Hey, you, in the white... you're ready to be a poet, right?

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While we were out at sea, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office dropped this bombshell with respect to how the Affordable Care Act was going to effect the nation’s employment numbers.


From McKnight News Service:

The full-time work force will lose roughly 2 million people overall by 2024 as a result of the Affordable Care Act, according to new figures from the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO report, released Tuesday, came one week after an expert told lawmakers that nursing home staff are among those most likely to have their hours reduced due to the ACA.

The employer mandate places a total of 2.6 million workers at risk of reduced hours, according toChen's written Congressional testimony. This number is similar to the CBO's projection that the full-time workforce will lose 2.5 million workers. However, the budget office said this erosion will mostly be due to expanded insurance options, not the employer mandate.

For example, the availability of government-subsidized, low-cost health plans available through the online marketplaces might lead some workers to work less, the CBO stated. This is because the premium subsidies decrease as the beneficiary's income increases.

While there are “anecdotal reports” of employers limiting workers' hours, there is “no compelling evidence” that the ACA has caused an increase in part-time employment, according to the report. Still, critics of the employer mandate — and the ACA generally — seized on the CBO figures to support their arguments. The report doubled the CBO's 2010 estimate of how much the health law will reduce labor use. The new numbers are from new research and more in-depth analysis, according to the budget office.

The White House and their allies immediately went into spin mode touting how all this actually liberated workers from “job-lock” and how people who normally would not leave their job for fear of losing their employer-based health insurance.


Now, we suppose it’s terrific that people are able to pursue their dreams as an artist, a photographer or graphic designer but please also bear in mind that you will be subsidizing this job transition and most perniciously, from the italicized sentence above, we are now told it’s a good thing that your tax dollars will be going to subsidize economic inactivity.


And for an economy that possesses the lowest labor participation rate in 40 years, the term “job-lock” is a particularly curious term. The term job-lock, in our thinking, would apply to better economic times when a job or career change would entail less risk… that risk, of course, being all your own. As it stands, currently, however, there are 10 of millions of Americans who wish they had this job-lock problem the administration and its water-carriers claim to be combating.




To Twitter:

http://t.co/VRe28FpvE9 Last week: "lowest unemployment rate in years." Today: "Say, 2.5 million more unemployed is pretty freaking groovy!"

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) February 5, 2014

CBO says 2m will stop working b/c of Obamacare. WH says this is good news. They've got more spin than a Maytag. http://t.co/Ci7xlkeEbC

— Allen West (@AllenWest) February 5, 2014

Seriously. Can't have it both ways, so what's it going to be, guys?

Harry Reid (1/8/2014): "Being out of work is not only financial devastating – it’s heartbreaking." My how a CBO report changes things.

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 5, 2014

White House response to that CBO report is simply Orwellian. #ACA #upisdown

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) February 5, 2014

White House spin: People not buying insurance = "commerce" People not working = "freedom" People buying their own contraception = "ban"

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) February 4, 2014

Of course they did. People telling us that food stamps are an economic stimulus are same ones telling us unemployment is a good thing. #ACA

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) February 5, 2014

Dave's Breakup Tips: tell the person you want to dump that you're liberating them from "sex block."

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 6, 2014

So, if unemployment drops at next jobs report, what will Dems say then? #jobslock

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) February 6, 2014

@JGreenDC @instapundit I never thought in my lifetime 1 major party would announce so casually that working is bad. This is surreal

— Brian Brown (@acebb20) February 6, 2014

http://t.co/cVlej60fWe Long-term, stable employment? Naw, man, don't be a square - that's just "job-lock", daddy-o.

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) February 6, 2014

http://t.co/LuOo35PqM4 #ObamaCare: codification of the welfare state.

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) February 6, 2014

Those last couple of tweets reminded us of the mentality behind the rationalizations of this devastating CBO report. In the linked article, they talk specifically of how hard this will hit the nursing home work force where 7.5% will see their hours reduced.


These folks aren’t the 50-something suburbanite with equity in his home and a nice 401(k) nest-egg where a career change would be viewed as a liberating aspect as he glides into retirement with both kids now out of the house and on their own. This is the Harvard faculty lounge worldview of this situation which pervades the White House. This, however, is not reality.


