I agree that Obama inherited a crappy economy, and I think it is silly to assert that he bears any responsibility for the severity of the 2007-2009 recession. But it is very fair to hold him responsible for what’s happened since the recession ended. I’ve cited data from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve on both employment […]

People in the political world say that President Obama threw Secretary of State Clinton under the bus in an attempt to protect himself from political fallout from Libya. I don’t follow those issues, so I can’t comment about the veracity of that charge, but I find it very interesting that some conservatives are urging Mitt […]

I talked a couple of days ago to Neil Cavuto about whether the Obama Administration is slightly modifying its class-warfare tax policy. As you can see, I’m not overly fixated on the parsing of Biden’s comments since I’m against higher tax rates for anyone. And my takeaway message from the segment is that we need […]

I spoke at the United Nations back in May, explaining that more government was the wrong way to help the global economy. But I guess I’m not very persuasive. The bureaucrats have just released a new report entitled, “In Search of New Development Finance.” As you can probably guess, what they’re really searching for is […]

I realize it’s wrong, but I can’t help cheering for France’s socialist president. Francois Hollande seems determined to raise every tax, expand every program, and augment every bit of red tape that afflicts the French economy. I fully expect this to end poorly, but at the risk of admitting that I’m chauvinistically concerned first and […]

Wow. I wasn’t surprised to learn that the United States dropped in the new rankings unveiled today in Economic Freedom of the World. But I’m somewhat shocked to learn that we fell from 10th last year all the way down to 18th this year, as can be seen on the chart (click to enlarge). Last […]

I wrote yesterday that the United Kingdom is doomed because there isn’t a political party with the vision or courage to restrain the welfare state. At various points, I’ve also expressed pessimism about the future of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, and even the United States. Simply stated, almost all western nations suffer from the […]

Like Sweden and Denmark, Germany is a semi-rational welfare state. It generally relies on a market-oriented approach in areas other than fiscal policy, and it avoided the Keynesian excesses that caused additional misery and red ink in America (though it is far from fiscally conservative, notwithstanding the sophomoric analysis of the Washington Post). Nonetheless, it’s […]

I’ve been against the auto bailout from the very beginning because it was a corrupt payoff to lazy corporate fat-cats and an ossified union. And when folks on the left say the bailout is a success, I explain that any industry can be propped up with a sufficiently large injection of other people’s money. Now […]

Centuries from now, I’m sure historians won’t bother teaching about the Magna Carta, the Constitution, the end of slavery, or the collapse of communism. Instead, people who want to know about human rights will learn about these great European developments. In France, it is against the law to say your husband is under-endowed or that […]