Economy
November 8, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Please don’t miss Allahpundit’s analysis of the national exit poll. For that matter, check out the poll numbers themselves. I want to focus on the data about the economy, since the exit poll confirms that this was, primarily, an election about the economy. To understand how President Obama won an election about the economy is this weak economy, consider two sets of numbers. First, 39 percent of voters think the
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November 2, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Last month’s jobs report was controversial, with questions about its methodology followed by a substantial downward revision. There were concerns that the Obama administration might pull some monkey business with today’s report, the last significant economic news before the election. But that apparently didn’t happen. The report wasn’t all bad, but all that really matters is that the unemployment rate ticked back up to 7.9%. So it will be apparent
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October 30, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Despite initial suggestions to the contrary, it now appears that the U.S. government’s jobs report for October will issue on Friday, as scheduled. Earlier, it was thought that the disruption likely to be caused by Hurricane Sandy in the Washington, D.C. area might well prevent the timely preparation of the report, and there was even speculation no report would be released until after the election. Hurricane Sandy did disrupt the
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October 30, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Our friend Justin Folk collaborated with Andrew Klavan on this excellent video, which explains the 2008 financial collapse in entertaining, understandable and accurate fashion. It is called, “Picking Losers, Why Cronyism Isn’t Capitalism.”
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October 30, 2012 — John Hinderaker
This video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity does an excellent job of exposing the folly of Barack Obama’s punitive tax policies. Obama’s approach, which is grounded in “fairness” rather than economic logic, hurts the economy while actually magnifying existing injustices in the federal tax code: Economist John Taylor, meanwhile, explains why Romney’s policies are exactly what the U.S. needs to get its economy moving again. Read it all;
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October 30, 2012 — Steven Hayward
There’s a race on right now between the climateers and the liberal cheerleaders for big government and economic illiteracy to see who can make the bigger fool of themselves over Hurricane Sandy. Two weeks ago in my Ashland University class I drew the students attention to Frederic Bastiat’s famous “broken window fallacy” of economics, and as exhibit one pointed to New York Times columnist (and Nobel Prize winner!) Paul Krugman,
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October 26, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The U.S. economy grew at a rate of only 2.0 percent during the third quarter of this year, according to an estimate by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. As James Pethokoukos notes, this means that “at the current pace, the economy will grow just 1.8% this year, the same miserable pace as last year.” The Romney campaign promptly pointed out that 2.0 growth amounts to “less than half
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October 19, 2012 — Steven Hayward
We take time out from our election coverage to note the 25th anniversary of the stock market crash of 1987. I have a long account of the myriad causes and aftermath of the 508 point crash (22 percent of the Dow at the time) in The Age of Reagan, including thefnitwit comment of Al Gore that “The voodoo chickens of Reaganomics have come home to roost.” Here’s a few excerpts:
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October 18, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Almost six years ago, as Mitt Romney prepared to enter the 2008 presidential campaign, his team believed that Romney’s business experience would be a huge plus. According to my sources, Romney and his staff saw a public that yearned, in the aftermath of President Bush, for a super-competent leader. Given Romney’s enormous sucess at Bain and with the 2002 Winter Olympics, he seemed to ooze super-competence. Things didn’t go according
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October 17, 2012 — Steven Hayward
So several polls give the general decision slightly to Obama, though this may be grading on a curve, based on his improvement from his total suckitude in the first debate. Piece by piece, however, it looks like Romney may have come out ahead, at least on the issues that matter most to voter decisions, as this screen shot of the CNN poll breakdown shows: And on energy, while Romney might
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October 15, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Stephen Moore is the invaluable editorial board member and senior economics writer at the Wall Street Journal. He is also the author of one of the books of the season: Who’s The Fairest of Them All: The Truth About Opportunity, Taxes and Wealth in America, just published by Encounter Books. The book addresses a a subject close to our heart; John and I took a whack at it in the
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October 15, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Michelle Obama says we are “in the midst of a huge recovery.” That claim is laughable to anyone who has lived through the last four years; this simple chart from the Senate Budget Committee highlights one of the central failings of Obamanomics: people are leaving the labor force faster than they are entering it. Since Obama became president ten times as many people have been added to the roster of
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October 11, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Watch for Joe Biden to unleash a torrent of mean-spirited demagoguery tonight. In a sense, his task is an easy one: Democrats pretty much unanimously want him to go negative, and journalists are desperate to write an Obama comeback story. So Biden’s mission is clear, and, as it happens, mean-spirited demagoguery is his forte. Still, Biden faces an uphill battle, for the same reason Barack Obama did. The first debate
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October 10, 2012 — Steven Hayward
So the so-called “Law of Averages” would suggest that if you have to make three airplane connections in one day, one of them is going to misfire, and so sure enough I’m cooling my heels right now for several extra hours in an airport, overheating my Kindle and my patience in equal measure, etc. Nevertheless, your intrepid roving Power Line bureau remains on the job. Our pal Charles C. Johnson
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October 9, 2012 — John Hinderaker
In the Democrats’ effort to brand Mitt Romney a “liar,” former economist Paul Krugman has taken a leading role, as I noted here. Krugman, as a full-time shill for the Obama administration, has tried to put a positive face on Obama’s dismal economic record. See, for example, this post on his New York Times blog, where he talks about the payroll jobs numbers and offers this graph: If you don’t
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October 9, 2012 — John Hinderaker
We wrote here about the American Enterprise Institute’s video contest: AEI offered $50,000 in prizes for videos of two minutes or less that make the moral case for free enterprise. AEI announced the winners this morning. First place went to this powerful video by Jared Fuller called “The Moral Paper Route”: Second place went to Joseph Farris for “Freedom’s Price”: And Don Brookins won third prize for “Joke of the
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October 8, 2012 — Steven Hayward
More consequences of sending the Oval Office Churchill bust back to the Brits (not to mention the style of elite education Obama absorbed at Columbia and Harvard): Obama is vindicating one of Churchill’s great lines about the futility of trade protectionism. Since I’m on the road I can’t lay my hands on the exact quote, but it goes something like: Thinking you can achieve prosperity through protection is like thinking
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