Banking's Past, Present, and Future
The White House has already given some indication of the sort of proposals it will put forward after Labor Day to help boost the economy. These include extending payroll tax cuts for another year, extending unemployment benefits, and speeding the approval of free trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea, and Panama. These are all worthwhile … Read more
Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, WSJ op-ed board member Stephen Moore offers a variety of dubious–and at least one outrageous–opinion on the economy and economic policy. (1) The economy would be in better shape today in the absence of the economic stimulus. No, it wouldn’t. Even fellow WSJ contributor Ed Lazear believes that the … Read more
Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, “…brought the Fed directly into the campaign debate Monday night by saying it would be ‘almost … treasonous’ for the central bank to play politics by expanding the money supply. “‘If this guy prints more money between now and the election,’ Mr. Perry said in Cedar Rapids … Read more
In case you have been asleep for the last couple of days, the sovereign debt rating of the United States was downgraded on Friday has been downgraded by the Standard and Poor’s (S&P) from AAA to AA+. This has not made S&P too popular in some quarters, particularly in the US government. President Obama and … Read more
Apparently, the editors of the Wall Street Journal have a rule about the number of op-eds each week that praise Ronald Reagan. I haven’t figured out the exact count yet, but Robert Barro’s piece in Monday’s Journal gets the paper off to a nice start on their weekly quota. It’s a pity that there are … Read more
Writing in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Stanford professor Edward Lazear argues that the real danger to the American worker is too much government–in other words: too many taxes and too much spending. Prof. Lazear writes: During the debt-ceiling debate, President Obama characterized his push for higher taxes and less aggressive budget cuts as being helpful … Read more