Major banks in New York and London are on alert this weekend, ahead of tomorrow's crucial elections in Greec. Crisis committees are standing by for a possible leftist victory that would likely send shock waves throughout the world financial system. ...
REPORTER:
... European leaders have pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into Greece with the understanding that Greece would adhere to strict austerity measures and make important structural reforms. And the fear is that a victory for [the] leftist candidate ... would mean that Greece might very well renege on that agreement ...
Has Greece received hundreds of billions of dollars? Most reports put the figure at less than $200 billion.
In any event, the division is clear. Banks on one side, leftist parties on the other. And now the battle is set to begin.
Excellent on merit goods and how to pay for them. Excerpts:
... American government at all levels provides two kinds of goods — public goods, which are essential to the private sector but would never be provided efficiently if at all by the private sector, and merit goods, defined as goods that the private sector does produce, but in inadequate quantities or at unaffordable prices ...
The major merit goods that Americans have decided their government should provide are income maintenance, healthcare, education and housing... These merit goods can be provided either directly by government or indirectly, by means of government subsidies to the private sector, including tax credits, vouchers and subsidized loans.
At the purely public end of the spectrum are merit goods that are directly provided by government agencies, like public K-12 schools and public colleges and public clinics. In the middle of the spectrum are transfer payments, like income or unemployment insurance, which are collected and distributed by the government but spent mostly on private goods and services. At the other end of the spectrum are specific merit goods like private higher education, housing and most healthcare.
Key paragraph:
If ever there were a real-world test of competing public policy models, it is found in the realm of merit goods in America. In the last half century, we have not seen out-of-control cost inflation in merit goods that are provided directly by government, like public K-12 schools and direct income maintenance payments to citizens like Social Security and unemployment insurance. Instead, the runaway costs have all come from merit goods like higher ed, health care and housing which follow the conservative model of subsidizing purchases of privately-provided goods.
And has a political recommendation:
American progressives and centrists are missing a great opportunity to champion real and lasting budgetary savings by proposing the replacement of the unaffordable conservative voucher approach to all merit goods by two cheaper approaches, where competitive markets for merit goods cannot exist: public provision or utility-style price regulation.
Lind goes on to detail various merit good in detail (e.g. healthcare) but the basic economic point is captured in the excerpts above. Markets do not always work, and some markets do much worse when they are fueled by government money instead of having the goods delivered by the government.
Lind has written many thoughtful essays at Salon over the years. His history is that of an apostate (liberal?) Republican that has completely given up on where that party is headed. Today's essay is a good example of that new stance he's taken.
Ann Romney’s dressage trainer Jan Ebeling and the horse they co-own, Rafalca, came in third this weekend at the United States Equestrian Federation National Dressage Championships in Gladstone, N.J. This competition, which will continue next weekend, also serves as an Olympics qualifying event for the U.S. Dressage Team for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. ...
In a Los Angeles Times story last month, Robin Abcarian reported that despite Romney’s relatively late start in dressage Romney won silver and gold medals in 2005 and 2006 at the highest level of competition from the U.S. Dressage Federation and she credits Ebeling with her success in the top tier of amateur dressage.
Hey, maybe doing well in - or merely being in - this category of "sports", almost exclusively practiced by the rich, will bring votes to Romney. If this country's reaction to Great Britain's celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee is any indication, the higher up you are, the more adulation you get. For those thinking that inequality has a grip on the public's mind, how do you explain all the positive coverage of Queen Elizabeth?
Money in politics doesn't matter that much, but don't regulate it!
In the wake of Scott Walker surviving a recall with the help of a seven-to-one spending advantage, conservatives are poo-pooing the influence of money. As Noonan does in the WSJ today:
The line laid down by the Democrats weeks before the vote was that it's all about money: The Walker forces outspent the unions so they won, end of story.
Money is important, as all but children know. But the line wasn't very flattering to Wisconsin's voters, implying that they were automatons drooling in front of the TV waiting to be told who to back. It was also demonstrably incorrect. Most voters, according to surveys, had made up their minds well before the heavy spending of the closing weeks.
There was heavy spending in the closing weeks, but there was also heavy spending before the closing weeks.
Spending matters and does shape elections, and will continue to do so as we see the national impact of the Citizens United decision at the national level this year.
