Category Archives: Economics

Green Shoots Are Sometimes Weeds

As any gar­dener will tell you, healthy lawns hardly ever have weeds in them. This is because when a lawn is healthy, it is lush and thick and weeds don’t have a chance to grow. Weeds only show up in a lawn when there is some­thing wrong with the under­ly­ing soil or lawn. If the …

May 21, 2009 – 8:54 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Tagged | Comments (0)

Adverse Effects

Work­ers in Paris are pissed again about sup­pos­edly ter­ri­ble work­ing con­di­tions. I was just over there last Sep­tem­ber and work­ing con­di­tions really didn’t seem that bad to me. We went to the Eif­fel Tower and as best I can tell, there weren’t a lot of rocket sci­en­tists nec­es­sary to make things work around that place. …

April 10, 2009 – 7:13 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Tagged , | Comments (0)

A New Tax Deduction

Quote of the Week Now that those of us who have been mak­ing steady, on-time pay­ments on our mort­gages for years will be pay­ing off oth­ers’ mort­gages through our taxes, can we claim a tax-deduction for our neigh­bors’ mort­gage inter­est too? Love it. Peo­ple are angry over this and they are only get­ting angrier. This is not …

February 20, 2009 – 12:33 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics, National Issues | Tagged | Comments (1)

Maybe America Will Be OK After All

There are some rea­son­ably seri­ous rum­blings about peo­ple get­ting sick of our new Pres­i­dent spend­ing all their money. And some of the rum­blings are get­ting loud. If a mod­ern day Boston Tea Party hap­pened to get orga­nized in Chicago, I’d be on the first plane to Chicago I could find. Here’s hop­ing we still have …

February 19, 2009 – 11:46 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics, National Issues | Tagged | Comments (0)

Advice We Don’t Need

There’s noth­ing like hav­ing the Euro­peans tell us how to han­dle our hous­ing cri­sis. “But as the hous­ing bub­ble deflates, it also drags inno­cent vic­tims into a wave of fore­clo­sures” they crow! Please. What inno­cent vic­tims are being dragged into a wave of fore­clo­sures? Either you can afford the house you live in or you …

February 19, 2009 – 5:03 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics, National Issues | Tagged , | Comments (0)

When A Billion Isn’t Big Anymore

Not so long ago, a bil­lion dol­lars was a lot of money. Now? Not so much. This morn­ing, news on the wire says Obama is set­ting aside $75 bil­lion to slow fore­clo­sures. First of all, where did that $75 bil­lion come from that he’s set­ting aside? Oh yeah: “com­mit­ting $75 bil­lion of tax­payer money to …

February 18, 2009 – 11:10 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics, National Issues | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Leadership

This is what passes for lead­er­ship these days. We send a bunch of peo­ple to DC to be our rep­re­sen­ta­tives and what they end up doing is pass­ing laws with­out even read­ing them. We’re pass­ing a $787 bil­lion stim­u­lus pack­age and the peo­ple who are sup­posed to rep­re­sent us don’t even have the time to …

February 13, 2009 – 4:11 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Comments (0)

Can You Cure An Addict By Giving Him More Drugs?

Only if you want to kill him. Car­o­line Baum dis­cusses this very topic on Bloomberg. Imag­ine a doc­tor who, faced with an alco­holic, diag­nosed more alco­hol as a treat­ment. A doc­tor like that would be thrown out of the med­ical pro­fes­sion and right­fully so. Yet, our polit­i­cal lead­ers, when faced by a cri­sis cre­ated by …

January 28, 2009 – 10:09 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics, National Issues | Tagged , | Comments (0)

China’s Deterioration

Unrest isn’t exactly reported with aban­don in China given that the media is cen­sored heav­ily but it’s start­ing to look like the domes­tic sit­u­a­tion in China is dete­ri­o­rat­ing rather quickly. Today’s New York Times reports that China cut inter­est rates by more than a full per­cent­age point overnight. Included in the arti­cle is this key info: …

November 26, 2008 – 8:53 am | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Tagged | Comments (0)

Bailout FAIL

So let me get this straight. Given how well the past 5 or 6 bailouts have worked, our gov­ern­ment has come up with a new one that will “bol­ster con­sumer financ­ing”. The the­ory (hor­ri­ble though it is) is that by giv­ing lots of money to banks, they will make financ­ing and credit avail­able to con­sumers …

November 25, 2008 – 4:56 pm | By Scotch Drinker | Posted in Economics | Tagged , | Comments (0)