Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, March 9, 2010


The show must go on...
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8 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100309/tpl-environment-us-climate-california-20b2d2f.html

California is likely to see modest job losses in the near term from its aggressive climate change policy due to higher energy costs and other factors, the state's independent Legislative Analyst's Office said.

(*THROWING MY HANDS UP IN THE AIR*)

* YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS SH... er... STUFF UP!

March 9, 2010 at 5:52 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=525872

Another bank failure is nothing new these days — except if the bank is run by the family of a U.S. Senate candidate who profited handsomely and lent millions to a convicted felon. But then, that's the Chicago way.

'I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street," President Obama said in a recent interview with "60 Minutes." Speaking to those bankers, he said: "You guys are drawing down 10, 20 million dollar bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it's gone through in — in decades, and you guys caused the problem."

Not all those fat cats, apparently, are on Wall Street. Some are on Main Street in the president's hometown. One of those "guys" recently won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Obama.

He's an Obama protege and fundraiser. His name is Alexi Giannoulias, and his family runs the Broadway Bank in Chicago, a financially troubled institution that the feds appear ready to seize and shut down. He is running for U.S. Senate from Illinois.

Last Friday, Crain's Chicago Business reported that the Giannoulias family stood to collect more than $10 million in federal tax refunds even if the bank does fail. The expected tax refund comes on top of $70 million in dividends the family, including Giannoulias himself, took in 2007 and 2008.

Giannoulias was senior lender at Broadway between 2002 and 2006...One of the people Giannoulias [loaned bank money to] was Michael "Jaws" Giorango, a Chicagoan with multiple convictions for bookmaking and promoting prostitution. As Ed Morrissey reported when he ran his Captain's Quarters blog, Giannoulias approved some $11.8 million in loans to Giorango and associates after Giorango was convicted in 2004 for running a prostitution ring.

In answering questions about Broadway's loans to Giorango during a 70-minute meeting with the Tribune editorial board, Giannoulias, the newspaper reported, "at first contended he was unaware of Giorango's criminal history. That contradicted Giannoulias' comments in 2006 to the Tribune, in which he acknowledged knowing Giorango had a criminal background."

The White House and most of the national media have oddly ignored the Giannoulias story, which one would think would matter as much as the AIG bonuses. If Giannoulias had been a Republican protege of George W. Bush, maybe coverage would be different. Maybe it's because he comes out of the same corrupt Illinois system that produced such stellar leaders as the impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich, accused of trying to sell Obama's former seat, and the human cipher who got it, Roland Burris. Dog bites man is not news.

March 9, 2010 at 7:16 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=525717

Abraham Lincoln once asked an audience how many legs a dog has, if you called the tail a leg? When the audience said "five," Lincoln corrected them, saying that the answer was four. "The fact that you call a tail a leg does not make it a leg."

That same principle applies today. The fact that politicians call something a "stimulus" does not make it a stimulus. The fact that they call something a "jobs bill" does not mean there will be more jobs.

What have been the actual consequences of all the hundreds of billions of dollars that the government has spent?

The stimulus spending started back in 2008, during the Bush administration, and has continued under the Obama administration, so it has had plenty of time to show what it can do.

After the Bush administration's stimulus spending in 2008, business spending on equipment and software fell — not rose — by 28%. Spending on durable goods fell 22%.

What about the banks? Four months after the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP) poured billions of dollars into the banks, the biggest recipients of that money made 23% fewer loans than before. A year later, the credit extended by American banks as a whole was down — not up — by more than $20 billion.

Spending in general was down. The velocity of circulation of money fell faster than it had in half a century. Just two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported, "U.S. banks posted last year their sharpest decline in lending since 1942."

You can call it a stimulus, if you want to, just as you can call a tail a leg. But the actual effect of what is called a "stimulus" has been more like that of a sedative.

President Obama keeps telling us that he is "creating jobs." But more and more Americans have no jobs. The unemployment rate has declined slightly, but only because many people have stopped looking for jobs. You are counted as unemployed only if you are still looking for a job. If all the unemployed people were to decide that it is hopeless and stop looking for work, the unemployment statistics would drop like a rock. But that would hardly be a solution.