This will impact, most forcefully, the working class like the nursing home workforce with a still-limited skill set and not yet much in the way of upward mobility. Living paycheck to paycheck and supporting families, they can ill-afford to be "liberated" from job-lock. The Harvard faculty lounge doesn’t want to be bothered with their well-being no matter how many of them are tending to the lounge’s yards, pools and children.

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Graph of the day

Alternate headline: We’re #12!


We're back from sea trials and trying to get up and running. An unfortunate, untimely and salt water-induced destruction of our smart phone has led to the purchase of a new S IV. Unfortunately, we were unable to transfer anything from the old phone which means uploading all our contact infos and apps such as Twitter (will it recognize our existing account?). These are things for which we are not technologically cut out so please bear with us.


In the meantime…


You are all aware one of the central memes of the President’s current second term slouch is income inequality. Why not employ code to stoke the continual flame of class warfare in order to pass more counter-productive legislation like a minimum wage hike and marginal tax rate hikes?


And in other news today, the U.S. has fallen out of the top ten in terms of economic freedom.


From the Wall Street Journal:

World economic freedom has reached record levels, according to the 2014 Index of Economic Freedom, released Tuesday by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. But after seven straight years of decline, the U.S. has dropped out of the top 10 most economically free countries.

It's not hard to see why the U.S. is losing ground. Even marginal tax rates exceeding 43% cannot finance runaway government spending, which has caused the national debt to skyrocket. The Obama administration continues to shackle entire sectors of the economy with regulation, including health care, finance and energy. The intervention impedes both personal freedom and national prosperity.

But as the U.S. economy languishes, many countries are leaping ahead, thanks to policies that enhance economic freedom—the same ones that made the U.S. economy the most powerful in the world. Governments in 114 countries have taken steps in the past year to increase the economic freedom of their citizens. Forty-three countries, from every part of the world, have now reached their highest economic freedom ranking in the index's history.

Here’s the chart:

(click to enlarge)

No surprise that the countries that have made the biggest gains are those of eastern Europe that were living under communist rule just over 20 years ago. They’ve seen the results of central planning and a disregard for property rights which is at the heart of a free economy.


As It stands, when the President promised to fundamentally transform this country, that will turn out to be the one campaign promise he will most likely keep and not for the better.



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Photo image of the day

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Just got back from Vegas and we were knocking around our Twitter feed and caught this beauty.

Perfecto!



Obama may defy conventional wisdom that an 8%+ unemployment rate will doom his designs on a 2nd term but think about it: this is an administration that not only celebrates how many people they can get on food stamps but touts said food stamps, not the private sector job growth, as an economic multiplier.


Considering the unemployment rate, the record Americans on food stamps and the fact that half of Americans pay no federal income tax, this is what political observers might refer to as a "Karl Rovian shoring up of the base."


Call us cynical but we're coming around to the fact that Team O has forgotten about strengthening the economy some time ago and is absolutely counting on the disaffected, soured on this economy but being held afloat by a gossamer's thread of faded hopenchange and continued government bennies to bring him home the vote.

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Are they coming around?

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We understand that there was much shouting and rejoicing at MSNBC when the jobs numbers came out Friday morning showing the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3% to 8.1%. If we only added 96,000 jobs in August, an anemic number to be sure, then how did unemployment drop?

While driving to Vegas, we had AM radio on for pretty much the entire time and we were picking up stations out of San Diego, then LA/OC, then out to the high desert and finally the Vegas stations. Witout fail, every single news break on every station felt compelled to give America a short lesson in how the government calculates unemployment figures: The Bureau of Labor only counts you against the unemployment figure if you are out of work but are currently seeking employment. We had 96,000 people find work during August, but over 360,000 people simply gave up looking for work so they were not counted as being part of the labor force. For every 1 person that found work, 4 said eff it, we’re sitting this one out.

Is that clear, MSNBC?




In all our years, we had not heard news outlets, on such a consistent basis explain this seemingly contradictory set of facts.

Is the media finally coming around or are they simply hedging their bets should the unthinkable happen in November and they can say, “See? We told you so”.

We’ll hedge ourselves, by saying probably the latter.




Oh, and if that didn’t quite grab ya, here are some more totally awesome numbers courtesy the Bureau of Labor:

(h/t): AEI

From Citigroup:

Average hourly earnings were unchanged, and up just 1.7% over the past year, matching the slowest pace on record.

All proving once again, all those degrees from Harvard aren't worth the lamb skin they are printed on.

