just thinking out loud
John Fund has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal about “The Obama-Pelosi Lame Duck Strategy.” The strategy is this: wait till after the mid-terms, when members of Congress don’t have to worry about an impending election, then pass all the contentious items left on Obama/Pelosi/Reid’s agenda (cap and trade, tax hikes, etc.). At HotAir, Ed [...]
Secretary Paulson and Congressional leaders have no monopoly on market-damaging panic. Witness today’s article in the UK’s Telegraph, claiming that world financial markets are ‘falling into the abyss.’ The article shares blame around, but places most if it on German chancellor Angela Merkel for opposing the redistribution of wealth among European countries. A sample from [...]
I wrote earlier about how Ace pointed out that the ‘pork’ in the bailout bill actually was preexisting in the bill that they tacked it on to, and not added as part of the bailout. He is right.
Ug and double ug. The Senate bailout bill has grown to 451-pages of pork-laden [insert profanity here]. Instead of just the bailout (Emergency Economic Stabilization, Division A, pages 1-113), the bill now also contains the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008 (Division B, pp. 113-261) and the Tax Extenders and Alternative Minimum Tax Relief [...]
Foon Rhee at the Boston Globe has an interesting breakdown of votes versus campaign contributions: A nonpartisan watchdog group calculated that US House members who voted yes received 51 percent more in campaign contributions from the finance, insurance, and real estate sector in their congressional careers than those who opposed the emergency legislation. The Center [...]
I think even the most diehard anti-bailout partisans, both left and right, would agree that there have been increasing problems in the financial markets, and that those problems seem to be coming to a head. Although I have a degree in economics, it has been almost two decades since I have used much of that [...]
