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A Keynesian Christmas Present: Rep. Louie Gohmert’s Tax Holiday
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), champion of a federal tax holiday, faced skeptical questions today about his idea to give the economy a boost. Gohmert wants to stop collecting taxes for two months — using...
View ArticleKeynesian Economics Is Wrong
Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute does an excellent job explaining why Keynesian fiscal strategies do not work in this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. It’s more...
View ArticleNo, Serious Deficit Spending is Not Immediately Needed
Government spending does not create economic growth. Regrettably, many in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, have ignored this fact. Just today, Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), declared in his Wall...
View ArticleHeritage Stimulus Plan Gets Plug at Economic Hearing
Heritage’s Bill Beach testified at yesterday’s Economic Recovery Working Group hearing on Capitol Hill about an alternative to the misguided Keynesian stimulus package liberals in Congress are...
View ArticleCato Fights Back
The Cato Institute sought to make clear where they and the world’s smartest economists stand on the Pelosi-Reid-Obama Debt plan by running a full page ad in the New York Times, Washington Post and...
View ArticleMorning Bell: The Road to Recovery Begins with the End of Obamacare
When President Barack Obama was trying to sell his $787 billion economic stimulus plan to the American people, there was no louder cheerleader for the plan than Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com. Zandi...
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Keynesian Doublespeak
A year ago, President Obama warned the American people that the financial crisis was dire and required a whole new approach to government spending. Obama argued that the government must help America...
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Tax Hikers Senselessly Stuck on Saving
Tax-hike advocates have erected yet another straw man to protect their high-tax policy, now arguing that little economic harm would be done if Congress and the president were to raise taxes on higher...
View ArticleDoes Supply Create Demand?
Which comes first: supply or demand? This question has serious policy implications, especially as President Barack Obama proposes $447 billion in additional stimulus spending in order to try to spur...
View ArticleVIDEO: Why Obama’s Stimulus Failed
President Obama’s economic stimulus was supposed to revive America’s economy and put people back to work. But nearly three years after Democrats rammed the bill through Congress, it’s a clear-cut...
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Chart of the Week: Slow Job Growth Means a Slow Economic Recovery
President Obama will deliver his third State of the Union address on Tuesday night. According to a preview video released this weekend, the speech will outline Obama’s vision for improving the economy...
View ArticleCBO’s Stimulus Review: As Good as a Horoscope
One reason economists sometimes compare themselves to astrologers is that their forecasts are often equally accurate. But when it comes to analyzing government policy, economists have trouble even...
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As Spain and Greece Burn, Estonia Offers a Lesson
A fire bomb explodes behind a riot police squad on September 26 in Athens, Greece, during clashes with demonstrators. (Photo: AFP) Over the past few days, new strikes and riots have convulsed Greece...
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Morning Bell: Heritage Experts React to Vice Presidential Debate
Vice President Biden and Representative Paul Ryan squared off last night for a spirited and intense 90-minute debate at Centre College in Danville, KY. Topics ranged from foreign to domestic, touching...
View ArticleIs a Tax Cut Always a Good Thing?
According to Friday’s Washington Post, the Administration is considering a new, short-term tax cut. Should conservatives cheer? As a matter of principle, there are at least two reasons to dislike taxes...
View ArticleFiscal Cliff: Is Heritage Inconsistent?
Menzie Chinn took to the blog Econbrowser last Thursday to accuse conservative economists in general – and The Heritage Foundation in particular – of being inconsistent, since we did not share his...
View ArticleDeficit Spending and Debt: Lessons from Japan
Deficit spending does not foster economic recovery. The U.S. and the world need to recognize the stagnation and inter-generational inequality caused by such spending, and for reference, they need not...
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Don’t Do It, Shinzo Abe!
Credit: Hajime Takashi/ZUMA Press/Newscom Japan’s incoming prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has an unenviable task. While Mr. Abe may prove to be exactly what the country needs in terms of foreign policy,...
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Obama Inauguration Speech: More Transportation “Investment”
President Obama hinted toward at least one aspect of his second-term agenda during yesterday’s inaugural address: more transportation “investment.” No surprise there. Obama’s past budget requests,...
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Meretricious? Senator Whitehouse Is Projecting
Credit: Michael Bryant/MCT/Newscom Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) spent eight minutes berating me at a Senate Budget Committee hearing yesterday. He disliked the facts I presented on austerity, so...
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Austerity and Stimulus: A Response to The Washington Post
Journalists should check with both sides before committing pen to paper, especially those at respectable outlets like The Washington Post. It would have served Post reporter Dylan Matthews well if he...
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Cut Government Spending to Help the Economy? Majority Say Yes
Newscom A recent Rasmussen poll (subscription required) found that 65 percent of likely voters want the government to cut spending to help alleviate the country’s economic woes. Four years after the...
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Obama on Infrastructure: Wrong Again on Government “Investments”
Newscom In yet another summer speech on the economy yesterday, President Obama trotted out familiar tax-and-spend ideas, this time pairing his latest call for a tax increase with his familiar call for...
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Japan’s Revolving Door Tax
YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images/Newscom Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is likely to increase Japan’s sales tax from 5 percent to 8 percent next year. Abe and his close ally Haruhiko Kuroda, head of the...
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European Central Bank Lowers Interest Rates, Trumping “Zero Lower Bound” Theory
Design Pics / Peter Langer/Peter Langer/Newscom The European Central Bank (ECB) lowered a key interest rate to 0.25 percent on Thursday. This is a big deal, since it demonstrates that the ECB has the...
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The Fed Inflation-Unemployment Trade-Off: Outlasting the Energizer Bunny
Newscom George Selgin has a new post on the Free Banking Blog that highlights the economic quandary the Fed now has the U.S. in. The post uses subtle sarcasm to make an excellent point, but many...
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Larry Summers, Satirist
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images/Newscom One must applaud Larry Summers for his cagey satire in a Washington Post op-ed today. He lets on—subtly—that the recent resurrection of “secular stagnation” is...
View ArticleSorry, Janet Yellen, We Can’t Spend Our Way to Prosperity
In spite of aggressive expansionary Federal Reserve policies and several rounds of fiscal stimulus since 2007, the U.S. economy has yet to take off. Nonetheless, some officials are refusing to give up...
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Paul Krugman: Selective Data Usage
Paul Krugman, in the words of a former New York Times public editor, “has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers.” Most recently, he selectively cited numbers about...
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