Free Republic

Embargoed until 3/9/09 at 1:30 p.m. ET Lessons from the Great Depression for Economic Recovery in 2009 Christina D. Romer Council of Economic Advisers To be presented at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., March 9, 2009 In the last few months, I have found myself uttering the words “worst since the Great Depression” far too often: the worst twelve month job loss since the Great Depression; the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression; the worst rise in home foreclosures since the Great Depression. In my previous life, as an economic historian at Berkeley, one of the things I studied...

06 Mar 09The New York Times doesn’t look half bad post info By hoystory E.W. Scripps just closed down the Rocky Mountain News last week. Of course, the hated News Corp. of Rupert Murdoch does a bit better. For those interested, some Rocky staffers have started their own online news site, iwantmyrocky.com. It’s reminiscent of what some former staffers of the Santa Barbara News-Press did with the SBNewsroom.com for a short time after Wendy McCaw wen’t wacko. And some journalists are doing something similar in Arizona. These sorts of enterprises can succeed — witness VoiceofSanDiego.org — but philanthropic funding sure...

By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN It's hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president's policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not just mitigate the recession and financial crisis. The illusion that Barack Obama will lead from the economic center has quickly come to an end. Instead of combining the best policies of past Democratic presidents -- John Kennedy on taxes, Bill Clinton on welfare reform and a balanced budget, for instance -- President Obama...

Voucher Subterfuge Hoping no one notices, congressional Democrats step between 1,800 D.C. children and a good education. Wednesday, February 25, 2009; A18 CONGRESSIONAL Democrats want to mandate that the District's unique school voucher program be reauthorized before more federal money can be allocated for it. It is a seemingly innocuous requirement. In truth it is an ill-disguised bid to kill a program that gives some poor parents a choice regarding where their children go to school. Many of the Democrats have never liked vouchers, and it seems they won't let fairness or the interests of low-income, minority children stand in...

Will Holder discuss these five racial issues? By Gregory Kane Examiner Columnist | 2/23/09 6:23 PM Attorney General Eric Holder, that esteemed expert on poltroonish Americans, hit the nail on the head in his speech last week about race relations. He was absolutely right. But not for the reasons he thinks. And for all his chiding that, “we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race,” there is some talk about race that Holder, in particular, and liberals, in general, don’t want to hear. In defense of Holder, his speech didn’t single out white Americans...

Will Germany deliver on the Faustian bargain that created monetary union? If Der Spiegel is correct, the German finance ministry is drafting rescue plans to prevent default on the edges of the eurozone leading to a full-blown collapse of Europe's monetary system. By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard This is an entirely appropriate policy in economic terms. One dreads to think what would happen if the world's twin reserve currency were to disintegrate at this stage. But what about the solemn pledge to voters by Germany's political elites – promiscuously given over the years – that monetary union would never leave them on...

Next Wave of Banking Crisis to come from Eastern Europe by F. William Engdahl February 18, 2009 European banks face an entirely new wave of losses in coming months not yet calculated in any government bank rescue aid to date. Unlike the losses of US banks which derive initially from their exposures to low-quality sub-prime real estate and other securitized lending, the problems of western European banks, most especially in Austria, Sweden and perhaps Switzerland arise from the massive volumes of loans they made during the 2002-2007 period of extreme low international interest rates to clients in eastern European countries....

Is It Any Wonder The Market Continues To Sink? By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, February 20, 2009 4:20 PM PT Last Oct. 13, in trying to explain why the market had sold off 30% in six weeks, we acknowledged that the freeze-up of the financial system was a big concern. But we cited three other factors as well: • The imminent election of "the most anti-capitalist politician ever nominated by a major party." • The possibility of "a filibuster-proof Congress led by politicians who are almost as liberal." • A "media establishment dedicated to the implementation of a...

The G7 Needs To Act, This Weekend, On Ireland Look at the latest Credit Default Swap spreads for European sovereigns (these are the data from yesterday’s close). As we’ve discussed here before, CDS are not a perfect measure of default probability but they tell you where things are going - and changes within an asset class (like European sovereigns) are often informative. European CDS have been relatively stable - albeit at dangerously high levels - for the past month or so. But now Ireland has moved up sharply (the green line in the chart). We’ve covered Ireland’s problems here before...

California Congresswoman discovers get-rich-quick schemeposted at 9:15 am on February 14, 2009 by Ed Morrissey Send to a Friend | Share on Facebook | printer-friendly People who wonder how elected officials come to Congress on modest means and retire wealthy should study Rep. Grace Napolitano of California. Few have found campaigning as personally enriching as Napolitano … literally. And according to the FEC, her scheme is apparently completely legal: During a decade in Congress, California Representative Grace Napolitano has pocketed more than $200,000 of political contributions by charging as much as 18 percent interest on money she loaned to her...

