Well done, and in convenient video form. Put together by the folks at Minnesota Majority, based on original work by the folks at Ace of Spades.
Posts Tagged ‘deficits’
Obama by the Numbers
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011More Greek Default Rumblings
Sunday, September 25th, 2011Actually, less rumblings than the roar of an approaching train. And since I temporarily seem to be ahead of the latest Ace of Spades Doom roundup, I’m going to try and give you a nice clear view of the coming crash.
“No longer a question of if, but when – that is the tone of discussions over Greece which has dominated the summit of finance ministers in Washington over the weekend.” Former Britain’s former finance minister Alistair Darling agrees, calling default “only a matter of time.”
The talk now is of how to put in a “firewall” to prevent the contagion of an inevitable Greek default from spreading throughout the European banking system.
The Euroskeptics have been completely vindicated:
Very rarely in political history has any faction or movement enjoyed such a complete and crushing victory as the Conservative Eurosceptics. The field is theirs. They were not merely right about the single currency, the greatest economic issue of our age — they were right for the right reasons. They foresaw with lucid, prophetic accuracy exactly how and why the euro would bring with it financial devastation and social collapse.
I think at this point UK residents should be feeling vrey glad indeed that they didn’t abandon the Pound for the Euro.
Bret Stephens talks about the long line of deceit and fraud that lead Europe to the current crises. “What is now happening in Europe isn’t so much a crisis as it is an exposure: a Madoff-type event rather than a Lehman one.”
Mark Steyn, using the ever popular music and political metaphor gambit, compares the breakup of the Eurozone with the breakup of R.E.M. while bringing the usual Steyn goodness: “Attempting to postpone the Club Med welfare junkies’ rendezvous with self-extinction will destabilize internal German politics (which always adds to the gaiety of nations).” And this:
As its own contribution to the end of the world as we know it, the Obama administration has just released a document called “Living Within Our Means and Investing in the Future: The President’s Plan for Economic Growth and Deficit Reduction.” If you’re curious about the first part of the title — “Living Within Our Means” — Veronique de Rugy pointed out at National Review that under this plan debt held by the public will grow from just over $10 trillion to $17.7 trillion by 2021. In other words, the president’s definition of “Living Within Our Means” is to burn through the equivalent of the entire German, French, and British economies in new debt between now and the end of the decade. You can try this yourself next time your bank manager politely suggests you should try “living within your means”: Tell him you’ve got an ingenious plan to get your spending under control by near doubling your present debt in the course of a mere decade. He’s sure to be impressed.
Germany is near the limit of their willingness to bail out Greece.
There may even be a taxpayer revolt brewing in the Aegean.
And if the other PIIGS are doing better than Greece, it is only a matter of degrees: “Italy is the new Lebanon, Portugal the new Venezuela, Spain the new Vietnam, Ireland the new Argentina and nothing is more risky than Greece, according to today’s credit default swap market.”
But it’s not just Greece and Europe that are hitting the wall. China’s housing bubble may finally be bursting. Worse still: “growth in China may be zero [and] China has ‘European kind of numbers’ when it comes to debt.”
And the Chinese housing bubble isn’t just affecting China. It’s also affecting Canada.
And at least one observer has drawn parallels to a certain hopemonger currently residing in the White House:
Obama has no intention of really solving the debt crisis. And that brings us back to Greece. That government has been doing the same thing for a decade and the chickens have now come home to roost. Greece’s debt is 150 percent of its Gross Domestic Product. Our debt has just reached 100 percent of GDP and the debt is accumulating faster than it ever has. If we were looking out the windshield down the road, we could see the crash that’s just up around the bend.
But rather than put on the brakes, the president has chosen to pick a fight with the other passengers in the car he is driving. Talk about distracted driving! He is gambling that this fight will convince the passengers to let him stay behind the wheel for another four years. But we certainly can’t wait that long. He’s turned up the radio in hopes we won’t hear the ambulance sirens.
It looks like its going to be another rough week for world markets…
Pat Buchanan 1, David Brooks 0
Friday, July 8th, 2011Since leaving the Reagan Administration, Patrick Buchanan has been, at best, an erratic conservative, on any number of issues (Israel, Iraq, Free Trade, etc.), flogging a philosophy (“paleoconservatism”) that failed to catch on with any but a tiny fringe, and carried out political adventures ill-advised at best and amazingly stupid a good portion of the time. (I mean, why would you even want to take over the Reform Party? That’s like stealing a half-chewed bone from a blind dog; even if you succeed, you’ve disgraced yourself for a worthless prize.)
But on the debt limit debate, Buchanan has penned an essay that is coolly rational in articulating why House Republican must stand firm aginst Democratic promises of future spending cuts in exchange for tax hikes now.
Behind the GOP opposition to tax hikes is the party’s word given to the country that elected it in 2010, its political principles, its traditional view of what not to do when the nation is in a slump, and party history.