The Friday evening dump

One in a series that takes a look at some unsavory news being jettisoned from Washington D.C. right in front of the weekend.


Technically, this went down on Thursday but was reported out by the newsies only yesterday so we're ruling it qualifies. Excpect the following to be coming to a GOP ad near you:

It was supposed to be the White House’s latest make-nice session with corporate America — a visit by Chief of Staff William M. Daley to a meeting with hundreds of manufacturing executives in town to press lawmakers for looser regulations.

But the outreach soon turned into a rare public dressing down of the president’s policies with his highest-ranking aide.

One by one, exasperated executives stood to air their grievances on environmental regulations and stalled free-trade deals. And Daley, the former banker tasked with building ties with industry, found himself looking for the right balance between empathy and defending his boss.

At one point, the room erupted in applause when Massachusetts manufacturing executive Doug Starrett, his voice shaking with emotion, accused the administration of blocking construction on one of his facilities to protect fish, saying government “throws sand into the gears of progress.”

Daley said he did not have many good answers, appearing to throw up his hands in frustration at what he called “bureaucratic stuff that’s hard to defend.”

“Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible,” he said.

(emphasis, ours)


Poor guy. Dude is going to get a dressing down for this but message discipline is such a bitch when things are as they are.

Quote of the day

For as much bitching and complaining we do around here from time to time, it's important to remember...

“Whatever else has happened to you, wake up happy every morning that you are in the United States of America,” said Stein, an actor, lawyer and celebrity commentator on political and economic issues.

“We are still the light of the world,” he said. “We are an amazing magnet for hardworking, energetic people. You don’t see too many people leaving Encinitas to drive taxis in Cairo or Bangladesh.”

Go with what you know

The Chi-comms take a page out of The Great Leap Forward playbook for their comprehensive macro-economic industrial base strategy:

Chinese steel mills and mobile phone factories are being idled and thousands of homes in one area are doing without electricity as local governments order power cuts to meet energy-saving targets set by Beijing.

Rolling blackouts and enforced power cuts are affecting key industrial areas. The prosperous eastern city of Taizhou turned off street lights and ordered hotels and shopping malls to cut power use. In Anping County southwest of Beijing, an area known as China's wire-manufacturing capital, thousands of factories and homes have endured daylong blackouts over the past two weeks.

"We can't meet deadlines for some orders and will have to pay penalties," said Han Hongmai, general manager of Anping's Jintai Metal Wire Co. "At home we can't use the toilet" on blackout days due to lack of power for water pumps, he said.

The reason for these shut-downs is mandatory energy efficiency goals dictated by the central government that are not being met.

Some industrious plants/factories still wishing to fulfill production goals while their power is cut, resort to firing up older on-site diesel generators which, of course, is not what you would consider environmentally friendly.

And dig this:

"You could say local governments are trying to blackmail the central government: If you order me to do something I can't deliver, I will pass on the pressure to ordinary people," said Yang Ailun, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace China.

An autocratic central government dictating terms of business to semi-nationalized industries who simply promise to pass along the pain to their costumers...? Over here we call that ObamaCare.

Reading the article, one gets the impression that the Chinese economy is one where an action or series of top-down decrees causes a spastic reaction that is responded to in turn by yet more top-down decrees by the Chi-comms. From our vantage point the Chinese economy is one massive back and forth flail.

Thomas Friedman likes this.

Summer time reading

Onward with excerpting Walter Russell Mead's essay, "The Top Ten Lessons of the Global Economic Meltdown":

9. Culture matters.

The economic crisis has further dispelled the illusion that the post-World War Two western world had achieved a permanently prosperous, permanently stable social democratic wonderland. The idea that liberal capitalism would produce a stable and secure world of low risk, rising living standards and increased economic equality has been proved wrong — at least for the time being. Propelled by global competition and rapid technological change the west is shifting into a world of higher risk, faster change, less stability and more inequality. This will be a difficult transition for all countries and cultures; for some it will be more wrenching than others. The fragile social peace in some European countries will be tested by the continued erosion of the old social model. The countries (in Europe and around the world) who are able to spend their energies exploiting the new possibilities of the new capitalist era will grow more rapidly than those who waste their energies fighting a rearguard action against it. Ultimately the fast changers will become more prosperous and more powerful than the slow changers. Historically, the English-speaking world has been a world of fast-changers; this is one reason English speaking countries have prospered so greatly in the capitalist era. In the post-2008 world, the ability to roll with the punches and change with the times has become more important than ever. Understanding the risks and rewards of investment and the future trends of world power and prosperity is increasingly linked to an understanding of the cultural forces in each country that make it easier for some and harder for others to take advantage of the emerging world system.

