Last week's special election in Taxachusetts to replace the late Ted Kennedy in the US Senate served as a referendum on Obama's fascist health care plan, with its mandates, taxes, fines and prison sentences. A majority of voters in what's arguably the most liberal state in the republic came out and soundly defeated Democrat Martha Coakley and gave the seat to a Republican for the first time in decades. Scott Brown, the Republican victor, promised during the election to oppose Obama's fascist health care program.
A week later, according to liberal media outlet The New York Times, Obama plans to tack sharply to the right, pretending fiscal conservatism by proposing to freeze some discretionary domestic spending, while leaving defense spending and entitlements untouched. Since entitlement spending makes up the majority of (non-interest) spending in the budget, even Obama's wildly optimistic (some might say, "delusional" or "deceitful") show his alleged freeze reducing the projected $9 trillion in federal budget deficits by only $250 billion, or less than 3%. In the meantime, his budget for the coming fiscal year would actually increase spending even more with another $150 trillion of "stimulus" pork spending. Even the liberal New York Times admits in the story below that all of Obama's talk of freezing the budget would serve mostly as a symbol of fiscal conservatism--while leaving trillions of dollars of new pork on top of the trillions of dollars of continuing pork.
Keep in mind, too, that the federal government uses something called "baseline budgeting." Under baseline budgeting the Congressional Budget Office estimates next year's "need" for spending and then calls that the baseline. Somehow the "need" increases every single year, even after adjusting for inflation and population growth. So baseline federal spending increases every single year in real dollars per person. Obama's proposed "cuts," even if they did materialize, would simply represent reductions in the baseline projected rate of increase, not actual cuts in spending from one year to the next.
Worse still, Congress has shown repeatedly, particularly Democrat Congresses in the 1980s and early 1990s, that "spend more now, cut later" actually means "spend more now, spend even more later." Each time Democrats and mushy moderates like Bob Dole promised Reagan and the first Bush that they would "cut the budget" they actually authorized far more than even the baseline. I would expect Obama, who's first-year spending binge dwarfs anything under FDR or LBJ (or indeed the two combined) to accept let Congress get away with far more in spending increases than Reagan or even Bush did.
Still, while Obama's calls for a budget freeze probably consist of roughly have delusion and half deceit, it's good to see that despite some liberal media claims to the contrary, Scott Brown's victory does indeed signal that Americans are fed up with Obama's liberal policies of tax, spend, regulate and imprison.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/politics/26budget.html?th&emc=th
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
McConnell: Bernanke Will Win; McCain Opposes
Yesterday I learned that Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky predicted that Ben Bernanke will win Senate approval for another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve System. (Technically the position has the title, "Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System," but as that's a bureaucratic mouthful even for journalists, nobody uses the full title.) McConnell himself wouldn't say which way he would vote, and I suspect is waiting to see which way the political winds are blowing. While some critics on both right and left have criticized the job he's done harshly, many in the big business community like him--as well they might, since he spent tens of billions of dollars bailing them out of the financial mess his inflationary policies helped Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac cause.)
Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, however, came out in opposition to the reappointment of Bernanke, whose policies destroyed McCain's presidential candidacy in the weeks after the Republican presidential convention in 2008. McCain came out of the convention leading Obama, but fell behind once Bernanke's 2007-2008 inflationary bubble burst as I warned my students it would as far back as fall of 2007.
Republican Senator John Cornyn has also come out against reappointing Bernanke, and according to the news report below, "Some Republicans have imposed a procedural block on Bernanke's confirmation, forcing Senate leaders to secure a super-majority of 60 votes in the 100-member chamber to advance the nomination." Requiring 60 votes can likely means that some Republicans have initiated a filibuster against Bernanke's reappointment. Republican Senator Orin Hatch of Utah, however, supports the nomination, and while two Democrats (Boxer of California and Feingold of Wisconsin) oppose it too, I suspect that President Obama won't have too much trouble rounding up enough Democrats to combine with Hatch and other pro-Bernanke Republicans to kill the filibuster. Still, I can't recall any nominee for Fed chairman to get this sort of opposition on both sides of the aisle in the Senate.
You can read a bit more about the story at http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/bernanke-mcconnell-confirmation-vote/2010/01/24/id/347821
Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, however, came out in opposition to the reappointment of Bernanke, whose policies destroyed McCain's presidential candidacy in the weeks after the Republican presidential convention in 2008. McCain came out of the convention leading Obama, but fell behind once Bernanke's 2007-2008 inflationary bubble burst as I warned my students it would as far back as fall of 2007.
