Latest Reliable Count Puts Obama At 104 Golf Outings As Of August 4th

I'm guessing he'll be on the links this weekend, but it is campaign season.

See whitehousedossier.com here.

Election 2012: Spreading The Wealth Around v. Spreading The Taxation Around

hates your wealth

hates your tax deductions

Bernanke Claims Large Scale Asset Purchases Of $3.35 Trillion Yielded 2 Million Jobs

Among other farcical things.

Transcript here:

[I]n late 2008 the Federal Reserve initiated a series of large-scale asset purchases (LSAPs). In November, the FOMC announced a program to purchase a total of $600 billion in agency MBS and agency debt.  In March 2009, the FOMC expanded this purchase program substantially, announcing that it would purchase up to $1.25 trillion of agency MBS, up to $200 billion of agency debt, and up to $300 billion of longer-term Treasury debt.  These purchases were completed, with minor adjustments, in early 2010. In November 2010, the FOMC announced that it would further expand the Federal Reserve's security holdings by purchasing an additional $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities over a period ending in mid-2011.

About a year ago, the FOMC introduced a variation on its earlier purchase programs, known as the maturity extension program (MEP), under which the Federal Reserve would purchase $400 billion of long-term Treasury securities and sell an equivalent amount of shorter-term Treasury securities over the period ending in June 2012. The FOMC subsequently extended the MEP through the end of this year.  By reducing the average maturity of the securities held by the public, the MEP puts additional downward pressure on longer-term interest rates and further eases overall financial conditions.

How effective are balance sheet policies? After nearly four years of experience with large-scale asset purchases, a substantial body of empirical work on their effects has emerged. Generally, this research finds that the Federal Reserve's large-scale purchases have significantly lowered long-term Treasury yields. For example, studies have found that the $1.7 trillion in purchases of Treasury and agency securities under the first LSAP program reduced the yield on 10-year Treasury securities by between 40 and 110 basis points. The $600 billion in Treasury purchases under the second LSAP program has been credited with lowering 10-year yields by an additional 15 to 45 basis points.  Three studies considering the cumulative influence of all the Federal Reserve's asset purchases, including those made under the MEP, found total effects between 80 and 120 basis points on the 10-year Treasury yield.  These effects are economically meaningful.

Importantly, the effects of LSAPs do not appear to be confined to longer-term Treasury yields. Notably, LSAPs have been found to be associated with significant declines in the yields on both corporate bonds and MBS. The first purchase program, in particular, has been linked to substantial reductions in MBS yields and retail mortgage rates. LSAPs also appear to have boosted stock prices, presumably both by lowering discount rates and by improving the economic outlook; it is probably not a coincidence that the sustained recovery in U.S. equity prices began in March 2009, shortly after the FOMC's decision to greatly expand securities purchases. This effect is potentially important because stock values affect both consumption and investment decisions.

While there is substantial evidence that the Federal Reserve's asset purchases have lowered longer-term yields and eased broader financial conditions, obtaining precise estimates of the effects of these operations on the broader economy is inherently difficult, as the counterfactual--how the economy would have performed in the absence of the Federal Reserve's actions--cannot be directly observed. If we are willing to take as a working assumption that the effects of easier financial conditions on the economy are similar to those observed historically, then econometric models can be used to estimate the effects of LSAPs on the economy. Model simulations conducted at the Federal Reserve generally find that the securities purchase programs have provided significant help for the economy. For example, a study using the Board's FRB/US model of the economy found that, as of 2012, the first two rounds of LSAPs may have raised the level of output by almost 3 percent and increased private payroll employment by more than 2 million jobs, relative to what otherwise would have occurred.  The Bank of England has used LSAPs in a manner similar to that of the Federal Reserve, so it is of interest that researchers have found the financial and macroeconomic effects of the British programs to be qualitatively similar to those in the United States.

What rot.

Eight million fewer full-time jobs exist today than in 2007. Is he saying there would be ten million fewer had the Fed not intervened?

That's only $1.675 million per job.

