By Les Dunaway
Well, it happened. Just as the warnings foretold. When will there be some sign of adult behavior in Washington? During the debt cap discussions, the rating companies wrote to the President, the Senate and the House and pointed out that just raising the debt cap would not prevent a rating downgrade. Think about it! Would you see it as positive if your dead-beat neighbor bragged to you … Read more...
About 4 trillion dollars of additional debt was added to the amount of debt owed by The Treasury during the 8 years of the George W. Bush Presidency.More than another 4 trillion have been added during the two years of the Obama “presidency”.There is an important factor that makes a big difference in those two 4 trillion dollar amounts.
… Read more...One of our many problems is that we must have the gumption, the will and the courage to do something constructive about the immediate situation in order to make constructive changes to the longer term trajectory. There is no way to cause that to be a painless proposition. When aggregate expectations are at, say, 10, but the aggregate national capability set that is needed to meet and satisfy the expectations … Read more...
By Les Dunaway
Well, it’s been a rough week! With every indication of more rough times to come.
The economy continues to sputter and 1Q11 was worse that we thought [read]
There’s lots of punditry about what the debt ceiling impasse will mean:
By Les Dunaway
This past week has produced demagoguery and asinine statements which will echo down the centuries. However, for all its entertainment value, the conversation has resembled an ER team arguing about what color sutures to use in closing bleeding self-inflicted gashes. It all reminds me of a joke my nurse mother told about a patient who said to the doctor “Doc, it hurts when I do that.” To … Read more...
By Les Dunaway
The recession was pronounced “over” in June 2009 – two years ago – and we still have no real recovery and millions of people out of work. What’s going on? A series of charts from Market Watch gives some of the picture [read].
Well, mostly what’s happening is that the historical engine of job growth – start-up business – is sputtering, dragged down by the … Read more...
By Les Dunaway
I want to refer you to a well written, upbeat-but-not-rose-colored-glasses piece in todays WSJ “The Future Still Belongs to America“. I want to highlight one paragraph which is, I believe, is key to the conclusion
New ideas disturb the peace of once-stable cultures. Young people grasp the possibilities of change and revolt at the conservatism of their elders. Sacred taboos and ancient hierarchies totter; women … Read more...
By Les Dunaway
This week was interesting! We had sort of a replay of how we got where we are – circling the drain, that is. We are running out of runway on the debt ceiling and on the general subject of getting spending under control.
First, we got the news that the housing crash has past the losses of the Great Depression [read]. The underlying causes of … Read more...
By Les Dunaway
We had an interesting couple of weeks. The market is still headed down and no one outside the Beltway sees any positive signs.
By Les Dunaway
Four stories were in the news this week. At first glance, three were financial, our normal subject area, and the other was about character and morality. However, upon reflection – which I had plenty of time for as I had a badly scattered series of appointments – all four are about what happens when voters fail to heed the the admonition which titles this article “Know your … Read more...
By Les Dunaway
Folks, I can’t really add anything to the awesome job done here by the Heritage Foundation. Please help those handicapped by government schools to understand these pictures.
… Read more...By Les Dunaway
The economy will be THE underlying issue in politics for the foreseeable future. America has, finally, woken-up to the fact that spending money we don’t have must stop. Now the conversation is turning to how do we dig out of the hole the tax & spenders have gotten us into. To answer that question, we must look at what’s likely and/or possible for the next 20 years. … Read more...