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Media Infiltrations: Republicans and the Populist Temptation  Wall Street Journal February 9, 2010 Why Taxing Stock Trades Is a Really Bad Idea Wall Street Journal January 6, 2010
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Chronicle of the Conspiracy
Join us as we discover, document, expose and challenge the bad people, the bad institutions and the bad ideas that stand in the way of wealth creation -- and show you how to fight back!
Saturday, September 15, 2007
NO, THAT'S "WHO IS JOHN GALT?" The New York Times doesn't get it quite right, in this story on Ayn Rand's enduring appeal:In Chicago, there is John Galt Solutions, a producer of software for supply chain companies... The founder and chief executive of the company, Annemarie Omrod, said she considered the character an inspiration...Thanks to Dave Duval for the link."Some of our customers don’t know the name, though after they meet us, they want to read the book," she went on. "Our sales reps have a problem, however. New clients usually ask: 'Hey, where is John Galt? How come I’m not important enough to rate a visit from John Galt?'"
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 11:00 PM |
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TALE OF TWO PAPERS ON REGULATION From the New York Times, another story about how business just can't ever do the right thing. Businessmen are selfish and greedy for rejecting the regulation that the liberals at the Times prefers, but are selfish and greedy all over again when they accept regulation:
For toys and cars, antifreeze and fireworks, popcorn and produce and cigarettes and light bulbs, among other products, industry groups or major manufacturers are calling for federal health, safety and environmental mandates. Some of those industries are abandoning years of efforts to block such measures, often in alliance with the Bush administration, which pledged to ease what it views as costly, unnecessary rules.Now here's the Wall Street Journal, on a related theme:The consequences for consumers, though, are not yet clear. The tactical shift by industry groups is motivated by a confluence of self-interests: growing competition from inexpensive imports that do not meet voluntary standards, and a desire to head off liability lawsuits and pre-empt tough state laws or legal actions that were a response to laissez-faire Bush administration policies. Concerns that Democrats could soon expand their control in Washington have also prompted manufacturers or producers to seek regulations that they consider the least burdensome, regulatory experts say.
Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Irish low-fare air carrier Ryanair...built Ryanair into Europe's largest airline by passenger volume and, along with such rivals as easyJet, transformed travel on the Continent. ...A generation of Europeans has come of age expecting £1 flights to overlooked tourist gems hundreds of miles away -- a phenomenon that arguably has done as much to aid European integration as the EU itself (though it says a great deal about the myopia in Brussels that Mr. O'Leary's efforts have often drawn regulatory scorn).My DC-insider pay "Mick Danger" comments,Speaking of eurocrats, Mr. O'Leary also seems to adhere to the belief famously misattributed to the master showman: There's a sucker born every minute. Regulators? "Useless." Environmentalists who complain about airlines' CO2 emissions? "Eco-nutters." Most of Ryanair's rivals? "Doomed."
RyanAir is not just the best thing about business in Europe, getting hooked on it has the side effect of making Europeans a bit more American, at least about business. RyanAir gives the public exactly what it wants from a light bulb; oops, from an airline.
Both articles illustrate that big business loves big government. Old news, yes. Question, though, can big government learn to love big business?
Look at the lighting industry. They have invested heavily in the notion that high-efficiency light bulbs can be sold to homeowners. What did they learn? They learned that when homeowners make the decision, they say no. Consumers ignore all the mostly true blah-blah-blah about dollar and energy savings over the life of the bulb. Consumers want the quality of light from an incandescent bulb and they want it cheap.
Without enough volume, companies like Philips can't drive down the per-unit cost nor can they justify further innovation. The potential national savings in energy are substantial. The political appeal is obvious. With some states and localities jumping into the regulatory game, most especially in California, the pragmatic answer to big business is federal regulation of light bulb efficiency standards, the preemption of state and local laws, and an eventual ban on incandescents. The debate on the ban is illustrative of the noblesse oblige attitude prevalent in Congress these days as they speak openly about making the ban begin on a date long enough in the future as to fool consumers and not so long that it costs the light bulb business money. Yeah, that’s the sound of big government falling in love with big business.
