Monthly Archives: December 2008

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

Obamanomics

From “Forecasts and Strategies” by Mark Skousen December 2008 newsletter. Highly recommended www.markskousen.com “I fear the coming of what I call the Four Horsemen of Obamanomics: 1) increased protectionism, 2) more union power, 3) higher taxes on investors and wealthy

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Pragmatic Stimulus ?

From American Thinker (see recommended sites) December 18, 2008What is American business afraid of? By Mikiel de Bary excerpts What are businesses afraid of? Perhaps they suspect that asset values may continue to drop a lot more or for a

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Globalizing Ourselves

“The irony is that the rise of the rest (of the world) is a consequence of American ideas and actions. For sixty years, American politicians and diplomats have traveled around the world pushing countries to open their markets, free up

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A Tool and a Weapon

Obama is a very bright man and he is surrounding himself with a very bright group in his cabinet. It reminds me of the “Best and the Brightest” (the phrase was a book title by David Halberstam about the Viet

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Distinguishing Flaws from Flexibility

Obama is already getting some heat from the far left over his appointments that are too centrist, and he is still a month away from inauguration. I expected this as the Republicans are just too fragmented to mount any kind

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Kosher Cowboys

…with reality like this, who needs drugs. On Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjNXTQfsL9Y

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The Washington Bubble

“In Washington, new thinking about a new world is sorely lacking. It is easy to criticize the Bush administration for its arrogance and unilateralism, which have handicapped America abroad. But the problem is not confined to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, or

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CDO

There is a psychological disorder called CDO. It is like OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) except the letters are in alphabetical order.

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Old Paradigms

By Henry Oliner After the oil embargo in 1974 (as a result of the US aiding Israel in the Yom Kippur War- so much for the myth that we only fight to protect our oil) the Arab world ruled the

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Strategic Protectionism

High oil prices brought the reality that our purchases were funding hostile regimes. We sought to be independent of imported energy for the purposes of national security. The price of oil has fallen dramatically and now we are faced with

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Which Party is More Corrput?

Blagojevich, Rangel and Jefferson. It seems there is a run on Democratic corruption. Yet there was Ted Stevens and other Republicans also guilty. Whenever one’s party is caught the other just rationalizes that they all do it. Well in American

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Fewer Options than You Thought

Pretenders to the White House often condemn the actions of the sitting president, yet when in office facing similar situations react in a similar manner. Those terrible decisions they criticized so strongly on the campaign trail prove to be best

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The Stimulus is a Tax

by Henry Oliner The stimulus package assumes that the government can repair a badly damaged economy by sending checks to a certain sector of citizens. This is such a flawed view that it should be obvious to anyone. The money

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Counterproductive Complex Tax Regulations

The tax code is so complicated and indefinite that the intended impact of tax legislation to increase or stimulate capital investment for a short time is dissipated in complexity. If you buy capital equipment in 2008 you can ‘elect’ under

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More Guns and Butter

Obama is speaking about undoing many of the spending programs enacted under Bush such as the farm bill and others that he said has outlived their usefullness. While there is still some distance from rhetoric to actions I personally hope

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Who Supports Free Trade?

It is worth noting that while we look to the constitution for guidance on today’s problems, the founding fathers approved tariffs and other federal controls of trade. Hamilton and his mercantile school wanted to use the government to ally with

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The Most Undercovered Stories in 2008

The shipment of 550 tons of yellowcake uranium from Iraq to Canada. While not weapons grade it clearly underlined the nuclear program Hussein was underwriting in violation of UN resolutions. Few people I have spoken with have ever heard of

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Dodd Should Resign

I can not help but recoil at Chris Dodd’s hypocrisy at demanding the firing of GM’s president. Chris Dodd was and is Chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee which was responsible for the oversight of Fannie

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Health Care Myths

It is amazing how bad information is repeated so often that it becomes accepted fact. The health care debate centers on the 45 million uninsured. But before we grind out an expensive solution we should undertsand those number more fully.

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Whose Preconditions?

“.. we have been talking to the Iranians, almost non stop, for 30 years. There isn’t an American president from Jimmy Carter to the present who has not authorized negotiations with Iran. The classic case occurred during the Clinton administration.

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