Republican Senator John Cornyn has also come out against reappointing Bernanke, and according to the news report below, "Some Republicans have imposed a procedural block on Bernanke's confirmation, forcing Senate leaders to secure a super-majority of 60 votes in the 100-member chamber to advance the nomination." Requiring 60 votes can likely means that some Republicans have initiated a filibuster against Bernanke's reappointment. Republican Senator Orin Hatch of Utah, however, supports the nomination, and while two Democrats (Boxer of California and Feingold of Wisconsin) oppose it too, I suspect that President Obama won't have too much trouble rounding up enough Democrats to combine with Hatch and other pro-Bernanke Republicans to kill the filibuster. Still, I can't recall any nominee for Fed chairman to get this sort of opposition on both sides of the aisle in the Senate.
You can read a bit more about the story at http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/bernanke-mcconnell-confirmation-vote/2010/01/24/id/347821
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Is Bernanke In Trouble?
Two Democratic US Senators, Barbara Boxer of California and Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, signaled last week that they would not support the reappointment of Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve System. While most people regard Boxer and Feingold as belonging to the left wing of the Democratic Party, Bernanke has been unpopular with the right wing of the Republican Party as well for his inflationary policies. (Apparently Boxer and Feingold want MORE inflation, if you can believe that.) With critics on both right and left then, Bernanke might well be in trouble so far as his reappointment goes. If he didn't get reappointed he apparently would be the first presidential nominee for Fed chairman whom Congress did not appoint.
With Bernanke's position as Fed chairman (but not as a Fed board member, for which his separate 14-year term doesn't expire until 2020) in at least some doubt, it's worthwhile to review how he, his successor Alan Greenspan, presidents Bush and Obama, and Congress got the economy into the worst recession since 1946 and possibly since the Great Depression itself. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I'll quote from messages I sent previously.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
"Greenspan actually started the mess by creating too much money which helped by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended up going mostly into real estate, where it gave people the erroneous impression that it represented more wealth. If the new money had pushed up consumer prices instead of real estate prices, everyone would have recognized it for the inflation that it was. Bernanke tried to stop the inevitable bust that came from Greenspan's inflationary bubble--by creating another inflationary bubble. So instead of just suffering a recession we suffered recession AND inflation, with food and especially gasoline prices spiking sharply in 2008. The spike in fuel prices savaged both the auto makers and the airlines, ensuring an even deeper recession."
Saturday, January 9, 2010
"I've been saying for maybe a year now that the economy likely would get worse before it got better. The trouble started back in the middle of the decade when the Federal Reserve System, under Alan Greenspan, caused the money supply to grow substantially faster than the real economy was growing. Much of the excess money, driven by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac housing subsidies, wound up in real estate, artificially inflating real estate prices, creating a bubble that eventually had to burst. It did burst, as you probably know, starting in 2006 with the weakest borrowers in the so-called sub-prime mortgage market. The collapse of the sub-prime market led the bubble to burst in the rest of the housing market, dragging down the economy.
"Starting in late 2007 the Federal Reserve System, then (and now) under Ben Bernanke, tried to stop what seemed like a likely recession caused by the first monetary bubble by--yes, that's right, by creating a second monetary bubble. It's a bit like trying to stop a cocaine addict from going through withdrawal by giving him more cocaine. I thought back in 2007 that we might have avoided a recession, but once Bernanke started inflating the money supply drastically faster than the real economy was growing, I predicted that we would have the very recession that he was trying to prevent.
"Bernanke (and surprisingly, Greenspan) are Keynesian economists. Keynesian theory teaches that government can wave a magic wand and create new "aggregate demand" out of thin air. (We'll have more on Keynesian economics for those of you in my macroeconomics class.) By inflating the money supply, the government can create the short-term appearance that aggregate demand has risen, but when people figure out that it's just more money chasing the same level of goods and services, the monetary bubble bursts and rather than having more aggregate demand we actually end up with less of it. So by pursuing the fatally-flawed Keynesian polices to try to prevent the recession, Bernanke actually caused (or helped cause) the very recession he wanted to prevent.