From John Hielemann's long story in New York magazine (Hope: The Sequel) on the Obama administration and political team: (emp add)
[January to August of 2011] had been hell for Obama. After the self-described “shellacking” his party suffered in the 2010 midterm elections, the president had sought to find a way to work with Republicans, to reestablish the post-partisan métier that animated his election. “For the first part of the year, he played what was largely an inside game,” says Obama’s longtime counselor David Axelrod. “The ideas being (a) maybe we can reason with the Republicans and come to some rational conclusions, and (b) maybe people really wanted to see cooperation. But that obviously didn’t work.”
Not just obviously, but screamingly so, as evinced by the reckless Republican brinkmanship over the debt ceiling and the collapse of the grand bargain on deficit reduction that Obama labored long to fashion with John Boehner. By the time the president took off for vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, recalls a senior White House official, “he was as frustrated as I’ve ever seen him.” Most irritating to Obama was the portrayal of him, on the right and left alike, as a terminally weak leader. “We found ourselves in the worst possible situation,” says Pfeiffer, “in which Republicans and some Democrats were using the same talking points to describe the president. That’s a moment of great political peril.”
From the first day of his presidency, Republicans:
Publicly announce they won't work with Obama.
Don't vote for any of Obama's policies.
Slow down and obstruct his nominees.
Violate decades-long political norms.
And with an even more conservative bunch of Republicans due to the 2010 election:
the president had sought to find a way to work with Republicans, to reestablish the post-partisan métier that animated his election
From Heilemann's story, what animated Obama was (a) irritation with being called "weak", or (b) really bad poll numbers.
Obama and his team were deaf to rational, fact-based arguments trying to convince him that this is not a time for compromise, that all moves to reach a deal merely move the Democrats to the right, and it dispirits his side and emboldens the conservatives.
"the post-partisan métier that animated his election" was part of Obama's rhetoric, and maybe he believed it, but for many observers it was seen as a way of softening the image of a black president for anxious voters in 2008. It certainly was not something that should have been driving political strategy when the reality of the situation was demonstrated once he was in office, and repeatedly afterwards.
If what caused Obama to jettison that approach and get feisty was him being called "weak" by the left, that means those Obots telling disgruntled progressives to quit their complaining are wrong. Complaining, especially ad hominem charges of being weak, appear to be what it takes.
If the CEO of Honeywell really thinks that the economic problems are due to government debt and the failure of the confidence fairy to appear, he could do the patriotic thing and give back the 15% of his company's revenue that comes from the federal government.
Honeywell used offshore subsidiaries and tax loopholes to pay a negative tax rate between 2008 and 2010, according to the report.
The company reported $5 billion in domestic profits and received $1.75 billion in federal tax subsidies, making its effective tax rate negative 0.7 percent the group reported, citing 2010 10-K reports for the company.
[David M. Cote, the CEO of Honeywell] whom Obama appointed to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (a.k.a. the Bowles-Simpson Commission) in 2010, has long advocated an elixir of spending cuts, entitlement reforms and tax hikes to fix the problem.
He voted in favor of the commission’s draft plan, which included those elements.
The appointment was in 2010, by which time the corporate behavior of Honewell was evident. Nevertheless, Obama appointed this guy to the commission.
Our new economy - especially for the younger people:
In a Washington Post op-ed that presented kinds moving back to their parents' home after college as not such a bad thing, we read: (emp add)
Millennials are the “go nowhere” generation. They’re spoiled, lazy, undecided about a line of work and all too willing to move back in with their parents after college. Boomerang kids, they are called — as if every time their moms and dads toss them out, they circle back to crash their parents’ hopes of a child-free life. At least that’s the rap against them.
It’s true that many 20-somethings move back to their childhood homes and let their parents subsidize them in ways that would have been unthinkable 50 years ago. But are they really entitled narcissists exploiting their parents’ goodwill? I don’t think so. I’ve been teaching undergraduates for 30 years, and when I talk to families, I see parents who are supportive of the semi-empty nest — and a recognition that this is the reality of the current job market. ...
... it turns out that this type of path is the best preparation for success in an economy that rewards ambition, risk-taking, entrepreneurship and adaptability.
With very few exceptions, the students whom I and other faculty members around the country work with are ... a generation facing a historic transformation in the route to a successful job and family life.
It used to be that you'd get educated and be hired for your skill set at a place that was reasonably stable and that offered health and retirement benefits.
To declare that that's not enough and that people also need "ambition, risk-taking, entrepreneurship and adaptability" is an admission that the system is broken. Or rather, has tilted way far away from a situation where labor has any negotiating power.