Mead is rather dismissive of paragraphs, no?

Prior to 9-11 we recall the term "End of History" where Europe, after centuries of warfare and having most recently witnessed the vanquishing of the Soviet empire, were going to ride off into the sunset of a comfortable existence informed by the non-confrontational ways of social democracy. History, of course, had other plans.

As Mead alludes, we (Americans) are a resilient lot but with respect to our ability to adapt and roll with the punches, it's not the American citizen we're as much worried about as the newly minted and as yet pending regulatory regime imposed upon us that will hamper this very ability to innovate and be agile enough to better work our way out of these cyclical recessionary binds.

Summer time reading

Continuing with our series of excerpts from Walter Russel Mead's essay, "The Top Ten Lesson of the Global Economic Meltdown"

7. The Battle of Financial Markets is over; the Battle of State Finance has begun.

“The Battle of France is over,” Winston Churchill said in 1940. “The Battle of Britain is about to begin.” We are at a similar juncture right now in the global economy. The financial markets failed to withstand a series of speculative assaults. The world’s governments rushed into the breach with large guarantees and bailouts. Now the markets are testing the governments: will the Europeans really be able to bail out Club Med? Beyond that, can the world’s governments armed with fiat currencies and facing enormous budget deficits provide enough credible stimulus to restart the world economy before fears of debt and default cause investors to lose faith in the ability of governments to manage the economic cycle?

The bad guys lost the Battle of Britain and we can hope that governments will survive the present downturn with their financial credibility intact. However, it is now clear that governments do not have an unlimited power to bail out private firms or to stimulate the economy through deficit spending. This is not only true of smaller governments like that of Greece; it may be true even of the United States.

This means that we have passed into a new economic environment, unlike anything we have seen since World War Two. For the last sixty years, we have operated under the assumption that the world’s leading governments were ultimately sovereign when it came to the economy: that they could do whatever it took to fix economic problems. In the future, we will be living in a world where this is no longer so obvious. New, large and unpredictable risks now hang over the global economy.

(itlalics, ours)

Unfortunately, we here in the states seem to be fixated on the prospect that somehow the federal government will be able to "stimulate" our way out of this recession. What has happened in Europe and the pending double-dip recession here has not factored into the logic of taste-makers like Paul Krugman and the Obama economics team who are pushing for even more spending and Keynesian gimmickry.

Summer time reading

Continuing our series of excerpts from Walter Russell Mead's essay, "The Top Ten Lessons of the Global Economic Meltdown"

5. Nobody really understands the world economy.

6. That goes double for financial markets.

Financial markets are even more volatile than the real economy. Economists predict, with varying but rarely satisfying results, the behavior of the real economy. Few are so foolish as to predict the behavior of financial markets (and those who do often lose a lot of money). There are good reasons for this. Psychology of course plays a major role in short term fluctuations, and crowd psychology is so far at least largely beyond our power to predict. But there is more. Change in financial markets has been accelerating dramatically with the improvement of computers, communications and software. The avalanche of new securities products during the last twenty years transformed the way global financial markets work. The crash set this process back for a while, but it is sure to resume. Both borrowers and lenders are (and should be) always on the lookout for cheaper, more efficient ways to manage their portfolios and get the maximum results for the minimum cost. Financial firms are, and should be, ready to help make this happen. Over time, new securities products, larger trading volumes and complex hedging and trading programs change the nature of the financial marketplace. There are new risks and new interconnections that, increasingly, neither regulators nor market participants fully understand. As time passes after a crash, both regulators and market participants become more confident that the system is working, and there is a natural tendency for risk tolerance to increase even as risks are becoming harder to measure and price. Sooner or later this leads to a new crash as unexpected vulnerabilities emerge; at that point everyone from regulators to speculators recalibrates and the predictably unpredictable cyclical process restarts.

Starting with the Dutch Tulip Bubble we’ve had about 350 years of financial crashes and panics. They are unlikely to stop anytime soon — and each one that comes will take most people by surprise.

