Free Republic

This weekends SNL poke at Pres. Obama actually had me laughing out loud for the first time in a long time. Basically, Pres. Obama starts off like he would normally until Pres. Hu starts to get upset and calls Obama out for cash for clunkers and the amount of debt China owns. President Hu asks Obama at one point to kiss him. Obama asks why. Hu says because he likes to be kissed when someone's trying to make the sex with him. Here's the clip

Satan, the great motivator The curious economic effects of religion By Michael Fitzgerald  |  November 15, 2009What makes economies grow? It’s a question that has occupied thinkers for centuries. Most of us would tick off things like education levels, openness to trade, natural resources, and political systems.Here’s one you might not have considered: hell. A pair of Harvard researchers recently examined 40 years of data from dozens of countries, trying to sort out the economic impact of religious beliefs or practices. They found that religion has a measurable effect on developing economies - and the most powerful influence relates to...

Communist China, 1995, The Dawn Of Capitalism Economics / Economic Theory Nov 19, 2009 - 07:47 AM By: Steve Selengut The Hong Kong based guide talked about the free enterprise zones, building projects, golf courses, and roads with a chest full of pride and visible excitement. Capitalism was everywhere along the tour route, and judging from the advertisements on billboards and posters, the world was coming to China! But although the government was embracing "for-profit" business for the first time, the train-ride out of the country evidenced the abject poverty of what would become a willing and able workforce. Another...

My job was SAVED today. I billed a client for work I DID! I hope and know that many of you Saved yours today also.

Anyone trying to figure out what in the world is going on in today’s economy might remember Agatha Christie’s classic, Murder on the Orient Express. When master sleuth Hercule Poirot boarded that train, he’d no idea that before the night ended he’d face the most perplexing murder case ever. A carful of passengers, all of whom had motive and opportunity, maneuvered around so skillfully that even Christie’s brilliant Belgian couldn’t figure out whodunit. The best he could do was point a perfectly manicured finger at the most likely culprits — in the end, everybody walked away, except the luckless victim....

By: LarryAs economists from across the globe are grappling to find a new name for Barack Obama's economic policies, I have beat them to the punch. Cluelessian is Obama's new model for future economic (failures). Thus, in an effort to ensure that others do not slip and fall down into the same bottomless pit, let me help you define the difference between Free Market Economics and Cluelessian Economics.The two most basic concepts in free market economic theory are the laws of supply and demand. Under the law of supply as prices increase the quantity of goods and services increases, as...

Let's look at the Recovery Act, a.k.a. the stimulus pork bill. Here are some statements from our delusional president [h/t Randall Hoven at American Thinker and The Hill]: If we don’t act swiftly and boldly, we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment. —January 2009. ... A full accounting of jobs created or saved thus far... yields estimates ranging from around 600,000 to 1.5 million... we are solidly on track to meet our goal of 3.5 million jobs saved or created by the end of next year. — October 2009. Increasing job growth is...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Chief executives in 35 of the top Fortune 500 companies were overpaid by about 129 times their "ideal salaries" in 2008, according to a new type of theoretical analysis proposed by a Purdue University researcher to determine fair CEO compensation. "One of the most pressing economic and corporate governance issues of the day is how to determine fair pay packages for CEOs," said Venkat Venkatasubramanian, a professor of chemical engineering. "The proposed theory allows us to compute what the fair pay is for a CEO, including bonuses and stock options, under ideal conditions." The ratio of...

The State Of The American Economy In One Chart Economics / US Debt Nov 12, 2009 - 01:31 PM By: Ceri_Shepherd They say a picture paints a thousand words. Well this picture paints very clearly the American Economy for the last 30 years. Ever decreasing Bond Yields which = EVER EXPANDING DEBT. The chart below shows that interest rates have been decreasing by approximately 0.5% every 2 years. Put simply, As the price of debt becomes cheaper more is created and then spent, and that effectively is the economy. In 1981 the 30 year bond which is a good approximation...

America’s mainstream religious denominations used to teach the faithful that they would be rewarded in the afterlife. But over the past generation, a different strain of Christian faith has proliferated—one that promises to make believers rich in the here and now. Known as the prosperity gospel, and claiming tens of millions of adherents, it fosters risk-taking and intense material optimism. It pumped air into the housing bubble. And one year into the worst downturn since the Depression, it’s still going strong. Like the ambitions of many immigrants who attend services there, Casa del Padre’s success can be measured by upgrades...

