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What’s regulation got to do with the credit problem?

Thursday 10 April 2008

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Not unexpectedly, there has been a sufficient amount of crowing from the left about the need for more financial regulation in light of the credit crunch. Their reasoning seems to encompass little more than the idea that deregulation or underregulation was the source of our current problems (which makes even less sense when you consider that there is no significant repeal in mortgage or lending laws to my knowlege).

This essay, however, directly refutes that idea:

The most striking fact about the ongoing financial mayhem is that it is concentrated not in lightly regulated hedge funds but in more heavily regulated commercial and investment banks. It is banks that created subprime mortgage securities. It is banks that mispriced them. And it is banks that filled their own coffers with this toxic paper, losing hundreds of billions of dollars. A somewhat breathless March 31Financial Times article proclaimed the closing of the worst month for hedge funds since the collapse of the infamous Long Term Capital Management in 1998. But the average fund tracked by the Chicago-based firm Hedge Fund Research declined by a mere 2.4 percent in March, bringing the cumulative fall for the first quarter of 2008 to 2.7 percent. By contrast, the bank-heavy financial services component of the S&P 500 fell 12.3 percent in the first quarter.

Hedge funds, for the most part, have weathered the storm remarkably well.

Simply put, if underregulation was the problem we would logically see worse performance from hedge funds than investment banks seeing that hedge funds are relatively unregulated financial vehicles.

While I blame the present problem on years of overly exuberant credit expansion by the Fed, I think it is an economic mystery why loose credit disproportionately funded a bubble in the mortgage market versus any other area of the economy (in the same way that it is mysterious why technology was overextended in the late ’90s). Put simply, we do not know why the mortgage markets bore the brunt of the Fed’s policy, but hopefully we can at least be resolved to do two things: a) not let the central banks devalue our money to the extent they have been doing this decade and b) avoid government bail-outs participants in these financial markets, which will create the same incentives to make bad investments that cause the problem in the first place.

Popularity: 48% [?]

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Publié dans Economics, Objectivist Content, Uncategorized, monetary policy, regulation | Aucun commentaire »

Mankiw defends Nafta; Economists favor free trade

Sunday 23 March 2008

The notable economist Greg Mankiw had a very sensible article in the Economic View column of the New York Times regarding Nafta, trade, and this campaign. Its main contentions include:

1. That economists are far more fond of free trade than the general public. For instance:

A 2006 poll of Ph.D. members of the American Economic Association found that 87.5 percent agreed that “the U.S. should eliminate remaining tariffs and other barriers to trade.”

On the other hand, a minority of the general public (around one in four according to many polls including one mentioned in the article) think that free trade is beneficial to the economy.

2. John McCain has been a constant champion of free trade throughout his career and is the only of the three candidates who will stand strong for the concept as president.

3. The issue of trade has become mired by populism recently and divorced from economics which could lead us towards more protectionist policies.

Its a good article which reaffirms one of the themes that I have been focusing on especially during this campaign: how populism and economic illiteracy is driving protectionist rhetoric and proposals from politicians not entirely limited to the left (will Mike Huckabee please stand up).

Popularity: 51% [?]

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Publié dans 2008, Democrats, Economics, Objectivist Content, Trade, international | Aucun commentaire »

No Visas, No Immigrants, No Service

Friday 14 March 2008

This from today’s NYT:

For years, William Zammer Jr. has relied on 100 seasonal foreign employees to turn down beds, boil lobsters and serve cocktails at the restaurants, golf course and inn he owns on Cape Cod and in nearby Plymouth.

This summer, however, the foreign workers will not be returning, and Mr. Zammer, like other seasonal employers across the nation, is scrambling to find replacements.

“It’s a major crisis,” he said. “We’re very short on work force. We’ll be looking at opening a little later, closing a little earlier, looking at how we do our menus.”

Mr. Zammer is caught up in a Congressional standoff over immigration overhaul that is punishing employers who play by the rules and that, advocates of change say, could cost small companies billions in lost business.

In an effort to win support for a comprehensive immigration overhaul, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and its allies have blocked voting on legislation that would allow employers to rehire foreign seasonal nonagricultural workers independent of a 1991 quota.

As a result, the government is limited to issuing the 66,000 seasonal work visas set when the visa program, known as H-2B, became law — 33,000 for winter workers and 33,000 for summer workers. Last year, more than 120,000 foreign workers entered the country on H-2B visas.