So, by our reading of the lay of the land as presented above, perhaps we can extend the cycles between "bust" periods by applying some common sense and some lessons learned. Eh, not so much...

GuardHill serves all kinds of borrowers, including a goodly number of self-employed folk, successful artists and financiers who tend to garner wealth in windfalls but don't have a sheaf of pay stubs to staple to a conventional loan application. Case in point: One of Dessner's people is toiling now on a loan application from a hedge fund manager wishing to borrow $800,000 against a $4 million home purchase. The hedge's fund did poorly last year, so as a sign of good faith for his investors he's drawing no salary. Good for his business, perhaps, but rotten for a conventional mortgage application.

"This guy made $5 million in 2007 and 2008. He's liquid for $10 million, and he's borrowing 20% LTV (loan-to-value)," says Dessner. A no-doc loan to that kind of borrower shouldn't be political dynamite, especially at a time when the Federal Housing Administration is making 95% LTV loans to low-income borrowers with poor credit and little savings, he argues.

(italics, ours)

Terrific. Making these no-doc or NINJA (No Income, No Job or Assets) loans to people that can obviously make that nut is one thing but apparently the federal government was not content with ruining Fannie and Freddie and is now using the FHA to further its agenda of affordable home ownership for all.

Remember, it's all about making a better America even if we can't afford it.

Summer time reading

We've been excerpting portions of Walter Russell Mead's essay "The Top Ten Lessons of the Global Economic Meltdown".

5. Nobody really understands the world economy.

Sad, but true. For all the math and the theoretical models, economics remains an intellectual discipline rather than a predictive science. That is unlikely to change. Just as all the computer models in the world can’t tell you what the stock market will do tomorrow, all the world’s economists working together can’t tell you when the next crisis will come — or what you can do to avoid it. At any given point of time there will be economists predicting a crash and economists predicting good times along with every variant in between; some of them are bound to be right but so far this looks more like timing and luck than the repeatable and testable result of demonstrably better methods. The economics profession is full of dogmatic and pompous heretic hunters of all stripes, but as a group they are no better collectively at prediction than a similarly dogmatic and contentious group of medieval clerics. This doesn’t mean that economics is bunk (any more than theology is bunk); systematic and rigorous reflection on human economic activity yields many useful insights and an education in basic economic ideas remains an essential piece of intellectual equipment for any serious person.

Economic outcomes remain hard to predict not because economists are stupid (they aren’t, by and large) but because the world economy is continually in flux. Facts change; China rises, new industries emerge, under the influence of new economic ideas, central bankers and investors change the way they behave. Investors and entrepreneurs have mood swings: too optimistic in 2007, too pessimistic in 2008. All this change feeds back into the world system in unpredictable ways. Economics can help us understand what is happening and give us more sophisticated tools for investigating the unknown — but it cannot protect us from uncertainty and risk. The “unknown unknowns” will always be with us.

This means, among other things, that we are no closer to eliminating panics and crashes than the Dutch were in the wake of the Tulip Bubble.

We're not economists, so by the author's own admission we're no more nor no less qualified to make any predictions about the economy but there are some things we do know that are worth noting.

The Federal Reserve has reported that the top 500 non-financial companies have socked away an astounding $1.8 trillion dollars on their balance sheets, a figure not seen in over 50 years. And there it sets. Massive amounts of capital not building new plants and not being used to hire more employees.

The expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of the year and the uncertainty created by the Obama regulatory regime has pushed economic activity forward and helped create this massive corporate America rainy day fund as private capital is apparently sitting out the recovery as it doesn't like what it sees on the short-term horizon.

Reasons for optimism

We continue to brace for a double-dip recession we hope never comes. We just can't help but think that the horribly misguided, demand-side Keynesian gimmickry like Cash for Clunkers and the various home-owners' assistance programs have served only to kick the can down the road, delaying any true recovery while doing nothing to chase the poisons out of the system.

While that may very well be our short-to-mid-term prognosis, what about the long term? Rule #1: Don't bet against this country.

•The party of the ravening parasites is going to get obliterated in November. The Democrats' only chance lay in the possibility of a global recovery. Europe is crushing those hopes on a daily basis. President Obama has been the perfect leader for these times. An unabashed econofascist with huge majorities, he's followed the course prescribed for decades by liberals and the result has been ... monster deficits and anemic growth.

