by Dan Mitchell | Oct 22, 2011 | Big Government, Blogs
I have no idea whether George Santayana was a good philosopher, but he certainly was right when he wrote, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Consider the fools in the U.S. Senate. They just voted to expand Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 20, 2011 | Bailouts, Big Government, Blogs, Europe
I would have structured this flowchart differently, for reasons I discuss in this post, but this is pretty good picture of why Europe is in trouble. They say all roads lead to Rome, and this flowchart shows all roads lead to a banking crisis (see this post to...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 17, 2011 | Bailouts, Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
The welfare states of Europe are in deep trouble. Decades of over-taxing and over-spending have sapped economic vitality and produced high levels of debt. The high debt levels, by themselves, might not be a problem if European governments implemented good policy....
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 29, 2011 | Bailouts, Blogs
One almost feels sorry for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. He’s a punchline in his own country because he oversees the IRS even though he conveniently forgot to declare $80,000 of income (and managed to get away with punishment that wouldn’t even qualify as a slap on...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 26, 2011 | Bailouts, Big Government, Blogs, Economics
This is getting surreal. We now have layers of bailouts around the world. Different nations are doing their own bailouts. On top of that, the Europeans have set up something called the European Financial Stability Facility, which does bailouts across the continent....