The consequences of stricter quotas on immigration are pretty clear but not often talked about in political debate regarding the issue. Less immigration, be it legal or illegal (in this case its legal), will mean a smaller, less diversified labor force and rising costs for businesses. Economist (and food critic) Tyler Cowen attributes the growth in quality and value in the restaurante industry in recent years to the immigration boom.

In the more macro sense, more immigration makes our economy more productive by making more labor available and enhancing our ability to divide labor in this country. Simple enough, no?

But now rising anti-immigration sentiment is beginning to take its toll at a troublesome time for the economy, and it will take its toll directly on the pocketbooks of American consumers in the form of higher prices of goods and services.

Weighing the value of illegal immigration is a matter of costs and benefits: how the productive labor reaped by the economy compares to the losses attributed to wealfare benefits, etc. The thing is that the complaint about illegal immigration from Republicans generally amount to “it’s illegal.” But then, if it were legal would it be okay? The Democrats don’t even take much of a stand on the issue, which is why businesses such as the one in the article are in trouble now.

As far as I see it, as long as immigrants don’t consume a large amount of welfare benefits they unequivocally add to our economy and legislative stalemates should not stop that from happening. The result is that we feel the worst of consequences–the ones that no one is even talking about.

Popularity: 36% [?]

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Publié dans Economics, Objectivist Content, immigration | Aucun commentaire »

Steven E. Landsburg, the great contrarian

Wednesday 5 March 2008

One of the reasons Steven Landsburg, a professor of economics from the University of Rochester, is one of my favorite economists around today is because he writes articles like the one he wrote this week called, The Case for Foreclosures. Here is part of his explanation:

I predict with great confidence that when I say that foreclosures create new homeowners, a sizable chunk of my readers will scoff that “the people who can afford them would have been able to afford nice homes anyway.” I could use economics to explain why those readers are mistaken (a glut of homes on the market leads to falling prices, etc.), but that’s unnecessarily complicated. All it takes is the simple observation that there cannot be more homeowners than there are homes, and if one home becomes vacant, then there can be one new homeowner. Call it the law of conservation of homes.

Its nothing more than a logical consequence of the price system that as people cannot pay their mortgages and demand goes down, prices will also go down to compensate and reestablish equilibrium in the housing market. The alternative, such as a freeze in foreclosures or interest rates as proposed by Hilary Clinton, could not change the fact that many residents cannot afford to pay their mortgages under the presently readjusted, the peril of which would be that more lenders would go bankrupt and less lenders would be able to initiate new mortgages for buyers looking to purchase homes on the market at reduced market prices.

Indeed it is contrarian to encourage foreclosures, but that’s not exactly what Landsburg is doing; Landsburg is, in reality, encouraging market forces and the price system as a means of achieving the optimal outcome in a below-average situation and warning against the unintended and unseen consequences of manipulating those natural forces. Indeed, much of my blogging on economics aspires to have the same effect whereby it defeats anti-market conventional wisdom by enumerating all the possibly hidden or misunderstood effects of anti-market policies.

Hahvahd professor Greg Mankiw also pointed out that it should come as no surprise that such an economist would be making a case for something as indefensible and callous as home foreclosure, considering he has also praised Ebenezer Scrooge. Of course this too sounds unfathomable considering the way the very name has become a household admonishment on any individual accused of selfishness.

In this whole world, there is nobody more generous than the miser—the man who could deplete the world’s resources but chooses not to. The only difference between miserliness and philanthropy is that the philanthropist serves a favored few while the miser spreads his largess far and wide.

In many ways his approbation of the miser is not only a approbation of the classical principles of savings and thrift, but also a rebuke of consumptionist-Keynsian thought. Either way, it is particularly brilliant in the tradition of “pop economics,” which dates back to Fredric Bastiat and Henry Hazlitt, for looking at “that which is seen, and that which is unseen.”

Today, popular economics has reached its apex, namely in the fame of the book Freakonomics. But what most don’t recall is that in modern times, before there was Steven Levitt–or anyone else for that matter–there was Steven Landsburg who wrote The Armchair Economist written in the late ’80s with a greater emphasis on logic, incentives, and larger economic trends, compared with Levitt’s nuanced microeconomic empiricism.

Finally, I found this video of Professor Landsburg on John Gibson’s Fox News show from a couple of years ago. He was brought on to talk about trade and a rising protectionist inclination among the American people, and in the face of those sentiments he makes the case that protectionism is xenophobic, irrational, and not dissimilar to racism. The exchange is heated but Landsburg sufficiently owns Gibson on his own show. And with trade and NAFTA emerging as a leading issue in this campaign cycle, the video is particularly relevant.

