Thank You, Ben Bernanke

December 17, 2012

Fed policy means an ultra-cheap mortgage now, but we may pay later with higher inflation.

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Going After ‘Idle Iron’

September 24, 2010

If you can’t keep people employed digging holes, pay them to fill the holes they have already dug. That seems to be at least part of the logic behind a new mandate from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The mandate, which the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement issued last week, requires oil and gas companies to permanently plug about 3,500 out-of-use wells in the Gulf of Mexico. …

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Obama Offers To Hold The Football

September 9, 2010

President Obama desperately wants American businesses to play ball. His latest economic game plan is aimed largely at tapping into nearly $2 trillion reportedly parked in corporate coffers. But when the president calls on executives to get in the game, they immediately picture Lucy offering to hold the football for Charlie Brown — with themselves as the round-headed fall guy. Business leaders do not trust Barack Obama. He has only …

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Time Is Running Out For Truth In Budgeting

February 2, 2010

If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. So, if your president promises to chop the deficit while increasing spending for job creation and college tuition, all without any tax increases for 98 percent of taxpayers, you might want to look at the numbers a little more closely. And if the president’s opposition says it can balance the federal budget without tax increases for anybody, history teaches …

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State Of His Union

January 27, 2010

President Obama will tell us tonight how he thinks our country is doing. We can make our own judgments about how our president is doing. Though January has been a difficult month for Obama, with the loss of the Democrats’ filibuster-proof Senate majority and the collapse of his health care initiative, his first year in office has been more of a mixed bag. True, his economic stimulus did little to …

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Something Better Than ‘Cash For Caulkers’

December 10, 2009

As we struggle to emerge from the Great Recession, the United States is relying on its charismatic president to boldly lead us back to prosperity. Would somebody please tell Barack Obama that we can’t weatherize our way to full employment? President Obama this week announced a new package of proposals to stimulate hiring. He wants yet more road- and rail-improvement spending, which will stack up in the pipeline behind the …

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Loose Change

December 8, 2009

You know that good feeling you get when you put on your warm jacket for the first time in the season, reach into the pocket and find a $20 bill you didn’t know you had? President Obama knows that feeling. Just when he was under pressure to do something — mainly, to spend money — to reduce unemployment, his administration reached into the pocket known as TARP and pulled out …

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A Stimulus By Any Other Name Is Just As Misguided

November 12, 2009

Last Friday President Obama signed into law the second round of economic stimulus legislation, which nobody in Washington is calling a second round of stimulus. Allow me, therefore, to introduce The Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009. The new law extends unemployment benefits, extends and expands the first-time homebuyer credit, and expands a provision allowing businesses to use recent losses to offset profits from earlier years for tax …

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A Clunker Of A Program

August 24, 2009

The Cash for Clunkers program, which is scheduled to expire today, is widely seen as one of the best efforts this year to stimulate the lagging economy. I disagree. While the clunkers program may have been a boon for those who sell new cars and those who can afford to buy them, it was disastrous for people who need cheap, reliable transportation. Until now, low-wage earners and young people who …

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