Opinion Forum

Huffington on Obama

October 30th, 2009

He (Obama) also controls who runs the Treasury Department — which, believe it or not, is not legally mandated to be overseen and staffed by former Goldman Sachs executives and their friends. And there is nothing in the Constitution that says the Treasury Secretary has to be in near-constant contact with the heads of Goldman, Citigroup, and JP Morgan, often taking their calls late at night.

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: banks, economy, Huffington, Obama, Wall Street
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (14) | Home

Eating Your Seed Corn

October 27th, 2009

In today’s complex global economy, it can be easy to forget the root and the meaning of money. In fact, it can be so easy that there is an entire school of economics, Keynesianism, that is devoted to the theory that it is the consumer that drives the economy and spending money is the best [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: bailouts, corn, economy, free market, Keynesian, monetary policy, recession
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (8) | Home

What a Day!

August 21st, 2009

August 20, 2009 – some highlights of a very newsy day! Cash 4 clunkers ran out of gas! Reverend Obama is preaching to the public: larger government is now the “moral” option. Ted Kennedy is, sadly, dying of brain cancer and as a last wish he wants to undo the law in Massachusetts so that the [...]

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: economy, health care, Libya, Lockerbie, press
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (5) | Home

How Low Can the Bar Go?

August 8th, 2009

Since President Obama moved into the oval office the national debt has skyrocketed; unemployment is at a record high in many places; there is legislation pending that, by all indications, will eventually bankrupt the government (technically it already qualifies for bankruptcy) as well as the free-market; a judicial activist has just been appointed to the Supreme Court; the government is in the process of spending $3 billion to buy old cars and then, this morning, a story lead in the Washington Post informs me that: “Dow and S&P Close at New ’09 Highs.”

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: economy, green, unemployment
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (7) | Home

Red State, Blue State

August 3rd, 2009

In Blue-State Blues in The New York Times, Ross Douthat discusses President Obama’s need to take a new look at the differences between so-called red states and blue states. Obama has often maintained that he doesn’t see red and blue states; he sees just one country. That’s fine, but his politics and policy preferences directly reflect blue-state thinking, [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: California, economy, Obama, Texas
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (9) | Home

Busybodies

July 24th, 2009

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good [...]

Articles written by Brian Bagent
Tags: economy, minimum wage, small business
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Obama’s “Fine Print”

July 14th, 2009

Picking a president based on campaign promises is just as perilous an adventure as applying for that third credit card after the first two are maxed out. It doesn’t seem like you have any choice and you live on the hope that everything will work out all right.

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: American Dream, economy, employment
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Wisdom on the Economy

July 12th, 2009

Advice from an Economist Who Saw 1929 at Time.com is an interesting interview with Anna Schwartz. From the introduction to the interview: The Obama Administration should stop bailing out corporate disasters and abandon plans to move health care onto the backs of taxpayers. Tough talk from Anna Schwartz, a financial sage who has seen it [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Anna Schwartz, economy
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (2) | Home

The Secret of Prosperity

June 28th, 2009

Why has America been so extraordinarily successful, politically and economically? The political answer is easy — freedom and strenuously defended individual rights. Americans sometimes fall prey to pathological navel-gazing, so closely focused on the cracks and flaws in our system that they can see nothing more. All it takes is to look up to the horizon [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: creativity, economy, prosperity
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (8) | Home

The Sentence

June 26th, 2009

To-Do List: A Sentence, Not 10 Paragraphs, Peggy Noonan’s column today, takes a thought-provoking look at what may be President Obama’s biggest problem right now. He’s trying to do too much instead of focusing on the things that are most important and that most Americans are concerned about. She wrote, Something seems off with our [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: economy, energy, health care, Obama
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

The Waning of Obama

June 24th, 2009

Oh Yea!! The honeymoon is definitely over and perhaps, just perhaps, the majority of Americans are starting to wise up to the fact that Obama is chasing some personal dream of some imagined Utopia and practicing the worst kind of mule-headed partisan politics to push us over the brink, rather than using his brilliance, his charisma and his popularity (while he still has it) to bring this country back from that brink.

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: economy, Obama, Obamanomics
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

The Slippery Slope to Statism

June 17th, 2009

Obama has never once mentioned the fact that it was the Federal government’s systematic manipulation of the financial and housing markets that led to today’s crisis.

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: economy, Obama, statism
Categories: Economics, History, Politics | Comments (6) | Home

The Unlucky Gordon Brown

June 8th, 2009

Paul Krugman had an interesting column in The New York Times yesterday. He very effectively made the point that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s problem in dealing with the economic crisis includes the fact that his party was in power during the bubble and the subsequent crash. That, plus the corruption scandal now rocking his government, may [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: economy, Gordon Brown
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

Higher Taxes, Negative Returns

May 20th, 2009

A recent column in the Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal discusses a fundamental problem of raising taxes. People are rational actors, and beyond a certain point, higher taxes result in their voting with their feet. They move elsewhere, to places where taxes are perceived to be more reasonable. Everyone doesn’t react this way, of course. But [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: economy, taxes
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (7) | Home

Follow the Money

April 11th, 2009

If you were spending $787 billion, wouldn’t you want to know where it’s going? Seems the Obama Administration isn’t too worried about it, and neither is the majority in Congress. The thing is, the money Congress and the Administration are throwing at the economic crisis is our money. We’ve already had indications that they don’t have much of an [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: economy, stimulus
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

The Value of Derivatives

April 10th, 2009

As I proved in an earlier article, Does Dark Matter Matter?, I don’t know much about quarks and hadrons in particle physics. I know even less about derivatives and credit default swaps in high finance. From everything I’ve heard, the financial crisis began with subprime mortgage defaults, transmogrified into derivatives and maybe credit default swaps, and [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: derivatives, economy, finance
Categories: Economics, Humor | Comments (5) | Home

It Doesn’t Take a Prophet

March 27th, 2009

About a month ago, I wrote an article on inflation. Well, the specter of it is rearing its ugly head with this Reuters Story. China, the largest holder of US debt in the world, doesn’t plan on dumping the dollar, but they have indicated that they will probably not be making as many Treasury purchases. [...]

Articles written by Brian Bagent
Tags: economy, inflation
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

Feeling the Pain

March 25th, 2009

I feel wiped out. And it’s not from the flu. It’s from the financial news. Several people I know lost their families’ life savings that were invested with Wall Street wizard Bernie Madoff. My bank, which has been on a buying spree of failing financial firms, was insured by AIG. Not long ago, the president [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: AIG, economy, Social Security
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (14) | Home

More on AIG

March 24th, 2009

The Rank Hypocrisy Continues Unabated Wow. I watched the 60 Minutes interview with President Obama regarding the AIG bonuses that came as such a surprise to the Administration and to Congress. The prevarication and obfuscation continues. The President lays this entire mess at the feet of Wall Street, completely ignoring the laws and regulations that the financial industry has [...]

Articles written by Brian Bagent
Tags: AIG, economy, Obama
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

Inept Government

March 22nd, 2009

One of the reasons I didn’t vote for Barack Obama is that he had no executive management experience. Not surprisingly, the Obama Administration evidences all the symptoms of inept and confused management. The abysmal performance of Congress is because it’s, well, Congress. Lots of people, some of them not used to criticizing Democrats, see this mess for what it is. Here’s a [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Congress, economy, Obama
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (8) | Home

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