More Government Intervention

Posted on 15 February 2019 by eehines

Shades of FDR, and a betrayal from the putative right of center. Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) wants Government to dictate to private enterprises what they must do with company profit.

The plan backed by Rubio encourages domestic investment by making full and immediate expensing permanent “as a way to discourage companies from pursuing share repurchases.”

Right move, wrong reason. Immediate expensing ought to be a permanent item in tax code reform on its own right. Delaying expensing or stringing it out is just another aspect of using our tax code for social engineering, which bastardizes our tax collections and distorts our market away from the most efficient use of our money—whether business money or personal. And that most efficient use might well include stock buybacks; that’s a business decision with which Government has no business interfering.

This is a preview of More Government Intervention. Read the full post (422 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

German Intransigence

Posted on 1 February 2019 by eehines

Last Tuesday, the British Parliament voted to send Prime Minister Theresa May back to Brussels to renegotiate the status of Great Britain’s Northern Ireland border with the Republic of Ireland, which is part of the Brit-EU exit agreement that the Parliament had earlier rejected. The same day, the Parliament also rejected an attempt by Labour to delay by nine months the actual departure of Great Britain from the EU, leaving the date set at 29 March.

European Council President Donald Tusk said through his spokesman

The backstop is part of the Withdrawal Agreement, and the Withdrawal Agreement is not open for renegotiation.

This is a preview of German Intransigence. Read the full post (499 words, estimated 2:0 mins reading time)

Germany’s Cost of Going “Green”

Posted on 31 January 2019 by eehines

Germany is moving decisively to eliminate coal-fired plants as a source for its economy’s energy.

Germany has already banned nuclear power, which was a singularly stupid thing to do—that source of energy already had no CO2 emissions. Nevertheless, the destruction of that industry already is ongoingly expensive.

Merkel’s decision in 2011 to dump nuclear energy by 2022 and to accelerate the build-out of renewable sources such as wind and solar power is already costing them €27 billion [$31.8 billion] each year in the form of a renewable-energy tax.

This is a preview of Germany’s Cost of Going “Green”. Read the full post (402 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Hysteria

Posted on 23 January 2019 by eehines

Some Congressmen are working on bills that, in their aggregate, would bar sales of critical computer components to the People’s Republic of China’s communications companies Huawei, ZTE, and other PRC companies caught violating our export laws or sanctions on those companies or companies with which these do business.

The PRC is upset.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said it was all “hysteria,” and

I believe the action of these few representatives are an expression of extreme arrogance and an extreme lack of self-confidence[.]

The PRC’s insults and hysterical response, whether individual or taken together, are sufficient evidence that we’re on the right track.

This is a preview of Hysteria. Read the full post (180 words, estimated 43 secs reading time)

A Judge’s Error

Posted on 16 January 2019 by eehines

The Trump administration had expanded rules allowing employers to opt out of being required to provide birth control coverage to their employees at no cost to the employees, so long as the opting out was convincingly based on religious or moral grounds. Federal District Judge Haywood Gilliam of the Northern District of California has issued an injunction blocking enforcement of the expansion while an underlying lawsuit against the expansion is underway.

Ordinarily, blocking an enforcement while the underlying case proceeds is no big deal, but this one is just plain wrong. Gilliam based his ruling in significant part on the premise that

This is a preview of A Judge’s Error. Read the full post (283 words, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)

Dismantling Great Britain

Posted on 11 January 2019 by eehines

The EU is pressing its effort to punish Great Britain for the latter’s effrontery in leaving the EU.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has reiterated that the EU finds a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland “unacceptable.” He warned of “serious damage” in the event of a no deal scenario.

Because the EU wants to split Northern Ireland away from Great Britain.

No threat there.

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

The California Magnet

Posted on 9 January 2019 by eehines

Newly sworn-in California governor Gavin Newsom (D) has a plan to expand on the State’s sanctuary “status” and draw even more illegal aliens into the State and into the country:

…an unprecedented new health care agenda for his state, aimed at offering dramatically more benefits to illegal immigrants….

As Newsom noted,

People’s lives, freedom, security, the water we drink, the air we breathe—they all hang in the balance

This is a preview of The California Magnet. Read the full post (410 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

The Party of Expansionist, Acquisitive Government

Posted on 28 December 2018 by eehines

That’s what we can see made plain in the incoming Congress’ House of Representatives. Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D, NJ) had this on her Progressive-Democratic Party’s plans:

There are dozens of measures…that have been languishing with Republicans at the helm for years, and I expect to see many of them finally come to the floor under Democratic leadership[.]

Plans like rolling back the just enacted tax cuts and preventing the individual income tax cuts from becoming permanent. Because the Progressive-Democrats know more about how to spend our money than we do.

This is a preview of The Party of Expansionist, Acquisitive Government. Read the full post (323 words, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

A US Appellate Court Thinks Americans Are Grindingly Stupid

Posted on 20 December 2018 by eehines

Kellogg’s makes Cheez-Its, a cheesy, corny confection that’s attractive to lots of folks, especially at boring parties. Some versions of this snack are marketed as “Whole Grain” or “Made With Whole Grain,” and the text on the packaging makes plain that this means 5 to 8 grams of whole grain for each 29-gram serving along with the primary ingredient being “enriched flour.”

This is too confusing for three women to bear, so they sued. One of the women went so far as to claim she was injured by all of this, yet, were the packaging only changed, she would continue to purchase the products in the future (where are the feminists over this feigned stupidity?). There started out some sanity in this idiocy:

This is a preview of A US Appellate Court Thinks Americans Are Grindingly Stupid. Read the full post (234 words, estimated 56 secs reading time)

France is Taxing

Posted on 19 December 2018 by eehines

The Macron administration utterly failed in its cynical effort to raise its taxes on the French working class and poor with its “climate” tax on transportation fuels, so now it’s going to go after American tech companies with carefully targeted taxes. And that administration is desperate to get going, and it’s going to do it unilaterally.

In early December, Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said France would give the EU until March to come up with a deal on taxing US internet giants. But ten days later he announced the tax would be introduced on January 1.

Wait, what?

This is a preview of France is Taxing. Read the full post (258 words, estimated 1:02 mins reading time)

A Plebe's Site

Quam bene vivas referre, non quam diu.

Category Archives: markets