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16 Nov 09

Germany: Chancellor Merkel follows the lead of employers and the FDP

  • In future, employees will have to come up with an increasing proportion of the costs from their own pocket, while the employers’ contribution will no longer rise. The introduction of a flat-rate scheme means that the boss will pay just as much for his basic health care as does his chauffeur. The former, however, can also afford to purchase expensive additional insurance, heralding the beginnings of a two-tier health system.
  • All the parliamentary parties are agreed that domestic security and defence are also out of bounds as far as budget cuts are concerned. The only expenditure that will be constantly reduced is social spending.
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10 Nov 09

Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs

  • the Bank of England has been slightly more irresponsible in its
    financing mechanisms than even the Federal Reserve, leaving interest rates
    above zero but funding fully one third of public spending through direct money
    creation.


  • A second British problem not shared by the US is its excessive reliance on
    financial services. As detailed in previous columns, this sector has roughly
    doubled in the last 30 years as a share of both British and US GDP. In
    addition, the sector's vulnerability to a restoration of a properly tight
    monetary policy has been enormously increased through its addiction to trading
    revenue.
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04 Nov 09

Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs





  • Bernankeism is a form of voodoo economics. It assumes that the economy is
    constantly suffering demand deficiencies, in relation to supplies of basic
    products such as oil and food commodities, and that the remedy is sheer "money
    helicoptering". This is different from the thinking of John Maynard Keynes, who
    called for infrastructure spending to stimulate the economy and discarded money
    injection into banks that can create a liquidity trap, or monetizing record
    fiscal deficits on current expenditure that cannot be rolled back later for
    political reasons.


  • Bernanke has constantly denied any link between monetary policy and commodity
    prices, even though all money injection was going straight to speculation in
    stocks and commodities.
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31 Oct 09

Obama signs bills for record Pentagon, Homeland Security spending

  • The US media paid relatively little attention to the bill’s passage, or to the perfunctory, rubber-stamp character of the congressional debate. Absurdly, the New York Times headlined its report on Obama’s signing of the largest-ever military spending bill, “Victory for Obama Over Military Lobby,” claiming that the deletion of a few big-ticket weapons systems, notably the F-22 fighter jet, represented “reform.”

  • Two months of Pentagon/DHS spending would cover the budget deficits of all 50 states.

US wages and salaries rise at record-low levels

  • The fall in consumer spending, the largest since December, is in part the result of the end of the government’s cash-for-clunkers program on August 24. Economists have said that this program, among others, accounts for much of the increase in third-quarter consumer spending and GDP.

13 Oct 09

Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs





  • The Financial Times on October 6 noted a disturbing new trend - hedge fund and
    other investors are increasingly seeking to invest in physical commodities
    themselves, rather than in futures
  • The cost to a hedge fund or other financial investor of
    holding stocks of a commodity is quite high, normally sufficient to deter
    investors from attempting to buy commodities directly. They will only buy
    commodities directly if they are afraid that the normal arbitrage mechanisms
    between the futures markets and the commodity markets will be overwhelmed by
    the volume of demand,
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06 Aug 09

Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs



  • In fact, speaking of taxes, it makes your hat fly up comically off your head in
    astonishment when you realize that total income and corporate taxes are less
    than this year’s federal budget deficit alone! And then you really start
    screaming your guts out in anger when you then realize that the total federal
    budget is 400% of total federal revenues! They are spending four times as much
    as they take in! Four times as much!
10 Jun 09

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.





  • "Government procurement gives priority to home products. So Mr Wuttke's
    complaint is not surprising," said a commentary on Jxnews.com.cn, the official
    website of the Jiangxi provincial government. "What is surprising is the NDRC
    statement which frankly points out the rampant discrimination [against]
    domestic products in government procurement ... In fact, this is not a new
    problem ... Therefore, we should thank Mr Wuttke's complaint for making us
    aware how serious the problem is."




    The NDRC statement is the first time the central government has publicly
    accused local officials of discrimination in favor of foreign brands.




    The timing of the statement is also intriguing. On the surface, it is a
    refutation of Wuttke's accusation. In reality, it is an appeal to the public to
    keep a closer eye on the spending of funds from the stimulus package.
25 Feb 09

EXILED ONLINE - MANKIND’S ONLY ALTERNATIVE » America’s Imperial Economy: What The Republicans Are Too Squeamish To Admit - By Mark Ames

  • if it really was the war that pulled America out of the Depression, that is hardly an argument in favor of endless tax cuts and small government. The wartime economy was the very opposite of the Adam Smith model of free trade and minimal government interference — it was, instead, New Deal economics to the tenth power, in which the government managed and controlled just about every single facet of the citizenry’s lives.
21 Feb 09

Don't Bet on Obama Reining in Defense Spending



  • The Obama administration inherits runaway defense spending and leadership of a military that wants more.

  • Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, have recently spoken about hard choices ahead. But they support budgets that avoid those choices.
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23 Jan 09

Europe failing to meet research targets : Nature News

  • Europe's research activity is lagging its international competitors and it is failing to boost spending on research and development (R&D), new figures show.
  • increased spending and R&D activity is essential for economic growth, and unless Europe ups its game it will not be able to compete with emerging economies such as China and India.
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25 Oct 08

RealClearPolitics - Articles - The Buying of the Presidency 2008

  • If you watched TV over the weekend in the Mountaineer State, you could not have missed the Obama ads -- an extraordinary buy of $1.2 million per day for 5 days, with ads running in every media market in the state.
  • Anyone familiar with his campaign against Alice Palmer in 1996, where he used challenges to nominating petitions to completely eliminate all his challengers in the Democratic primary for the Illinois State Senate, should have realized this aspect of Obama's campaign style.
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