – The Year of Rabid Tribalism

The following comes from the ESPN college football website: “Florida defensive coordinator Dan Quinn knew the Gators’ locker room wouldn’t be the same as an NFL locker room, because the roster is twice as big — too many people for the same kind of...

The Big Spanking

Our grandchildren were over last weekend–two boys ages 5 and 3.  At one point the 3-year-old was telling me about being disobedient and how Daddy had to give him a big spanking.  Now I know my son and I’m sure that he was providing gentle discipline, but...
Dr. Bernanke’s Fed Funds Patent Tonic with Opium

Cash for Clunkers

money-flying-awayBy all accounts, the cash for clunkers program has been a huge success. Never mind the fact that auto dealerships want nothing to do with the bureaucratic red tape and if at all possible will steer a customer toward conventional financing. The fact of the matter is that it has been a real boost to the economy. So who really has benefited from this program?
  • Some consumers, who traded up from old gas guzzlers to spiffy new fuel-efficient models,
  • Auto dealers, who were able to dump inventory and pay their financiers,
  • Banks, who all of a sudden, had some new auto loan volume, with up to $4,500 down-payments,
  • Auto companies, especially Ford, Toyota, Honda and Nissan, who led the pack in sales. Conspicuously absent from the list were the beneficiaries of the government's bailout program, General Motors and Chrysler. The car companies were also able to unload a bunch of inventory,
  • Unions, who conceivably will be called back to work to replace all of that sold inventory,
  • Steel manufacturers, such as Nucor, who will be able to buy cheap scrap steel and turn it into something usable,
  • The green movement, because these new cars will be spitting out fewer greenhouse gas emissions,
  • And the biggest winner of all, the Obama Administration, who was able to satisfy a number of constuencies and supporters, namely, the unions, the green folks, and the car companies they now run (GM and Chrysler). In the process, the President will be able to boast how this will boost the nation's Gross Domestic Product and single-handedly pull us out of recession.
With so many winners, how can there be any losers? Of course, [...]
Dr. Bernanke’s Fed Funds Patent Tonic with Opium

It’s About Freedom

row-of-us-dollar-signsArthur Brooks, at The Wall Street Journal suggests that there’s a bit of a culture war going on about the future of capitalism. The headline suggests that “The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism “
There is a major cultural schism developing in America. But it’s not over abortion, same-sex marriage or home schooling, as important as these issues are. The new divide centers on free enterprise — the principle at the core of American culture.
I dare suggest Brooks in this quote, has this exactly backward. He’s pointing at a symptom and labeling at the root cause. Not that I blame him, really. It’s been so long since we’ve dealt with things on the level of principle that even the more learned among us get it garbled in translation. I agree with Arthur that this is a war that is cultural in its nature. However, the war over capitalism, as he calls it, is part of the war on culture because capitalism in its truest sense can only exist in a free society, which is a culturally generated condition. It is the product of a particular variety of culture that… (at least until recently)… we here in these United States have been blessed with. What I am suggesting is that the principle at the core of the American culture is in fact freedom, of which capitalism is a product. While it is true that there are a few places in the communist world, China for example, where capitalism raises its head in some form, it is diluted in the extreme. It is in fact, capitalism in name only. Alas in the view of many, a goodly number of which were out on the front lines of the tea party protests last month, that kind of weak as dishwater capitalism, capitalism in name only, is the [...]
Dr. Bernanke’s Fed Funds Patent Tonic with Opium

Obamanomics

Somehow, I managed to stay awake for last night's Presidential press conference. Say what you will about President Obama's communication skills--and they are considerable--he is no macro economist. Which is a shame, because he has access to two of the brightest macro-economists of our generation: Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers. He should listen to them; learn from them. They have much to teach him. My reaction to watching the President last night is that he is clueless as to how the economy really works, and his recent historical perspective is revisionist. First, kudos to the media. As opposed to the first press conference, they asked him some hard, direct questions. Unfortunately, President Obama is incapable of answering these questions in a transparent, straightforward manner, but the questions were direct even if the answers weren't. Now to the revisionist Obamanomics. First, President Obama claims he inherited a $1.2 trillion budget deficit. According to the [...]
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