Environmentalists are happy about all this, right? Wrong. They oppose state preemption because they assert that the California market is so important, they think it can set the operative national standard. They ignore the claims by Philips and others that without preemption there won't be a single national market big enough to drive down costs and sales up. Environmentalists like forcing companies to make products that are good for the environment and bad for business. Go ask Detroit.
As for the consumer, they don’t pay close enough attention to goings-on in Congress to know that there is a bill moving which will ban the bulb. If it happens, some folks will back up the SUV at Wal-Mart and buy cases and cases of the old standby, perhaps as inventory for the eventual black market.
Love LUV and RyanAir and want governments everywhere to stop protecting their loser competitors?
Love Philips? Just know that you are making a complicated bet. You are betting that
1. Congress is capable of drafting a truly light-touch (sorry) law,
2. the Department of Energy implements that law as intended, and
3. a protected big business will perform well.
My bet is that it will still be cheaper to fly RyanAir from Galway to Rome and back than to buy a case of bulbs.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 7:28 PM |
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Friday, September 14, 2007
"THE BIG BOOM" Here's another brilliant reply to the anti-supply-side screed of Jonathan Chait (who is not a trained economist) -- this one from our friend Bret Swanson at the Discovery Institute.A new generation of supply-side business economists has proved the most prescient on Wall Street. David Malpass, Don Luskin, Brian Wesbury, and Michael Darda now serve up the most incisive—and profitable—analyses. But far from being “monomaniacal” or marching in lock-step, supply-siders have for the last decade engaged in spirited debate over monetary policy. The most interesting Wall Street and monetary debates these days are happening within the loose arena of supply-siders, often on Larry Kudlow’s nightly CNBC show, which entertains by far the most sophisticated economic discussions found anywhere on television....Unable to fight on theoretical or empirical grounds, Chait deploys vicious rhetoric to scare the GOP away from the economically and politically successful supply-side strategy. Chait has great reverence and nostalgia for those economic titans Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Bob Dole. Chait advises the GOP to remake the party in their image. But let us review: Hoover, who sparked the Great Depression with massive tariff and tax hikes, lost in 1932; Nixon, who imposed wage and price controls, endless new regulations, and set off a decade of inflation by floating the dollar, resigned in 1974; Ford, a decent man with no solution to stagflation, lost in 1976; and Dole, the Beltway compromiser who never grasped or believed in the supply-side program, lost in 1996. The big con, indeed.
In analyzing supply-side economics, Chait would have done much better writing about The Big Boom.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:34 PM |
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IF YOU ARE REALLY AN AYN RAND DEVOTEE ...you'll want to listen to this "tiddlywink music" that, for some reason, was her favorite. Somehow I doubt that by listening to "It's a Long Long Way to Tipperary" over and over you will manage to produce a 1000-page philosophical novel, but why not try it? Thanks to Jameson Campaigne for hte link.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:43 AM |
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Thursday, September 13, 2007
"FAMILY DISCOUNT" From the New York Post:The New York Times dramatically slashed its normal rates for a full-page advertisement for MoveOn.org's ad questioning the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.Update... My friend Jameson Campaigne knows a thing or two about the way the business side of the media works, and he has this light to shed on the "family discount":Headlined "Cooking the Books for the White House," the ad which ran in Monday's Times says Petraeus is "a military man constantly at war with the facts" and concluded - even before he testified before Congress - that "General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us."
According to Abbe Serphos, director of public relations for the Times, "the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692."
A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed to The Post that the liberal activist group had paid only $65,000 for the ad - a reduction of more than $116,000 from the stated rate.
A Post reporter who called the Times advertising department yesterday without identifying himself was quoted a price of $167,000 for a full-page black-and-white ad on a Monday.
Serphos declined to confirm the price and refused to offer any inkling for why the paper would give MoveOn.org such a discounted price.
Citing the shared liberal bent of the group and the Times, one Republican aide on Capitol Hill speculated that it was the "family discount."
"I'm surprised they had to pay anything at all for the ad," the GOP staffer said. "They could have just asked the editorial page to run it and it wouldn't have cost them a cent."
