In “Stimulus price tag once again lurches higher,” Stephen Dinan reports in the Washington Times that according to the Congressional Budget Office, the cost of Obama’s “economic stimulus” package (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 or ARRA) has now risen by another $40 billion. Congress’s chief scorekeeper said Wednesday that the price tag…
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Matt Cover at CNSNews.com writes that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just issued a new report, “Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output from October 2010 Through December 2010,” that indicates that: The jobs created and saved by the economic stimulus law that President Barack Obama…
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In his recent article in Investor’s Business Daily, “Uncertainty Continues To Depress Jobs,” Robert Higgs (Senior Fellow, The Independent Institute) discusses how the U.S. government’s interventionist and spending policies are prolonging high unemployment by creating a climate of massive economic uncertainty: President Obama, in his State of the Union address, promised to focus on…
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Over at Economix, Casey Mulligan has a nice illustration of Austan Goolsbee’s approach to economic planning. In essence, targeted means of stimulating investment (say, with New Homebuyer tax credits) don’t work to increase investment, and thereby employment, in the short-run. Rather these types of subsidies have drive up prices for current asset owners—constituting windfall…
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According to Michael Munger, the recent proposals by the deficit commission are DAFT. DAFT is short for “deficits are future taxes” and is a useful analogy to counter the political myths about debt and taxation. “With a total debt of more than $13 trillion, our government is in the midst of forcing the largest…
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In the Wall Street Journal, Jeff Bater reports in “U.S. Posts $150.4 Billion November Budget Deficit,” that federal red ink is reaching an all-time record: The U.S. government ran its 26th straight monthly budget deficit in November amid wrangling over a package that would extend big tax cuts to Americans trying to recover from…
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In a new article in the Wall Street Journal, “Why the Spending Stimulus Failed: New economic research shows why lower tax rates do far more to spur growth,” Stanford University economist Michael Boskin examines how and why the U.S.’s $814 billion economic stimulus has failed. For many years now, Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert…
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In shocking new disclosures, the Washington Post has reported in an article, “Fed aid in financial crisis went beyond U.S. banks to industry, foreign firms,” that in 2008 and 2009 the Federal Reserve created trillions of dollars in corporate welfare as secret bailouts “not just to Wall Street but also to motorcycle makers, telecom…
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As the government of Ireland undergoes scrutiny and criticism for its poorly mismanaged fiscal house, the media risks missing the primary lesson. Poor public sector incentives drive politicians to enact policies that defy the laws of economics. There is no such thing as a free lunch—not even a Keynesian lunch of government issued corn…
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In the new Wall Street Journal article, “Fed Fires $600 Billion Stimulus Shot,” Jon Hilsenrath reports that the day after the stunning mid-term elections that clearly were a referendum against the Keynesian spending binge of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the Federal Reserve has launched another gigantic “stimulus” measure exactly like what…
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