Wouldn't it have been more efficient simply to have dropped the cash from helicopters in our backyards?

That way all ten million of us could have enjoyed a cool $335K each. A prudent man could easily live on that for 10 years or more.

Instead we're all suckin' wind out here.

Flashback July 2010: Obama Said 2010 Midterm Election Was Referendum On His Policies

As reported here.

"[A] choice between the policies that got us into this mess and my policies that got us out of this mess."

Funny we're still in the mess his policies already got us out of two years ago.

"The Way . . . Is Surely To Think Non-Ideologically"

Timothy Snyder, here:

The way to national prosperity in the twenty-first century is surely to think non-ideologically, to recognize that politics is a choice among constraints and goods rather than a story about a single good that would triumph if only evil people would allow it to function without constraints. The market works very well for some things, the government is desperately needed for others, and stories that dismiss either one are nothing more than ideology.

What Do Today's Gasoline Prices And Chevrolet Have In Common?

"When I take her to the track she really shines

She always turns in the fastest times

My four speed dual quad posi-traction 409"

Fear Not America! Obama Will Not Succeed With Transformation, Even If He Wins!

Albert Jay Nock, American, here:

Various social superstitions, such as magic, the divine right of kings, the Calvinist teleology, and so on, have stood out against many a vigorous frontal attack, and thrived on it; and when they finally disappeared, it was not under attack. People simply stopped thinking in those terms; no one knew just when or why, and no one even was much aware that they had stopped. ...

Great and salutary social transformations, such as in the end do not cost more than they come to, are not effected by political shifts, by movements, by programs and platforms, least of all by violent revolutions, but by sound and disinterested thinking. The believers in action are numerous, their gospel is widely preached, they have many followers.

Nock's Critique Of The Tariff, 1927: A License To Rob The Domestic Consumer

Here:

The great desideratum in a tariff, for instance, is its license to rob the domestic consumer of the difference between the price of an article in a competitive and a non-competitive market. Every manufacturer would like this privilege of robbery if he could get it, and he takes steps to get it if he can, thus illustrating the powerful instinctive tendency to climb out of the exploited class, which lives by the economic means (exploited, because the cost of this privilege must finally come out of production, there being nowhere else for it to come from), and into the class which lives, wholly or partially, by the political means.

The Origin Of Our Enemy, The State

Albert Jay Nock, 1927, here:

The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification of society permanently into two classes — an owning and exploiting class, relatively small, and a propertyless dependent class. Such measures of order and justice as it established were incidental and ancillary to this purpose; it was not interested in any that did not serve this purpose; and it resisted the establishment of any that were contrary to it. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another.

Albert Jay Nock Prophesies Abortion On Demand in 1927

Here:

Everyone knows that the State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime that I spoke of a moment ago, and that it makes this monopoly as strict as it can. It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. 

Albert Jay Nock, Detective of Fascism in 1927

As reproduced from The American Mercury, here:

"[T]he primary intention of government was not to abolish crime but merely to monopolize crime . . .."

Amity Shlaes Thinks The Mortgage Interest Deduction Is The Only One Distorting Markets

Amity Shlaes is in full-throated opposition to the mortgage interest deduction, here:

The distortion of the housing market, we now know, stemmed not only from the tax deduction but also from the subsidies of government-sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (FMCC) and from inappropriately loose monetary policy promulgated by the Federal Reserve. ...

Opponents of deduction abolition today argue that abolition will make the market crash some more, as per Thomas of the Realtors. One could argue this the other way. Now Americans see houses for what they really are: boxes that depreciate. This is therefore the least expensive time to abolish the deduction. We have already taken the hit -- and 2012 is also the time when we most need the $100 billion or so from the elimination.

No mention here of the cost of, say, the reduced rates of taxation on capital gains and dividends, which came to $91 billion last year. Nor of the costs of any of the other tax loss expenditures which benefit everyone.

She's worried about the distorting effects of the deduction on house prices, but fails to address the distorting effects on stock prices of the lower capital gains tax rate. All tax loss expenditures have distorting effects, not just the one for housing. 

