Dems ruin economy

Milton Friedman socialism





Milton Friedman on Greed





.Job fears grip voters as Obama ratings crumble
Buzz up!132 votes Share
retweet
EmailPrint.. Play Video Barack Obama Video:Anti-Obama Booth In Mound Draws Cheers, Disgust WCCO Minneapolis .
Play Video Barack Obama Video:Spill panel probes Obama's plan to drill more AP .
Play Video Barack Obama Video:Democrat Says Joe Must Go FOX News .
By Richard Cowan Richard Cowan – Tue Aug 24, 4:03 pm ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More Americans now disapprove of President Barack Obama than approve of him as high unemployment and government spending scare voters ahead of November's midterm elections, Reuters/Ipsos poll found on Tuesday.

In the latest grim news for Obama's Democrats, 72 percent of people said they were very worried about joblessness and 67 percent were very concerned about government spending.

The unemployment rate of 9.5 percent and the huge budget deficit are dragging down the Democrats and eating away at Obama's popularity only 20 months after he took office on a wave of hope that he could turnaround the economy.

Another bit of bad economic data arrived on Tuesday when the National Association of Realtors reported sales of existing homes plummeted in July to their slowest pace in 15 years.

Piling the pressure on Obama, the top Republican in the House of Representatives called on the administration's economic team to quit.

Obama's disapproval rating was 52 percent in Tuesday's poll, overtaking his approval rating for the first time in an Ipsos poll. Only 45 percent of people said they approved of the president's performance, down from 48 percent last month.

That number, coupled with a hearty 62 percent who think the country is going in the wrong direction, could spell trouble for Democrats, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House.

But despite the bad poll numbers, a non-partisan congressional body on Tuesday backed Democrats' claims that the massive stimulus package in 2009 kept the economy afloat.

House Republican leader John Boehner called for a fresh start on the economy. In a campaign-style speech, he urged Obama's top economic advisers to resign, saying, "It's time to put grown-ups in charge."



Double Dip'? Or Did the 'Great Recession' Really Never End?
Posted Jun 28, 2010 12:54pm EDT by Aaron Task
Related: ^DJI, ^GSPC, SPY, TBT, TLT, GLD, UUP
Monday's weak consumer spending data is the latest in a string of reports that has many Americans worried about a "double-dip" recession.

Then again, considering the unemployment rate has remained elevated, many Americans would be forgiven for thinking the recession that began in December 2007 still hasn't ended. Notably, that's the view of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the nation's official arbiter of economic expansion and contraction.

Among the signs suggesting the NBER is right to hold off in declaring the recession over:

Housing Rolling Over: Last week's housing numbers were horrific, especially the steep drop in new home sales. Still, Coldwell Banker CEO Jim Gillespie tried to put some lipstick on the proverbial pig on Tech Ticker last week.

Jobs Still Hard to Come By: Despite signs of recent progress, "there's no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession," a notably candid Vice President Joe Biden said Monday. Friday's jobs report is expected to show overall payrolls declined by 115,000 in June.

'Hair-Shirts' in Fashion, Worldwide: As discussed here, this weekend's G20 meeting shows that policymakers believe the time for fiscal austerity is at hand. From an economic point of view, the G20 confirms that the appeal of government spending (i.e. Keynesian economics) to combat the downturn is on the wane, replaced by a view that it's better to take the pain now and cut spending (i.e. Austrian economics).

Financial Market Distress: While the stock market's recent struggles grab most of the headlines, the real pain of late has been felt in the bond market. Excluding the panic levels of late 2008, the yield on the 10-year Treasury hit its lowest levels since 1962, last week. Meanwhile, the price of default insurance for Greece and other sovereign credits spiked higher and Bloomberg reports the percentage of corporate bonds considered in distress is at the highest in six months.

