Comments by pashley1411

Clinton had the good fortune of the end of the cold war, the internet stock bubble, and a GOP congress. Nevertheless, Clinton is a good example of gdpbull's point, which I agree with.

The war on drugs should end, but for South American governments to be looking to the US, at the time when the US is likely to go thru deep government retrenchment and reorganization, doesn't speak well to the maturity of south American governments. The US (like Euroland, like Japan, like maybe even China) is going to be leaving the rest of the world alone for awhile.

Downgrade news is good news, if you think prosperity is more often crushed by the public sector and that benefit levels are impossible to sustain.
Euro political elites would be wiser to look to the welfare or their citizens and their economies, rather than bashing countries on the other side of the globe on carbon duties. Like we are going to make it out of this century in anywhere near the same condition as we went in.

We can be sure that the Greek junta will do just enough to fall short of effective.

A utilitarian argument for reducing the scope of freedom of religion and freedom of association is probably not doing a good job of engaging the issue.

DP is correct. All the credit institutions and private sector defaults won't fix a government that still hemorages red ink at, as far as I can tell, exceeds 7% of GNP/year.

Zero out the private sector, there is nobody left but state-controlled banks and speculators. Put the government on cash. And then to revive the private sector, print print print the new drachma.

To use a different cultural reference, AGW is pinning for the fjords.

There is an upside. Since there is no money for global warming projects, it will give time for the climate scientists to rebuild the data, projections, and paradigms. To better withstand scrutiny, instead of the monthly revelations that their work has been swept up by tricksters and frauds (in the form of politicians and UN bureaucrats).

Science and politics doesn't mix (again).

Its pointless to point to a particular training program, supply, when high youth unemployment is endemic across Western countries.

Training is a micro thing, and governments sux at micro. Governments don't know what to train, wouldn't know how to train properly if pointed in the right direction, and can't function except in a ghastly expensive and wasteful manner.

So stop trying to create supply when there is no demand. Drop the cost of employing people; taxes, regulation, litigation.

The proposal is to take away the power to tax and spend from the national level, and kick it upstairs to a higher level of government, Brussels.

A national government, Greece, is revealed to be a failure, but how is Brussels supposedly more frugal? wiser in its policies? better at promoting business? I can't see how its a serious argument.

And benefits for the EU are that businesses were able to take advantage of a large common market. It seems like then the solution to Greek-type mismanagement is to not kick powers upstairs, but to limit the power of national governments (which was the original 3% of GNP deficit limit, a restraint on national governments).

Europe doesn't need a new government; it needs a constitution to limit governments' power.

Another experiment in direct democracy was the Parisian mob. How did that work out? Its 2011 and reporters have never read, for example, the Federalist papers?

I'm not interested in beating up on the Greeks. The only difference between them and most of the EU is a matter of degree.

Also not interested in suicide tax bills to keep payments up to French banks. Let the banks take some huge haircuts and miss their quarterly bonuses.

On the other hand, its is of great interest what sort of regime the EU puts in place, since they seem to think that the EU gives them writ to do so. High taxes and emigration? Stomp out businesses? Slash retirement and pensions? A probusiness regime? Its all up in the air.

Does anyone really think that the French and Germans are going to play sugardaddy to Greece and its dependents?

A country can only do so many things, and right now, the Western countries are trying to figure out a) in the EU, integrate or breakup b) integrating immigrant populations c) downsizing the welfare state.

We won't even mention imprisoning their own dissent leaders (Britan).

So popular opposition in other countries are on their own.

The Fed isn't in the constitution, so where did the "constitutional crisis" pablum come from?

If you want to prosecute politicians for poking their noses up everyone's arse, I'm all for it, but this is probably not where to start.

So, does that mean that AGW "warmists" can be tossed in jail if the temperature doesn't warm up as much as their models predict? Can't wait.

I wouldn't pretend to have answer to the "debt" problem. Having trained southern Europeans to live beyond their means and in notions of cotton-socialism, there are no easy paths pack. But its far easier to make predictions.

The Gordian knot of debt will be easily cut, with a default.

Banks and taxpayers money lent to southern Europeans to tide them over will be lost, every cent, or centium, as you were.

Every northern leader who advocated giving money to southerns will, very soon, retire in disgrace.

Some will be charged and tried.

And Europe will wake up and realize that it is a much poorer place than it imagined.

The message of risk, or spreads, is simply the messenger, though sometimes the trumpet of alarm rings louder than others.

The risk is the governments themselves, their budgeting (or lack thereof), the commitments they've made, whether plausible or not.

The current US administration, with expenses wildly out of alignment out of current revenue, deserves no breaks. In time it won't get any.

"For Barack Obama, these signs of Republican softening are a godsend." Maybe if the Administration had stayed out of Libya and not expanded the war in Afganistan, and so stayed as the "peace" President.

I think the wars are a sideshow, as pointless as I personally feel they are. The problem is that the administration is taking a tremendous beating, both at home and abroad. His budget crushed 93-0, the House has become an enemy camp, his allies in the Senate can't pass a budget, the intiative of the federal agencies simply act to inflame the country, the blue states in hawk and the red states in rebellion.

We have to go back to 1968 to find a worse year for an administration.

It would nice if the socialists who oppose operations outside of Europe would drop their insistence on human rights as well. Bad things will happen in Libya/Syria/Yemen, and the Europeans should just admit there is nothing they can do about it.

Meanwhile, as Samuelson would have predicted, the attempted integration of multicultural Europe burns up so much energy and money to foreclose operations in the rest of the world.

Agree with the others, kind of a worthless exercise until the 3 years of excess inventory gets kicked out and real estate prices find a new bottom. Which isn't today, and probably will not be tomorrow.

The government is going to have to settle on a consistent supply-side; the incomes to buy and maintain homes, not threatened by job losses or tax heights. We aren't even close to being there.