Mark Casey Online » Economy

John Swift Demands Pardons for Deadly Wal-Mart Stampeders

Mark Casey — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:41:31 +0000

The wonderful satirist John Swift has joined the chorus of media and political figures telling outgoing lame duck George W. Bush just who should avoid jail time for their nefarious deeds. For some, it’s Gitmo torturers. For others, it’s dirty CEOs. For one Scooter Libby, it’s a guy who took the fall for leaking a CIA agent’s name.

But for Swift, it’s the valiant capitalists who sought Black Friday deals at Wal-Mart, and who trampled an employee to death on their way to noble holiday bargains:

Prosecutors may even try to score cheap political points by filing criminal charges against some of these bargain hunters, who have been called “savages” and “animals” by demagogues in the liberal media. Of course, my heart goes out to the family of this man who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but while it is unfortunate that someone got hurt, capitalism is not a dinner party. There will always be some collateral damage in a free market. Socialists who hate capitalism are now trying to scapegoat these patriotic Americans…

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Forget the Last 20 Years — Look at this Chart!

Mark Casey — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:30:13 +0000

Conservative economist Greg Mankiw is upset by this meme which seems to be forming that Obama’s economic team is more special than any of Bush’s — which happens to include Mankiw himself.

So, in response to Paul Krugman’s post about the days of cronyism being over, Mankiw pulls out a large chart which purports to rank economists based upon their “academic accomplishments,” and wouldn’t you know it — plenty of folks from both Obama and Bush’s teams are on the chart. Thus, Mankiw deftly proves that everything Bush ever did (cough *tap Mankiw* cough) is just as good as anything Obama will do:

Judging by this objective criterion, it looks like the two adminstrations are drawing economists from roughly the same talent pool.

Of course, the bulk of Obama’s team earned their chops by presiding over the largest and longest economic expansion in American history (Clinton Admin.); and Mankiw and his buddies get to stake their claim in the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.

BUT THEY’RE ALL ON THE SAME CHART!

There is also some irony in the fact that Mankiw vaguely implies Krugman is a “hack” while referencing a chart which conveniently ranks Krugman ahead of Mankiw:

15. Paul Krugman
21. Greg Mankiw

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How to Create a Stimulus Straw-Man

Mark Casey — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:57:57 +0000

Conservative economist Greg Mankiw giggles at Democrats’ silly belief that the government can improve the economy:

The Washington Post reports:

“Facing an increasingly ominous economic outlook, President-elect Barack Obama and other Democrats are rapidly ratcheting up plans for a massive fiscal stimulus program that could total as much as $700 billion over the next two years….Obama has set a goal of creating or preserving 2.5 million jobs by 2011.“

Dividing one number by the other, that works out to $280,000 per job. What is going on here?

Oh, those silly liberals and their horribly wasteful government spending. Mankiw is suggesting a consumer approach to job creation, thinking that, somehow, the government will literally be spending x amount of dollars on “creating” a job.

The stimulus plan in question, of course, is about promoting economic health — not the mere hiring of 2.5 million people by the government.

Is Mankiw deliberately ignoring the other possible roles that government may take in affecting the economy because conservative economists don’t believe the government may play that role? Is he pretending to be stupid in order to create a stimulus straw-man?

After the last eight years, does anything Mankiw thinks the government should do matter?

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That Wiley Stock Market

Mark Casey — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:31:55 +0000

A row of houses in foreclosure

We just had the biggest two-day rally in over 20 years, coming on the heels of the recent prolonged crash from mid-september onward. Analysts are giving credit to Barack Obama and the announcement today (and Friday) of his economic team. Combine that with Citi’s personal rescue plan, and you’ve got people apparently willing to invest once again. At least for a couple of days.

This, from CNN:

“There is a massive amount of liquidity on the sidelines but it’s sitting behind a dam of fear,” said Stephen Leeb, president at Leeb Capital Management.

He said that there needs to be a major catalyst to really start it flowing, but Monday’s news had certainly caused some cracks in the dam. In particular, the nomination of Timothy Geithner for secretary of the Treasury was helping Wall Street.

Am I the only one at least marginally concerned that our entire financial system behaves like a petulant child, with all its whims and overreactions and fits?

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Who is Joe the Plumber?