"Fiscal policy has the same effect as monetary policy: all the trillions of dollars of "TARP" and "stimulus" spending passed by the Democrats in Congress and supported by Republican President Bush and Democratic President Obama simply helps circulate all the new money that the Fed creates, making the bubble--and the bust--even bigger. You might recall those skyrocketing oil and gas (and food) prices in 2007, which hurt the auto and airline industries. The skyrocketing prices came directly from the Bernanke-Bush polices of inflate and spend. The stock market bubble of 2007, which alas for John McCain burst right after the Republican convention, also came directly as a result of the Bernanke monetary inflation. Obama and Bernanke have followed the same policies of inflation and government spending that led to the real estate and stock market bubbles, so it's not surprising that more than two years after Bernanke started them to try to stop the downward spiral caused by Greenspan's earlier inflation, we remained mired in recession.
"Bernanke has testified before Congress because he's up for re-appointment and apparently he wants the job again very much. And has he learned his lesson, the lesson for which we paid so dearly in the 1970s and early 1980s, that government can't spend and inflate the economy into real growth? No. He sees his fatally-flawed policies, on the contrary, as having saved the economy from even worse. So more than two years after he started the current mess to try to clean up the mess caused by his predecessor, I'm still saying that I wouldn't be surprised if things get even worse before they get better."
So it sounds like reappointing Ben Bernanke would be a very bad idea indeed, and that if President Obama does reappoint him we could expect a continuation of the current ruinous Keynesian inflationary policy. The catch, however, is that if President Obama doesn't reappoint Bernanke, Barbara Boxer and Russell Feingold want the president to appoint someone even WORSE.
I suspect, when push comes to shove, that Boxer and Feingold, and perhaps a couple of conservative Senate Republicans, will ask Bernanke some embarrassing questions, and he’ll pat himself on the back and claim again he saved us from another Great Depression, and that a majority in the Senate will end up approving his reappointment. Did I mention that I expect the economy to get worse before it gets better?
You can read the full story in The New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/business/economy/23fed.html?th&emc=th.
With Bernanke's position as Fed chairman (but not as a Fed board member, for which his separate 14-year term doesn't expire until 2020) in at least some doubt, it's worthwhile to review how he, his successor Alan Greenspan, presidents Bush and Obama, and Congress got the economy into the worst recession since 1946 and possibly since the Great Depression itself. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I'll quote from messages I sent previously.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
"Greenspan actually started the mess by creating too much money which helped by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended up going mostly into real estate, where it gave people the erroneous impression that it represented more wealth. If the new money had pushed up consumer prices instead of real estate prices, everyone would have recognized it for the inflation that it was. Bernanke tried to stop the inevitable bust that came from Greenspan's inflationary bubble--by creating another inflationary bubble. So instead of just suffering a recession we suffered recession AND inflation, with food and especially gasoline prices spiking sharply in 2008. The spike in fuel prices savaged both the auto makers and the airlines, ensuring an even deeper recession."
Saturday, January 9, 2010
"I've been saying for maybe a year now that the economy likely would get worse before it got better. The trouble started back in the middle of the decade when the Federal Reserve System, under Alan Greenspan, caused the money supply to grow substantially faster than the real economy was growing. Much of the excess money, driven by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac housing subsidies, wound up in real estate, artificially inflating real estate prices, creating a bubble that eventually had to burst. It did burst, as you probably know, starting in 2006 with the weakest borrowers in the so-called sub-prime mortgage market. The collapse of the sub-prime market led the bubble to burst in the rest of the housing market, dragging down the economy.
"Starting in late 2007 the Federal Reserve System, then (and now) under Ben Bernanke, tried to stop what seemed like a likely recession caused by the first monetary bubble by--yes, that's right, by creating a second monetary bubble. It's a bit like trying to stop a cocaine addict from going through withdrawal by giving him more cocaine. I thought back in 2007 that we might have avoided a recession, but once Bernanke started inflating the money supply drastically faster than the real economy was growing, I predicted that we would have the very recession that he was trying to prevent.
"Bernanke (and surprisingly, Greenspan) are Keynesian economists. Keynesian theory teaches that government can wave a magic wand and create new "aggregate demand" out of thin air. (We'll have more on Keynesian economics for those of you in my macroeconomics class.) By inflating the money supply, the government can create the short-term appearance that aggregate demand has risen, but when people figure out that it's just more money chasing the same level of goods and services, the monetary bubble bursts and rather than having more aggregate demand we actually end up with less of it. So by pursuing the fatally-flawed Keynesian polices to try to prevent the recession, Bernanke actually caused (or helped cause) the very recession he wanted to prevent.
