Some headlines from Tuesday, January 31, 2012: Congressional Budget Office Reports Another $1 Trillion Deficit The government faces a fourth year of trillion-plus deficits in 2012, according to new projections released Tuesday—numbers which also show little relief in the future unless Washington comes to grips with needed changes in its tax and spending policies….
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In an Associated Press article in the San Jose Mercury News, “Parent of Obama-backed battery maker goes bankrupt,”Matthew Daly reports that yet another “green” company that received corporate welfare from the Obama administration has now gone bankrupt. In this case, the electric car-battery company Ener1 received $118 million from the Department of Energy in…
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Crony capitalism is the theme of tonight’s “State of the Union” address. Warren Buffet’s longtime secretary, Debbie Bosanek will be seated next to Michelle Obama at tonight’s speech. Bosanek has recently become the White House’s new symbol for higher taxes and what the administration terms “economic fairness”. But fairness couldn’t be farther from the…
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Stunning. That’s really the only word we can use to describe the release of a “sensitive and confidential” 57 page memo, written by then soon-to-be U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers in December 2008, about what became President Obama’s signature economic program in the first year of his presidency: the “stimulus package”. James Pethokoukis has…
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My colleague Jeff Hummel pointed out an interesting blog post by Ted Levy where he asks the question: what’s the point of the debt ceiling? Levy shows that since the debt ceiling was created in 1917, it has been raised over 100 times, 8 times in just the last ten years. In fact, Congress…
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The Heartland Institute’s Steve Stanek reports on the state of Illinois’ recent debt downgrade to now have the lowest credit rating of all the United States, back on January 9, 2012: Despite having imposed a record 67 percent increase in the personal income tax and 46 percent increase in the corporate tax in January…
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In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Sara Murray reports that “Nearly Half of U.S Lives in Household Receiving Government Benefits.” The pool of Americans relying on government benefits rose to record highs last year as an increasing share of families tapped aid in a weak economy. Some 48.6% of the population lived…
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Presented here, in one chart: References Nakamura, David. Obama Asks Congress for Debt Limit Hike. Washington Post: Politics and Policy. 12 January 2012. Tapper, Jake. R.I.P., Department of Commerce? President Obama Seeks to Consolidate Government Agencies. ABC News: Political Punch. 13 January 2012.
I could not resist posting this beautiful graph of the current state of the momentousness US debt. The graph is particularly useful for eyeballing the historical path of U.S. debt to GDP. Often pundits will say that our current debt-to-GDP ratio is not unreasonable because it is not too high relative to the period…
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The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House informed Congress yesterday that they are once again reaching the debt ceiling limit. This quote that I found in the article was quite unsettling: But under procedures resulting from last August’s budget agreement that sought to avoid a government default, President Barack Obama could issue…
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