It is always possible to buy what are called "remnant pages" in the Times and other newspapers and magazines, unsold or late-canceled ad pages that otherwise have to carry a house ad or unanticipated extra editorial copy, and these can be discounted substantially. Especially in the Monday, Tuesday and Saturday papers which are typically ad thin almost everywhere.Update [9/14/2007]... Be all that as it may, reader David Williams notes that Rudy Giuliani thinks it's only fair he be let into the same "family."They generally are offered to agencies who are notified and asked if they wish to bid on them. Book publishers often take advantage of the offer. In this case, it may have been an inside deal set up in advance ... political ads generally are not solicited.
Still, good to see this out in the open, which ought to annoy the paper's contract and full-rate customers. Lots of pages for the under-pressure ad staff to fill, as advertisers migrate elsewhere -- there is as much an economic as perhaps political reason for the MoveOn ad.
Giuliani, calling MoveOn.org’s controversial “General Betray Us” ad “abominable,” said his campaign is asking the paper for a comparable rate for an ad to run following President Bush’s speech on Iraq.The former mayor said his ad “will obviously take the opposite view” from MoveOn.org, which argued in its ad that Gen. David Petraeus is “cooking the books” on Iraq and cherry-picking facts that support his recommendation to keep a large number of troops in Iraq for some time.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 8:54 AM |
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KUDLOW REPLAY Here's the YouTube clip of Tuesday's hit.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 1:15 AM |
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THE GREENSPAN MYTH My op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal:
"What would the Maestro do?" As nervous markets hang on every word of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, trying to divine whether he will lower interest rates in response to the current turmoil in credit markets, comparisons to his illustrious predecessor Alan Greenspan are inevitable.
Such comparisons can also be invidious, and shouldn't influence what Mr. Bernanke does now. Mr. Greenspan is fondly remembered for his role in stewarding markets through the stock crash of 1987, the Long Term Capital Management crisis of 1998, the collapse of the tech bubble in early 2001, and the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 2001. Today he enjoys a reputation for having moved swiftly and decisively -- "pre-emptively" it is often said now -- to help the markets out of those crises.
But the truth is quite different. Mr. Greenspan is fortunate indeed to be remembered as such a decisive leader, because in fact his reactions to some of those crises were quite tardy, and were seen by most market participants at the time as being too little, too late.
Let's look at the Long Term Capital Management crisis of 1998, an event in many ways analogous to today's situation. Then the markets were thrown into turmoil by emerging market currency devaluations and Russia's default on its sovereign debt, much as markets have recently been rocked by defaults in subprime mortgages. As a consequence, then as now, the solvency of hedge funds and the investment banks that sponsored them were threatened.
By the time LTCM had collapsed -- and had to be bailed out by a private consortium of banks brought together by the New York Fed's William McDonough, not Mr. Greenspan -- the S&P 500 had already fallen by almost 20%, and staged a modest recovery from there. Mr. Greenspan had done precisely nothing with interest rates.
The Federal Open Market Committee made a 25 basis-point rate cut the day after the LTCM bailout was announced in late September. Markets were not impressed. Credit markets remained frozen much as they have been in the current crisis, and stocks fell to new lows over the first 10 days of October.
Laurence Meyer, a Federal Reserve Board governor at the time, recalls in his 2004 book, A Term at the Fed, that "Rather than calming the markets, the small size of the rate cut raised doubts that the Fed appreciated the severity of the problem . . . Greenspan was now under attack."
In mid-October, Mr. Greenspan cut rates another 25 basis points in a surprise inter-meeting move. According to Bob Woodward in his Greenspan biography Maestro, Mr. Greenspan was reluctant to make that move but was pressured by Mr. McDonough and then Fed Vice Chairman Alice Rivlin.
By the end of 1998 there was another 25 basis-point cut at a regular FOMC meeting, the market turmoil passed and Mr. Greenspan ended up on the cover of Time as chairman of the "Committee to Save the World." That's how he's remembered today.
Mr. Greenspan is also remembered for cutting interest rates aggressively as the tech bubble burst in early 2001, starting on Jan. 3 with a surprise inter-meeting cut of 50 basis points. In his book, Mr. Meyer writes that Mr. Greenspan "had decided that the Fed should be seen making a deliberately anticipatory move -- one that would not be viewed as a late response to a rapidly deteriorating situation."
Alan Greenspan got his wish in terms of how history would remember him, but the reality is that the economy had already rolled over. By the time Mr. Greenspan made his "anticipatory" cut, the S&P 500 had already fallen almost 16% from its highs the previous September.
