There’s always been a simple and desirable solution to Europe’s fiscal crisis, but nobody in Europe wants to do the right thing because it means admitting the failure of big government and it would result in less power for the political elite. So we get the spectacle of never-ending emergency summits as the political class […]
read more...By European standards, Germany is in pretty good shape. There’s a very large welfare state and the tax burden is quite onerous, both of which hinder growth, but Germany has been more responsible than the United States in recent years. And while this may be damning with faint praise, this modest bit of fiscal discipline […]
read more...Last month, I shared a video about bloated bureaucracy from a group called Government Gone Wild. That generated a big response, so here’s another video from the same group, only this one looks at egregious examples of government waste. If you like videos on wasteful spending, but prefer a more attractive narrator, click here. And […]
read more...In hopes of stopping investor panic about Europe’s fiscal crisis, the world’s major central banks just announced that they will do whatever is needed to ensure financial markets don’t freeze up. This could be an appropriate and relatively benign use of the lender-of-last-resort powers, or it could signal another round of reckless easy money and […]
read more...This narrator probably won’t get rich, like the guy who did the “Girls Gone Wild” videos, but this is the second-best video I’ve ever seen on the bloated and overpaid government workforce. I especially like how he understands that the problem is the size of government, and I also admire his recognition that Republicans often […]
read more...Most people have a vague understanding that America has a huge long-run fiscal problem. They’re right, though they probably don’t realize the seriousness of that looming crisis. Here’s what you need to know: America’s fiscal crisis is actually a spending crisis, and that spending crisis is driven by entitlements. More specifically, the vast majority of […]
read more...bout a year ago, I spoke at a conference in Europe that attracted a lot of very rich people from all over the continent, as well as a lot of people who manage money for high-net-worth individuals. What made this conference remarkable was not the presentations, though they were generally quite interesting. The stunning part […]
read more...Remember my post from a week ago when I said I was not a Republican even though Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge are two of my heroes? Well, now I have another reason to despise the GOP. Those reprehensible statists just voted to expand federal housing subsidies. Here are some excerpts from an excellent National Review column […]
read more...The economic and fiscal crisis in Europe looks worse every day as a growing number of international investors decide that nations such as Greece, Portugal, Italy, and Spain can’t be trusted. As a result, interest rates on government debt are hitting record levels. Not surprisingly, Europe’s craven political class is refusing to reduce the burden […]
read more...The left wanted to get one thing from the Supercommittee, and that was to seduce gullible Republicans into a 1990-style tax increase deal in order to enable bigger government. But I was pleasantly surprised when GOPers failed to surrender, which means that taxpayers didn’t get raped and pillaged. But winning a battle is not the […]
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