“We are the United States of America, we are not Sweden.” U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, March 23, 2009. “The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories.” Swedish enterprise minister Maud Olofsson, March 22, 2009. “Today, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and National Economic Council (NEC) Director Larry Summers …
In February, groups representing the auto parts suppliers asked for a $25.5 billion bailout from the Treasury. Yesterday, the Treasury announced parts suppliers will receive about one fifth of that through Troubled Asset Relief Funds: The Treasury Department announced a $5 billion program to aid struggling auto-parts suppliers, raising the …
As President Obama and Congress are starting to learn, it isn’t easy running American businesses from Washington. This week AIG threw bonuses in the faces of their new CEO’s on Capitol Hill, after Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) specifically legislated that they could do just that. Senator Dodd is apparently wishing …
Dangerous currents advocating protectionism are alive and well on both sides of the Atlantic. A “Buy American” clause in the latest U.S. stimulus package may have been eased to avoid violation of bilateral trade agreements, but its protectionist intentions remain. But the European Union is in no position to lecture …
“This is a presidency on steroids.” That’s not an assessment from a libertarian shocked by President Barack Obama’s first month in office. That is the first sentence of Eugene Robinson‘s latest column, which goes on to list many of the ways that the Obama Administration is “managing the big chunks …
Few economists have a good word for the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930, which provoked a worldwide round of competitive protectionism that reduced trade, deepened and prolonged the Great Depression, and aided the rise of the Nazi Party. Out of that disaster came a bipartisan consensus: the U.S., for decades a …
