The Hellenic debt crisis is a con of a type that we’ve seen in municipal politics here state-side. Big city gives unions everything they want, default looms, city’s warned, city keeps spending, city gets bailed out. Insert ‘auto company’ for ‘city’ and you get last year’s crisis. Insert ‘nation state’ for ‘city’ and you’re looking at this years crises.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3cfeab9e-1813-11df-91d2-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
I’ve been warning you since last Summer that as Obama’s agenda gets stuck in the legislative branch, he would shift to an executive branch strategy, by passing the congress. That, unfortunately, seems to be happening now, according to the New York Times, which doesn’t seem to be too worried about it.
Hat Tip Crane Durham. Enjoy.
This week’s Euro-panic is not just about technical credit issues, it’s about the power of bad ideas. Georgios Papandreou’s Panhellenic Socialist party has sewn the wind and reaped the whirlwind. He’s president of the Socialist International and Prime Minister of Greece, an Amherst and London School of Econ-trained sociology major, so what could go wrong? Everything.
US Constitution supercedes CT law as well as well as political lawlessness — “No State shall pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.” Interesting how it links Attainders (laws focused on individual citizens),… Ex Post Facto (hindsight laws) and noble titles with contract abrogation.
My debate last night with CT AG Blumenthal, Yale Bigwig Sonnenfeld and (ouch) my friend Larry Kudlow, about whether AIG employees should lose their contractually guaranteed conpensation.
Challenger Survey says lay-offs are up over 50% in January. They were pretty low in December, but still the jobless recovery thing is just not over. Impose a western european welfare state and you get western european results. Human nature again.
Latest from auto sales – human nature still exists! Cash$Clunkers failed, August sales soared, September plummeted. Now back to lousy normal. SUV sales are up. People just gamed the system. We’re not lab rats; we’re rational beings. Ditto for jobs tax credit, temporary spike just in time for the election, then layoffs after.
The latest survey of the service sector (everything except manufacturing) of our economy is revelatory. Weak expansion. Fits inventory theory: we have to build stuff in order to stock the shelves. But we don’t stock the shelves with haircuts or by-passes. Inventory bouncebacks are a mfg th…ing, not a service thing. Also employment still lame, and inflation section is quite high.
From the Dallas Fed, a nice two page summary of most of the major data changes over the past month, year. Vital stats for our economic health. Nothing new, just a lot in one easy place.
http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/economic-policy/macroecon/monthly_economic_data.pdf
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