Has the AIG CEO Robert Benmosche, just three months into the job, had enough? The Wall Street Journal scoops the field this morning with news from inside the AIG board room that Benmosche has informed the board "he is considering stepping down as chief executive of the government-controlled insurer." Benmosche dropped the bomb last week, saying he was "done." According to the Journal's sources, Benmosche "is chafing under constraints imposed by AIG's government overseers, particularly a recent compensation review by the Obama administration's pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg." He's not quite out the door yet, though. He agreed to think over...

AMERICAN.COM A Magazine of Ideas Not Your Grandfather's (or Keynes’s) Economy By Arnold KlingSaturday, November 7, 2009 Filed under: Economic Policy, Boardroom, Numbers The complexity of today's economy means that old-fashioned Keynesian policies will not restore full employment. We are currently hearing a lot about Keynesian economics. A number of economists and pundits suggest that his theories, developed in the 1930s, provide us with the best guide to economic policy today.This back-to-Keynes movement ignores the dramatic restructuring of our economy over the past 50 years.Consider three changes.1. The decline in manufacturing production workers as a percent of employment.2. The increase...

Ludwig von Mises was snubbed by economists world-wide as he warned of a credit crisis in the 1920s. We ignore the great Austrian at our peril today. Mises's ideas on business cycles were spelled out in his 1912 tome "Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel" ("The Theory of Money and Credit"). Not surprisingly few people noticed, as it was published only in German and wasn't exactly a beach read at that. Taking his cue from David Hume and David Ricardo, Mises explained how the banking system was endowed with the singular ability to expand credit and with it the money...

Please FReep this poll: Do you believe the economy will get better in 2010? Yes, the economy it turning around and things look positive. Yes, things can't possibly get any worse. No, the economy will not truly recover until unemployment begins to drop. No, things will get worse before they get better. The economy will stay the same. No Opinion

In January 2009, as Obama unveiled his plans for economic recovery, he assured the Congress and the American people that, if we would just agree to set up a $787 billion slush fund for him to play with, he would fix our sick economy and that the unemployment rate would never exceed 8 percent. With a straight face, and with words that came straight from his teleprompter, he vowed that he would accomplish something that no man, and no government, has ever accomplished before: he would halt the downward spiral of the economy and stimulate economic growth, and he would...

We all know the Rap on capitalism: That it is fundamentally greedy and immoral. That it enables the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor. That open markets are Darwinian places where the most ruthless unfairly crush smaller competitors and where the cost of vital products and services like health care and energy are almost beyond the reach of those who need them. Capitalism has also been blamed for a range of social ills--from air pollution to obesity. Not only have educated, successful people bought into capitalism's bad Rap, but the Rap is taught in our schools....

Israel has thrived during the global collapse—thanks to an entrepreneurial culture built on compulsory military service. Dan Senor and Saul Singer on why U.S. companies should take notes. For all the press coverage of the Middle East, there is one side of Israel that gets scant attention: the country’s economy has the highest concentration of innovation and entrepreneurialism in the world today. For years, multinational technology companies and global investors have been beating a path to Israel. Even in 2008—a year of global economic turmoil—per capita venture investments in Israel were 2.5 times greater than in the United States, more...

The Political Economy Postponing Providence Economics / Economic Stimulus Nov 02, 2009 - 12:29 PM By: Captain_Hook That’s the game – postponing providence – putting off the inevitable until the next guy’s shift. This is the cache of our political economy, as with all other comparables before it, now maturing into rot. All dominant cultures recede this way of course, dying from within as it were. And the American Empire is no different, with its hollowed out economy, markets, and values. Despite the obvious signs of this decay, most people continue to deny and ignore the inevitable, however acceleration of...

The first edition of this book appeared in 1946. It is now, as I write this, thirty-two years later. How much of the lesson expounded in the previous pages has been learned in this period? If we are referring to the politicians—to all those responsible for formulating and imposing government policies—practically none of it has been learned. On the contrary, the policies analyzed in the preceding chapters are far more deeply established and widespread, not only in the United States, but in practically every country in the world, than they were when this book first appeared. We may take, as...

Economics,, as we have now seen again and again, is a science of recognizing secondary consequences. It is also a science of seeing general consequences. It is the science of tracing the effects of some proposed or existing policy not only on some special interest in the short run, but on the general interest in the long run.******But in the course of specific illustration we have found hints of other general lessons; and we should do well to state these lessons to ourselves more clearly. In seeing that economics is a science of tracing consequences, we must have become aware...

