Tag Archives: freedom

Government Market Intervention European Style

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From The Wall Street Journal we learn that that the European Central Bank wants to “manage” the interest rates on member nations’ sovereign debt instruments, and it wants to do so by entering the market for government bonds—announcing its buys and sells in a manner intended to “influence” the market’s interest rates imposed on those governments’ borrowings.  The WSJ quotes the ubiquitous “person familiar with the matter” as saying

ECB would guide investors toward a target, or range, for government bond yields of Spain and others by publicly communicating specifics about the amount of the bond purchases it conducts, as well as the details on the types of bonds it buys. For instance, if the central bank says it bought €1 billion ($1.26 billion) worth of shorter-dated Spanish bonds, it could move investors toward the yields it deems appropriate by raising or lowering purchases in subsequent weeks.

But the real thinking was revealed by the ECB’s President, Mario Draghi.  “Exceptionally high” risks are embedded in many government bonds markets, the WSJ cites him as saying, and to the extent to which these “risk premia” include a euro breakup scenario, they are “unacceptable.”  Thus, the market should sit down, shut up, and do what its betters tell them to do.  Investors’ pricings on exploding debt will not be tolerated.  Their duty is to simply keep lending at rates their Betters dictate.

Never mind that, as the Bundesbank’s Jens Weidmann puts it,

In democracies, Parliaments, not central banks, should decide about such comprehensive sharing of risks[.]

He’s not one of the Know Betters, so he’s just whispering in the wind.

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Then we have this from Spain, in particular.  The government says it expects the Spanish economy to contract 1.7% this year, despite growing exports (from the declining euro more than any real productivity-related effects), and it will contract next year by an additional 0.5%.  Yet that same Spanish government fully intends to impose “billions of euros” in tax increases over these next two years (along with allegedly large spending cuts).  You read that right.  In a contracting economy, the government fully intends to take a ton of money out of the private sector: it intends to defund the very part of the economy that is the engine of economic prosperity—and here, of economic recovery.

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And then there’s this.  The Obamacare Independent Payment Advisory Board, consisting of “15 philosopher kings,” is starting to be set up, although we don’t get to know who these kadi are until after the election this fall.  This Board will have the power to dictate prices to all participants in the health care industry: hospitals, doctors, insurers, patients alike.  No market forces at all here.  And yes, there will be plenty of patients: customer participation is mandatory.  Of course there’ll be fewer and fewer providers as these are driven out of business by the Board’s price controls; this will turn the Board into a Death Panel.  A third example of government market intervention European style.

The New Jim Crow?

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I’ve written about racism and religious bigotry here, here, and here.

Now I want to take a broader view.  We’ve had, in quick succession in the last very few years, the following.

President Obama’s Health and Human Services mandates that businesses and insurers to provide, at no cost to the insurees, health insurance coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients, without regard for the religious beliefs of the businesses or insurers.  This mandate also requires Americans to buy such health insurance coverage (even though these added items are to be provided at no additional cost), regardless of the religious beliefs of these individual Americans—or to accept the coverage from their employers.  There is an “exemption” that allows businesses to put this off onto their insurers, but this cynically ignores, among others, those entities who self-insure.

Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas (D), says that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is appealing to racists who do not want a black man in the White House.

I absolutely believe it’s all about race, and for the first time in my life I’ve been able to convince my children, finally, that racism is alive and well[.]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) suggesting that Republicans are simply manipulating American Jews for political gain.

HUNT: That’s why some of the Republican Jewish supporters are really active.

PELOSI: Well, that’s how they’re being exploited. And they’re smart people. They follow these issues.

Unions, in one overt case, are attempting to keep black children down on the plantation, at least in Louisiana.

[L]awyers for the Louisiana Association of Educators, one of the state’s two major teachers unions, threatened private and parochial schools with lawsuits if the schools accept students participating in a new school choice initiative that starts this year.

The Maryland State Board of Education has established a policy of race-based discipline, regardless of the nature of the misbehavior.

President Obama’s Department of Justice, shortly after Obama took office, dismissed a civil case against New Black Panther members, accused of voter intimidation against white voters, after the case had been won by default through the non-appearance of the defendants.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is threatening Steubenville, OH, with civil suit if the city doesn’t remove a cross from the city’s logo—a logo that

includes several local landmarks, including the Franciscan University’s Christ the King Chapel

which, oh by the way, has a cross on it.

The ACLU has been attacking America’s fallen soldiers and their families for years, using, for instance, the Mt Soledad Veterans Memorial Cross as a vehicle.  The ACLU wants the military decoration—the cross—removed.  Worse, the Obama administration now is attempting to “negotiate” a settlement with the ACLU without including the central party to the controversy, the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, in the talks.