And when the cut was announced, the relief in the markets was fleeting. Stocks stabilized for several weeks, but fell to new lows in mid-February. They were destined to fall nearly an additional 40% from there, despite no less than 11 more rate cuts -- with even more to come after stocks bottomed in late 2002. So much for "anticipatory."
Mr. Greenspan indeed did cut rates quickly in the aftermath of the stock crash of 1987 and the terrorist attacks of September 2001. That's because both those extraordinary and highly public events were seen by the Fed as being very likely to depress overall economic activity, not because distressed markets themselves needed to be bailed out.
To help the markets in those crises, the Fed opened its checkbook to provide the liquidity necessary for transactions to clear and credit to endure despite the chaos. That's precisely what Mr. Bernanke has already done in the present turmoil, both through a very high volume of ordinary open market transactions and a liberalized discount-window lending policy.
In that sense, Mr. Bernanke has already acted more pre-emptively than Mr. Greenspan did in 1998, and similarly to the way Mr. Greenspan did in 1987 and September 2001. And he has done so despite the fact that, judging by the stock market's sturdy performance through the current turmoil -- now down only about 5% from all-time highs -- today's crisis is less threatening than those earlier ones.
It's noteworthy that the enormous volume of Fed open-market operations in the fed funds markets over the last month has been completed at the current rate target of 5.25%. This suggests that no lower rate is required to meet the needs of the banking system. And the discount window has scarcely been used at all, which suggests that the system is not in quite the state of distress that has been advertised.
So why would Mr. Bernanke cut the fed funds rate, unless he became convinced that the overall economy was highly likely to be damaged by the present market turmoil? That was the call Mr. Greenspan made quickly after the 1987 crash and the 2001 attacks, and slowly in 1998 and early 2001. Where's the evidence to support Mr. Bernanke making such a call today? Almost all the evidence is that the economy is remarkably robust, credit crisis or no credit crisis, housing slowdown or no housing slowdown.
Yes, we've had one disappointing jobs report. But with jobs at a level historically regarded as "full employment," must we hurry to cut rates? By historical standards, rates are already low. Since the 1970s, no easing cycle, and no recession, has ever begun when the real funds rate was as low as it is today.
Yet Mr. Bernanke remains under tremendous pressure from markets to cut rates. The prices observed in short-term fixed-income and interest-rate futures markets clearly imply that the markets expect a cut -- and the balance of pundit commentary is calling for one.
If the principled case can be made that a robust economy is significantly at risk, then Mr. Bernanke should do what the markets and the pundits demand -- provided that he sees a rate cut as consistent with his mission to preserve price stability.
But the idea that he must act immediately, in order to be seen as a worthy successor to the "Maestro," is unfair to Mr. Bernanke and too generous to Mr. Greenspan. The current Fed chief deserves our admiration for having acted quickly and appropriately so far, and resisted the temptation to over-react.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:01 AM |
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Wednesday, September 12, 2007
LET'S HEAR IT FOR PLUTOCRACY Holman Jenkins explains how private equity investors get so damn rich (by taking risks that make the world so damn rich):...personnel story of the week -- Jim Press leaving Toyota for Chrysler.He was Toyota's highest ranking American, a member of its board, a 37-year veteran, an international business statesman of the first rank. He was a highly valued player on the winningest team in the auto industry -- all of which he will be giving up to assist Chrysler, now owned by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management.
He may be motivated by the challenge that Chrysler represents even more than the vast sums he will undoubtedly be paid if successful. But like any rational person, he doesn't give up a secure, high-paying job in favor of another job, one that if successful would yield billions in profits for his new employer, without expecting to share in those rewards himself.
That's the way the world works. That's the way private equity works. If Mr. Press had left to run the Red Cross, nobody else would be getting rich off his efforts and he wouldn't expect to either.