Oh, do read more at the link because contrary to the pull-a-graph, KT's brimming with confidence and is quite optimistic about the economic outlook of our country.

You gotta believe there is just too much creativity, ingenuity and drive in this country to not come back from this great recession regardless of who is in office. And since, as a representative republic, we usually get what we want, here's hoping that whoever takes office in November would see fit to neither bludgeon about with even more useless multi-billion dollar "jobs bills" nor tinker at the levers of "Cash for (Whatever)" side shows but rather just get the hell out of the way!

Quote of the day

"The second way government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment is by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a 'reservation wage'—the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase [the] reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer."

What follows is not going to be one of our beloved Milton Friedman videos because the quote above did not come from him or any of the other usual supply-side suspects but rather one of President Obama's chief economic advisers, Larry Summers.

As Congress is considering pushing the duration of unemployment benefits out to 99 weeks, studies, facts on the grounds and simple human psychology don't support the fact that unemployment benefits actually put people back to work.

Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute has found that the average unemployment episode rose from 10 weeks before the recession to 19 weeks after Congress twice previously extended jobless benefits—to 79 from 26 weeks.

Even the Brookings Institute, which will never be confused with Heritage Foundation, concluded that the jobless insurance extensions "correspond to between 0.7 and 1.8 percentage points of the 5.5 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate witnessed in the current recession."

And another Obama economic advisor, Alan Krueger concludes from a 2008 study that "job search increases sharply in the weeks prior to benefit exhaustion" which is a concept that we need neither an economic advisor nor a study to realize as we've been there-done that.

Again, if one is being paid not to work, what is then the incentive to work?

This administration's policies have been all about putting off, delaying or simply denying the pain that comes with bouncing back out of a recession.

Compassion is a wonderful thing but all too often when practiced by the government it morphs into a cheap political tool that almost without exception stunts individual initiative that is at the heart of a robust economy.

Casting wider the welfare net does not make for an economic recovery.

ObamaCare by the numbers Pt. II

Remember, you all are just going to love what's in this bill now that it has been passed.

A record 25 percent increase in the taxes against US small businesses -- from costs associated with new health care law, to an increased Medicare tax, increased capital gains taxes and higher state and city taxes -- is repealing any ability of these entrepreneurs to add jobs to their payroll.

Some specifics:

* An increase of 4.6% in federal taxes from 35% to 39.6% (expiration of Bush tax cuts)

* An increase in capital gains taxes from 15% to 20% (expiration of Bush tax cuts)

* A new tax of 3.85% on investment income, dividends, rents, royalties mandated in the new health care bill

* An increase in the Medicare payroll tax to 2.35% as mandated in the new health care bill

* In states like New Jersey and others, state and municipal taxes have been raised by the average of almost 2%.



Expect more of the same for fiscal basket case states like California.

Jobs recovery: the hard way

Of all the people in the Obama administration’s economic team, Christina Romer, has, in our mind, emerged as the most sensible and appears to be a straight-shooter. Here she is commenting on the jobs picture:

A top White House economic adviser said Sunday "you'll get no argument from" her on the need to improve the miserable jobs picture.

Council of Economic Advisers chief Christina Romer said it's devastating that some workers have been unemployed for two years and that job losses were continuing nearly a year after passage of the so-called stimulus bill.

But then, she loses us:

She added that she wants to work on convincing firms that are considering hiring to take the plunge.

Romer also appeared to back a House effort to pump an additional $75 billion in federal spending into the struggling economy and pointed to targeted programs like longer COBRA health insurance coverage and "cash for caulkers" -- energy saving retrofits -- as ways to expand growth.

"The sense that we need to do more is overwhelming," she said.

Yeah, eff-it! Go ahead, guys, take the plunge!

That ought to be Team O’s new economic recovery slogan because jumping in with two feet (or more precisely, head-first) is precisely what small and medium-sized businesses will be doing as pending legislation in healthcare reform and cap and trade contain taxes that will absolutely hammer these very businesses if they’re passed.

And we’re assuming that this $75 billion of federal funding that will be “pumped” into the economy is not be confused with the $150 billion son of Porkulus, recently passed by the House that is to fulfill all the jobs promises broken by the $787 billion Porkulus the Elder that became law in February of 2009.