You can watch it by clicking the link directly below:

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Popularity: 50% [?]

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Publié dans Economics, Objectivist Content, Trade, monetary policy, regulation | Aucun commentaire »

Fed indicates more rate cuts to come

Thursday 28 February 2008

In front of a House committee on Wednesday Ben Bernake claimed that lagging growth is the central bank’s chief concern.

This means only one thing: that the Federal Reserve will cut rates again in the relatively near future. His claim that growth is the chief concern also indicates that climbing inflation and the falling dollar are of secondary concern. The reality of both economic slowdown and climbing prices are beginning to revive worries of impending stagflation, which could be revealing itself for the first time since the 1970s and early 80s. The dilemma for Bernake is balancing these two inverse herrings. At this point, if he is indicating that he will cut rates to bolster short-term growth he is willingly accepting more inflation and a weaker dollar.

Yet there is still another side-effect that the fed is accepting: the stifling of long-term growth. This never gets talked about much on the news or by economically illiterate congressmen, but for the simple fact that more rate cuts encourage consumption at the cost of savings, we will be capital accumulation for usage of our economic resources in the short term. Its a simple matter of distorting time prefferances.

Additionally, unanswered is how rate cuts will actually revive the economy’s real capacity to produce and grow. While easier money encourages more spending, and thus creates the image of more growth by boosting aggregate demand in the immediate, it does not actually represent a real or sustainable spike in productivity. If rate cuts did boost real output then there would be no reason for the Fed to stop at 3%, they would just keep cutting and cutting the FFR down to 1% or less, and then keep it there. But the fact is that loose banking policy does little more than increase the money supply–which is the reason we are presently seeing more inflation–not wealth, contrary to the Keynsian and Mercantalist doctrines which apparently survive still today.

Another issue rarely addressed is the possibility of reinflating any bubbles in the economy by repeated rate cuts. Recall the slowdown in ‘01/’02 and how the Fed aggressively debased interest rates all the way to one percent by 2003. One of the consequences of the absurdly low rates was that investors that went bust in the tech bubble of the late nineties were to an extent bailed out by easy money and thus a standard of incentives were set which said that ‘even if you make bad investments, you will not be made to bear the full burden of your decision-making.’ Today, we may be seeing the deja vous in the housing market.

Henry Hazlitt once said, “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” Currently, I think many in the public eye are not acting as “good economists” by this measure. Even many economist have jumped on the fiscal/monetary stimulus bandwagon without enumerating all the costs and benefits of those policies. Until and unless many more Americans, economists, and policymakers start heeding Hazlitt’s advice, we should all become accustom to the patters of moderate booms and busts that we have witnessed in recent history.

Popularity: 37% [?]

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Publié dans Economics, Objectivist Content, monetary policy, recession | Aucun commentaire »

Which candidate will manage the economy best?

Monday 25 February 2008

The candidate who manages the economy least.

At least that is the theme of John Stossel’s newest article, which hits the proverbial nail on the head. So often the question regarding the economy in presidential elections is who will best “manage” it. But that question, especially the term “manage” really implies that inevitably the president will be exerting a great deal of control over the economy, and the issue is relates more to how the president will then allocate spending and taxation and regulation–how he or she will “man the controls.”

But in reality, the question should be more open-ended and have more choices. Rather than ask, how the president will manage the economy, we should first ask, will the president manage the economy, and if so, how much.

By addressing the basic issues of government’s place in the economy, which voters systematically ignore in favor of the same amount of executive control year after year, Stossel is able to put into perspective the economic nonsense that Congress or the president is directly responsible for growth.

He writes:

Sen. Hillary Clinton told The New York Times recently, “I want to get back to the appropriate balance of power between government and the market. … You try to find common ground, insofar as possible. But if you really believe you have to manage the economy, you have to stake a lot of your presidency on it.”

Notice that she equates government power and market power. That is absurd. “Power” in a free market means success at creating goods and services that your fellow human beings voluntarily choose to buy. Government power is force: the ability to fine and imprison people.

Politicians who talk about managing the economy ignore the fact that, strictly speaking, there is no economy. There are only people producing, buying and selling goods and services. Keep that in mind, and one realizes that government action more often than not interferes with the productive activities that benefit everyone. When politicians propose regulations to fix some problem, they should ask if some earlier intervention created the problem and if the new regulations will make things worse. The answer to both questions is usually yes.

