A Rookie President - Thomas Sowell

"In the name of "change," Barack Obama is following policies so old that this generation has never heard of them...."

America's Economic Crisis: Looking Back, Looking Forward - The Acton Institute

What currencies nations of the world keep their reserves in

As It Starts Programs, Fed Weighs How to Stop Them - WSJ MARCH 23, 2009

Excerpts:

"The Federal Reserve, aiming to pull the U.S. out of its recession, is in the early stages of pumping money into the economy. But the central bank is increasingly being forced to confront what happens at the end stages, when it must unwind its programs as the economy recovers.

"The Fed last week announced it would pump up to $1.15 trillion more into the financial system by buying Treasury bonds and expanding its purchases of mortgage debt. But the huge injections of money into the economy, if left in place, threatens to spur a bout of inflation as spending picks up and unemployment falls.

"... While the government debt will be easy to unload when the time comes, it still could disrupt markets and push some borrowing costs back up more quickly.

"Ending the Fed purchases of Treasurys, when the economy is recovering, "could result in the mother of all bond bear markets," said Alan Ruskin, a strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital. The result "is another example where ameliorating the extent of the downturn is paid for with a weaker eventual recovery," he said.

"The central bank's other interventions, geared toward specific sectors, will prove more difficult to unwind. The Fed has committed to buying up to $1.25 trillion of mortgage-backed securities, enough to satisfy half the nation's home-loan demand this year. Selling that off, even years after an epic housing bust, would likely come against strong opposition from the real-estate industry, which wants low mortgage rates.

"Each of the portfolios will have its own constituencies -- in markets and governments across the country -- that could pressure the Fed not to pull back too quickly, or ever. With each of those programs, the Fed faces the risk of becoming more entangled with political authorities -- undermining its role in setting interest rates.

Now Is No Time to Give Up on Markets - WSJ.com

"When the market economy is compared to alternatives, nothing is better at raising productivity, reducing poverty, improving health and integrating the people of the world."

Fed's Gamble: Buying Long Bonds - WSJ.com

"The Federal Reserve's controversial decision to buy long-term Treasury securities is a step Chairman Ben Bernanke has been contemplating for much of this decade in thinking about how to prevent a return of deflation and depression.

He hopes Wednesday's move will push down long-term borrowing rates benchmarked to Treasury bonds, from car loans to mortgage debt to corporate bonds. But it could backfire and fuel fears that the Fed, by using its power to print money to help the government finance soaring budget deficits, is kindling inflation. Those fears could, paradoxically, send Treasury yields higher.
[Fed's Gamble: Buying Long Bonds]

The market's initial reaction was mostly positive. Treasury yields dropped sharply, as previous research conducted by Mr. Bernanke suggested would happen."

Congress Is the Real Systemic Risk - WSJ.com

Britain apologises for 'Third World' hospital

"We saw patients drinking out of flower vases they were so thirsty."

The current administration plans to revolutionize health care in the U.S. by having government play a bigger role. In Britain health care is provided by the government. This article gives you an indication of the consequences that have resulted from an increased government role.

Is Rand Relevant? - WSJ.com

Treasury's new plan to solve the financial crisis ( as announced on Saturday Night Live)

Unfortunately, I'm afraid this is pretty accurate.

U.S. Insists China Fears Over Debt Unfounded - WSJ.com

We talked in class about the effects of the dramatic increase in the national debt that will result from the government's efforts to "stimulate" the economy. Our biggest creditor, China, is concerned about this as well.

Americans See 18% of Wealth Vanish - WSJ.com

Americans See 18% of Wealth Vanish - WSJ.com

The Obama Rosetta Stone

"The economy as most people understand it was a second-order concern of the stimulus strategy. The primary goal is a massive re-flowing of "wealth" from the top toward the bottom, to stop the moral failure they see in the budget's "Top One Percent of Earners" chart."

The Fed Didn't Cause the Housing Bubble - Alan Greenspan

"Any new regulations should help direct savings toward productive investments."

U-6: An alternative measure of unemployment

We saw in lecture that the unemployment rate counts only workers who are without a job and are actively looking for work. The government also calculates several alternative measures of how the labor market is doing.

One of the more interesting measures is called U-6. U-6 is "total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers."

Marginally attached workers are "persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule."

For more information see the BLS site.

Obama's Radicalism Is Killing the Dow

"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."

Deception at Core of Obama Plans

"The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction ... to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society."

On the ethics of redistribution

"Bertrand de Jouvenel, writing in 1951 about popular attitudes toward income inequality in "The Ethics of Redistribution":

The film-star or the crooner is not grudged the income that is grudged to the oil magnate, because the people appreciate the entertainer's accomplishment and not the entrepreneur's, and because the former's personality is liked and the latter's is not. They feel that consumption of the entertainer's income is itself an entertainment, while the capitalist's is not, and somehow think that what the entertainer enjoys is deliberately given by them while the capitalist's income is somehow filched from them."

Has Obama Buried Reagan?

"What Ronald Reagan knew and they don't is that what moves a nation is the vital, teeming life of the private economy -- work, ideas, innovation, the excitement of production, getting bigger. Growth."

What Are the Odds of a Depression?

"International evidence suggests there is a 20% chance our stock-market crash will lead to much worse."

The budget reveals the liberal Obama

"This budget says the Republicans had Mr Obama right all along. The draft contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal."

Federal Outlays as a Percentage of GDP