WASHINGTON, D.C. A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an airbase inside that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counterterrorism collaboration with the United States. The disclosure by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, marked the first time a U.S. official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land. At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise at Pakistani opposition to the ongoing campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan's...

Overview: US bond yields climb amid oversupply fears By Dave Shellock Published: February 9 2009 18:18 | Last updated: February 9 2009 18:18 US government bonds yields climbed to their highest levels for more than two months on Monday ahead of the Treasury’s record $67bn of issuance this week. Treasury bond climbed back above the 3 per cent level for the first time since late November. “If the market chokes on this supply, it might not only mean higher yields but it could start to weigh on the dollar,” suggested Steve Barrow, currency strategist at Standard Bank. “With foreign investors...

February 02, 2009 When the Old Bad Becomes the New Good By Bill Frezza What do you call it when investors are paid with cash taken in from other investors, rather than from investment returns? OK, now what do you call it when investors are paid with loans taken out from … themselves? I don’t know, but we’re going to find out. Welcome to the land of Bad Banks and the Home of Depraved. It's not quite as catchy as the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, but at least it's accurate. Is Congress really considering...

Seven steps he can take to help lead the GOP on the road to recovery. February 1, 2009 - by Jennifer Rubin Support Pajamas Media; Visit Our Advertisers After six exciting rounds of balloting, Michael Steele was elected chairman of the RNC. While some rock-ribbed conservatives may have had other dogs in the fight, the general consensus among both conservative and moderate Republicans alike is that the Republicans chose wisely and dodged far worse alternatives. But now what? Republicans, even with a telegenic chairman, are still in the minority and have serious work to do in repairing the dilapidated party...

Compound Errors by J. R. Nyquist Weekly Column Published: 01.30.2009Print It is alleged that when Albert Einstein was asked to name the greatest invention in human history, he gave the following reply: “Compound interest.” On page 1,664 of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto’s masterwork, The Mind and Society, we read: “A centime placed on compound interest at the rate of 4 per cent at the time of the birth of Christ would yield by the year 1900 a fabulous amount in francs….” The exact number would be 23,085 followed by 26 zeros. In Pareto’s day the planet earth would have to...

Notations Does Stimulus Stimulate? Bruce Bartlett, 01.23.09, 12:01 AM EST The role of government in economic recovery. In a few weeks, Congress will likely enact the largest fiscal stimulus legislation in history. Surprisingly, the whole idea of such a stimulus is much more controversial among A-list economists than I would have expected, given the depth and breadth of the economic malaise. Although the debate is rather technical, it's important to try to understand it because much is at stake. Eighty years ago, the conventional view among economists was that government had nothing to do with business cycles--it neither caused them...

[Print] [Email] The question Obama doesn't want you to ask By Timothy P. Carney Examiner Columnist | 1/23/09 5:39 AM “Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions—who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans,” President Barack Obama said in his inaugural address on Tuesday. For these non-believers, the president had scorn: “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them—that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or...

Obama will need to ready himself for demands from friends and threats from enemies. China released a report, timed to coincide with the new President taking office, that ‘advises’ the US that weapon sales to Taiwan harm the relationship between China and the US. Given that China is sitting on over a $ trillion of US Treasury Bonds (more than the report below cites according to economists in the know), you can be sure that Washington takes notes of disapproval from China very seriously. The following report is from Associated Press: China made a rare appeal for cooperation between its...

10 Questions about the Economic Stimulus Bill [Brian Riedl] The $800 billion economic "stimulus" bill may be more appropriately called the "Obama debt plan." It will, after all, dump $6,700 per household of new debt into the laps of our children and grandchildren. Whether it will actually stimulate the economy is another matter. So perhaps politicians can first answer a few questions from the back of the classroom: 1) President-elect Obama claims that spending approximately $800 billion will create 3.675 million new jobs. That comes to $217,000 per job. This doesn't sound like a very good value, especially with the...

Presidential Candidate Barack Obama Backs Federal Decriminalization -- “I think the war on drugs has been a failure, and I think we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws.” Share This Page del.icio.us | digg | Stumble Upon | Facebook January 31, 2008 - Washington, DC, USA Washington, DC: A newly discovered video of a 2004 appearance at Northwestern University by Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, in which he calls for the federal decriminalization of marijuana, was posted online today by The Washington Times. In that appearance, Obama states, "I think the war on drugs has been a...