Tag Archives: political economy

Martin Feldstein Thinks the Markets are Headed for a Fall

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He’s right, to an extent.  The Price-Earnings ratio for aggregated publicly owned businesses is at historic highs.  His reasoning centers on four factors: the Fed’s raising of its benchmark interest rates, which will make money cost more for businesses; the Fed’s reducing its own government bond holdings, which will contribute to upward pressure on interest rates generally; the Federal government’s needing to borrow to cover its still enormous deficits; and heretofore easy money has made the labor market too tight.

However.

There are a couple things about Feldstein’s four reasons. One is that the improving economic activity will greatly mitigate (albeit not eliminate) stock price falls by raising business earnings to meet those falling stock prices—both the numerator and the denominator of the P/E ratio, after all, are dynamic, not only the numerator (albeit the one is capable of moving faster than the other).  Prices won’t fall as far as Feldstein seems to think.

Another thing is that Feldstein’s third reason is a prime argument for the Progressive-Democratic Party to get out of the way and allow Federal spending to be cut.

A third thing is that Feldstein is overstating the case in his fourth reason.  The labor market isn’t as tight as it might seem, given that the underemployed per centage remains at elevated levels, as does the number of workers who’ve left the labor market because they’ve given up; the latter is a population that can be persuaded to return to the labor force.

The Party Wants No Deal

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The Progressive-Democrats in Congress don’t want a deal, neither on the budget nor on DACA.  They want the Federal government shut down so they can blame the Republicans for it during this fall’s elections.  They also want to keep the DACA situation and immigration in general alive as a debating question for those same elections.

Democrats said Mr Trump’s dismissal of “shithole countries” in Africa in a closed meeting last week with lawmakers positioned him as the person who upset the negotiations.

Notice that.  The Progressive-Democrats are doing two things here: masquerading a claim of certain words being spoken as a fact that those words were spoken, and then using those words as an excuse to refuse to deal on DACA rather than actually dealing on DACA.

That the Progressive-Democrats do not want a DACA deal at all is illustrated by a third thing to notice, a matter that’s being carefully ignored by both those Progressive-Democrats and the NLMSM.  Such words spoken publicly would be damaging to our national reputation; on that we’re all agreed.  What’s ignored is that, having been said in that closed meeting (if they were said), no one outside the meeting would know about them and no damage would be done—but for a meeting participant (Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) comes to mind) running screaming to the press as soon as the meeting broke up to bruit about those words.  This is a deliberate move to blow up any DACA negotiations.

Nor is a DACA agreement needed in the current budget debate.  President Donald Trump’s rescission of ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) DHS memorandum gave Congress, where such a matter belongs, until next March to enact a DACA program legislatively, or explicitly decline to do so, before Trump’s rescission takes effect.  The lack of urgency is further well-known to the Progressive-Democrats: a Federal judge has blocked Trump’s order.  Demanding a DACA deal in the current budget debate is simply a mechanism to block a budget deal.

Too, the Progressive-Democratic Party must come before children.  That Party is more important than children is demonstrated by two outcomes of the Progressive-Democrats’ obstructionism.  The DACA children will get nothing from any government shutdown.  The Progressive-Democrats’ rejection of a budget deal also will reject the CHIP program, whose funding is renewed for six years, in the deal on offer.  Millions of children will be denied access to health insurance.

Remember that in the coming elections.

The Rogue EPA

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Glider trucks are freight-hauling trucks with used, rebuilt engines and drive trains installed in new cab-chassis.  Then-President Barack Obama’s (D) EPA, led by the paragon of green envy virtue, Gina McCarthy, decided that these used trucks actually were new trucks and held them required to meet that EPA’s emissions standards for new trucks.  After all, the Environmental Protection Act exempted used trucks from those standards, and the Obama crowd and its cronies like Volvo didn’t like that.

In late 2017, in order to prove the legitimacy of the claim, some holdover folks of the EPA ran a test on a couple of glider trucks and found them to meet/exceed EPA standards for new truck emissions.

So, shut up.

No.

Staff at EPA headquarters told [Steve Milloy, the author of the piece at the link] that administrator Scott Pruitt had no knowledge of these tests and never authorized them. The renegade report that the tests produced wasn’t peer-reviewed, as is customary. It also wasn’t printed on official EPA letterhead or assigned an internal EPA document number. It is not even available on the EPA lab’s website. Yet it mysteriously found its way into the hands of glider opponents at the early December public hearing on the proposed rollback.

The current budget request for the EPA contains a payroll budget level that’s consistent with a 47% reduction in EPA employees.  That reduction is clearly justified.

Projection

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Kentucky has decided to take advantage of new Federal Medicaid rules and add a work requirement to those receiving Medicaid payments in order for them to be eligible for continued payments.  Recipients in the typical working age range of 19-64 must do 80 hours—two weeks—of what the State terms “community engagement.”  There are, of course, exceptions for those who cannot work.

As Kentucky’s governor Matt Bevin (R) noted in his tweet about his decision to approve the new rule,

There is dignity associated with earning the value of something that you receive. The vast majority of men and women, able-bodied men and women … they want the dignity associated with being able to earn and have engagement.

Progressive-Democrats are in an uproar over the requirement that people actually work in order to receive government largesse.

Congressman John Yarmuth [D, KY] call[ed] it a “dangerous and irresponsible” decision that will lead to the “financial ruin” for thousands of families that reside in Kentucky.

Of course.  Just like adding a work requirement in the Federal government’s reform of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (later replaced by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which continued the work requirement—until then-President Barack Obama (D) waived the work requirement) dangerously and irresponsibly led to financial ruin for all those hundreds of thousands of families.  Oh, wait—that actually led to the adults in those families not only going to work, but to those families’ increased prosperity, since their earned income was greater than their AFDC/TANF payments.

The Progressive-Democrat is projecting.

 

*The waiver led to an explosion of families on TANF and their increased poverty, thus providing an actual experiment on the outcome of a work requirement.

It’s a Start

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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has been instructed by President Donald Trump to adjust its rules to allow the States to adjust their own rules to require work for Medicaid payments.

This is a very good start.  There are two remaining steps, though.  The funds transferred to the States in support of Medicaid need to be converted to block grants with no strings attached.  Each State knows its own medical support needs far better than does the Federal government.

The last step is to begin reducing, over a short number of years, the size of those block grants until no funds at all are being sent to the States.  This will get the Feds out of the States’ business, remove an extortion tool from the Feds’ kit which the Feds use to push the States into doing (or not doing) things the Feds demand be done or not done, and it will greatly reduce Federal spending.  In 2016, the Federal government sent almost $350 billion to the States in Medicaid transfers.