Stable Genius Liberal

Our Corrupt New Old Regime Aristocracy

Shortly after Mitt Romney’s failed 2008 campaign for the Republican nomination his son Tagg set up a private equity fund with the campaign’s top fundraiser. One of the first donors was his mum, Anne. Next came several of his dad’s financial backers. Tagg had no experience in the world of finance, but after two years in the middle of a deep recession the company had netted $244m from just 64 investors.
Tagg insists that neither his name nor the fact that his father had made it clear he would run for the presidency again had anything to do with his success.

He pulled himself up by his boot straps after using his dad’s money to hire a team of boot-strap-pullers and a staff of advisors to make sure his boot straps and the people helping him pull them would be tax deductible as business expenses.

America’s Helium Privatization Fiasco

in 1996 when Congress decided that the United States did not need a giant strategic helium reserve, Chris Cox, R.-Calif., and his colleagues passed a Helium Privatization Act that ordered the helium supplies to be sold down at a formula-driven price rather than auctioned. That price has turned out to be way below the market rate. That’s encouraging overconsumption of helium, discouraging new helium production, and all-in-all creating a big helium shortage.

I’ve asked this question before and I will ask it again. If you think government can not run anything right, why do you think it can run a privatization program? Second, it looked like the state run helium system worked better (the fact that it was set up by people who actually think the public center can run things might have something to do with it) would you consider going back?

States Quietly Exempt ALEC From Lobbying Rules While ALEC Insists They Aren’t Lobbyists

I’m waiting for someone to suggest that we legalize bribery under the guise that if bribery is illegal, only criminals will be out there willing and able to pay bribes.

The Park Slope Food Coop Cheese Dept has its own Facebook page.

This is park slope. Not only do our stores have web sites, some departments of our stores have web sites.

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I didn’t believe in the liquidity trap and was pretty down on old-fashioned Keynesianism until 1998, when a hard look at Japan and an attempt to understand what was happening there led me to change my mind. Krugman on Japan and Keynes. Macroeconomic Morality – NYTimes.com

Tourism: America should make it much easier for foreign visitors to come here.

Talk of exports normally conjures up images of factories and container ships, but many of America’s exports are services. The nation’s biggest service export is in some sense not an export at all—it’s travel and tourism

So can we now start arguing that the national security state is hurting exports?

Taxes Are Austerity

A confusing new argument I’m seeing from the right is that European austerity programs aren’t really austerity because some of the deficit reduction has come from tax increases. All that shows is that European politicians favor fiscal austerity, which is a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts—i.e., exactly what European countries have been implementing.

This is the defense of austerity by claiming it wasn’t enough austere enough. If it were just done by massive service cuts then it would have worked.

Greg Sargent on Charles Krauthammer and Paul Ryan: “This is worse than a shell game. It’s a shell game without the pea.”

There is a real simple two question test I apply when I am trying to sort out the sincerity of a policy opinion.

If the facts were different, would the policy opinion be different?
If the facts were opposite, would the policy be opposite?

I first came up with this test during the debate over the Bush tax cuts. The debate quickly when from the economy is doing well, we can afford a tax cut to the economy is in crisis, we need a tax cut for stimulus.

So, if unemployment were low and school costs flat; would Ryan propose the same budget or a different budget?

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People in my camp have repeated until we’re blue in the face that the case for fiscal expansion is very specific to circumstance — it’s desirable when you’re in a liquidity trap, and only when you’re in a liquidity trap. Structural Flashbacks – NYTimes.com Keynesian Economics 101

Robert Reich: The Answer Isn’t Socialism; It’s Capitalism that Better Spreads the Benefits of the Productivity Revolution

robertreich:

Francois Hollande’s victory doesn’t and shouldn’t mean a movement toward socialism in Europe or elsewhere. Socialism isn’t the answer to the basic problem haunting all rich nations.

The answer is to reform capitalism. The world’s productivity revolution is outpacing the political will of rich…