Category Archives: markets

Business Factoid

Posted on by
Reply

Matthew Payne, writing in The Wall Street Journal this weekend on a related subject, had this little tidbit.  Quoting a Chief Executive Magazine poll of business-worthy states, he wrote,

CEOs are well disposed to Texas, and it’s not hard to understand why.  52 Fortune 500 companies now call Texas home.

That’s 10% of the Fortune 500 that live here.

If those 500 companies were spread evenly across the 50 states, there would be 10 of them here.  If the 500 were spread proportional to each state’s population relative the nation’s population, Texas would have 4 of them.

This is a preview of Business Factoid. Read the full post (100 words, estimated 24 secs reading time)

Federal Debt and GDP Growth

Posted on by
Reply

In a speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to the Japan Society of Monetary Economics, a few short years ago, he said

In economics textbooks, the idea that people will save rather than spend tax cuts because of the implied increase in future tax obligations is known as the principle of Ricardian equivalence.  In general, the evidence for Ricardian equivalence in real economies is mixed, but it seems most likely to apply in a situation like that prevailing today in Japan, in which people have been made highly aware of the potential burden of the national debt.

This is a preview of Federal Debt and GDP Growth. Read the full post (1317 words, 3 images, estimated 5:16 mins reading time)

Why We Protect Inventions

Posted on by
Reply

The Indian Supreme Court has rejected the idea of patent protection for Novartis’ drug Glivec, saying that an active ingredient in Glivec was well-known prior to the development of the drug.  Those worthies also rejected Novartis’ argument that the innovation that deserved patent protection was their transformation of that active ingredient into a “beta crystal” form, which made it a viable treatment for cancer.

Never mind, said the Court, India doesn’t feel like patenting this and making it harder for an Indian company to profit from the foreign Novartis’ work.

Novartis isn’t alone in this strait.

This is a preview of Why We Protect Inventions. Read the full post (250 words, estimated 1:00 mins reading time)

Competition and Cadillac Insurance

Posted on by
Reply

Under Obamacare, writes Emily Chasan in The Wall Street Journal, employers will be required by 2018 to pay a tax of 40% on health care plans that President Barack Obama and his minion, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, decide for themselves are somehow “excessively rich” in the benefits they pay out.

The excuse these two and other Progressives make for this is that these Cadillac plans, with their low deductibles and “generous” medical coverage, will encourage overuse of our health-care system.  Sure.  Everyone needs to be covered.  But only to a government-approved degree.  And never mind that those low deductibles make the policy purchasers ineligible for Health Savings Accounts—Progressives don’t want Americans to have those, anyway.

This is a preview of Competition and Cadillac Insurance. Read the full post (355 words, estimated 1:25 mins reading time)

Why Not Just Take It All?

Posted on by
Reply

Spiegel International Online notes that the Cypriot government may be figuring out some of the foolishness of the troika’s (ECB, EC, and IMF) demand concerning the latter’s “offered” bailout as well as some of the variants under discussion.  Some of those variants include reallocating the confiscationtax according to more deposit account sizes than just two, and hitting the highest—still those over €100,000 with a 15.6% claim.

[C]oncerns have emerged that a large number of foreign investors and depositors will withdraw their money from the country en masse.  Critics warn this would devastate Cyprus as a financial center and also threaten the country’s entire economy.

This is a preview of Why Not Just Take It All?. Read the full post (220 words, estimated 53 secs reading time)

More Obama Sequester in Action

Posted on by
Reply

A few of items.

Congressman Ted Poe (R, TX) is wondering about sequester cuts to tuition aid for our military veterans while we continue to send education aid to Pakistan.  The Marines, for instance, had spent $47 million tuition aid in 2012, while nearly $13 million went to Pakistan for “higher education.”  And then, post-sequester, the Obama administration committed another $37 million to the Pakistan program.

Hmm….

And there’s this example of Obama cynicism.  Recall that the US Department of Agriculture would be forced to “furlough” a significant portion of its meat inspectors, among other personnel.  In the meantime, though, and again post-sequester, the Obama administration

This is a preview of More Obama Sequester in Action. Read the full post (253 words, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)

Magical Thinking

Posted on by
1

Well, that didn’t take long.  President Barack Obama already has failed his test.

The Progressives’ idea of a budget is out of the Senate Budget Committee, now, and on the Senate floor, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) will do his best to thrust it home with as little debate allowed as he can achieve.  Here’s the summary table (and scroll down a bit to this table; sorry you have to crane your neck); the whole thing can be viewed, in piecemeal form, on the Senate’s site:

This is a preview of Magical Thinking. Read the full post (505 words, 2 images, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

The Deficit Has A Silver Lining?

Posted on by
Reply

Dr Alan Blinder, Princeton University Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, had some thoughts on this.  His piece is fundamentally optimistic, but a few of his remarks jumped out at me.

Congress and the president have managed to agree on several measures that reduce the projected 10-year deficit considerably.

Reduced the 10-year deficit.  He writes of this as if it’s a good thing.  He writes of this as though that continued 10-year deficit, representing as it does an enormous expansion of an already ruinous debt, is a good thing.

This is a preview of The Deficit Has A Silver Lining?. Read the full post (720 words, estimated 2:53 mins reading time)

A Foreign Tax on American Investors in America

Posted on by
Reply

The European Commission earlier this month proposed a new financial-transaction tax for 11 participating states, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Slovenia, Portugal, Greece, Slovakia, and Estonia.  These produce roughly two-thirds of the EU’s economy.

It’s an enormous tax, too, in a market where spreads are on the order of pennies, even fractions of pennies: 0.1% for trades in bonds and shares, and 0.01% for derivatives transactions, and it would apply to both buyers and sellers

as long as either of them is based in one of the participating states, or if the financial instrument being traded was issued in any of these countries.

This is a preview of A Foreign Tax on American Investors in America. Read the full post (356 words, estimated 1:25 mins reading time)

Progressives Need to Quit Complaining and Start Cooperating with the Republicans

Posted on by
Reply

Sally Kohn, a Fox News contributor, offered a response to President Barack Obama’s Tuesday State of the Union address.  Herewith, I offer my response to her and to Obama.

Tonight, the president of the United States of America and the leader of the party that won the Presidential election in 2012 while losing the Congressional and State House elections set forward a plan not only for the next four years but the next four decades of American decline.

It is a plan that purports to build our economy from the middle class out and not just from the top-down, while ignoring the poor and their fading opportunities for upward mobility.

This is a preview of Progressives Need to Quit Complaining and Start Cooperating with the Republicans. Read the full post (1116 words, estimated 4:28 mins reading time)