Category Archives: Government Incompetence

More Government Spending Required to Stimulate the Economy? At Least 207 Economists Disagree

Activism, Credit Crisis, Economics, Government Incompetence, Government Waste, History, Monetary Issues, Strategies For Advancing Liberty, The Welfare State, Theory and Ideas

Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan’s “lost decade” in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.

[See full list of economists who disagree here @ Cato’s “Fiscal Reality Central”]

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Treasury Bars Lobbyists From TARP II

Government Ethics, Government Incompetence, Government Regulation

Not sure how they intend to accomplish this, and the WaPo story suggests they’re not sure either:

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner issued new guidelines yesterday aimed at eliminating the influence of lobbyists on the $700 billion financial bailout program by restricting their contact with officials who are reviewing applications for money and deciding how to disburse it.

Treasury officials also will seek to limit political influence over the funds, saying they will use similar restrictions that forbid such influence in tax matters as a model. The department’s Office of Financial Stability will be required to certify to Congress that each government investment is based solely on objective criteria. As part of that effort, only banks recommended by their primary regulator will be eligible for capital investments.

Great, so lobbyists won’t have any more influence over TARP II than they will over our tax code. I feel better.

UPDATE 1/28 2 PM PST: Geithner follows this up by announcing an ex-Goldman Sachs lobbyist as his chief of staff. Hat Tip – Cafe Hayek.

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

The Most Dangerous Phrase Strikes Again

Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Government Incompetence, Government Regulation, Legal, The Nanny State

Seriously, congresscritters are morons. There can be no other explanation.

Sadly, this is not the most idiotic, ridiculous, laughable, or embarrassingly stupid law ever proposed; but it’s close:

“New Law Will Require Camera Phones to ‘Click’
Author: Michael Horton

A new bill is being introduced called, Camera Phone Predator Alert Act, which would require any mobile phone containing a digital camera to sound a tone whenever a photograph is taken with the camera’s phone. It would also prohibit such a phone from being equipped with a means of disabling or silencing the tone.

While its a good gesture, I do not believe having such a law would deter criminals from hacking their camera phones to take pictures in inappropriate ways. Also, the real criminals would not even use a camera phone but would probably use other devices such as a hidden camera. Regardless, at least with the bill signed into law it would allow prosecution and jail time for individuals that get caught with a camera phone that does not make the noise.

One question does remain, what if you have a camera phone that doesn’t make the noise at all or is suppressible? Would older phones still be covered under this new law?”

So, if my finger happens to be blocking the speaker, what then?

What if my phone breaks and the tone no longer works?

What about digital cameras; they’re quite small and easy to conceal?

What about deliberately hidden cameras, or novelty cameras that look like other things, will those be illegal as well?

Yet another example of one idiot… or given the subject matter probably thousands of idiots… saying to another idiot (one with power over us, god help us) “There ought to be a law”; the most dangerous phrase in the English language.

Chris Byrne
I am a cynically romantic optimistic pessimist. I am neither liberal, nor conservative. I am a (somewhat disgruntled) muscular minarchist… something like a constructive anarchist.

Basically what that means, is that I believe, all things being equal, responsible adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as nobody’s getting hurt, who isn’t paying extra

http://anarchangel.blogspot.com

Bailouts Are Not Sexy

Government Incompetence, Government Waste, Monetary Issues, Taxation, The Welfare State
Photo credit TopNews.in

Photo credit TopNews.in

Extreme obesity could be defined as an abnormally large accumulation of body fat. Consequences of obesity include illness, disability and death. While treatment options vary (i.e. dieting, liposuction, medications, surgery), increasing caloric, fatty or carbohydrate intake clearly isn’t the correct solution. In other words, you aren’t going to shed 10,631,467,593,243.45 pounds by consuming a 7,940,000,000,000.00 calorie cake.

Marie Antionette was known as Madame Déficit because the “people blamed her for the bad economics in the country and claimed that she alone was the one to have spent all the money on her own pleasures.”

The still controversial statement “let them eat cake” is often attributed to Antoinette. It seems that both the previous and current administrations and Congresses want to distribute bread to the masses while bailing out (or even nationalizing) the major corporate bakeries. Unfortunately, local mom-and-pop bakeries aren’t “too big to fail,” so many of them will indeed fail because of the political preference for corporate courtiers. History is filled with examples of financial crises caused by excessive government spending.  History is indeed repeating itself now, as it also did during the reign of Louis XVI.

In the meantime, corporate welfare is neither sexy nor healthy. Why the mainstream media refuses to paint an accurate picture of our federal extravagance is beyond me. Hopefully, this photograph will help illustrate the fact that the only thing a stimulus package will ever stimulate is an ever-increasing appetite for even more stimulus packages.

Stephen Gordon
http://stephengordon.com
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