The economy is far too complex for any president — no matter how smart — to manage. How can politicians and bureaucrats possibly know what hundreds of millions of individuals know, want and aspire to? How can government employees fathom what trade-offs to make in a world of scarce resources?

They can’t. That’s why free people are more prosperous than unfree people.

Presidential candidates should promise to keep their hands off the economy.

Popularity: 38% [?]

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Publié dans 2008, Domestic Politics, Economics, Objectivist Content, political philosophy, regulation | Aucun commentaire »

Legitimate and Illegitimate (pun intended) Criticism of John McCain

Thursday 21 February 2008

Yesterday, the New York Times broke an eight year old story announcing the possibility that McCain had an extramarital affair with a much younger DC lobbyist. The story cited former McCain aids who grew suspicious of the Senator for appearing more than usual with the woman thirty years his junior back around the time he was first running for president . Of course, the Times had no evidence of the impropriety but chose to feature the aspersion in the first paragraphs of an article entirely criticizing McCain for his involvement with wealthy and influential donors.

The thing is that some of the story may actually be relevant–regarding the “maverick” of a Senator, who is known for his battles on campaign finance and ethics reform, who may have gotten a little to cozy with some wealthy patrons–but the Times chose to relegate that story while featuring the aspersion of an allegation of McCain maybe having a crush.

Now, here is valid criticism from Megan McArdle:

McCain is not a classical liberal; he’s the product of an intensely hierarchical honor culture that he seems to think would substantially improve the rest of us if we adopted more of its values. I have no shortage of respect for the military, and their willingness to place their own lives between the rest of us and war’s desolation. But that doesn’t mean I think America would be a better place if we had a more martial state. His record bespeaks little respect for spontaneous order and individual freedom. What free-market instincts he evinces seem to have come as part of the conservative ideas combo-pack he bought because it was cheaper than buying the parts individually–all he really wanted was the national greatness and the moderately conservative social structure.

This is the most accurate description of McCain I have ever read and it goes to the heart of why I am not too fond of him. But, at the same time, I foresee myself voting for him because he is effectively less harmful to the economy and the country as a whole (”100 years in Iraq” not quite withstanding). On the other hand, Barack Obama is the image of a more rational, intelligent, thinking man’s president on the surface (juxtaposed with McCain’s traditional-patriotic image), but underneath it he will rule with a more heavy hand over the economy. My constant inclination is to vote for the political substance under the facade which is why I lean towards McCain. I don’t think there is much evidence to say that if America votes for what they perceive as a thinking man’s politician over a military-traditionalist one that it will in the long term lead to enough positive, free market reforms to necessarily outweigh Obama’s anti-market plans.

Hence, I disagree with the libertarian blogger’s assessment and endorsement of Obama, and choose to stick by McCain, who as of now appears to be the least-worst choice.

UPDATE: McCain responded to the allegations of the Times in a press conference this morning. The full video thereof can be accessed by clicking the link below:

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Popularity: 43% [?]

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Publié dans 2008, Domestic Politics, Economics, Objectivist Content, culture, media | 1 commentaire »

Foreign Aid In Vein

Monday 18 February 2008

From Obama’s website:

Obama will embrace the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty around the world in half by 2015, and he will double our foreign assistance to $50 billion to achieve that goal. He will help the world’s weakest states to build healthy and educated communities, reduce poverty, develop markets, and generate wealth.

Of course we are also used to hearing the clamoring of a myriad of inconsequential celebrities for more funding for the third world. And its not only liberals like Obama who trump up foreign aid. Remember that President Bush pledged $30 billion more in AIDS funding for Africa in the coming year.

Normally the foreign aid debate is casted as those altruists who care about the prosperity of the third world against the thrifty, America-centric who rather the money be kept at home. That’s conventional wisdom, but perhaps conventional wisdom is not always correct. At least in this case it appears not to be, as the same foreign aid that Obama proposes doubling has historically done little good to jump start the economies of the world’s poor.

From Michael Beran, regarding foreign aid to Africa and also addressing the Millennium Project that Obama endorsed:

From Walt Rostow and John F. Kennedy in 1960 to Sachs and Tony Blair today, the message, [NYU economist William] Easterly says, has been the same: “Give more aid.” Assistance to Africa, he notes, “did indeed rise steadily throughout this period (tripling as a percent of African GDP from the 1970s to the 1990s),” yet African growth “remained stuck at zero percent per capita.”