Worse to me is her objectification of the home as a depreciating box. The fact is housing was long stable in America, until Republicans in league with Bill Clinton started fiddling with it and the tax law surrounding it in 1996. What they did was turn the home into a commodity, which abnormally shot up in value and now has shot down.

The question going forward isn't whether to gut the home some more by removing the tax deduction. Even with it home values have declined dramatically today, and could go even lower despite it as they have in the past. And they probably should and probably will decline without any change to the tax deductibility of mortgage interest. If you aren't old enough to have experienced the housing crash of 1980, you aren't old enough to really understand how relatively small changes in housing values compared to now felt a lot bigger from time to time.

When you attack housing you don't just hurt people where they live in the economic sense, but you hurt them also spiritually. The home in America has been much more than a mere store of economic value, a treasury which greedy government enticed Americans to unleash in a torrent from 1997. The home is the incubator of the next generation of Americans, the place where we engage in the most important work we do as a people: replacing ourselves.

The question is what are we going to do about all the distorting effects of government tax policy, not just the distorting effects of one of them.

That Amity Shlaes leaves them all out except as they impact homeowners suggests not just an economic hostility to housing, but a cultural one, part of a broader hostility which has resulted in family dissolution, not family formation.

If the profane bottom line is tax revenue, the way to achieve it is through more taxpayers. You know the kind: the ones who get up everyday, get to work on time, and work hard.

And the most reliable way we have found to produce them is in families, families which overwhelming still prefer to live in houses.

Subsidizing this enterprise comes with a cost.

So does not subsidizing it.

Can We All Agree Now That Both Sides Intend To Cut The Growth Of Medicare Spending?

We once hoped Paul Ryan was a real spending cutter instead of a spending growth cutter, but is now just a defender of Medicare spending growth, or something.

In other words, you are either going to vote for a Republican Welfare State in Romney/Ryan sans ObamaCare, or a Democratic Welfare State in Obama/Biden with it, but not for a Fiscally Conservative State, and certainly not for a Limited State. 

The Investor's Business Daily doesn't seem to care that failing to cut the overall size of a program over time, adjusted for inflation, means you are not a fiscal conservative, here:

Media fact-checkers also complained about Ryan's charge that Obama is cutting $716 billion from Medicare to fund ObamaCare. Not true, they said. Medicare's growth is just being slowed.

But Obama achieves that slower growth by making real cuts in provider payments. And in any case, the media always and everywhere call a reduction in the rate of federal spending growth a "cut." So why suddenly charge Ryan with being misleading for using that same term?

In any case, Obama himself admitted that he's doing what Ryan says. In a November 2009 interview with ABC News, reporter Jake Tapper said to Obama that "one-third of the funding comes from cuts to Medicare," to which Obama's response was: "Right."

Reducing the size of government is different than reducing how much it grows.

Plans like the Penny Plan -- if they threw out the ever-rising baseline which makes government bigger every year because spending on programs must rise to accommodate increased population -- would work in a fiscally conservative sense because they essentially freeze programs in time and lop-off 1 percent annually until revenues grow enough to balance the budget.

But in no sense can even such a plan be construed as a limited government plan because such plans do not commit to paying off the debt, which by my calculations would take $850 billion annually or so for 30 years at 3.5 percent on top of balanced budgets each and every year over the period. This is how households used to work and no longer do, which is why government no longer does.

A country is only as good as its people. If Americans will not control their own spending, the government which represents them never will.

It begins with us, not with Barack Obama or Paul Ryan.

Election 2012: Romney v. The Utopian

Whatever Mitt Romney is, he's not a utopian.

As reported here:

After electing a man of huge promise and ambition, voters might welcome a candidate with curbed enthusiasm. That seems to be Romney’s calculation, anyway. “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family,” Romney said, drawing perhaps the loudest cheers of the night.

Palin 2008 v. Ryan 2012: Not Even Close At 37.2 Million Viewers to 21.9 Million

So says Nielsen according to the Wall Street Journal, here:

An average of 21.9 million viewers tuned into the nine broadcast and cable networks that were broadcasting convention proceedings Wednesday night between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., according to Nielsen. That was 41% less than the 37.2 million who tuned in the same night four years ago, the research firm said.