Which just shows the PE revolution isn't merely the product of a "tax loophole." It's about concentrating management incentives and talent to wring more wealth out of businesses that aren't doing so well in other hands.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 8:25 AM |
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Tuesday, September 11, 2007
AND NOW A CHEAP THRILL FROM OUR "PUBLIC EDITOR" Irwin Chusid twists the knife, here and here.Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 8:26 PM |
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PART OF AN UNBALANCED BREAKFAST
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 4:34 PM |
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MORE FROM GROVER Vilified by Jonathan Chait (who is not a trained economist) as a "James Bond villain," Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform here comes back with an eloquent -- and, indeed, moving -- political and moral case for tax-cutting. I have to admire Grover, and acknowledge that what has made him a success in politics and persuasion, is that he keeps his moral center despite the enormous temptation to get into the muck and mire with a scumbag like Chait (who is not a trained economist); I on the other hand, can't resist calling a scumbag a scumbag.
Asked if they would be willing to pay their share of the $340 billion deficit--or $2470 per individual tax return, only nine percent said yes; 79 percent said no and 12 percent were unsure.Update... If Chait (who is not a trained economist) were a James Bond villain, I think he'd be this one:Of those 9 percent willing to pay, fully 63 percent of those said if Congress got the additional cash they would "mostly increase spending and not pay off the deficit." Only 17 percent believed Congress would use the money to fully pay down the deficit.
And the constituency for higher taxes is not there (and, yes, letting the Bush tax reductions lapse would raise taxes). Between 1996 and 2006 the percentage of Americans who believe their taxes are already too high has fluctuated between 50 and 66 percent. Your target audience that sees their taxes as too low has jumped from one to three percent and back to one percent most recently. Unless you are planning to seize power by grabbing the radio stations and airports and the railway stations in the capital, I think you need more than one percent popular support.
Or maybe hate and envy can come into play. Tax the rich to pay for everything. Asked in 2006 what the maximum percentage of a person's income is that should go to all taxes--federal, state and local ... one percent said 50-59%, one percent said 40-49%, six percent said 30-39%, 22 percent said 20-29%, 43 percent said 10-19%, 24 percent said 1-9 %, and the guys I really want to meet, those suggesting that "zero" was the right amount came in at one percent. The mean percentage Americans feel should be paid is 15%. That, by the way, is my stated goal--reducing the cost of government to half its present percentage of the economy. I am willing to go to the people with the argument that free people should pay less than European serfs in the Middle Ages. Eight percent of the country supports the present tax burden for higher-income taxpayers.
And envy fails again when the American people, fewer than five percent of whom will pay the death tax, are asked if the "estate tax" should be completely eliminated, as they were in 2006 and 2005--68 said percent yes. Only 19 and 17 percent were opposed in those years.
We want freedom. The left cries for envy and leveling. ...we are a movement dedicated to liberty... We worked with and for Reagan because he shared our goal of liberty and limited government. Not the other way around. He was not a great communicator. He communicated great things: liberty and its partner, limited government.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 2:52 PM |
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Monday, September 10, 2007
STOCKS DON'T LIE Our correspondent "Irrational Exuberance" notes that the Iraq Stock Exchange is up 64% this year. He also notes that the New York Times noted last year, when things didn't look so good, that, "If stock markets are any measure of a nation's confidence, then the numbers at the nascent Iraq Stock Exchange show that faith in the country may be at its lowest ebb since U.S.-led forces invaded." As "IE" says, "It will be interesting to see if they do a follow-up story now that the indicator has flipped the other way and favorably depicts the situation in Iraq."Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:11 PM |
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CHAIT VS. NORQUIST, ROUND 1 Normally the meat rejects the grinder, but apparently Jonathan Chait (who is not a trained economist) wants to lead with his meaty chin. He's made the mistake of inviting Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform to engage with him in a web-based debate on his article "Feast of the Wingnuts." In the first instalment, Chait (who is not a trained economist) focuses not on economics, but on the politics of tax-cutting, claiming that Norquist has tricked the Republican party into endorsing tax cuts that its own base doesn't even want.
Republican elites have managed to overcome the opposition of their own base to make tax-cutting the sine qua non of the party, and convince social conservatives and anti-spending conservatives to accept their subordinate position. One answer is that people like you have used the cult of Ronald Reagan to foist your own preferences onto the party. Republicans know they must never deviate on taxes because this was the essence of Reagan's beliefs. To immodestly quote myself, you have "redefined Republicanism as conservatism, conservatism as Reaganism, and Reaganism as a relentless and uncompromising opposition to taxes, especially those paid by the rich."Grover responds,...In [my book], I write about you: "Norquist, like a James Bond villain, has an irrepressible penchant for spelling out his master plans in their full, nefarious detail." So, here you are. Please share your nefarious plans with the readers.