All told, the West has given some $568 billion in foreign aid to Africa over the last four decades, with little to show for it. Between 1990 and 2001, the number of people in sub-Saharan Africa below what the UN calls the “extreme poverty line”—that is, living on less than $1 a day—increased from 227 million to 313 million, while their inflation-adjusted average daily income actually fell, from 62 cents to 60. At the same time, nearly half the continent’s population—46 percent—languishes in what the UN defines as ordinary poverty.

Yet notwithstanding this record of failure, the prosperous nations’ heads of state have sanctioned Sachs’s plan to throw more money at Africa’s woes. In July 2005, G-8 leaders meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, endorsed Sachs’s Millennium thesis and promised to double their annual foreign aid from $25 billion to $50 billion, with at least half the money earmarked for Africa. This increased spending, the Gleneagles principals proclaimed, will “lift tens of millions of people out of poverty every year.” No doubt, too, Africans will soon be extracting sunbeams from cucumbers.

Once again, the notion that charity would actually hurt Africans in the long run is unconventional, but it is nonetheless all given evidence supports it. But if we dig deeper down and logically examine the incentives that the foreign aid creates we have no trouble rectifying theory and reality. This is what I wrote in a newspaper editorial (October issue, page two) on the subject back in the fall:

Charity demonstrates bad causation to Africans. In a simple economic sense it says: we will give you money because you are poor. At the same time organizations, like the Heifer Club, may say that they only will continue to supply funds for the needy if they show good behavior or meet some set of standards. To be sure, that is a more intelligent approach, but at the same time it does not eliminate the primary incentive which says, ‘we will give you money because you are poor.’ Hence the result is a confused myriad of incentives which occasionally set good standards on one hand, but always require minimal productivity on the other.

Let me also add, as I did later in the column, that aid only temporarily bolster the status quo, making the current regimes more acceptable, and does nothing to fix society’s foundational ethic and establish rule of law and defend property rights.

Popularity: 37% [?]

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Publié dans Economics, Objectivist Content, culture, international | Aucun commentaire »

Measuring Economic Inequality

Monday 18 February 2008

The economic blogs have been buzzing about the recent column in the NYT by Dallas Reserve Bank economists Michael Cox and Richard Alm regarding economic inequality. They’re article argues that consumption is a better unit of measure for economic inequality, because it is a more accurate measure of living standards. As the tittle says, “you are what you spend.”

My reaction is that when we compare the economic conditions of people within an economy we should be looking at consumption figures, because they most accurately reflect a person’s quality of life at any given point. Given the marginal propensity to consume, it should not come as a surprise that inequality is less stark under this type of measurement (see first image below), and that savings/investment makes up the difference.

More importantly, however, is that consumption comes closer to taking into account innovative technologies which enhance standard of life across the board. These innovations are not reflected in monetary representations of income, or even consumption, which ultimately represent each individual’s “slice of the pie.” Improvement in technology does not only make everyone’s life better but it also makes living standards more equal as the changes are mass-produced and rapidly become social norm. Even Paul Krugman agrees with this point:

Yes, over the centuries economic progress has reduced some gross disparities — modern Americans are relatively unlikely to simply starve to death (though it can happen), so in that sense the gap between rich and poor has narrowed. But the question isn’t whether society is, in some sense, more equal than it was in 1900. It’s whether it is radically more unequal than it was in 1970.

Krugman, of course, holds that inequality has grown since that time. I would assume that is true, if one is to go by income distribution, or even consumption distribution since 1970. But once again, distribution is not always the best way to go about making these assessments. Keep in mind all of the advancements since 1970, and their speedy dissemination among consumers (bottom graph below). Goods like the microwave, VCR, cellphone, home computer, and internet all hit the market since that point in time, reaching between 60% and 95% of the population by the present. For instance, the microwave has made cooking food far more efficient for those who otherwise could not spare the labor and time, while internet access makes any type of information imaginable far more accessible, especially on the net, for those whose resources are otherwise more limited.

Ultimately, to answer Krugman’s question about equality since 1970, we need to weight the effects of technological advancements against the climbing inequality in monetary distribution. Such a task is difficult to exact, however, to to which Tyler Cowen proposes an alternative conclusion:

We do not know how inequality of welfare in America is faring over say the last thirty years. This is a point of overriding importance. Just in case you missed it, let me repeat: when it comes to the kind of intra-nation inequality that we should really care about (if we are going to worry about intra-nation inequality at all), we “do not know.” As in “know” and “not” put together.

Until and unless I know more, I am inclined to side with Cowen. Consequently, I think we are better off concentrating economic policy on how to raise productivity, rather than how to equal economic ends, because what we do know is that, as a former teacher of mine often cited, “a high tide does indeed raise all boats.”