The Downside of Falling Rates



Don't follow Europe's example
. The real meltdown may not be in Greenland, but western economies:
http://tinyurl.com/35tmq8r
Two Brits discuss the European economic crisis: http://tinyurl.com/26vp8fh




liberal economists, such as Paul Krugman, try to assure us that the largest annual federal budget deficits in history ($4.5 trillion in total over the first three years) do not matter, and that the ratio of total federal debt to GDP does no matter, and argue we should really be spending even more, there are some who disagree. For the record, in the first 4 years of the Obama administration, the total additional federal debt will be larger than the combined accumulated debt in the nation's history before he took office. But relax: Paul Krugman says it is manageable. Does it strike anyone as odd that while one European country after another announces that it is overextended financially, and has to reduce its entitlement spending, that the Obama administrations seems to be laser focused on driving our economy into a European welfare state model?
No we are not Greece (yet). But we are on track to soon be Greece times 30. The IMF gets worried about America: http://tinyurl.com/25japc7
Power Line: http://tinyurl.com/2wlk4px
John Stossel on Krugman: http://tinyurl.com/29xbtwt
The Bank of England thinks America is going the way of Greece: http://tinyurl.com/3xb3xjc
It has gotten so bad, it has become too embarrassing for the Democrats in Congress to pass a budget this year: http://tinyurl.com/27amrtf
April is normally the best month of the year for the federal budget, as taxpayers pay what is due before April 15. That is not the case this year. With the economy supposedly growing again, why were federal tax receipts substantially lower in April 2010, than in April 2009?: http://tinyurl.com/25vdo8t
Are we out of money? http://tinyurl.com/2vgzbs6





Do you recall when President Obama attempted to demonstrate his seriousness with tackling the enormous federal deficits he has run up ($4.5 trillion in total for the first three fiscal years of his Presidency: 2009, 2010, and budget for 2011) by demanding his Cabinet come up with $100 million in savings? Here is a way to visualize this.
http://tinyurl.com/ygxrnyl
The $860 billion stimulus package was money well spent. The unemployment rate jumped to 9.9% this month, and the broader unemployment rate, including those who have stopped looking for work, or can't find full-time jobs, is now 17.1%, up for the third month in a row, and within 0.3% of the recent record level set last October. Given that almost noone on the Obama team ever created a private sector job, it is not surprising that there has been a complete failure to create private sector jobs so far . While 8 million private sector jobs disappeared in the last two years, government employment levels are up. The stimulus bill sent hundreds of billions to state and local governments, to allow these bodies to continue to keep their bloated, overpaid workforce intact. Of course, a high percentage of the public workforce is unionized. Ergo- the workers keep their jobs, and they keep paying union dues. And the union due keep funding campaigns to elect Democrats.
http://tinyurl.com/26q2mca
Mona Charen on Greek public finan




More taxing
Another Obama Tax Hike
The Senate health-care bill would raise effective marginal tax rates on lower and middle-income singles and families up to 41%..ArticleComments (23)more in Opinion ».EmailPrintSave This ↓ More.
.By DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN AND ALEX BRILL
The stunning victory of Scott Brown in Massachusetts may prove to be a game-changer for the President's health-care "reform" agenda. This is good news for the ability of lower-income families lacking insurance to climb up the ladder of American prosperity. His associated rhetoric notwithstanding, the President's policies in the stimulus bill and health-care debate increase current barriers to the American dream. These legislative efforts (we use the Senate health-care bill for illustration) raise to shocking levels the effective marginal tax rates (EMTR) on lower and middle-income singles and families--with the government taking up to 41% of each additional dollar.

The mechanics are simple. The effective marginal tax rate is the answer to the question: "If I earn $1 more, how much less than $1 do I get to save or spend?" If you can keep that full dollar for your disposal, the effective marginal tax rate is zero. If earning another dollar does not raise your disposable income by even a penny, the effective marginal tax rate is 100 percent.

Obviously, neither extreme is realistic. But exactly where federal policies come down in between has dramatic implications for the ability of families to rise from the ranks of the poor, or to ascend toward the upper end of the middle class. This mobility is the heart of the American dream that has made the United States a beacon of economic light for centuries. Equal opportunity to achieve that dream – not equal paychecks or equal government handouts – is the real-world litmus test for fairness in government policy.