When I hear a person of the left arguing that the conservatives or Republicans should abandon the tax issue--and I keep a "Al Hunt" file of these semi-annual outbursts--I am reminded of the scene in the movie where the bad guy tells the hero, "put down that gun and we'll talk." If said hero is stupid enough to put down his gun, the movie continues for another 20 minutes.Update... I notice buried in riposte by Chait (who is not a trained economist), there is one of those exaggerations that just about becomes an outright lie, so typical of Paul Krugman and others on the Left who love to cite authoritative-sounding "facts," but just can't resist sexing them up a bit. Chait (who is not a trained economist) says,The tax issue is the trump card for the American right and the Republican Party. You've written a clever book hoping to encourage my team to abandon the high ground of American politics. I believe it was in the movie Silence of the Lambs where Hannibal Lecter is able to talk the fellow in the next cell into swallowing his own tongue and killing himself. ...you lack Dr. Lecter's persuasive powers.
We will stick with the tax issue.
The Pew Survey finds that Republicans still overwhelmingly prefer reducing the deficit to cutting taxes. Majorities prefer repealing all the Bush tax cuts or at least the portion that only favor the wealthy, raising the minimum wage, and providing health insurance to all even if taxes must be raised.Let's call his bluff, and follow that link. Turns out that the Pew Survey in question actually says almost nothing about what "Republicans" believe -- but rather a set of dominantly Republican "typologies" called "Enterprisers," "Social Conservatives," and "Pro-Gov't Conservatives." Here are some things in that survey that Chait (who is not a trained economist) doesn't quite tell us honestly.
1) On page 42, among "proposals to reduce the deficit," the "Enterprisers" prefer cutting spending over raising taxes, 81% to 12%; "Social Conservatives" 63% to 27%; and "Pro-Gov't Conservatives 53% to 32%.
2) On page 41, we find that the "majority" of Republicans (actually the typologies) that prefers repealing the Bush tax cuts, or the portion of them for the wealthy (whatever that means), is actually only 50.25%. 3) On page 40, we find that the the "majority" of Republicans (actually the typologies) that prefers government health insurance for all, even if taxes are increased, is actually only 52.1%.
4) An on page 62 we find that the margin of error in this survey is between 2.5% and 5.5%. But that wouldn't matter to Chait (who is not a trained economist) because, after all, he is not a trained economist. Nor a very honest person.
Norquist thinks that surveys like this don't matter anyway: the best survey is the real world:
We can do dueling polling data if you wish. I suggest that real elections and real initiatives where citizens vote on tax hikes suggest that there are very real, powerful, and vote-changing anti-tax majorities in the American electorate.If the Dems thought otherwise they might have campaigned in 2006 in favor of tax hikes. We invited them to do so but were unable to get those nice Democratic challengers who were too busy wearing hunting outfits and going to church to call for tax hikes.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 6:09 PM |
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THE WASTE! THE SCANDAL! Now here's an important investigation into waste and profligacy in government. According to the AP:
The Bush administration spent at least $2.8 million traveling around the country promoting its plan to let many people divert a portion of their Social Security taxes into private retirement accounts, congressional investigators said Friday.No mention of how much it would have cost those same resources to do something else with the same hours. No mention of how much it cost GAO to produce its report. And no mention of the fact that every year we delay saving Social Security, the shortfall grows by $700 billion a year.The Government Accountability Office, acting on a request from Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., counted 228 different Social Security reform public speaking events by Bush administration officials in 2005. The departments participating ranged from the Labor Department to the Commerce Department to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Update... Oh, and we almost forgot. AARP spent $25 million defeating reform in 2005.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 9:04 AM |
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Sunday, September 09, 2007
BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH BEN BERNANKE... ...reprising the role of Doc Brown. Something tells me we've seen this movie before, as the Fed readies inflate us out of the subprime mortgage mess by cutting interest rates (while gold soars past $700 and the dollar falls to all-time lows).
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 1:55 AM |
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