All Posts Tagged With: "bailout"
Will the New Bailout Save Europe?
While Greece and other European countries have been facing disaster, it is nothing like the disaster that looms because the economic piper has yet to be paid.
12May2010 | William L. Anderson | 5 comments | ContinuedThoughts on Goldman Sachs
See addendum below. Goldman Sachs is taking a beating in the press because a Senate committee and the SEC are investing whether it engaged in wrongdoing by betting against the shaky mortgages fueling the housing boom and allegedly failing to disclose that fact to buyers of its “synthetic collateralized debt obligations.” The allegation of wrongdoing [...]
27Apr2010 | Sheldon Richman | 6 comments | ContinuedGM Repays Government, in a Manner of Speaking
It’s all over the news: GM repaid its loan to the federal government — early. The Obama-engineered bankruptcy worked. Did it? The story takes on a new aspect when we realize that Neil Barofsky, Treasury Special Inspector General of TARP, told both Rep. Thomas Carper of Delaware and Neil Cavuto of Fox Business News that [...]
22Apr2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedGetting in Deeper
In what the Wall Street Journal calls “a watershed moment for government intervention in the private sector,” the Federal Reserve announced in October that it will regulate executive compensation at all banks so they will not have incentives to take on too much risk. Meanwhile, the Obama administration said it would cut by half (on [...]
5Jan2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedFrustrating Michael Moore
If Michael Moore would study a little political economy he might turn into a potent champion of individual liberty. As we see in Moore’s new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore is offended by some truly offensive things: banks engaging in wild speculation without concern for the risk, taxpayer bailouts for banks and other businesses, [...]
1Jan2010 | Sheldon Richman | 6 comments | ContinuedPolitical Bankruptcies: How Chrysler and GM Have Changed the Rules of the Game
The topic of corporate bankruptcy law scarcely titillates the imagination of ordinary citizens, even those with a deep interest in constitutional and public affairs. Harried people treat bankruptcy almost dismissively as a useful way of winding up firms that cannot keep their financial heads above water. In practice they sense rightly that the corporate bankruptcy [...]
18Nov2009 | Richard A. Epstein | 12 comments | ContinuedStealth Expansion of Government Power
The government of the United States spent the year debating major new undertakings, ranging from health care to climate change to energy development to tax reform. Yet a far more fundamental shift, in the form of a rapid and pervasive expansion of government power over the private sector of the economy, has been going on [...]
23Oct2009 | Murray Weidenbaum | 1 comment | ContinuedGovernment Motors
Government Motors by Michael Heberling Michael Heberling (mheber01@baker.edu) is president of the Baker College Center for Graduate Studies in Flint, Michigan. If Washington owns it, it just can’t keep its hands off. —Senator Lamar Alexander Twenty-five years ago President Reagan told auto workers in Orion, Michigan, “You’ve demonstrated when the chips are down, what people [...]
23Oct2009 | Michael Heberling | 6 comments | ContinuedGetting in Deeper
In what the Wall Street Journal calls "a watershed moment for government intervention in the private sector," the Federal Reserve announced yesterday it will regulate executive compensation at all banks so that they will not have incentives to take on too much risk. The term "pretence of knowledge" comes to mind.
23Oct2009 | Sheldon Richman | 19 comments | ContinuedSaving Is Killing the Economy?
In the midst of the current recession, many of the oldest fallacies in economics are making a comeback. In a column titled “Why Saving is Killing the Economy,” senior writer Chris Isidore repeats one of the oldest: that the key to economic recovery or growth is consumption and that saving retards that process. Isidore states [...]
19Aug2009 | Steven Horwitz | 6 comments | ContinuedTransforming America: The Bush-Obama Stimulus Programs
George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s “stimulus” programs will permanently transform the American economy. The market-based system that has produced unprecedented prosperity relies on profit and loss, which rewards individuals and firms that add value to the economy and penalizes those that detract value. The various stimulus programs undermine that system. My discussion will focus [...]
19Aug2009 | Randall G. Holcombe | 13 comments | ContinuedThe Fatal Conceit
The politicians are confident that they can wisely spend trillions of your dollars. The arrogance of the political class is stunning.
17Jun2009 | John Stossel | 10 comments | ContinuedHow Washington Works
On the day before Thanksgiving in 1991, the U.S. Senate voted to vastly expand the emergency powers of the Federal Reserve.Almost no one noticed.The critical language was contained in a single, somewhat inscrutable sentence, and the only public explanation was offered during a final debate that began with a reminder that senators had airplanes to [...]
1Jun2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedOught Implies Can
Too often ethical pronouncements have an air of hubris about them, as the pronouncer simply assumes we can do what he says we ought to do. By contrast, economics demands some humility. We always have to ask whether it’s humanly possible to do what the ethicists say we ought. To say we ought to do something we cannot do, in the sense that it won’t achieve our end, is to engage in a pointless exercise. If we cannot do it, to say that we ought to is to command the impossible.
24Apr2009 | Steven Horwitz | 35 comments | ContinuedTGIF: Boomerang: Government and Systemic Risk
If you’re not careful when throwing a boomerang, it could come around and hit you in the back of the neck. Politicians and bureaucrats should learn the same lesson when touting their supposedly indispensable role in safeguarding the country’s economic security. If you look closely, you find that they are the biggest source of the [...]
24Apr2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Geithner-Summers Toxic Asset Plan
Jeffrey Sachs give us another reason to be wary of the Obama administraton’s scheme to relieve banks of their toxic assets. Read it here.
10Apr2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedIs It Obama's Economy Yet?
Unemployment is up; the bailouts will be more expensive than we were led to believe; and Treasury Secretary Geithner is prepared to fire more CEOs if necessary. Only one conclusion suggests itself: Barack Obama’s plan is working. Imagine if he had done nothing at all!
6Apr2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued-
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