(*SNORT*)

None of this is new. What is going on is what went on during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Anti-business rhetoric and anti-business policies did not create business confidence then, any more than they do now. Economists have estimated that the New Deal prolonged the Depression by several years.

Obama today, like FDR in the 1930s, cannot leave the economy alone. Both have felt a need to come up with one bright idea after another, to "do something." The theory is that, if one thing doesn't work, it is just a matter of trying another. But in an atmosphere where nobody knows what the federal government is going to come up with next, people tend to hang on to their money until they have some idea of what the rules of the game are going to be.

March 9, 2010 at 7:16 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=525718

Texas has been teaching some lessons to which the rest of the nation should pay heed.

Contrast Texas, the nation's second most populous state, with the most populous, California. Both were once Mexican territory, secured for the United States in the 1840s. Both have grown prodigiously over the past half-century. Both have populations that today are about one-third Hispanic. But they differ vividly in public policy and in their economic progress — or lack of it — over the last decade.

California has gone in for big government in a big way. Democrats hold large margins in the legislature largely because affluent voters in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area favor their liberal positions on cultural issues. Those Democratic majorities have obediently done the bidding of public employee unions to the point that state government faces huge budget deficits. [Large numbers of] Californians have responded by leaving the state. From 2000 to 2009, the Census Bureau estimates, there has been a domestic outflow of 1,509,000 people from California — almost as many as the number of immigrants coming in.

Texas is a different story. Texas has low taxes — and no state income taxes — and a much smaller government. Its legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, compared with California's year-round legislature. Its fiscal condition is sound. Public employee unions are weak or nonexistent. [Still,] Texas seems to be delivering superior services. Its teachers are paid less than California's. But its test scores — and with a demographically similar school population — are higher. California's once fabled freeways are crumbling and crowded. Texas has built gleaming new highways in metro Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth. Texas' economy has been booming. Unemployment rates have been below the national average for more than a decade, as companies small and large generate new jobs.

Americans have been voting for Texas with their feet. From 2000 to 2009, some 848,000 people moved from other parts of the United States to Texas, about the same number as moved in from abroad. That inflow has continued in 2008-09, in which 143,000 Americans moved into Texas, more than double the number in any other state, at the same time as 98,000 were moving out of California.

In the two decades after World War II, California, with its pleasant weather, was the Golden State, a promised land for most Americans, while Texas seemed a provincial rural backwater. Many saw postwar California's expansion of universities, freeways and water systems as a model for the nation. Few experts praised Texas' low-tax, low-services government. Now it is California's ruinously expensive and increasingly incompetent government that seems dysfunctional, while Texas' approach has generated more creativity and opportunity.

[Meanwhile...] Democrats in Washington are still trying to impose policies like those that have ravaged California rather than those which have proved so successful in Texas.

(*SIGH*)

March 9, 2010 at 7:17 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=525746

After crunching the numbers, the Heritage Foundation found the economy actually lost fewer jobs — 48 million — during the first six months of this recession than during the milder downturn in 2001, when 50 million were shed.

So why is unemployment so much higher now? A dearth of job creation. Through the first two quarters of 2009, the economy created just 40 million jobs vs. the 47 million it created two quarters into the 2001 recession. Now, eight months into a recovery, the economy still isn't adding positions. In fact, it has lost an additional 1.1 million jobs — including 36,000 last month — despite a rebound in gross domestic product growth.

A huge share of the unemployed has been out of work for more than a year. Minorities have been hit hardest, with the jobless rate for young black men climbing to a record high.

* BUT, HEY... SCREW OUR OWN NEEDY CITIZENS, RIGHT? YEAH... LET'S HAVE "A PATH TO CITIZENSHIP" FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS WHILE OUR OWN FELLOW AMERICANS SUFFER. (*SMIRK*)

March 9, 2010 at 7:17 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704548604575097582436343268.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

The Obama Administration is planning to force companies to raise pay and benefits for workers if they want continued access to federal contracts. Waiting to cash in on the impending Executive Order are unions that would end up with a piece of the government's $500 billion in annual contracts.