Mark Casey — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:19:29 +0000

“Joe the Plumber” is a Republican man from Holland, Ohio who asked Barack Obama why he wanted to raise his taxes in the event that he bought the plumbing business he worked for. Obama explained that there are all kinds of different taxes applied to small businesses, and he wants to do what he can to protect and support small businesses while keeping with his plan to roll back the Bush tax cuts for people who make more than $250,000 a year.

John McCain turned this moment into an accusation in the third presidential debate that Obama didn’t care about plumbers. So the news media thought it would be cute to go meet and interview Joe, who it turns out is not, in fact, a sweet little undecided voter.

No, Joe says he has known who he’s going to vote for “for a long time now” — and it’s got nothing to do with Taxes:

Joe the Plumber is a Republican for McCain, who does not make over $250,000, and nor will his small business, and he has no immediate plans to buy that small business. He was looking for a “gotcha” moment on that ’socialist’ Obama, and boy, did he ever get one. He said the following to his local news station:

Obama “talks nice,” but Joe the Plumber doesn’t trust him.
John McCain is a war hero, and that’s the only thing that matters.
He doesn’t want America to turn into a “Socialist” country (read: Obama is an icky radical).
Joe the Plumber doesn’t have immediate plans to buy any businesses, and those businesses he wants to buy don’t make over $250,000, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be hit with the same tax plan as individuals, but one day, Joe the Plumber “hopes” to eventually make over $250,000 a year.

Hey, Joe, me too! I also hope to marry an underwear model and cure some diseases. But, until that happens, let’s just keep repeating that John McCain is a war hero and that’s why he’s the best candidate.

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Is the Bush Administration Responsible for the Financial Meltdown?

Mark Casey — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:29:31 +0000

As the global financial meltdown has rocked the stock market — and millions of 401-K’s along with it — the first thing to spring to the average American’s mind was something like “Okay, so how is George W. Bush responsible?”

It’s a question worth asking, but thus far there haven’t been many answers. Democrats blame Republicans for their dogmatic obedience to the financial sector, and their refusal to believe that it could do anything wrong. Republicans blame Democrats for… forcing them to give loans to minorities. (Yes, political operatives on the GOP side are writing straight-faced editorials claiming that the global financial collapse which is bankrupting people from New York to Istanbul is thanks to a few thousand poor folks in Chicago — most often believed to be Barack Obama’s friends and family, all of whom are also terrorists.)

But if we’re going to place blame along political lines, it’s going to be hard not to find fault with the part who has controlled congress for 12 of the last 14 years, and the presidency for 8 of them (read: Gasp, Republicans!!).

However, I’ve always thought the problem was much more subtle than that. It’s not so much that one party or the other has explicity designed our financial system to fail (though that is essentially the result of the GOP’s deregulation fixation). Rather, it’s a decades-long belief by both parties in Washington that rules and regulations really are best left alone. This is thanks to the popularity of Ronald Reagan. Not, mind you, the success of his policies, which is meh — but just the fact that politicians are trying to somehow capture the same stuff that made him popular, to use it for themselves.

Anyway, the point is, there’s a great writeup in Business Week explaining a key moment in the meltdown, when state officials went to the federal office of the Comptroller to warn him that “aggressive lending” — in the praiseful words of George W. Bush — was causing huge problems in their states, and the Comptroller (appointed by Bill Clinton) decided that he didn’t care, and that the days of government watchdogs and regulation had gone the way of the Dodo.

It’s true; they had. How about we bring them back? Freedom is great — but regulation isn’t a lack of freedom. It’s like putting more cops on the street, so we don’t let people’s freedoms result in the burning down of buildings.

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“Wardrobe Malfunction” Fine Revoked by FCC

Mark Casey — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:55:39 +0000

Perhaps in honor of the late George Carlin, a federal appeals court has thrown out the over half-million dollar indecency fine it levied against CBS in the wake of the now infamous “wardrobe malfunction” incident during the 2004 Super Bowl, in which Janet Jackson’s breast was partially and momentarily exposed.

The court called the FCC’s fine arbitrary, and found that it was over the top and out of line with the FCC’s established history of handling indecency incidents.

Kudos to CBS, who could’ve simply paid the fine and been done with it years ago. Instead, it challenged the FCC in court, and found this happy outcome, which will have far-reaching implications. The huge fine came at the height of what many observers, including this one, thought was a campaign by the FCC to vastly overreach its bounds, inventing new definitions of “indecency” (and therefore new definitions of what was acceptable on TV), and attempting to over-regulate mediums it has no business regulating, such as cable television and the internet.

