The House is voting today on a bill to improve transparency in the TARP bailout program. TARP is, shall we say, rather opaque. 25 different agencies administer TARP funds. Each one uses different accounting standards. Keeping track of everything is almost impossible.
I wrote an article not too long ago saying that transparency is welcome symptomatic relief. But TARP itself is a disease. The only way to cure the disease of bailout programs is to abolish them. Russ Roberts said much the same…
Question: What do you get when you combine a $700 billion “stimulus” package, $1.1 trillion in wealth-destroying regulatory compliance costs, a mountainous non-discretionary entitlement obligation, bailouts for large manufacturers, an small army of unelected czars, and a $1.4 federal budget deficit?
Answer: Way too much government!
In a new CEI paper, One Nation, Ungovernable?, Clyde Wayne Crews lays out an agenda for setting America on the path to economic recovery. From lifting burdensome regulations and restrictions on executive compensation to fostering competition and…
Detractors of capitalism decry that it caters to special interests. The opposite is actually true. Just look at what’s happened in the last year.
Most of Wall Street came to government asking for a bailout when the government-created housing bubble popped.
The Big Three automakers also went to Washington for largesse when their customers came to prefer Toyotas and Hondas.
Health insurance companies stand to make a killing if Obamacare passes.
T. Boone Pickens and Al Gore would make millions from environmental legislation.
Ludwig von…
Your host Richard Morrison welcomes back returning guest co-hosts Michelle Minton and Jeremy Lott for Episode 54 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with ominous hints of new taxes, California state employees making strike threats and the possible antitrust implications of the Microhoo partnership. We continue with a double-dipping pay scandal, the suppression of dissent in Venezuela and some fully transparent Olympic News.
Over the last few months I have been keeping an eye on the tea party movement. My participation has waned and heightened throughout, from my first impressions to my ultimate conclusions about the utility of tea parties. This weekend I was able to glean a different perspective when they asked me to deliver one of the speeches at the DC Independence Day Tea Party at Upper Senate Park next to the Capitol Building. This time, I was able to get a…
Sin taxes are often justified by claiming that the item/behavior taxes costs the taxpayer money. By applying a tax, the government claims it can pay for the public services that the behavior produces a need for as well as increasing the cost of the behavior thereby discouraging continuation. The most obvious example is the cigarette tax. Increased prices supposedly incentivize smokers to quit or at least temper their addiction, while revenues from the tax can pay for health services.
But what…
The federal government is spending more than $50 billion to bail out General Motors, with no end in sight. But the UAW union refused to sacrifice its privileged position to save the company, demanding excessive wages and benefits that are much higher than most Americans get. The Obama Administration caved in to its demands, saddling GM with high labor costs that may doom the company in the long run.
As the Washington Post notes today, the “concessions” that Obama obtained from the UAW were…
The federal government is giving another $30 billion in taxpayer money to General Motors to allow it to operate without having to cut excessive union wages. The Obama Administration is “gambling” on its ability to turn around the company under government control.
The Obama Administration has said it will now interfere not just with the “selection of the company’s board of directors,” but also in “fundamental corporate decisions,” and “major corporate events and transactions.” For example, Obama recently pressured GM to keep its headquarters…
The Obama Administration wants to convert the preferred shares the government got from banks in the bank bailout into common shares. In theory, it could help expand lending, but in practice, it could politicize the banks, harm the economy, and waste taxpayer money.
Common shares, unlike preferred shares, vote on who manages the company. The Government could use its votes to make banks waste money on ideological causes — the way it recently did with Freddie Mac, in order to promote mortgage…
“The president of the European Union on Wednesday slammed U.S. plans to spend its way out of recession as ‘a road to hell.’ Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, told the European Parliament that President Barack Obama’s massive stimulus package and banking bailout ‘will undermine the liquidity of the global financial market.’”
There’s “one small problem with Geithner’s plan: It will bankrupt the banks,” says analyst Henry Blodgett, triggering a chain reaction of write-offs.…
People who have actually read the fine print of the Administration’s trillion-dollar toxic asset buy-up program don’t like it. One calls it “pure plunder.”
Both liberals like Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, and conservatives like Chris Stirewalt, sum up the program as “Heads I win, Tails the Taxpayers Lose.”
Others argue it provides “public subsidies” for hedge funds that don’t need them, and for “zombie banks” that ought to be shut down to cut the taxpayers’ losses.
Even Harvard business law professor Lucian…
Obama gets a failing grade from economists. “U.S. President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner received failing grades for their efforts to revive the economy from participants in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey.”
Not content with the $8 trillion the Obama Administration has already committed for bailouts, pork, and welfare, Treasury Secretary Geithner, who was confirmed by the Senate despite cheating on his taxes, wants to spend $100 billion on IMF loans to bail out struggling nations in Eastern Europe and elsewhere…
We normally don’t spend much time praising elected officials here at OpenMarket, but I have to make an exception (this week, at least) for Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. Over the weekend he appeared on TV and trashed the seemingly endless series of financial services bailouts, making the case that if these companies are incapable of functioning without billions of taxpayer dollars, the government should simply let them go into bankruptcy:
“Close them down, get them out of business,” Shelby, the senior Republican…
The automakers have come back for more taxpayer money, which is exactly what we warned would happen when the first bailout was granted last year. The restructuring plans merely represent an attempt to acheive the results of bankruptcy, with the taxpayer picking up the costs. What is needed is not more taxpayer money, but a way to make US automakers competitive again. As I said in my recent Detroit News piece, we can do that through a simple, cost-free, program that will…
Welcome to Episode 30 of everyone’s favorite podcast LibertyWeek, with your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist and very special guest Jeremy Lott. We start with the end of the U.S. economy as we have known it: the $790 billion economic stimulus plan and its chilling consequences. We take note of Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit’s pledge to work for $1 a year and celebrate some good news with Alabama’s plan to legalize beer with a higher alcohol content than most wines.…
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