There's No Such Think as a Jobless Recovery http://www.wiseandfrugalgovernment.blogspot.com I have been watching the U.S. markets and the economy for twenty-five years. And I can tell you with confidence: There is no such thing as a recovery when unemployment is rising. I can also tell you that over those twenty-five years (during which I was managing billions of dollars) never have I seen a media so determined to call an end to a recession only to declare with the next bit of economic news that the so and so indicator "unexpectedly" came in below expectations... Unexpected? Only to the wishing...

Reach in your wallet, and pull out a dollar bill. Look at it for a moment. Now ask yourself, “What is this worth?” This isn’t a trick question. Don’t think about anything but that dollar in your hands. Don’t think about a soft drink. Don’t think about a bag of chips, or a handful of screws at the hardware store. Think about that dollar in your hands without thinking about what it can buy. Can you do that? It’s pretty difficult, isn’t it? That’s because a dollar, qua a dollar, isn’t worth anything more than the paper and ink on...

Luigi ZingalesAn Economic Agenda for the GOP Republicans need to be pro-market, not pro-business. Autumn 2009 For 30 years, the Republican Party dominated American political life, winning five of the seven presidential elections before 2008. But the GOP has taken its lumps of late, culminating in its loss of Congress in 2006 and the White House last November. As the party suffers not just from a leadership vacuum but from considerable internal division, its future direction is unclear. This much, however, is certain: as America struggles to emerge from a financial crisis, any renewal of the Right will require...

Green protectionism is already a growth business. When the European Union considered restricting entry of biofuels based on a range of environmental standards, eight developing countries on three continents threatened legal action in the fall of 2008. In fact, there is a long tradition of such disputes (dolphin-safe tuna, anyone?), but the business community is worried that green protectionism could be a defining feature of international markets in the decades ahead. And of course, the prospect of green trade wars or even just opportunistic fiddling with trade laws to "protect" local jobs suggests a period of related international tensions, especially...

IF we need to cool the Earth in a hurry, what is the best way to do it? Reducing carbon emissions is not a great way of cooling the Earth in a hurry for two key reasons: (1) even if we cut carbon emissions today, the Earth will continue warming for decades; and (2) reducing carbon emissions is expensive, with a price tag of at least $1 trillion per year. (There is a third problem with reducing carbon emissions, which is that it requires worldwide behavioral change, which will be hard to achieve. But even beyond that, carbon mitigation is...

From time immemorial proverbial wisdom has taught the virtues of saving, and warned against the consequences of prodigality and waste. This proverbial wisdom has reflected the common ethical as well as the merely prudential judgments of mankind. But there have always been squanderers, and there have apparently always been theorists to rationalize their squandering. The classical economists, refuting the fallacies of their own day, showed that the saving policy that was in the best interests of the individual was also in the best interests of the nation. They showed that the rational saver, in making provision for his future, was...

AMERICAN.COM A Magazine of Ideas Greed Is Not Good, and It’s Not Capitalism By Jay W. RichardsThursday, October 15, 2009 Filed under: Big Ideas, Culture, Economic Policy, Public Square Capitalism doesn’t need greed. What capitalism does need is human creativity and initiative. After months of hearing the media and pundits pronounce the untimely death of capitalism, it did my heart good to see a recent Newsweek cover story challenge the familiar trope. The author, Fareed Zakaria, noted that this pessimistic pronouncement gets air time in the wake of every financial downturn. But in reality, capitalism, over the long haul, has...

Economics for Catholics… Exposing the Dangerous Premises of Economic Liberals Brian McCall REMNANT COLUMNIST, Oklahoma (Posted 10/19/09 www.RemnantNewspaper.com) The central assumption underlying all of Liberal Economic Thought (in contrast to Catholic Economic Thought) is greed. Now Economic Liberals (“E Libs”) do not always use that word; they may call it “profit motive” or “self-interest” or “wealth maximization,” but all of these terms boil down to the same thing.  More clever E Libs will mask this principle by saying that it is only valid within the economic “framework.” Once wealth is generated morality may have something to say about what...

He does mention Weimar Inflation, the dollar, Asia, and the non-stimulating "stimulus" package. Click on the link for the video.

We'll have to wait and see if the so-called outside-the-box thinking once praised by some of liberal media elites will get the same reception with this latest edition. In 2005, University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner released the book "Freakonomics" that provided cover for the pro-abortion movement in America by suggesting legalized abortion lowered crime and had a positive impact on society. However, in their new book "SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance," Levitt and Dubner blame what is generally accepted to be a liberal...

understanding, we shall go over again some of the ground already covered in chapter fifteen on the price system, but we shall view the subject from a different angle. Profits actually do not bulk large in our total economy. The net income of incorporated business in the fifteen years from 1929 to 1943, to take some illustrative figures, averaged less than percent of the total national income. Corporate profits after taxes in the five years from 1956 to 1960 averaged less than 6 percent of the national income. Corporate profits after taxes in the five years 1971 through 1977 also...