It may seem trite, a mere footnote in telecommunications legalese — but it’s an important precedent, for both innovative entertainment and for free speech.

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EPA Says a Human Life is Worth $900,000 Less

Mark Casey — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:12:21 +0000

So, I didn’t know that the government looked at human life in terms of a cost-benefit analysis, and frankly, I’m a little disturbed by it.

But really, is there a better way to do it? You can’t just pass a law related to the death of every single human being on the planet. So, what the EPA does is, they examine a situation like, say, rampant pollution in New Jersey. If they wanted to end a particular aspect of that pollution, such as Carbon Dioxide in the air or Mercury levels in the water, they would find out how much money it would cost to impose regulations over those activities, and they weigh it against the cost of human life lost if the activity continues.

Morbid as it may be, that means they have to assign a value to each human life. And they just decided that a human life costs $900,000 less than it used to, in a move that most analysts have decided is entirely political. The administration is just trying to give energy companies one last break before they have to clean out their offices, I guess.

Already, the new measurement is going to be put to the test, after a federal court ruled that East Coast pollution levels, which are expected to cause 15,000 premature deaths a year, aren’t allowed to be regulated by the federal government.

We should probably just remember that the government believes 15,000 people’s lives can be excused if Duke Energy can turn an equally valuable profit off of their death. And hey, I’m not a complete bleeding heart — I know that the financial success of a company also helps to improve and even save the lives of their employees or customers.

Or, at least they would… if the version of “government” we have right now didn’t also believe that it’s perfectly natural and reasonable for the CEO of a company to make hundreds of millions annually while gouging prices and laying off employees.

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Quick Links: The Business of Racism

Mark Casey — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:55:24 +0000

An enterprising old racist at the Texas State GOP convention this past weekend sold some buttons which quaintly read: “If Obama is president… will we still call it The White House?” How transparently base. Luckily, the Texas Republican Party banned him from further participation in the party.

I wrote briefly yesterday that the last two decades of deregulation have resulted in a self-destructive free market and a less effective economy. But if you don’t believe me because I’m not a millionaire, meaning I must be an idiot, Fortune has a good piece on the recent arrest of two Bear Stearns hedge fund executives, including analysis of what their company’s greed-induced collapse (and the massive shock waves it’s sent through our economy) means about the state of Wall Street.

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The Daily Snark: CEO’s, Corruption, and Tom Cruise

Mark Casey — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:03:27 +0000

A new Quinnipiac Poll says Obama now leads McCain by significant margins in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. 12 Year Old Newsweek reporter Andrew Romano says it’s all the women’s fault. And oh yeah, now that one side is honestly behind in the race for the first time, let the mud-slinging begin! Prepare yourself for a whole lot more of those “Obama is clearly, simultaneously, a terrorist and a person who does not understand terrorism” comments from the entire width and breadth of the right wing.

How can Americans not be insulted by the clear orchestration so often crammed down their throats by political parties? This time it’s the GOP, with McCain, Bush, and every oil executive imaginable coming out in favor of offshore drilling. Under the false banner of reducing oil prices, they’re acting like they all suddenly got the idea to drill in the Gulf of Mexico (not where they’re already allowed to explore and choosing not to, but in the other places), and the Democrats want you to pay four hundred dollars a gallon because they hate America. Meanwhile, Democrats are actually taking on the cause of high gas prices: the artificial shortage created by unchecked oil speculation — also known as “The Same Thing Enron Did.”

Speaking of offshore drilling, CNN and MSNBC both decided to interview the CEOs of oil companies to get their opinion on drilling for oil off the coast of Florida. Anyone want to guess what they said?

Speaking of CEO’s, a third of them reported to a poll that they expect to cut jobs from their companies in the next year, even as they also reported that they expect sales to start rising again. Man, I sure am happy that weak-kneed politicians believe that an open market means an unregulated one, or else we wouldn’t currently be enjoying all the wonderful benefits of an unmonitored, self-destructive market economy.

And finally, this last bit is a direct port from Melted Reel Online — and something I find hilarious. Tom Cruise and his Scientology goons are once again trying to bring down the entire psychiatric industry. This time, however, they didn’t start the fight. Celebrity shrink “Dr. Drew” did. For quotes and the full story, follow the links.

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