Category Archives: markets

Racism of the Left

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Again.  Still.

A Black-owned bakery, Fat Cupcake, baked up a batch of cupcakes to honor our President, an American who happens to be black; they titled the cupcakes “Mr President.”  Fat Cupcake described their confection on their menu as an

Oreo (™) Cookie baked inside white cake, cookies n’ cream buttercream.

It didn’t take long for the Left to start manufacturing a racist beef where none exists, thereby displaying their own racism.  Via Yelp, for instance:

Very troubling. They were serving a cupcake called the “Mr President” that had an Oreo cookie inside. When I tried to point out the racism implied, they claimed that “our current president loves Oreos.”

Never mind that President Barack Obama (D) is well-known for loving Oreos; there’s no “claim” there.

This isn’t just an isolated anecdote, either.

Since opening in Southeast Portland, [Fat Cupcake owner Anjelica] Hayes said she’s had to field questions about whether her cupcakes are racist.

I’m surprised someone isn’t whining about the sexist nature of the establishment’s name.

Apparently Bureaucrats Don’t Have Enough Control Already

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The European Commission is considering unilaterally expanding the scope of its authorities.

The European Union’s antitrust authority on Friday said it was considering changes to its merger review rules to include a wider swath of technology and pharmaceutical deals that normally wouldn’t fall within its purview but could possibly harm the bloc’s internal market.

…the European Commission said it was fielding opinions from the public on whether the regulator should also probe mergers involving companies with smaller revenues.

Because instructing the big companies on the business decisions the Commission would permit them to take doesn’t have enough juice for them anymore.

Such a move would be especially significant for the digital and pharmaceutical sectors, the EU said, where an acquired company might generate little turnover but holds commercially valuable data or owns products under development that haven’t yet been marketed.

That’s an area of regulatory vacuum, and we can’t have that, now can we?  Besides those data and nascent products represent action on which the EU wants its vig.

Government Needs to just Butt Out

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A bipartisan group of senators is pushing to include municipal bonds in bank-safety rules, the latest wrinkle in a continuing fight over how safe—and salable—the debt of states and localities would be in another financial crisis.

The proposed regulation would “allow” banks to include municipal bonds on their balance sheets in the category—mandated by existing rules requiring banks to have sufficient (government’s definition) cash to fund operations for 30 days in the next “financial crisis.”  The proposed regulation also specifies the safety rating for those munis: the banking rules’ “high quality liquid assets” category, albeit at the lowest level of “high quality.”

So Chicago’s bonds should be on a par with Dallas’.

No.  These are decisions—every single one of them, the definition of “sufficient,” of “crisis,” whether to include munis as high quality assets, even whether to count munis as assets at all—are best made by banks and by businesses generally in a free market, not made by Government from the center of a government-managed economy.

Obamacare Fail

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The headline of this Wall Street Journal piece pretty much says it all: Average Cost of Employer Health Coverage Tops $18,000 for Family in 2016.

The sub-head, with careful reading, adds clarity: Pace of cost increase slowed by accelerating shift into high-deductible plans, new survey shows.

That cost of employer coverage, buy the way, refers to the premiums employees must pay: $18,142 for a 2016 typical employer-offered family plan, and employees have to pay 30% of that, typically, up from 29%.  Like a sergeant I once worked with liked to say, sort of, “Holy cats.”

Is that cost increase rate actually slowing, though, where it matters to the individual—the employee?  Not in the deductibles.  Shifting into high-deductible plans means the policy holder—the employee—has to pay lots more out of his own pocket just to get to the point where the coverage plan begins to pay its 50%, or 60%, or maybe as high as 80% of the medical costs.  For that year.  Then the deductible has to be paid anew.

Notice another part of that sub-head: accelerating shift into high-deductible plans.  That means that in that next year, the erstwhile high-deductible plan may not be available: the employee may be stuck with purchasing a different plan, perhaps with an even higher deductible, perhaps with higher yet premiums, perhaps with coverage not as useful to the employee.

This is what Obamacare, not the employers, has wrought.  This is what needs to be tossed in its entirety into the medical waste disposal and replaced with a more honest environment within which actual insurance can be had, and competitively so.

Of Course They Are

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President Obama and his Democratic allies are seizing on the exodus of private insurers from ObamaCare markets to renew their push for a so-called “public option[.]”

Never mind that the revival of this push is a direct result of the broad, expensive failure that is those same Know Betters’ Obamacare.  No, when government fails as miserably as it has done with Obamacare, the only right answer is the Progressive answer: more government.  A bigger hammer.

We can’t have competition and private enterprise do this.  We gotta have Know Betters in Government do this; us mere citizens can’t be trusted with such weighty matters.