Heritage Employment Report: October Has Few Treats, Lots of Tricks
As job losses mount, the monthly jobs report continues to demonstrate both the failure of the stimulus bill and the hollowness of the Administration's claim that it created or saved 640,000 jobs.
Why Government Control of Bank Salaries Will Hurt, Not Help, the Economy
In response to the recent financial crisis, the Obama Administration and the Federal Reserve Board are capping executive salaries and bonuses, and imposing a host of new regulations and mandates--all in the name of reducing risk. If the rule of unintended consequences applies anywhere, it applies here. Government pay rules have been tried before--and have consistently increased the very salaries and special bonuses they intended to curb. Besides, a sense of risk--instead of the certainty of taxpayer bail-outs--is precisely what would rein in some of the reckless corporate practices rightly decried by the government and American citizens.
Executive Summary: Understanding the Great Global Contagion and Recession
The Great Global Contagion and Recession was largely the result of a sustained global savings glut combined with excessive monetary accommodation by the Federal Reserve and other central banks. These two complementary and reinforcing forces artificially depressed the price of risk globally, leading to the widespread mis-pricing of assets and misallocation of investment. These effects were enhanced by rapid financial innovation and breathtaking arrogance of leading financial market participants in believing that they understood these innovations.
General Motors Bankruptcy and Nationalization: Exit Strategy Needed
Congratulations: If you are a U.S. taxpayer, you will soon be a part owner of a car company. Under the latest reorganization plan for General Motors, Uncle Sam would take ownership of 72.5 percent of the troubled automaker while providing an additional $30 billion in funds to the company.
Killing the Entrepreneurial Spirit: Government Is Not a Good Investor
President Barack Obama calls his stimulus bill and proposed budget an "investment" plan, implicitly recognizing that investment--rather than simply spending--creates economic growth. But this plan is based on the faulty assumption that only government is able and responsible enough to invest at this time.
What Unions Do: How Labor Unions Affect Jobs and the Economy
Unions function as labor cartels, restricting the number of workers in a company or industry to drive up the remaining workers' wages. They also retard economic growth and delay recovery from recession. Over time, unions destroy jobs in the companies they organize and have the same effect on business investment as does a 33 percentage point corporate income tax increase.
Financial Systemic Risk Regulators: Congress Is Asking the Wrong Questions
Congress may be about to create a new financial regulator without fully understanding exactly what problem it is supposed to solve or how the new regulator is supposed to accomplish its mission.
Five Reasons the EPA Should Not Attempt to Deal with Global Warming
On April 17, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an endangerment finding, saying that global warming poses a serious threat to public health and safety. Thus, almost anything that emits carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could be regulated under the Clean Air Act. This is the first official action taken by the federal government to regulate carbon dioxide.
Left-wing proxy plays
An awful lot of people who have never even run a lemonade stand are presuming to micromanage corporate conglomerates. General Motors Corp., now headquartered at the White House, is the most prominent example.
Should Unions Prevent Your Next Raise?
Suggest imposing wage caps on a few hundred highly paid executives, and you get plenty of attention. Highlight the federal law that imposes wage caps on over 8 million mostly middle-class workers, and you'll probably be ignored.
Nationalized Cheerios?
Regular superheroes save us from villains. Liberal superheroes save us from ourselves.
Reward Workers With Better Laws
Over the past generation, the labor market has changed profoundly. Computers have automated many manual and repetitive tasks. The share of American workers employed as operators, fabricators and laborers or in precision production craft and repair occupations has fallen by 10 percent.
'Economic policy insanity': Obama's approach threatens to prolong recession, weaken recovery
Last week the government reported 539,000 jobs were lost in April. As a sign of the times this was considered good news. Some are crediting government, including President Obama's just implemented policies, for the good news. Spring is in the air.
Heal the Economy, Start Over on Health Care Reform
As the economy sputters and falters the questions coming up time and again are: What should Obama do? What can Congress do? They’ve tried spending their way to prosperity and as today’s jobs numbers show, 3.5 million jobs lost since Obama took office and an unemployment rate that shot up to 10.2 percent is Read More...
What Superman and Barack Obama Don’t Have in Common
When Superman rescued a small boy who was plummeting toward the depths of Niagara Falls, it was pretty clear that the kid was in danger and that, but for Superman’s ability to fly, the boy would have faced certain death. It goes without saying that if the boy were not in danger, Clark Kent Read More...
Obama Jobs Deficit Hits 7.7 Million and Climbing
The Department of Labor announced today the economy shed another 190 thousand jobs in October, pushing the unemployment rate to 10.2 percent and the running Obama jobs deficit to 5.7 million. Earlier in the week the Obama Administration released figures purporting to show the Obama stimulus had saved or created 640,000 thousand jobs. Read More...