"Fiscal policy has the same effect as monetary policy: all the trillions of dollars of "TARP" and "stimulus" spending passed by the Democrats in Congress and supported by Republican President Bush and Democratic President Obama simply helps circulate all the new money that the Fed creates, making the bubble--and the bust--even bigger. You might recall those skyrocketing oil and gas (and food) prices in 2007, which hurt the auto and airline industries. The skyrocketing prices came directly from the Bernanke-Bush polices of inflate and spend. The stock market bubble of 2007, which alas for John McCain burst right after the Republican convention, also came directly as a result of the Bernanke monetary inflation. Obama and Bernanke have followed the same policies of inflation and government spending that led to the real estate and stock market bubbles, so it's not surprising that more than two years after Bernanke started them to try to stop the downward spiral caused by Greenspan's earlier inflation, we remained mired in recession.
"Bernanke has testified before Congress because he's up for re-appointment and apparently he wants the job again very much. And has he learned his lesson, the lesson for which we paid so dearly in the 1970s and early 1980s, that government can't spend and inflate the economy into real growth? No. He sees his fatally-flawed policies, on the contrary, as having saved the economy from even worse. So more than two years after he started the current mess to try to clean up the mess caused by his predecessor, I'm still saying that I wouldn't be surprised if things get even worse before they get better."
So it sounds like reappointing Ben Bernanke would be a very bad idea indeed, and that if President Obama does reappoint him we could expect a continuation of the current ruinous Keynesian inflationary policy. The catch, however, is that if President Obama doesn't reappoint Bernanke, Barbara Boxer and Russell Feingold want the president to appoint someone even WORSE.
I suspect, when push comes to shove, that Boxer and Feingold, and perhaps a couple of conservative Senate Republicans, will ask Bernanke some embarrassing questions, and he’ll pat himself on the back and claim again he saved us from another Great Depression, and that a majority in the Senate will end up approving his reappointment. Did I mention that I expect the economy to get worse before it gets better?
You can read the full story in The New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/business/economy/23fed.html?th&emc=th.
New Jobless Claims Rise Instead of Falling
News organizations often report on the economic expectations of a "consensus" of economists. I'm never quite sure which economists the news organizations regard as forming the consensus, but the reports almost always illustrate that the consensus gets their economic forecast substantially wrong. I suspect that right now news organizations which support President Obama report on the consensus of pro-Obama economists who keep forecasting a recovery in hopes that simply by forecasting it they can make it happen, and then they can give the credit to Obama.
According to the liberal Associated Press, the consensus (in this case of "Wall Street economists" whomever they might be) expected initial claims for unemployment insurance to drop slightly. Instead of dropping, however, initial claims for unemployment insurance rose 36,000 to a seasonally-adjusted total of 482,000. Nearly half a million workers, in other words, lost their jobs last week--up 36,000 from the nearly half a million workers who lost their jobs the previous week.
It's frightening how quickly the failed Keynesian policies of the Bush and Obama administrations and the Democratic Party majority in Congress have caused the US economy to shed jobs. Instead of cutting marginal tax rates and reducing government spending to ease the deadweight losses government imposes on the economy, government has imposed Keynesian policies which have increased the deadweight losses and dragged the economy into what's now clearly the worst recession since 1946, and arguably since the Great Depression itself.
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve System, has led the charge to try to trick the economy into real growth by inflating the money supply. Increasing the money supply at a rate faster than the rate at which the economy is growing causes inflation, which is a tax on every dollar that you hold. I predicted in the fall of 2007 that if he imposed inflationary Keynesian policies to try to avert a recession that he would cause the very recession he wanted to avert, and that's exactly what happened. Because Bernanke, Obama and the Democratic Congress have continued the policies that Bernanke (and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan) and Bush started, I've predicted that things will continue to get worse before they get better.
I see no sign that Obama, congressional Democrats, or Bernanke have learned their economic lessons, so alas I have to renew my prediction that things will continue to get worse before they get better. I think right now that the best hope for the economy lies in big Republican gains in the 2010 congressional elections, forcing Congress to make cut marginal income tax rates and reign in the federal government's vast multi-trillion-dollar spending binge that started when Bush and congressional Democrats got together in late 2008 to pass the so-called TARP bailout of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the private financial intuitions that they'd subsidized into making home loans to people who couldn't afford home loans. A big Republican congressional victory too might persuade Bernanke (or whoever replaces him as he's up for reappointment) to stop inflating the money supply too. Unfortunately the officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are using some of the TARP bailout (that came from your tax dollars) to pay themselves millions of dollars in bonuses. So expect things to continue to get worse before they get better.