* OBAMA SURE SEEMS FOND OF "EXECUTIVE ORDERS," DOESN'T HE? WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO... er... I DON'T KNOW... LEGISLATION VIA THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS?

The government can't steer contracts directly to the unions. But it can use its authority over how taxpayer money is spent to favor unions and their agenda.

The proposed Executive Order is being drawn up by Joe Biden's Middle Class Task Force. It would oblige government procurement agencies to give contracts to "responsible contractors" who pay workers well and offer higher health, pension, sick leave and other benefits.

At each federal agency, a new labor commissar tasked with making these judgments will also have discretion to award an advantage to companies which, by some calculation, treat employees better. Under Democrats, this would tilt toward unionized companies. And these labor standards would have to be enforced across a company, not just at the unit bidding for a contract.

* WE'RE LOSING OUR COUNTRY, PEOPLE. WHAT OBAMA IS SEEKING TO DO - ONCE AGAIN - IS TO REWARD HIS POLITICAL ALLIES WITH YOUR MONEY; YOUR MONEY... MY MONEY... OUR MONEY AND THAT BORROWED IN OUR NAMES.

Smaller businesses will find it harder to win government work. Even if they put in better bids, many can't match the benefits offered by big companies...

* NOR SHOULD THEY BE EFFECTIVELY FORCED TO! THIS IS AMERICA... OR AT LEAST IT USED TO BE.

For decades, the government's main goal has been to find the best services provider at the best prices. Last we checked, procurement agencies weren't supposed to be agents of social engineering. Using federal contract authority to drive up private wages and indirectly impose onerous labor standards is far from what voters thought they were getting from this Presidency.

* AND REGARDLESS OF WHAT VOTERS THOUGHT THEY WERE GETTING, THIS USED TO BE A GOVERNMENT OF LIMITED POWERS. WHAT WE SEE LITTLE BY LITTLE IS THE CONSTITUTION, THE RULE OF LAW - OUR ULTIMATE CIVIL RIGHT - BEING SUPPLANTED BY THE RULE OF MAN... IN THIS CASE THE RULE OF OBAMA.

March 9, 2010 at 7:17 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://healthcare.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDZmNjE4M2JmMzYwYjk4ZjExM2U3MTY2MmU4YTJiODg=

One of the president's biggest talking points these days is his new proposal for a federal board to review health-insurance premiums and block "excessive" rate increases. In today's New York Times, however, state insurance regulators explain why the plan is a bad idea:

Experts see a serious potential problem: Federal officials will focus on holding down premiums while state officials focus on the solvency of insurers, the ultimate consumer protection.

Economists say that holding down premiums does not necessarily hold down the cost of care, which reflects the prices charged by doctors and hospitals and the volume of services.

State officials worry that they would be left to police the solvency of health insurance companies while federal officials pressured insurers to reduce premiums, as Mr. Obama has done in recent days.

Said one insurance commissioner: "You're not necessarily helping the consumer if you keep the rates artificially low. . . .What's worse for the consumer: having a premium increase or having to pay the full amount of a medical expense because the company is out of business?"

Obama's war on the insurance industry is meant to rally public support for the the Dems' legislation — but the public doesn't appear to be buying it, with the latest Rasmussen polls showing 57 percent of voters predicting that Obamacare will hurt the economy and 53 percent opposing Obamacare.

Whatever the administration is selling, the public isn't buying it.

March 9, 2010 at 7:32 PM
Rodak said...

After the Bush administration's stimulus spending in 2008, business spending on equipment and software fell — not rose — by 28%. Spending on durable goods fell 22%.

What does that prove, when you're talking about jobs? At my place of employment, for instance, the budget has sustained large cuts in materials and operations lines, precisely in order not to need to make those cuts in salaries. The result would show up on a stats sheet as reducations in in the purchase of equipment and durable goods. The same sheet would show no creation of new jobs. That looks pretty bad, out of context.
On the other hand, though, we all still have our jobs. That looks damned good.

March 10, 2010 at 11:53 AM

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