Tag Archives: political economy

Hypocrisy of the Left

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Sanctuary City San Francisco has

proposed new city regulations, which could only be aimed at High Bridge Arms, would have required the shop to take and preserve video of all transactions and turn customers’ personal data over to police on a weekly basis.

There was only one gun shop left in San Fran at the time these new rules were proposed. That shop already had 17 cameras installed and turned video over to the police on their request. However, as the shop’s General Manager said,

it’s the idea of filming our customers taking delivery of items after they already completed waiting periods[.]

Rather than accepting that increased invasion, not just of an honest business doing business, but of the privacy of honest Americans doing honest business, the gun shop is closing.

Clearly, the Sanctuary City’s government and the residents that elect them care more about the ability of illegal immigrants with long records of violent crime to get guns than they do about honest Americans’ ability to defend themselves.

More of the Left’s War on Energy

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Regulators from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp went to Houston to…talk to…big banks like JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citigroup, even a branch of the Royal Bank of Canada about those banks’ allegedly risky loans to American oil and gas producers.

The regulators’ beef? Those loans are too risky. Something bad is going to happen; the regulators don’t know what it is, and they don’t care.

Never mind that the bankers know more about energy production than do the regulators. Never mind that the bankers know more about how to assess risk than do the regulators. Never mind that those loans are secured by the proven oil and gas reserves held by the borrowing producers.

Never mind, either, that of those four banks, the one with the largest exposure, JP Morgan, has only about 5.5% of its total loan portfolio in the form of loans to those producers—and like the other three, those loans are secured by those reserves.

Never mind, then, that if all of those producers went bust all at once, the losses would sting the banks a bit, but they wouldn’t seriously hurt them. Never mind, either, then, that even if those producers went bust all at once, their secured loans—those borrowings backed by their proven reserves—would be paid to a significant degree; the losses to the banks would not approach total.

No, President Barack Obama’s Progressive Big Government Knows Better. Facts aren’t necessary.

In the end, the regulators are right, though: something bad is going to happen. The regulators are going to close off those oil and gas producers’ access to credit, and with that, our nation’s access to cheap energy. The climatistas are rejoicing.

Drugs

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Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has turned to bashing drug companies, and in doing so, she’s exposing her ignorance of economics. Last Tuesday, she proposed in all seriousness

a $250 monthly cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs and other measures to stop what she called “price gouging” by pharmaceutical companies.
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Under Clinton’s plan, the monthly cap would limit what insurance companies could ask patients to pay for drugs that treat patients with chronic or serious medical conditions.

Then she added this gem:

“We need to protect hard-working Americans here at home from excessive costs. Too often these drugs cost a fortune,” adding drug companies keep the profits for themselves while “shifting the cost to families.”

Well, yeah, they do keep the profits. Contra her BFF, President Barack Obama, they did build that.

Here’s a thought, Madam, for holding down costs for us “hard-working Americans here at home” about whom you claim to care so much: reduce the costs to the manufacturers by getting your Big Government’s regulations out of their way. Increase the incentives for manufacturers to reduce costs by getting your Big Government out of the way of competition.

And think about this: if your monthly cap, pulled straight out of rectal storage, plays out, what will be the cost of those drugs to us hard-working Americans here at home when the drug companies, unable to recoup their costs, stop manufacturing the drugs altogether?

Let’s Increase Taxes

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…and the costs all of us must bear from that. But the real story is this…proposal…Hillary Clinton has dreamed up for her Presidential campaign.

The centerpiece idea would require drug makers to devote a sufficient portion of revenue to research and development. Those that don’t would risk losing federal support, such as research grants or an R&D tax credit.

Never mind that drug companies already spend 15%-20% on R&D. This fine businesswoman, who’s never run a company in her life and who was dead broke when she left the White House, says that’s not enough. Never mind, too, that she has studiously avoided saying how much is enough.

This is just another Democrat who hasn’t met a tax she didn’t like. This is just another Democrat who thinks Big Government knows more about running a business than the businessmen, who have to operate in a competitive environment or fail.

Power Grab

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Here’s one worthy even of President Barack Obama’s legendary reach.

France’s data-protection regulator on Monday rejected Google Inc’s appeal of its order to expand Europe’s “right to be forgotten” to Google’s websites world-wide….

The French presume to extend their legal reach beyond their legal reach—beyond their borders.

France’s Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés, or CNIL, said that Google must now adhere to a formal order in May directing it to apply Europe’s right to be forgotten to “all domain names” of the search engine, including google.com—or face possible sanctions proceedings.

Here is France saying, “Do what we tell you to do anywhere you are in the world, or we will break you.”

Rank extortion.

It’ll be interesting—and instructive—to see whether Google management has the moral courage and the integrity to say, “Non.”