In January the U.S. Treasurer, Rosie Rios, traveled to Dallas to join local officials at the construction site of a new convention hotel being built with money raised through Build America Bonds. The purpose was to celebrate the success of the so-called BABs, which are federally-subsidized bonds created by the 2009 stimulus package.
Of course, what no one at the Dallas “celebration” pointed out is that the $388 million in BABs that the city floated with federal aid were necessary because no private developer would cough up the money for the risky project. In fact, local officials…
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Archive for the “RealClearMarkets” CategoryArticles from RealClearMarkets. Surprise, surprise. Sen. Chris Dodd’s financial-regulation proposal raises the possibility of substantial progress on the road to ending “too big to fail” (TBTF) and bailout nation for banks and other financial institutions. Over the last two budget cycles, every state except North Dakota has had to close a budget gap. But a handful of states stand out for the depth of their fiscal problems. For 2010, seven states had budget gaps totaling more than 25% of general fund spending, as measured by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Of these, six have a clear story about how they ended up in such a mess.
Mar
15
2010
 
Dodd’s Financial Reforms Won’t Fix the BanksPosted by: realclearmarkets in RealClearMarketsAmerica’s banks are as vulnerable today as before the credit crisis, and reforms offered by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd won’t fix things. The new Obama Fed is going to be very dovish when it comes to fighting future inflation and defending the value of the dollar.
Mar
11
2010
Entrepreneurial Innovation and the InternetPosted by: realclearmarkets in RealClearMarketsAs Washington and the states pile up mountainous liabilities - $3 trillion for unfunded state pensions, $10 trillion in new federal deficits through 2019, and $38 trillion (or is it $50 trillion?) in unfunded Medicare promises - the U.S. needs once again to call on its chief strategic asset: radical innovation. WASHINGTON-Lucky women. They face an 8% unemployment rate, compared with 10% for men. Women are riding out the recession more easily, so what better time for Congress to put forward an agenda to help those men displaced from construction and manufacturing? It’s very difficult to pick up any kind of financial publication these days without reading about China’s growing economy, and what this means for the economic health of the United States. While an enhanced division of labor has traditionally been viewed as bullish for all who participate in what is a “closed” world economy, China’s rise is increasingly seen as a threat to the U.S. for its ever-expanding workforce making ours less relevant.
Mar
09
2010
What’s Gross About Our Gross Domestic Product?Posted by: realclearmarkets in RealClearMarketsThe health of an economy is too-simply described by GDP growth. If I sue you, and you countersue me, our collective legal fees increase GDP handily. Excellent! If government passes additional laws to increase the complexity of the tax code and the burden of regulatory compliance, and then hires additional staff to better enforce these more-complex laws and regulations, GDP rises handily. If our employers hire additional people to address these new levels of complexity and regulation, GDP again rises handily. Better still, the “Keynesian multiplier” applies to the spending of these…
Mar
09
2010
The Oscars, the NFL, and Failed Public PolicyPosted by: realclearmarkets in RealClearMarketsThe game of Chicken, in which two players face off against one another in a potentially devastating confrontation, seems like an apt description for the clash on Sunday between Cablevision and ABC over transmission fees, which resulted in a black-out of part of the Oscar telecast for about 3 million viewers. The game is also an appropriate analogy for the face-off between the National Football League and its players’ union over a collective bargaining agreement, which could result in a lock-out of players or a strike. There’s an old joke about a chemist, a physicist and an economist stuck on a desert island. The castaways possess plenty of canned food, but no tools. The scientists set about an elaborate scheme to build a fire and explode the cans open. But the economist proposes a more elegant solution — “First,” he says, “assume a can opener.”
Mar
08
2010
The Jobs Picture Is Even Worse Than It AppearsPosted by: realclearmarkets in RealClearMarketsEmployment: As the economy continues to destroy jobs, we hear a new excuse. Frigid weather, the White House says, made the jobs report look worse than it is. Actually, even without snow, it’s worse than you think.
Mar
07
2010
Will Systems Biology Survive Healthcare Reform?Posted by: realclearmarkets in RealClearMarketsIf you ever find yourself munching a sandwich at your desk and want to enliven your lunch break with a fascinating lecture about the future of medicine, tune in to a talk titled “Systems Biology, Systems Medicine, and Transformational Technologies” by Dr. Leroy Hood of the Institute for Systems Biology. Rather than a post-partisan olive branch to congressional Republicans and the American public, President Obama’s latest health-care speech was a declaration of war. He’s more than willing to use a 51-vote reconciliation majority to jam through a roughly $2 trillion health-care plan that amounts to a government takeover of nearly one-fifth of the economy. He’s prepared to stick Uncle Sam right in the middle of the age-old relationship between patients and doctors, and doctors and hospitals, all while subjugating the private health-care insurance system to the status of a… Sen. Dodd’s financial reform bill, like Rep. Frank’s before it promises to be a magnificent example of the politicians’ craft. The near perfect failure of either bill to address the actual cause of the crisis is outshined only by the shamelessness with which its authors evade their own responsibility for the disaster. Naturally they propose to expand their own power to do it all over again. |
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