There's not much to it, but you can read the original Associated Press (AP) story at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/21/new-jobless-claims-rise-expected/. I'd like to point out to those who still think it's Fox News that's the biased network that here we have another example of Fox balance, as it carries the liberal AP story. Fox in fact regularly carries liberal AP stories. I'll also point out that while Fox carried the full speeches of both Republican Scott Brown, and Democrat Martha Coakley, PMSNBC and the Commie News Network carried substantially more of loser Coakley's speech than of winner Brown's. Fox too was the only network to give Hillary Clinton a fair shake against Obama during the 2008 Democrat presidential primaries.
According to the liberal Associated Press, the consensus (in this case of "Wall Street economists" whomever they might be) expected initial claims for unemployment insurance to drop slightly. Instead of dropping, however, initial claims for unemployment insurance rose 36,000 to a seasonally-adjusted total of 482,000. Nearly half a million workers, in other words, lost their jobs last week--up 36,000 from the nearly half a million workers who lost their jobs the previous week.
It's frightening how quickly the failed Keynesian policies of the Bush and Obama administrations and the Democratic Party majority in Congress have caused the US economy to shed jobs. Instead of cutting marginal tax rates and reducing government spending to ease the deadweight losses government imposes on the economy, government has imposed Keynesian policies which have increased the deadweight losses and dragged the economy into what's now clearly the worst recession since 1946, and arguably since the Great Depression itself.
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve System, has led the charge to try to trick the economy into real growth by inflating the money supply. Increasing the money supply at a rate faster than the rate at which the economy is growing causes inflation, which is a tax on every dollar that you hold. I predicted in the fall of 2007 that if he imposed inflationary Keynesian policies to try to avert a recession that he would cause the very recession he wanted to avert, and that's exactly what happened. Because Bernanke, Obama and the Democratic Congress have continued the policies that Bernanke (and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan) and Bush started, I've predicted that things will continue to get worse before they get better.
I see no sign that Obama, congressional Democrats, or Bernanke have learned their economic lessons, so alas I have to renew my prediction that things will continue to get worse before they get better. I think right now that the best hope for the economy lies in big Republican gains in the 2010 congressional elections, forcing Congress to make cut marginal income tax rates and reign in the federal government's vast multi-trillion-dollar spending binge that started when Bush and congressional Democrats got together in late 2008 to pass the so-called TARP bailout of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the private financial intuitions that they'd subsidized into making home loans to people who couldn't afford home loans. A big Republican congressional victory too might persuade Bernanke (or whoever replaces him as he's up for reappointment) to stop inflating the money supply too. Unfortunately the officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are using some of the TARP bailout (that came from your tax dollars) to pay themselves millions of dollars in bonuses. So expect things to continue to get worse before they get better.
There's not much to it, but you can read the original Associated Press (AP) story at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/21/new-jobless-claims-rise-expected/. I'd like to point out to those who still think it's Fox News that's the biased network that here we have another example of Fox balance, as it carries the liberal AP story. Fox in fact regularly carries liberal AP stories. I'll also point out that while Fox carried the full speeches of both Republican Scott Brown, and Democrat Martha Coakley, PMSNBC and the Commie News Network carried substantially more of loser Coakley's speech than of winner Brown's. Fox too was the only network to give Hillary Clinton a fair shake against Obama during the 2008 Democrat presidential primaries.
Scott Brown’s Win Called Victory for Netanyahu
In my blog (http://david-lifelibertyandproperty.blogspot.com/) last March and April I documented the 6 anti-Israel appointments that Obama made to his then-new foreign policy apparatus (and the 7th anti-Israel whose appointment we managed to kill), his funding of Hamas in the massive pork "stimulus" bill, and his agreement to do nothing to stop the mass-murdering Muslim monsters ruling Iran from developing nuclear weapons to exterminate Israel. So I thought maybe you'd like hear how nearly a year later we have a little good news for Israel: the election of Republican Scott Brown, who ran against Obama's fascist health care plan and solidly defeated liberal Democrat Martha Coakley in what's arguably the most liberal state in the republic, brings to Congress a solidly pro-Israel US Representative. I'm proud to say that I made a small contribution to Brown's campaign and persuaded a few family members and friends to do likewise.
You can read a little bit more about how Brown's triumph supports Israel again Obama's pro-terrorist policies in the NewsMax story below. Obama has been pressuring Israel to surrender to his Jew-butchering terrorist buddies, and despite liberal assurances to Jewish voters (74% of whom voted for Obama) in the last election, neither Rahm Emanuel nor Democrats in Congress have lifted a finger to protect Israel from Obama. Brown's victory over the Obama-backed candidate takes a tiny step in the direction of protecting Israel, but we need to keep watching Obama like a hawk, as he has conducted most of his anti-Israel machinations under the table. Still it's nice to have something good to report for a change.