Thinking has become so emotional and so politically biased on the subject of wages that in most discussions of them the plainest principles are ignored. People who would be among the first to deny that prosperity could be brought about by artificially boosting prices, people who would be among the first to point out that minimum price laws might be most harmful to the very industries they were designed to help, will nevertheless advocate minimum wage laws, and denounce opponents of them, without misgivings. Yet it ought to be clear that a minimum wage law is, at best, a limited...

The headlines that ran side by side on the front page of Saturday’s New York Times summed up, inadvertently, the terrible fix that we’ve allowed our country to fall into. The lead headline, in the upper right-hand corner, said: “U.S. Deficit Rises to $1.4 Trillion; Biggest Since ’45.” The headline next to it said: “Bailout Helps Revive Banks, And Bonuses.” We’ve spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government — while giving the banks...

Once in a while, a book comes along that shakes so many of your core beliefs that you are left questioning either the integrity of what you have read or your own knowledge. In this particular case, I had the privilege of a sneak peek at The Return of the Great Depression by Vox Day and with most certainly can state, it is the latter. RGD as it shall be referred to from now on, as can be inferred from its title makes a very compelling case as to the state of our economy and where this nation is potentially...

A Great Chinese Thriller…Pass!Posted By Michael Mandaville On October 18, 2009 @ 5:48 pm In Politics | 11 Comments I thought about writing a script about China – thriller, action, intrigue.  The last film that dealt with China would be “Red Corner” which a Wikipedia review said, “…more the movie’s subtext swallows its story, until all that is left is Gere’s superior virtue, intermixed with his superior virility — both of which are greatly appreciated by the evidently under-serviced Chinese female population…”  The film was banned in China.  But it’s fertile ground for material.  Imagine the conversation with a Studio...

A very good friend of mine has lately taken me to task for my opposition to a single payer, universal medical coverage. She argues that she is one of those the president speaks of when describing Americans that do not have “affordable” health insurance. She has a pre-existing condition and coverage is expensive. When I point out that while the cost of her coverage may be high it is certainly affordable (in that she is managing to pay for it) she rejects the argument on the basis that the high cost eats into other equally important expenses. When pressed to...

Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman - of Princeton and the New York Times - wrote a noteworthy piece this week: "Misguided Monetary Mentalities", published in the New York Times on October 12. "One lesson from the Great Depression is that you should never underestimate the destructive power of bad ideas. And some of the bad ideas that helped cause the Depression have, alas, proved all too durable: in modified form, they continue to influence economic debate today. What ideas am I talking about? The economic historian Peter Temin has argued that a key cause of the Depression was what he...

Recession Over But British Economy Will 'Bump Along The Bottom' For 18 MonthsThe recession is now over but Britain's economy will manage little more than to "bump along the bottom" for the next 18 months, according to one of the country's leading forecasters. By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor Published: 8:54PM BST 18 Oct 2009 The economy will grow by a meagre 1pc next year following an almost unprecedented 4.5pc collapse in economic output in 2009, the Ernst & Young Item Club has said. The prediction comes only days ahead of the release of official gross domestic product figures expected to...

Government control of the rents of houses and apartments is a special form of price control. Most of its consequences are substantially the same as those of price control in general, but a few call for special consideration. Rent controls are sometimes imposed as a part of general price controls, but more often they are decreed by a special law. A frequent occasion is the beginning of a war. An army post is set up in a small town; rooming houses increase rents for rooms; owners of apartments and houses increase their rents. This leads to public indignation. Or houses...

Japan A Deflation Death? - Nope Stagflation Oct 17, 2009 - 12:29 PM By: Phill_Tomlinson Gordon Brown this week announced what can only be described as a car boot sale of UK PLC's bric-a-brac goods, an attempt to sooth markets regarding the budget deficit. Many of the items have been for sale before, but I'm sure the government in their current desperation will be willing to accept lower offers this time around. I agree with privatisation in getting the state out of our lives, but a student loan book and a crossing in Kent are hardly big ticket items, never...

“Dissent is patriotic” was the battle cry of progressives during the last administration. “Dissenters are racists” is their new motto. Because I love my country and vehemently disagree with the current policies does that make me a racist?!?!? I dare any of these progressives to compare their views, their records on race, with mine proud resume on that issue. We’ll see who is truly more progressive… the bigots who tolerate no dissent or this immigrant (from Uruguay, South America), politically conservative, orthodox Jew from Brooklyn, NY, who loves the USA and what it represents? John Adams once said: “There are...