Gee, when Romney loses will they blame the conservatives again?

Rep. Ryan Falls In Line: Frames Obama's Reduced Rate Of Medicare Growth As Big Cut

William Saletan for Slate mocks Paul Ryan, here:

Since Mitt Romney tapped you as his running mate, you haven’t stood for fiscal restraint. You’ve attacked it. You warned voters in North Carolina and Virginia that cuts in the defense budget would take away their tax-supported jobs. ... Four days after Romney put you on the ticket, you began parroting his Medicare shtick. You protested that Obama’s $700 billion savings in the future growth of Medicare payments to providers—a spending reduction that any sensible conservative president would have sought, and that you had previously included in your budget plan—would “lead to fewer services for seniors.” You depicted a horror scenario: “a $3,600 cut in benefits for current seniors. Nearly one out of six hospitals and nursing homes are going to go out of business.” You assured seniors that the Romney-Ryan agenda for Medicare “does not affect your benefits.” And you promised future retirees “guaranteed affordability” of health care. In short, you adopted every tactic in the liberal playbook. You framed a reduced rate of growth as a draconian cut. You inflated the likely impact of the reduction. You denounced any loss of services as unacceptable. You promised not to touch seniors’ benefits. And you reaffirmed a fiscally unsustainable guarantee. By my count, you’ve now done this in at least six speeches and rallies. Every day, you’re reinforcing the culture of entitlement and making it harder to rein in retirement programs.

This isn't quite right. There was no fiscal restraint in the Ryan budget to begin with. It simply returned the trajectory of the growth in spending to the status quo ante Obama, which was bad enough. This is why Ryan's budget doesn't achieve balance for decades: it supports the continued growth in spending in programs like Medicare, sans ObamaCare. Obama cuts that growth to help pay for ObamaCare. In other words, it's just business as usual with the Republicans, made to look like fiscal conservatism because it wipes away the really insane spending trajectory threatened under more of Obama.

Bait the conservatives, and switch.

Yea, shame on you, Paul Ryan.

Flashback 2008: McCain Called For Spending Freeze During Crisis. In 2012 Romney Won't.

Who is the more conservative, Mitt Romney, who has said he won't cut spending dramatically in his first year for fear of causing another recession, or John McCain, who was quite radical by current standards in calling for a freeze on spending?

September 26, 2008|Russ Britt

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Sen. John McCain proposed a possible spending freeze on virtually every federal program except the Department of Defense, for veterans and entitlement programs in a presidential debate with rival Barack Obama Friday night. Obama countered that approach is too broad-based, saying it was the equivalent of "using a hatchet where you need a scalpel."

Anybody seen the scalpel? The debt back then was $10 trillion. Now it's $15 trillion. And we're no longer AAA.

Video here.

Election 2012: Rasmussen Now Has 7 States As Toss Ups, Not 6

His map is here.

He now shows Missouri no longer leaning Romney.

Election 2012: It's The Yeomanry Vs. The Clerisy

Joel Kotkin's formulation of the class war, here, between

"people engaged in farming, fishing, forestry, transportation, manufacturing and construction"

and

"an ever-expanding class of minders — lawyers, teachers, university professors, the media and, most particularly, the relatively well paid legions of public sector workers — who inhabit Washington, academia, large non-profits and government centers across the country."

Good News For Obama: Initial Claims For Unemployment Hit Lowest Level Yet

The latest figures are reported here.

They show initial claims, not-seasonally-adjusted, revised for August 18 falling to their lowest level yet during Barack Obama's tenure: 311,787.

And the advance number for August 25 is just a hair under 310K, while August 11 came in just under 318K. At the end of July he posted a number just under 313K.

In March of this year, Obama achieved numbers as low as 319K and 315K, but the trend melted up after that. Now he has five weeks in a row between 310K and 320K.

Expect him to say this is reason for hope that the skies are finally clearing.