US District Judge Fred Biery, in response to a complaint from a single family, blocked a Texas school district’s “invocation” and “benediction” and banned any prayer at the ceremony altogether, even threatening the valedictorian with jail if she mentioned God in her speech.

The Obama administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs  demanded that the pastor presiding over a private funeral at the Houston National Cemetery not make religious references in his prayers at the soldier’s burial.

Progressive leaders also attack conservative women.  Bill Maher said this of Governor Sarah Palin:

Did you hear this—Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she’s demanding that we invade ‘Tsunami,’” Maher said. “I mean she said, ‘These ‘Tsunamians’ will not get away with this.’ Oh speaking of dumb twats, did you—

And we get this about Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R, MN):

Michele Bachmann says certain things that sound crazy to the general public.  But to anybody raised in the environment of the evangelical right wing, what she says makes perfect sense.

The list goes on.  Are we seeing, now, a resurgence of the attitudes of Jim Crow, but with a different, broader, more unfocused set of bigotries?

Some Thoughts on Culture

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I had some words on the subject of culture the other day.    Another man weighed in on the subject last Tuesday; maybe you’ve heard of him: ex-Governor and Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney.  He offered these thoughts on culture and its role in a society’s freedom and prosperity.

[W]hat exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture?  In the case of the United States, it is a particular kind of culture that has made us the greatest economic power in the history of the earth.  Many significant features come to mind: our work ethic, our appreciation for education, our willingness to take risks, our commitment to honor and oath, our family orientation, our devotion to a purpose greater than ourselves, our patriotism.  But one feature of our culture that propels the American economy stands out above all others: freedom.  The American economy is fueled by freedom.  Free people and their free enterprises are what drive our economic vitality.

The linkage between freedom and economic development has a universal applicability. One only has to look at the contrast between East and West Germany, and between North and South Korea for the starkest demonstrations of the meaning of freedom and the absence of freedom.

Israel is also a telling example. Like the United States, the state of Israel has a culture that is based upon individual freedom and the rule of law. It is a democracy that has embraced liberty, both political and economic. This embrace has created conditions that have enabled innovators and entrepreneurs to make the desert bloom. In the face of improbable odds, Israel today is a world leader in fields ranging from medicine to information technology.

I visited three lands—Israel, Poland, and Great Britain—which are defined by their respective struggles for freedom….  I am only strengthened in my conviction that the pursuit of happiness is not an American right alone.  Israelis, Palestinians, Poles, Russians, Iranians, Americans, all human beings deserve to enjoy the blessings of a culture of freedom and opportunity.

What he said.

You Can’t Build This, Either

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Paul H Rubin, Professor of Economics at Emory University, had some thoughts on President Obama’s “You didn’t build that” oratory.  After giving Obama the benefit of the doubt and allowing that he really meant, without denigrating the accomplishments of entrepreneurs and other businessmen, that government needed to help private enterprise with infrastructure, Professor Rubin added a few items of interest in the infrastructure milieu.

  • the Obama administration, in its first three years, adopted 106 major regulations that cost over $100 million, compared with 28 such regulations in the Bush the Younger administration, and it has 144 more in the pipeline.

Of more immediate impact, with regard to the infrastructure of roads and bridges, the administration’s attitude toward other necessary components of our transportation infrastructure is clear.  It has

  • refused to allow a private company to build the Keystone XL pipeline
  • reduced permits for offshore drilling
  • slow-walked permits for drilling on Federal land
  • increased EPA regulation of pollutants, well past the point of diminishing returns, yet
  • committed to spend billions on California’s riderless bullet train to nowhere

Concerning another area of necessary infrastructure, access to capital, there’re these:

  • regulations needed to implement Dodd–Frank are not even being written, negatively impacting business’ ability to reasonably predict their fiscal future—so some won’t lend, and others won’t borrow.
  • increased minimum wage discourages hiring entry-level workers, or older workers into low-value jobs
  • Obamacare increases uncertainty regarding future labor health-related costs

And so on.  RTWT.

Iran Warns Arab States Over Syria

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With apologies to The Wall Street Journal, from whose article I took the title of my post.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi warned Sunni-led Arab states and Turkey, who are supporting Syria’s opposition in its battle with Tehran’s ally President Bashar al-Assad, that their insistence on toppling the Syrian regime will destabilize their own countries and the entire region.

“If they continue moving in the wrong direction then let them rest assured that the consequences of this will affect them too,” said Mr. Salehi in a joint news conference with his Syrian counterpart, Walid Moallem, who was visiting Tehran Sunday.

And this is the nation our administration is so timid with regarding its nuclear weapons program.

But that’s OK—if that misunderstood al-Assad or those bad Iranians continue to misbehave, we’ll talk even more, and we’ll shake our fingers especially firmly at…someone.