Robert Barro, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, criticizes the recently passed federal stimulus package as a "terrible piece of legislation," and calls for permanent changes to the tax structure to spur economic growth. In a discussion with Tax Foundation Vice President for Economic Policy Robert Carroll in this week's edition of the Tax Policy Podcast, Barro strongly disapproves of both the expenditure and tax provisions within the stimulus legislation. "What they call tax reductions in this bill are really transfer payments, particularly redistribution of income from the rich to the poor," says Barro. "I don't think it's really attractive...

Most people have a general idea of the events that led to the current recession. Lax lending standards contributed to a housing bubble that peaked in mid-2006. As housing prices began declining, more and more mortgages were defaulted on, and bank balance sheets deteriorated rapidly. In September 2008, Lehman Brothers failed, and the financial crisis seemed to become much worse. A mild recession turned into one of the most severe since the 1930s. But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? Is it possible that we have fundamentally misdiagnosed the crisis? Some basic insights from modern macroeconomics suggest a very...

Nobel economists’ work on common ownership shows that markets, not distant governments, manage things better. For the first time, the Nobel economics prize has gone to a woman, Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University. She shares it with colleague Oliver Williamson. One of the things the pair studied, for example, was the case of the Maine lobster fishing families, who brought in their own system of tradeable quotas. It meant that market principles were brought to bear on the exploitation – and protection – of this natural resource. Iceland’s trawler industry also derived great benefit from the system of individual transferable...

Reason Foundation http://reason.org http://reason.org/news/show/three-guiding-principles-for-r Three Guiding Principles for Reforming Wall Street Cure the problems, don't create new ones Anthony Randazzo October 12, 2009 In the wake of the massive bank bailouts, nearly everyone is calling for some kind of financial regulatory system overhaul. The Obama administration has outlined what it would like to see and Congress is currently holding hearings on how to best reform the regulatory structure. But the lobbying began long ago. Big banks are squaring off against smaller banks in the debate over consolidating national banking regulatory powers. All banks are lining up against financial institutions like...

It is on the fallacy of isolation, at bottom, that the “productionfor-use-and-not-for-profit” school is based, with its attack on the allegedly vicious “price system.” The problem of production, say the adherents of this school, is solved. (This resounding error, as we shall see, is also the starting point of most currency cranks and share-the-wealth charlatans.) The scientists, the efficiency experts, the engineers, the technicians, have solved it. They could turn out almost anything you cared to mention in huge and practically unlimited amounts. But, alas, the world is not ruled by the engineers, thinking only of production, but by the...

by Alan Greenspan [written in 1966] This article originally appeared in a newsletter: The Objectivist published in 1966 and was reprinted in Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense - perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire - that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other. In order to understand the source of their antagonism, it is necessary first to...

While the debates rage on with health care, cap-and-trade, and the overall role of government in the average American’s life, economic societal terms like “capitalism,” “socialism,” and “communism” often get careless bandied. Many on the right feel like America is on the move towards “socialism” and many on the left believe that “capitalism” is the root of all social ills. The only way to set the record straight is to understand the precise definitions of these terms and how are they being used in today’s rhetoric. Capitalism has been blamed for the Great Depression and the current financial crisis. It...

press boxThe FTC's Mad Power Grab The commission's preposterous new endorsement guidelines.By Jack ShaferPosted Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2009, at 6:29 PM ET If you're a blogger and you write about goods or services—and what blogger doesn't write about books, movies, music, theater, restaurants, home theaters, laptops, manicures, clothing, tutoring, bicycles, cars, boats, cameras, strollers, watches, lawn care, pharmaceuticals, gourmet food, maid service, hair care, concerts, banking, shipping, or septic tank service from time to time?—then you've just made yourself vulnerable to an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission.In new guidelines (PDF) released Oct. 5, the FTC put bloggers on notice...

THE LOBBIES OF Congress are crowded with representatives of the X industry. The X industry is sick. The X industry is dying. It must be saved. It can be saved only by a tariff, by higher prices, or by a subsidy. If it is allowed to die, workers will be thrown on the streets. Their landlords, grocers, butchers, clothing stores and local motion pictures will lose business, and depression will spread in ever-widening circles. But if the X industry, by prompt action of Congress, is saved—ah then! It will buy equipment from other industries; more men will be employed; they...