Morning Bell: 10% Unemployment Shows Objective Failure of Obama Stimulus
Last week the Obama administration issued a report purporting to show that the President’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan had saved or created exactly 640,329 jobs. Such a precise number for such a fuzzy concept as jobs “saved or created” immediately raised doubts about the veracity of the report in any honest American’s mind. And since Read More...
Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble
Confusing times lead to conflicting concerns. Worries over current deflation run into worries about explosive inflation down the road and now there are growing worries over another global asset price bubble. All of these worries are valid, but the possible return of the asset price bubble is the newest and perhaps most serious Read More...
Heal the Economy, Start Over on Health Care Reform
As the economy sputters and falters the questions coming up time and again are: What should Obama do? What can Congress do? They’ve tried spending their way to prosperity and as today’s jobs numbers show, 3.5 million jobs lost since Obama took office and an unemployment rate that shot up to 10.2 percent is Read More...
What Superman and Barack Obama Don’t Have in Common
When Superman rescued a small boy who was plummeting toward the depths of Niagara Falls, it was pretty clear that the kid was in danger and that, but for Superman’s ability to fly, the boy would have faced certain death. It goes without saying that if the boy were not in danger, Clark Kent Read More...
Obama Jobs Deficit Hits 7.7 Million and Climbing
The Department of Labor announced today the economy shed another 190 thousand jobs in October, pushing the unemployment rate to 10.2 percent and the running Obama jobs deficit to 5.7 million. Earlier in the week the Obama Administration released figures purporting to show the Obama stimulus had saved or created 640,000 thousand jobs. Read More...
Morning Bell: 10% Unemployment Shows Objective Failure of Obama Stimulus
Last week the Obama administration issued a report purporting to show that the President’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan had saved or created exactly 640,329 jobs. Such a precise number for such a fuzzy concept as jobs “saved or created” immediately raised doubts about the veracity of the report in any honest American’s mind. And since Read More...
Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble
Confusing times lead to conflicting concerns. Worries over current deflation run into worries about explosive inflation down the road and now there are growing worries over another global asset price bubble. All of these worries are valid, but the possible return of the asset price bubble is the newest and perhaps most serious Read More...
Senate Bails Out the Rich Again
The Washington Post reports: The Senate voted Wednesday to renew the government’s $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers through the first six months of next year as part of a broader bill designed to extend unemployment benefits. Heritage fellow Ronald Utt explains why this is terrible public policy: Under the expiring law, the housing tax credit is Read More...
TARP Enables Big Labor Crony Capitalism Again
Nolan Finley at The Detroit News reports: Workers in Barack Obama’s new economic order fall into two categories — those who are worthy of the president’s energies, and those who aren’t. You may be surprised to learn where you rank. Obama doesn’t weigh the value of workers based on their paychecks, what they do or whether they Read More...
New Study Shows Tax Cuts Most Effective Stimulus
The failure of the stimulus package to create jobs and generate economic growth becomes more apparent each day – despite preposterous claims from the White House about all the jobs they say it has created and saved. Counter intuitively (at least in the sane world outside of Washington), the stimulus’ failure increases the risk that Read More...
CIT Bankruptcy Shows that It is Time to End TARP
Sunday, CIT Group, with $71 billion in assets one of the largest small business lenders in the country and the recipient last December of $2.3 billion in taxpayer money filed for bankruptcy. It was the fifth largest bankruptcy in US history. Monday, nothing much happened. Stocks didn’t collapse. There was no panic. In fact, all of Read More...
Summers’ Tax Rate Comments A Substantial Revelation
Lawrence Summers, the Director of the White House National Economic Commission recently committed an unpardonable sin – he revealed two unpleasant truths in a single sentence. Summers said, “I don’t find there to be much evidence that suggests that raising the top marginal rates from 35 to 39 percent that will be implicit in the Read More...
What should be done about financial markets
Two things should be clear to anyone trying to figure out the financial crisis, says Heritage President Ed Feulner. One is that we need to get to the bottom of what caused it and why. The second is that we can't rely on Congress to conduct such an investigation. Learn More...
Red Tape Rising: Regulatory Trends in the Bush Years
Contrary to much popular rhetoric about massive regulatory rollbacks, the regulatory burden has grown during President George W. Bush's tenure, and the President's final year may see a regulatory surge. Policymakers should work to prevent this surge and adopt reforms to ensure that new and old rules are thoroughly vetted to ease the burden of this regulatory tax on Americans. Learn More...
Heritage Experts on Enterprise and Free Markets
Media Information Line: (202) 675-1761
James L. Gattuso
Senior Research Fellow in Regulatory Policy , Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies
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