I recently posted data showing how companies are sitting on lots of cash, presumably in part because the business climate is not conducive to investment and job creation. I also showed a cartoon that makes the same point in an amusing – yet insightful – manner. Now…
Daily Analysis
Real-World Evidence for Regime Uncertainty?
There certainly are logical reasons to think that Obama’s policies are dampening economic growth. Investors and entrepreneurs have little reason to produce and take risks, after all, when they know the burden of government is going to climb. Especially when you add…
How Would You Describe the Federal Government?
There’s an encouraging new poll from Gallup which reveals that 72 percent of Americans say something negative when asked for a one-word description of the federal government. Here’s the “word cloud” showing the results. As you can see, this is very similar to the…
Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which Nation Has the Most Debt of All?
The Economist has a fascinating webpage that allows you to look at all the world’s nations and compare them based on various measures of government debt (and for various years). The most economically relevant measure is public debt as a share of GDP, and you can see…
David Cameron’s Foolish (or Cynical) Naivete about the Laffer Curve
Even though he’s allowing the budget to grow twice as fast as inflation, some people seem to think the new U.K. Prime Minster is a fiscal conservative. I’m skeptical. Not only is spending rising much too fast (there are promises of more restraint in the future, but…
Do We Have a Problem of Too Much Spending or Too Little Revenue?
Here’s a chart from Veronique de Rugy’s new article in The American. Amazing how the problem becomes obvious when you look at real numbers and don’t get trapped into using “baseline” math (as I explain in my latest video).
Obama’s Job-Killing Policies: A Picture Says a Thousand Words
The new unemployment data has been released and it’s not a pretty picture. Literally and figuratively. This image is all we need to know about the success of President Obama’s big-government policies. The lower line is from a White House report in early 2009 and it…
Obama’s Policy Failure, Part II
In a previous post, I commented on a Wall Street Journal column by former Senator Phil Gramm, calling attention to evidence that the economy is under-performing compared to what happened after previous recessions. This is an important issue, particularly when you…
Where are the ’60s Hippies Now that They’re Needed to Fight Keynesianism?
Keynesian economic theory is the social-science version of a perpetual motion machine. It assumes that you can increase your prosperity by taking money out of your left pocket and putting it in your right pocket. Not surprisingly, nations that adopt this approach do…
Retirees Are the Third Victims of Obamacare
We’ve already identified kids and low-income workers as groups that are being hurt by the new scheme for government-run healthcare. Now we can add retirees to the list. Gee, I wonder what happened to that promise about being able to keep your existing health plan?…