Tag Archives: economics

A Greek Exit

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In a piece in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, about Greece’s economic status and its relations with the rest of the eurozone, Matthew Karnitschnig had this remark

[A] Greek exit would prove that the eurozone isn’t inviolable and trigger speculation over the future of other weak links, such as Portugal, Ireland and even Spain, in the currency bloc. The euro crisis could return in full force.

Perhaps the crisis could return. But only briefly, and only if misunderstood by the leaders of the eurozone. After all, what’s the long term (or even the medium term) downside of losing “other weak links” in the eurozone? What would be left would be, by definition, stronger.

More Excessive Government

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US financial regulators are focusing renewed attention on Wall Street pay and are designing rules to curb compensation packages that could encourage excessive risk taking.

Regulators are considering requiring certain employees within Wall Street firms hand back bonuses for egregious blunders or fraud as part of incentive compensation rules the 2010 Dodd-Frank law mandated be written, according to people familiar with the negotiations. Including such a “clawback” provision in the rules would go beyond what regulators first proposed in 2011 but never finalized.

Congress created a bureaucracy, and it expanded it enormously with that Dodd-Frank. Now the bureaucrats have to do something to justify their existence. Regulators gotta regulate. And so we get this.

Never mind that the free market is a fine regulator, and “certain employees” and their “Wall Street firms” employers will be severely and promptly regulated when those excessive risks fail.

Government intrusion isn’t just not needed, though, it’s counterproductive. Now businesses, on and off Wall Street, will incur additional costs as they seek compliance, additional costs as they seek work-arounds, additional costs from the expanded field for nuisance suits (and legally legitimate ones), additional costs as they’re forced to negotiate even more complex compensation packages in order to hire the best, rather than the second best.

Such regulatory nonsense also is in large part duplicative and so wasteful. For instance:

Some banks are already voluntarily recouping money from employees who engage in misconduct or excessive risk.

We already have adequate laws (not regulations) on the books to handle both criminal and civil misconduct. Additional regulation here would be useless.

Too, that some businesses think such procedures are appropriate for them does not at all justify government interfering to impose such procedures on all of business.

Update: Corrected a typo in the third paragraph: Government intrusion isn’t just not needed….  <sigh>

The Judicial Branch and the Law

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In a couple of weeks, the Supreme Court will hear a case involving Federal subsidies to health coverage purchasers who bought their plans on ObamaMart instead of State exchanges. The Obamacare law limits those subsidies to purchasers via State exchanges argue the plaintiffs; the government demurs.

Some ACA critics fear the Supreme Court may hesitate to block the current subsidies because of a lack of confidence in the legislative branch in general.

Against that backdrop, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said

The current Congress is not equipped really to do anything[.]

That claim is the pseudo-logic President Barack Obama uses to justify his Executive Orders and “executive actions” that deliberately bypass Congress, and unconstitutionally so.

Justice Ginsburg, and others of like mind on the Supreme Court, may be entirely right on Congress’ ability—or willingness—to act. However, she, and they, would do well to remember that the Constitution they’re sworn to uphold does not authorize the Court to legislate in place of, or in addition to, Congress.

Justice Ginsburg and her fellows would do well to remember that the judiciary’s task is first to determine whether a law comports with the Constitution as the Constitution is written, and if it’s legitimate, to apply that law as that law is written.

Full stop.

Democrats and Those Pesky Laws

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Three senior House members told The Associated Press that they plan to strongly urge the administration to grant a special sign-up opportunity for uninsured taxpayers who will be facing fines under the law for the first time this year.

The three are Michigan’s Sander Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, and Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, and Lloyd Doggett of Texas. All worked to help steer Obama’s law through rancorous congressional debates from 2009-2010.

Because, voters. Because, law? That’s too inconvenient; just ignore it.

The Obamacare law—which Democrats have been trying to stifle debate about by insisting “It’s the law of the land”—specified the signup period. If these worthies want to change the signup period, they need to change the law—which they helped write this way—not ignore it.

The lawmakers say they are concerned that many of their constituents will find out about the penalties after it’s already too late for them to sign up for coverage, since open enrollment ended Sunday.

Wait, what? These Democrats haven’t been talking to their constituents about their responsibilities under these Democrats’ law? Not since 2010? At all!?

Oh, yeah. Voters.

It’s Time

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…for the Party of No to get out of the way and let legislation happen. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) had this to say through her spokesman Drew Hammill about her fellow Democrats’ insistence on shutting down DHS* in favor of protecting President Barack Obama’s unconstitutional “executive actions” concerning immigration:

With only four legislative days left until the Republican Homeland Security Shutdown, Speaker Boehner made it clear that he has no plan to avoid a government shutdown. The speaker’s reliance on talking points and finger-pointing was a sad reflection of the fact that the Tea Party continues to hold the gavel as they insist on their futile anti-immigrant grandstanding.

Government shutdown. Not DHS shutdown. No exaggeration there. Pelosi’s proxy statement more honestly reads

With only four legislative days left until the Senate Democrats’ Homeland Security Shutdown, Minority Leader Pelosi made it clear that neither she nor her Senate colleagues have a plan to avoid a department shutdown. The Minority Leader’s reliance on talking points and finger-pointing was a sad reflection of the fact that the Democratic Party insists on its futile illegal immigrant grandstanding and vote pandering.

Note, too, that the Democrats are willing to hold hostage American homeland safety against preservation of those “executive actions”—”hostage” being their term, not Republicans’.

 

*Never mind, in the Democrats’ panic mongering, that DHS won’t, in fact, shut down in any substantive way: all the protection forces, from TSA to border control will remain on the job. They just won’t be paid on time, courtesy of the Senate Democrats’ constant filibuster of the House-passed bill that fully funds DHS.