Category Archives: markets

Obamacare’s Cost Increases

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As even President Barack Obama (D) has finally confessed, Obamacare plan premiums and deductibles are skyrocketing.  But the Democrats and their Progressive fellows are cynically obfuscating the matter.  Here’s a typical remark, by HHS’ Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Kevin Griffis:

Headline rates are generally rising faster than in previous years…headline rates are not what they [recipients of Obamacare subsidies] pay.

Indeed not.  Those rates are what you and I and our fellow taxpayers who don’t get subsidies pay, and they’re rates for which we pay a second time in the form of the subsidies Obamacare passes on to potsful of Obamacare plan purchasers.  We pay for those subsidies with our tax payments.

This is carefully elided by those pushers of Obamacare.

Be Quiet

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Your Betters are working.

Elon Musk, who as CEO of Tesla Motors, which is building self-driving cars, has a personal, vested interest in the matter, says we must stop criticizing self-driving cars—they’re going to save lives.  One day.

In the meantime, we’re to keep our critiques—which would actually make the cars better, safer, and more consumer friendly—to ourselves.  He knows what he’s talking about; we don’t.  And we’ll kill people if we don’t shut up with our comments.

If, in writing some article that’s negative, you effectively dissuade people from using autonomous vehicles, you’re killing people[.]

Just be quiet.  Trust me.

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.