President Bush imposed a so-called stimulus plan in 2008 and President Obama imposed an even bigger “stimulus” in 2009. Based upon the economy’s performance over the past five-plus years, those plans didn’t work. Japan has spent the past 20-plus years imposing one…
Daily Analysis
No, There Are No FATCA Treaties in the Senate
Yesterday, an article in The Wall Street Journal by Ben DiPietro reported that Senator Rand Paul is holding up “FATCA treaties” in the Senate. If only it were so, but this is simply untrue. There are no such FATCA treaties. The treaties in question are…
The Strange Left-Wing Fascination with Prostitution
I thought conservatives were the ones with an unseemly fixation on sex. They’re supposed to be the Puritans who, in the words of Mencken, have a “haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Maybe that’s true in a few cases, but it also appears that some…
Can You Name the One Nation in the World with a Higher Corporate Tax Rate than the United States?
I’ve made the point before that the United States foolishly imposes the highest corporate tax rate of all developed nations. But that obviously means it is theoretically possible for there to be a nation in the developing world that has a higher corporate tax rates….
Laughing at Obama’s Fumbled Attempt to Extort More Taxes with FAA Flight Delays
You don’t enjoy many victories when you fight for liberty, so I’m not averse to spiking the football on those rare occasions when we win. That’s why I shared this very funny cartoon last week to celebrate Obama’s belly flop on gun control. Now we have another cartoon,…
Are there any Lessons to Be Learned from the Rogoff-Reinhart Kerfuffle?
For those who haven’t followed this issue, Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart wrote an influential paper in 2010 arguing that government debt above 90 percent of GDP was associated with weaker economic performance. It turns out that the Rogoff and Reinhart made a…
How the Welfare State Erodes Social Capital, as Illustrated by a Chuck Asay Cartoon
I’m a big fan of Chuck Asay’s political cartoons. My favorite is his nothing-left-to-steal masterpiece. And his tractor cartoon and his regime-uncertainty cartoon are brilliant indictments of Obamanomics. Here’s another classic. It shows the impact of the welfare…
Explaining to the Kleptocrats on Capitol Hill that Tax Havens Should Be Emulated, not Persecuted
Since I just left Monaco and am now in Geneva, this is an appropriate time to extol the virtues of so-called tax havens. But I don’t merely say nice things about low-tax jurisdictions when I’m in friendly environments. I believe in swinging my sword in the…
New European Central Bank Study Finds that Government Spending Undermines Growth
The fiscal policy debate often drives me crazy because far too many people focus on deficits. The Keynesians argue that deficits are good for growth and this leads them to support more government spending. The “austerity” crowd at places such as the International…
FATCA: Exposing the IGA Bait-and-Switch
There are many problems with the FATCA intergovernmental agreement (IGA) process. From a US perspective, they agreements represent a subversion of the proper treaty process, an unconstitutional expansion of executive powers, and an unwise commitment to saddle US banks…