'3. Scott Brown’s Win Called Victory for Netanyahu
'The election triumph of Republican Scott Brown in the race to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts is a “huge victory” for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.
'Netanyahu has been pressured by Obama to make concessions to the Palestinians to help restart peace talks. But with Republicans now holding 41 seats in the Senate, Obama will be more dependent “on the support of his Republican rivals, the supporters and friends of Netanyahu,” Haaretz reported.
'Netanyahu dragged out negotiations over a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, then declared that a freeze would last for 10 months and end in September — “just in time for U.S. congressional elections in which Democrats are expected to suffer heavy losses,” the newspaper observed.
'“Netanyahu understood he must withstand the pressure until his right-wing supporters recapture a position of power on Capitol Hill and work to rein in the White House’s political activities. The election in Massachusetts . . . will from this moment on be a burden for Obama.”
'With the current political atmosphere in the U.S., “Netanyahu can rely on Republican support to thwart pressure on Israel.”'
You can read the full report in Haaretz ((in English) at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1143891.html.
You can read a little bit more about how Brown's triumph supports Israel again Obama's pro-terrorist policies in the NewsMax story below. Obama has been pressuring Israel to surrender to his Jew-butchering terrorist buddies, and despite liberal assurances to Jewish voters (74% of whom voted for Obama) in the last election, neither Rahm Emanuel nor Democrats in Congress have lifted a finger to protect Israel from Obama. Brown's victory over the Obama-backed candidate takes a tiny step in the direction of protecting Israel, but we need to keep watching Obama like a hawk, as he has conducted most of his anti-Israel machinations under the table. Still it's nice to have something good to report for a change.
'3. Scott Brown’s Win Called Victory for Netanyahu
'The election triumph of Republican Scott Brown in the race to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts is a “huge victory” for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.
'Netanyahu has been pressured by Obama to make concessions to the Palestinians to help restart peace talks. But with Republicans now holding 41 seats in the Senate, Obama will be more dependent “on the support of his Republican rivals, the supporters and friends of Netanyahu,” Haaretz reported.
'Netanyahu dragged out negotiations over a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, then declared that a freeze would last for 10 months and end in September — “just in time for U.S. congressional elections in which Democrats are expected to suffer heavy losses,” the newspaper observed.
'“Netanyahu understood he must withstand the pressure until his right-wing supporters recapture a position of power on Capitol Hill and work to rein in the White House’s political activities. The election in Massachusetts . . . will from this moment on be a burden for Obama.”
'With the current political atmosphere in the U.S., “Netanyahu can rely on Republican support to thwart pressure on Israel.”'
You can read the full report in Haaretz ((in English) at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1143891.html.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Petition to Seat Scott Brown Immediately
Now that Republican Scott Brown has won the US Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for decades, Democrats in the Senate have lost their 60-seat filibuster-proof majority and so can no longer pass Obama's fascist health care plan with its mandates, taxes, fines and criminal prison sentences. Or have they?
Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid might try to delay the seating of Scott Brown until after the House-Senate Conference Committee sends back a fascist health care bill that reconciles the Senate version with the even worse House version. Reid doesn't care much that a majority of American people oppose the fascist health care bills and that even in Massachusetts, arguably the most liberal state in the republic, thousands of liberal Democrats who voted for Obama came out to vote against Obama's fascist health care bills. Reid himself now runs a serious risk of getting tossed out by the voters of Nevada in his 2010 reelection bid, so he's likely to conduct a scorched-earth policy and impose as much fascist government control on us as possible before Nevadans put an end to his legislative reign of terror and lop off his political head.
To help oppose fascist health care you can sign a petition to demand the immediate seating of Scott Brown at http://www.countryfirstpac.com/seathimnow/?initiativekey=3JTODVIZSRFF. Reid might not be listening, but some other Democrat Senators are: already last night, Virginia's US Senator, Jim Webb, a Democrat with a liberal voting record but a moderate reputation, stated that no vote should on health care reform should take place before the Senate seats Brown. Webb won his Senate seat in 2006 by only three-tenths of a percent against conservative Republican George Allen, and only because 1. The liberal media managed to turn Allen's non-racial "macaca" comment into a racial slur; 2. Voters sick of losing Bush's then-losing policies in Iraq wanted to win; 3. Enough voters were foolish enough to believe that Democrats would win rather than try to cut and run; and 4. The liberal media managed to paint Webb as a "moderate" or even "conservative" Democrat because he'd once served as an Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Reagan (but also called Reagan a fool, a fact that the liberal media loved but hid from you). Webb knows then that he's skating on thin ice. He routinely votes a liberal line, but without much media attention routinely gets away with it. On fascist health care (on which he voted to kill the Republican filibuster) though there's far too much media attention, and he knows that he's in serious danger of not getting reelected in 2012.