Fully 235 Republican House members signed a 2010 pledge not to raise taxes. And by giving their word they were rewarded with victory.
Should they now dishonor that pledge, what would differentiate them from George H.W. Bush, who famously promised in 1988: “Read my lips! No new taxes!” then went back on his word and took the party down to defeat with him?
It also does a fine job dissecting David Brooks’ panicked appeal for them to take Obama’s handful of magic beans in exchange for their good word:
In 1982, President Reagan agreed to the same deal being offered the party today: three dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in tax increases to which he assented. As he ruefully told this writer more than once, he was lied to. He got one dollar in spending cuts for every three in tax increases.
Buchanan at least has learned the lesson Brooks hasn’t: Future budget cuts are non-existent budget cuts, and only a sucker believes they’re real. The only budget cuts that count are the ones to this year’s budget. Democrat promises of future spending cuts are always lies to be taken back in the next budget session. Even ironclad budgetary mechanisms to limit spending (i.e. Gramm-Rudman) will be jettisoned at the first opportunity.
No one should mistake Buchanan for a reliable mainline conservative these days, but he’s dead right on this issue. But given David Brooks’ swooning over Obama and his heresy on tax hikes, perhaps we should stop mistaking him for a conservative at all.
Karl Rove: Why Obama Will Lose in 2012
Thursday, June 23rd, 2011While hardly a disinterested observer, Karl Rove is far from an untutored one, and he offers up some compelling reasons why Obama will lose in 2012. Four, to be precise:
The economy is very weak and unlikely to experience a robust recovery by Election Day. Key voter groups have soured on him. He’s defending unpopular policies. And he’s made bad strategic decisions.
The second point is the one he offers the most meat in terms of polling analysis. And the fourth is Obama’s decision to abandon Presidential distance and starting campaiging for reelection early.
Read the whole thing.
LinkSwarm for Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011It’s a busy week for me, so here are a few links to tide you over:
LinkSwarm for Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010Two days before Thanksgiving! Here’s a swarm of links from what should be a slow news week:
- Dwight gives his pimp hand another workout fisking the latest WaPo gun piece.
- He also notes that the Saxet gun show is back after a lengthy absence.
- The consequences of global population decline.
- Estonia joins the Eurozone just in time to get stuck with part of the bill for the Greek bailout. That is, if the Euro doesn’t collapse entirely…
- The New Madrid Fault may not be as dangerous as once believed.
- Obama on people protesting the TSA: Shut up and enjoy your groping.
- Thomas Sowell sees TSA policies as part and parcel of this administrations contempt for average Americans: “This administration is so hung up on political correctness that they have turned ‘profiling’ into a bugaboo. They would rather have electronic scanners look under the clothes of nuns than to detain a Jihadist imam for some questioning.”
- Federal pay cuts aren’t enough. We also need federal head-count cuts.
- The Wall Street Journal uses cruel facts and spiteful logic to shoot holes in the pet liberal theory that Democrats lost because Obama just wasn’t liberal enough.
- Republicans picked up about 680 state legislative seats on election day. They’ve picked up 10 more since.
EU: How about letting the yuan appreciate? China: How about you die in a fire?
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010It’s not just the U.S. that believes China’s yuan is pegged artificially low. The EU is also complaining at the current EU-China summit, asking them to let the yuan appreciate 20-40% in value.
China’s reply? Get stuffed.
That’s not the only China-EU news this week. China is also buying up Greek assets at the same time they’re dumping U.S. assets.
Let that sink in for a moment. As The Motley Fool’s Christopher Barker put it, “China may consider Greece a safer bet than the United States.”
If Obama Administration officials weren’t worried about our unsustainable budget deficits before (and every indication is they weren’t), now would be an excellent time to start…
LinkSwarm for September 29, 2010
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010A few links you may find of interest:
- “Barack Obama is destroying the Democratic party. It may not recover for a long time. In this, he most closely resembles a synthesis of the failed candidacy of George McGovern and the catastrophic presidency of Herbert Hoover.”
- Are Democrats losing because the policies of Obama, Pelosi and Reid are unpopular? Nah. It’s because white people are crazy. (I think we’ve now had more racial friction in two years of Obama’s “post-racial” presidency than eight years of George W. Bush.)
- Mark Steyn on our internalization of Islam’s view of us.
- Who is to blame for our spiraling deficits? Bush? Obama? Neither. Steve Moore in the Wall Street Journal says it’s Pelosi and Reid.
- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, head of the Islamic Republic of Iran, get’s a rapturous reception from the usual far-left gang of race-hustling poverty pimps.
Fake Austerity, the Obama Way
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010Problem: Voters are outraged that government bureaucrats continue to get hefty pay and benefit hikes while the private sector suffers through the leanest years since the Great Depression.
Solution: A bonus (not pay) freeze, and only for political appointees (that’s, what, all of 2.000 people?).
Next on the list of Obama Austerity Measures: Offbrand caviar for the SEIU lounge.