The New York Times reports today: Japan’s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery. This should not be news to …
From Heritage Senior Research Fellow Robert Rector’s latest analysis of Obama’s Trillion Dollar Debt Plan: The recently passed U.S. House of Representatives stimulus bill contains $816 billion in new spending and tax cuts. Of this sum, $264 billion (32 percent) is new means-tested welfare spending. This represents about $6,700 in new welfare spending for every poor person in the U.S. But this welfare spending is only the tip of the iceberg. The bill sets in motion another $523 billion in new welfare spending that is hidden by budgetary gimmicks. If …
In Britain, London’s buried under eight inches of snow, the trains don’t work, the economy’s collapsing, and a Labour government’s put the nation deeper in debt that it has been in thirty years. The Adam Smith Institute, preferring to laugh instead of cry, jokes that it looks like the 1970s all over again. And the strikes are back too. In late January, workers walked off the job at the Lindsey oil refinery. Sympathy strikes – technically illegal – followed at power stations and refineries around Britain. The cause of the …
A key argument in favor of the stimulus package is that it contains several measures that are not only good for the environment but will create new jobs and boost the economy. From the people who make wind turbines and solar panels to those who install insulation in buildings or design electric cars, the predicted number of so-called green collar jobs to be created stretches into the hundreds of thousands. But reality says otherwise. In fact, everywhere that these green measures have been tried, unemployment has increased, not decreased. The …
Trial lawyer Neil Fineman brought a class action lawsuit on behalf of customers of a department store who were asked to provide personal information to the store–usually an email address or phone number–when paying by credit card, which is against the law in California. The normal way these things work: The lawyer makes a claim for enormous damages, the targeted business settles with the lawyer for pennies on the dollar, the actual plaintiffs (i.e., those who were supposedly injured by the wrongful behavior) get maybe a few gift cards or …
Defending his Trillion Dollar Debt Plan, President Barack Obama said critics of his plan were peddling “worn out old ideas” that won’t pull the country out of the recession. But it is Obama’s policies that are worn out and old. And its not just conservatives who are saying that. Howard Dean’s campaign manager Joe Trippi Tweets: “Old thinking and why it isn’t working” and links to this Los Angeles Times op-ed by Niall Ferguson: “Keynes Can’t Help Us Now: Governments cling to the delusion that a crisis of excess debt …
Cato Institute fellow Will Wilkinson wrote earlier this week: I am slowly reaching the conclusion that the current debate over fiscal stimulus — like prior debates over monetary stimulus, and the causes of the financial crisis — has exposed the cluelessness of (many? most?) professional economists and ought to be considered an embarrassment to the profession. In the debate over economic stimulus, I hear many otherwise brilliant people making a lot of baseless conjectures about mass psychology — about consumer and creditor “fear” and “uncertainty,” and what to do about …
NAME: Rich Galen OCCUPATION: Writer, Political Pundit, Public Relations Advisor, Philosopher HOMETOWN: Alexandria, VA Rich Galen is the author of MULLINGS, a three-day-a-week column, which reaches some 400,000 people per month and is considered required reading by senior reporters and operatives on both sides of the aisle. He began writing MULLINGS in 1998 when he served as Executive Director of GOPAC. Prior to that stint, he served as press secretary to Dan Quayle, when he was a Congressman and a U.S. Senator; and to Newt Gingrich when Gingrich was House …
Another day, another poll showing public support for President Barack Obama’s Trillion Dollar Debt Plan sinking fast. Trying to turn these numbers around, Obama went on the offensive yesterday delivering some red meat to House Democrats at their posh Resort and Spa retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia. Defending his plan, Obama told Democrats: “[We] are not going to get relief by turning back to the same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin. … I found this national debt, doubled, …
Barack Obama can’t seem to win for losing when it comes to his nominees. Earlier this week, I wrote about the possible ethics violations committed by Congresswoman Hilda Solis, who has been nominated by President Obama to head the Labor Department. Not only was she the treasurer and on the board of directors of American Rights at Work, an organization lobbying Congress on bills she cosponsored, but she failed to reveal that information as required on financial disclosure forms until January 29. The nomination of Solis was supposed to be …