Consumption Inequality

Popularity: 36% [?]

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Publié dans Economics, Objectivist Content, philosophy, poverty, sociology | Aucun commentaire »

Omaba, Clinton, and Economic Nonsense

Saturday 16 February 2008

Now that Obama has decided to shed a fraction of his flowery rhetoric in favor of more specific ideas, especially on economic issues, he is beginning to paint a better self-portrait of himself as a policy man. But when listening to him talk substance, I cannot help but raise an eyebrow relatively often. Here was a absurd comment from his Chesapeake victory speech:

It’s a game where trade deals like NAFTA ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart.

This contention is just completely wrong and makes almost no economic sense. It is illogical and there is no data to support it. Not only is it sensationalism and Wal-Mart bashing, but seems that there is no reason to say it unless it were aimed at scaring people into supporting Obama and his economic plan. There is really no other explanation to why he said it other than it is pandering and, ironically, fear-mongering from the man who pontificates about hope all the time.

If he was economically literate he would take note of the fact that over half of those working minimum wage are under the age of 25 (and more than a quarter in their teens), while almost nine of every ten minimum wage workers do not have any dependents (BLS). Moreover, he would also recognize that freer trade allows for more capital mobility and for businesses and people to remain more productive, thus delivering more, cheaper, and better products to consumers. Bill Clinton was honest enough to embrace free trade even when it went against his party’s grain. Now even his wife isn’t brave enough to stand up against her party. Worse yet, Republicans like Huckabee, and to an extent Romney when he was still in the race, underhandedly went after free trade, using the unoriginal line, “I believe in free trade, but it has to be ‘fair’ trade.” Talk about a lepor’s bell. Among candidates on trade, however, McCain has demonstrated that he is most consistently in favor, even telling Iowans that he is in favor of eliminating all farm an ethanol subsidies.

One of America’s most prominent economists, Greg Mankiw, writes:

An open question in my mind is whether Barack Obama is going to align himself with the economic centrists in the Democratic party or with the populists on the far left of the party. A key litmus test is trade, and so far it does not look good.

And, for that matter, it doesn’t look so good for the other Democrat in the race as well.

From the Washington Post, here are the candidates records on earmarking which should serve as an indicator to how much fiscal restraint and responsibility they will practice on the whole:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure more than $340 million worth of home-state projects in last year’s spending bills, placing her among the top 10 Senate recipients of what are commonly known as earmarks, according to a new study by a nonpartisan budget watchdog group.

Working with her New York colleagues in nearly every case, Clinton supported almost four times as much spending on earmarked projects as her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), whose $91 million total placed him in the bottom quarter of senators who seek earmarks, the study showed.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the likely GOP presidential nominee, was one of five senators to reject earmarks entirely, part of his long-standing view that such measures prompt needless spending.

On the issue of disparity in pay between men and women, the candidates positions serve as an indicator of their overall attitude towards free exchange and market forces, as well as their willingness to use government to stifle those forces. From the WSJ:

There are actually two versions of comparable worth legislation, the Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. The former is co-sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama; the principal sponsor of the latter is Sen. Hillary Clinton (Mr. Obama is a co-sponsor). Both would push companies to set wages based not on supply and demand — that is the free market — but on some notion of social utility. The goal is to ensure that jobs performed mostly by men (say, truck drivers) are not paid more than those performed mostly by women (paralegals, perhaps).

President Ronald Reagan correctly called comparable worth “a cockamamie idea.” A great lesson of economic theory, not to mention historical experience, is that government-set wages and prices not only curtail freedom, but lead to shortages, surpluses and market disruptions.

The writer is right on the money with his conclusion, but I will add that the arrogance of the candidates who think that the millions upon millions of individual economic actors determining supply and demand, while working in their own self-interest, should be manipulated on a whim by government edicts is becoming increasingly ominous. While I have traditionally said that Obama would be slightly more rational on the economy than Clinton, it is clear that their platforms are very, very similar (Clinton even accused Obama of copying her ideas) on these issues and that neither are very desirable Presidents at least in terms of how they would handle the economy. And even though McCain has his fair share of economic setbacks, not to mention the fact that he claims to not know much about the economy, he appears to be a more consistent backer of limited government and the free market than either Democrat would wish to be accused of in their wildest nightmares.

Popularity: 45% [?]

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Publié dans 2008, Democrats, Economics, Objectivist Content, Trade, regulation | 3 commentaires »

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