Consider, then, the figure below constructed for a two-earner family with two school-age children, one of whom is in college. The solid line shows the EMTR based on income tax law prior to the health-care bill (it excludes the impact of the payroll taxes). The dashed line displays the damaging increases in the EMTR assuming the health insurance premium subsidies contained in the Senate health-care bill and insurance cost estimates provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation. As a family's income rises above 133% of poverty, Medicaid eligibility will be eliminated but a family that does not receive health insurance from their employer will receive a subsidy to purchase health insurance in the "exchange." In turn, however, as their efforts yield higher income, subsidies are clawed back or effectively taxed away. The current law policies show that there are already some lower income families facing EMTRs above those in the middle class. But the barrier to success imposed by health-care reform is even more striking. According to the Congressional Budget Office, about 20 million people would receive a subsidy to purchase insurance through an exchange and thus face a higher EMTR.

.How can a family be expected to get ahead when taking an extra shift, finding a way for a second parent to work, or investing in night school courses to qualify for a raise means handing the government as much as 41% of the additional income earned? Parents already juggle the tough trade-off between working more to build their family's future and spending time at home with their children. The bigger the EMTR, the tougher that tradeoff becomes.

How could this happen? In part, it may reveal ignorance about the long-term impacts of class warfare-based programs. For decades, both parties have employed refundable tax credits (i.e., disguised spending programs) as a way of providing benefits to low-income families while appearing to favor low taxes and small government. The class-conscious left has insisted that these benefits be "targeted" – i.e., that they disproportionately help those lower-income families that pay no taxes and be phased-out for the tax-paying middle class. The result fit their agenda of wealth redistribution. The right, eager to achieve any tax cuts they could muster, accepted the income limitations as the price of getting any tax relief. With progressives' hell-bent effort to soak the rich, the outlook for the poor and middle class quietly and steadily deteriorated to the condition we find it today.

Every "phase-out" of a tax credit or subsidy program is an EMTR in disguise. The cumulative impact is a cruel twist on "targeting," as families are anchored near the bottom of the income distribution by layers of fiscal cement. Ignorance is a dangerous animal in the hands of tax policymakers.

A second possibility is subtle paternalism toward the poor. Unlike the rich who are presumed to know what they want (which progressives are dead set on thwarting), it may be that poorer Americans are presumed to need guidance on how to live their lives (or a "nudge" in the parlance of the faddish behavioralists in the Obama Administration). They need to be told that it is a good idea to work, take care of your children, go to college and have health insurance, hence a tax credit for every virtue.

In the end it does not matter how we got here. Taxes interfere with the basic rewards for work, thrift, and saving. Excessive EMTRs damage these incentives, discourage the taxed, and threaten to rob America of a vitality that is its signature.

This year marks a crucial time in the future of tax policy. The tax laws enacted in 2001 and 2003 will sunset, along with the recent tax credits included in the so-called stimulus bill. As Congress thinks about the future, we hope it puts full weight on the importance of a tax code that supports the ability of the poor and middle-class to achieve their dreams.

The Massachusetts special election sends the strong message that voters want Washington to scale back its interference in their lives. Re-thinking the policies that get in the way of their pursuit of success is a good place to start.

ems ruin economy, Obama blames bankers
WSJ Mr. Obama summed up his White House meeting with the bank CEOs by once again blaming them for the financial crisis and suggesting that they have an obligation to support new regulation being written by Barney Frank (D., Mass.) and Senator Chris Dodd (D., Conn.).

You have to smile at that irony. No two Members of Congress did more to encourage the financial crisis, by preventing reform of the government-sponsored housing behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By ignoring Washington's role in creating the credit mania, Mr. Obama is hardly offering confidence that his financial reform efforts will prevent a repeat.

Yet none of this seems to count for much at a White House that is reading the polls and sees a political opening because bankers aren't popular. Someone in that power palace ought to consider that you don't encourage capitalism by beating up capitalists, and you aren't likely to encourage more lending by whipsawing lenders