So while the petition probably won't affect Reid directly, it can certainly affect Democrat Senators like Webb and others from so-called "purple states" where voters could easily toss out the Democrat Senators with moderate reputations revealed to be liberal and not the moderates they pretended to be. So let's do everything possible to drive the wooden stake through the heart of Obama's fascist health care plan and sign the petition to seat Scott Brown immediately at http://www.countryfirstpac.com/seathimnow/?initiativekey=3JTODVIZSRFF. I've already signed it, and I hope you will too.
Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid might try to delay the seating of Scott Brown until after the House-Senate Conference Committee sends back a fascist health care bill that reconciles the Senate version with the even worse House version. Reid doesn't care much that a majority of American people oppose the fascist health care bills and that even in Massachusetts, arguably the most liberal state in the republic, thousands of liberal Democrats who voted for Obama came out to vote against Obama's fascist health care bills. Reid himself now runs a serious risk of getting tossed out by the voters of Nevada in his 2010 reelection bid, so he's likely to conduct a scorched-earth policy and impose as much fascist government control on us as possible before Nevadans put an end to his legislative reign of terror and lop off his political head.
To help oppose fascist health care you can sign a petition to demand the immediate seating of Scott Brown at http://www.countryfirstpac.com/seathimnow/?initiativekey=3JTODVIZSRFF. Reid might not be listening, but some other Democrat Senators are: already last night, Virginia's US Senator, Jim Webb, a Democrat with a liberal voting record but a moderate reputation, stated that no vote should on health care reform should take place before the Senate seats Brown. Webb won his Senate seat in 2006 by only three-tenths of a percent against conservative Republican George Allen, and only because 1. The liberal media managed to turn Allen's non-racial "macaca" comment into a racial slur; 2. Voters sick of losing Bush's then-losing policies in Iraq wanted to win; 3. Enough voters were foolish enough to believe that Democrats would win rather than try to cut and run; and 4. The liberal media managed to paint Webb as a "moderate" or even "conservative" Democrat because he'd once served as an Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Reagan (but also called Reagan a fool, a fact that the liberal media loved but hid from you). Webb knows then that he's skating on thin ice. He routinely votes a liberal line, but without much media attention routinely gets away with it. On fascist health care (on which he voted to kill the Republican filibuster) though there's far too much media attention, and he knows that he's in serious danger of not getting reelected in 2012.
So while the petition probably won't affect Reid directly, it can certainly affect Democrat Senators like Webb and others from so-called "purple states" where voters could easily toss out the Democrat Senators with moderate reputations revealed to be liberal and not the moderates they pretended to be. So let's do everything possible to drive the wooden stake through the heart of Obama's fascist health care plan and sign the petition to seat Scott Brown immediately at http://www.countryfirstpac.com/seathimnow/?initiativekey=3JTODVIZSRFF. I've already signed it, and I hope you will too.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
US Loses 85,000 More Jobs in December 2009
I've been saying for maybe a year now that the economy likely would get worse before it got better. The trouble started back in the middle of the decade when the Federal Reserve System, under Alan Greenspan, caused the money supply to grow substantially faster than the real economy was growing. Much of the excess money, driven by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac housing subsidies, wound up in real estate, artificially inflating real estate prices, creating a bubble that eventually had to burst. It did burst, as you probably know, starting in 2006 with the weakest borrowers in the so-called sub-prime mortgage market. The collapse of the sub-prime market led the bubble to burst in the rest of the housing market, dragging down the economy.
Starting in late 2007 the Federal Reserve System, then (and now) under Ben Bernanke, tried to stop what seemed like a likely recession caused by the first monetary bubble by--yes, that's right, by creating a second monetary bubble. It's a bit like trying to stop a cocaine addict from going through withdrawal by giving him more cocaine. I thought back in 2007 that we might have avoided a recession, but once Bernanke started inflating the money supply drastically faster than the real economy was growing, I predicted that we would have the very recession that he was trying to prevent.
