Author Archive | Jim Lindgren

Buried in the Chrysler filings was the revelation that US government investments in Chrysler will not be paid back, though the government will probably take an 8% equity interest in Chrysler: Chrysler LLC will not repay U.S. taxpayers more than $7 billion in bailout money it received earlier this year and as part of its […]

Roger Cohen offers a mixed but mostly sympathetic review of Godfrey Hodgson

Today’s two biggest financial stories are a probable Chrysler bankruptcy in the next week or two and revelations from Ken Lewis’s testimony. The Wall Street Journal is subscription only, but its Ken Lewis story has been spread widely. This is from a US News blog: Lewis Silenced, Threatened Over Merrill By Bernanke And Paulson Bank […]

I watched Tim Geithner in his Congressional testimony assure businesses that they would NOT be subject to the compensation restrictions if they participated in the asset-buying program. Yesterday Charlie Gasparino reported that big investors were reluctant to participate in the public-private partnership because they were afraid of having their compensation restricted or being called before […]

As a matter of government policy (not necessarily law), I was happy to see that 17-year-olds will probably be able to get the “morning-after pill” without a prescription: The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it would accept, not appeal, a federal judge’s order that lifts Bush administration restrictions limiting over-the-counter sales of “Plan B” […]

On CNBC, commentators today were discussing the proposal to tax the worldwide income of American corporations, even when that income is not brought home to the US. I haven

At the Congressional Budget Office (via Mankiw) is this stunning chart: Total Revenues and Outlays in CBO’s Baseline and Under the President’s Budget (Percentage of GDP) click to enlarge While the main takeaway is the current peak in outlays and trough in revenues, one shouldn’t ignore the strong pattern of Clinton-era fiscal responsibility. In the […]

As the nation considers increasing marginal tax rates and facilitating greater union membership, I thought it might make sense to look at the states with the highest and lowest unemployment rates to see if there might be any relevant patterns. The six states with the highest unemployment rates are: 12.6% Michigan 12.1% Oregon 11.4% South […]

A Spanish university study finds that the Spanish government’s promotion of green jobs was extremely harmful to its economy: 1. As President Obama correctly remarked, Spain provides a reference for the establishment of government aid to renewable energy. No other country has given such broad support to the construction and production of electricity through renewable […]

No one can question President Obama’s commitment to green jobs. He is proposing to create 5 million green jobs (about 3% of the US employed workforce) through new programs such as the Green Job Corps, the Clean Energy Corps, and the Global Energy Corps. It is a matter of faith, not evidence, that the government […]

Last week, I was sensing an emerging meme, journalists arguing that opponents of big government should not talk about fascism — or as Jon Stewart put it: “drop the F-bomb.” I saw CNN making a big deal about it in several stories. If this meme were being spread by the White House or by Journolist […]

When I first heard rumblings in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere that the government would not allow big banks to repay their TARP loans, I thought it was either a genuine misunderstanding or an unfair partisan canard against the Obama administration. But the stories continue in the press and Tim Geithner has not done […]

Remember this New York Times ad from December 2005, comparing Bush to Hitler and accusing Bush of remaking “society very quickly . . . in a fascist way”: YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights. YOUR GOVERNMENT is […]

Here is a John Leo column from late 2003 on the Nazification of Bush. Unfortunately, it lumps together the criticisms of serious people and organizations with those of isolated internet commenters: The hard left decided long ago that George W. Bush is Hitler. In maddened corners of the Internet and at swastika-choked antiwar marches, Bush […]

With all the recent talk about fascism, I thought I’d reprise this July 2003 Newsday essay by Professor Sheldon Wolin of Princeton: A Kind of Fascism Is Replacing Our Democracy Sept. 11, 2001, hastened a significant shift in our nation’s self-understanding. It became commonplace to refer to an “American empire” and to the United States […]