We have an overwhelming sense, also, Ms. Romer, but from the short yet not comprehensive list of “pumping” and “stimulating” in the paragraph above it’s not borne from a belief you guys need to do more.

Plunging through that glass floor.

Not just a recession but a… man-cession?

"Over the last year from November 2007 to November 2008, the U.S. economy lost
2.352 million jobs, and 82% of those losses were male jobs (1.932 million) and
only 18% female jobs (430,000). Stated differently, for every female job lost,
there were 4.5 males jobs lost over the last year. "

So, why so?

"Men have the misfortune of being concentrated in the two sectors that are doing
the worst: manufacturing (70% male) and construction (88% male). Women are
concentrated in sectors that are still growing, such as education and health
care (77% female).The troubles for the American male worker, while exacerbated
by the current slump, are hardly new. The manufacturing sector is in long-term
decline, and construction goes through repeated booms and busts. Meanwhile women
are graduating from college at higher rates than men. Some analysts even argue
that men are less suited than women to the knowledge economy, which rewards
supposedly female traits such as sensitivity, intuition, and a willingness to
collaborate."

Picture of the Day

Remember, folks… What’s good news for the U.S. consumer is bad news for Thomas Friedman.

Slashers: Congressional Style

Curious as to what a veto-proof Democratic Congress may look like? In keeping with the spirit of Halloween, a couple of Democratic Congressmen give us a peek at coming attractions.

Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.
House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-California, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.

“Overhaul”… “Obliged”…? Hmmmm. It does have a softer tone than “wreck” and “forced”, though, doesn’t it?

Let’s break this down to the basics. We are in debt. We are massively in debt and face even more debt as we contemplate bailing out the auto industry and depending on who’s getting sworn-in in January, toy with the idea of universal health care amongst all other manner of foolishness. And who’s going to pay for all this goodness? Well, you are, of course….. but how? For one, by Congress getting their hands on the estimated $2 trillion of estimated revenue over the past 15 years lost to the government because of tax-deferred savings accounts.

But don’t worry, Teresa Ghilarducci of the New School for Social Research (that title alone has train wreck written all over it) has got a plan. In return for wacking our 401(k) tax deferment, we would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy (read: a, hey, no hard feelings, bub “government kickback”) in return for being “obliged” to “invest” 5 percent of our pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Admin which would pay a whopping 3% a year, adjusted for inflation.

Now, if you are thinking, “Gee, Beers, that sounds suspiciously like something we are “obliged” to pay into already that is administered by the SSA”, you would be entirely correct in that assessment but Ms. Ghilarducci, who has been testifying to this effect in front of Miller and Baghdad Jim, frankly doesn’t give a damn what you are thinking.

“I want to stop the federal subsidy of 401(k)s,” Ghilarducci said in an interview. “401(k)s can continue to exist, but they won’t have the benefit of the subsidy of the tax break.”

Under the current 401(k) system, investors are charged relatively high retail fees, Ghilarducci said. (ed.: what this statement has to do with anything relative to what she is proposing is lost on us)

“I want to spend our nation’s dollar for retirement security better. Everybody would now be covered” if the plan were adopted, Ghilarducci said.
She has been in contact with Miller and McDermott about her plan, and they are interested in pursuing it, she said.

Awesome.

Its so nice to know that someone much smarter than us has got our back whether we realize it or not.

Unfortunately and despite what Ghilarducci has to say, 401(k)s will cease to exist if this plan is implemented because that big fat tax deferral at the front end of the paycheck along with the employers’ matching contribution is perhaps the biggest reason why people got into 401(k)s in the first place.

But all that, with the corollary benefit of depriving the federal government trillions of dollars while pumping the same into the private sector.... gone come January.

Think about it.

Exit question: How long is it before Congress starts talking about eliminating the home loan interest exemption?

The making of the new "C"-word

Whether its emissions or early-stage life, M.T. Suit sees both forms of carbon-based matter as a burden to the planet and society. B-Daddy has more on Suit’s fool-proof method to beat down the economy, here.

The Economy is in such bad shape, some candidate are resorting to begging.

With a ship launch fast approaching, we are resorting to Theocracy drive-bys, particularly for the latest in this Wall Street meltdown which KT has been all over here, here and here.

Also, B-Daddy would be glad to explain who’s been hitting the bottle pretty hard over this whole mess and alludes to the “sunshine on his face” factor for the candidate who holds the upper hand.