Bernanke (and surprisingly, Greenspan) are Keynesian economists. Keynesian theory teaches that government can wave a magic wand and create new "aggregate demand" out of thin air. (We'll have more on Keynesian economics for those of you in my macroeconomics class.) By inflating the money supply, the government can create the short-term appearance that aggregate demand has risen, but when people figure out that it's just more money chasing the same level of goods and services, the monetary bubble bursts and rather than having more aggregate demand we actually end up with less of it. So by pursuing the fatally-flawed Keynesian polices to try to prevent the recession, Bernanke actually caused (or helped cause) the very recession he wanted to prevent.
Fiscal policy has the same effect as monetary policy: all the trillions of dollars of "TARP" and "stimulus" spending passed by the Democrats in Congress and supported by Republican President Bush and Democratic President Obama simply helps circulate all the new money that the Fed creates, making the bubble--and the bust--even bigger. You might recall those skyrocketing oil and gas (and food) prices in 2007, which hurt the auto and airline industries. The skyrocketing prices came directly from the Bernanke-Bush polices of inflate and spend. The stock market bubble of 2007, which alas for John McCain burst right after the Republican convention, also came directly as a result of the Bernanke monetary inflation. Obama and Bernanke have followed the same policies of inflation and government spending that led to the real estate and stock market bubbles, so it's not surprising that more than two years after Bernanke started them to try to stop the downward spiral caused by Greenspan's earlier inflation, we remained mired in recession.
Bernanke has testified before Congress because he's up for re-appointment and apparently he wants the job again very much. And has he learned his lesson, the lesson for which we paid so dearly in the 1970s and early 1980s, that government can't spend and inflate the economy into real growth? No. He sees his fatally-flawed policies, on the contrary, as having saved the economy from even worse. So more than two years after he started the current mess to try to clean up the mess caused by his predecessor, I'm still saying that I wouldn't be surprised if things get even worse before they get better.
You can read more about the bad employment news at
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/business/economy/09jobs.html?th&emc=th
Starting in late 2007 the Federal Reserve System, then (and now) under Ben Bernanke, tried to stop what seemed like a likely recession caused by the first monetary bubble by--yes, that's right, by creating a second monetary bubble. It's a bit like trying to stop a cocaine addict from going through withdrawal by giving him more cocaine. I thought back in 2007 that we might have avoided a recession, but once Bernanke started inflating the money supply drastically faster than the real economy was growing, I predicted that we would have the very recession that he was trying to prevent.
Bernanke (and surprisingly, Greenspan) are Keynesian economists. Keynesian theory teaches that government can wave a magic wand and create new "aggregate demand" out of thin air. (We'll have more on Keynesian economics for those of you in my macroeconomics class.) By inflating the money supply, the government can create the short-term appearance that aggregate demand has risen, but when people figure out that it's just more money chasing the same level of goods and services, the monetary bubble bursts and rather than having more aggregate demand we actually end up with less of it. So by pursuing the fatally-flawed Keynesian polices to try to prevent the recession, Bernanke actually caused (or helped cause) the very recession he wanted to prevent.
Fiscal policy has the same effect as monetary policy: all the trillions of dollars of "TARP" and "stimulus" spending passed by the Democrats in Congress and supported by Republican President Bush and Democratic President Obama simply helps circulate all the new money that the Fed creates, making the bubble--and the bust--even bigger. You might recall those skyrocketing oil and gas (and food) prices in 2007, which hurt the auto and airline industries. The skyrocketing prices came directly from the Bernanke-Bush polices of inflate and spend. The stock market bubble of 2007, which alas for John McCain burst right after the Republican convention, also came directly as a result of the Bernanke monetary inflation. Obama and Bernanke have followed the same policies of inflation and government spending that led to the real estate and stock market bubbles, so it's not surprising that more than two years after Bernanke started them to try to stop the downward spiral caused by Greenspan's earlier inflation, we remained mired in recession.
Bernanke has testified before Congress because he's up for re-appointment and apparently he wants the job again very much. And has he learned his lesson, the lesson for which we paid so dearly in the 1970s and early 1980s, that government can't spend and inflate the economy into real growth? No. He sees his fatally-flawed policies, on the contrary, as having saved the economy from even worse. So more than two years after he started the current mess to try to clean up the mess caused by his predecessor, I'm still saying that I wouldn't be surprised if things get even worse before they get better.
You can read more about the bad employment news at
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/business/economy/09jobs.html?th&emc=th
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