Vatican: 'Outrageous'...

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Strongsville business owner guilty of tax evasion Sun Star Courier The owner of a visible Strongsville business has pleaded guilty to attempted income tax evasion. On August 30, Alex Byczek, owner of Strongsville Marathon, …

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EZRA v. STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES Leagle.com The alleged retaliatory act at the heart of Ezra's claim was respondents' filing of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 1099 which reported the proceeds … and more »

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Globe and Mail

Canadian Currency Gains as Central Bank Raises Interest Rate BusinessWeek The loonie is up 1.1 percent since June 1, the day the Bank of Canada became the first Group of Seven nations central bank to raise interest rates since … Bank of Canada Increases Key Interest Rate to 1%, Signals Slower RecoveryBloomberg Bank of Canada hikes rates, sees slower recoveryReuters Bank of Canada raises key rate despite slow growthVancouver Sun Wall Street Journal -ETF Database -Daily FX all 653 news articles »

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In the Mother of All Political Machines, there will be a changing of the guard. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, scion of the most ruthless and relentless political machine in American political history, has announced that he will not seek a whopping SEVENTH term. Wants to retire, he says. Interesting. Daleys don’t retire. They just stay in office, abusing power, forever.

But this Daley has decided to bow out, for some real reason we’ll find out later. That means Chicago will be getting a new mayor soon. And that new mayor just may be…Rahm Emanuel?

Obama’s Chief of Staff is a Chicago boy. He was a Clinton White House senior adviser, a Chicago-area Congressman, and head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee before his current gig. By the way, he’s just not that into his current gig. He was into it when they were riding high, but now that Obama’s sucking salt, he’s dying to get outta there.

So, he’s going to run for mayor of Chicagoland. And he’ll win, because Chicago is Chicago. Beautiful city, ridiculously stupid politics. In Chicago, if you’re not indicted, you’re not invited.

One thing’s for sure: if Rahm runs for mayor, he will be leaving a gaping hole in the Obama White House. Yes, he’s profane and brutal and a huge jerk. But he’s also the only guy in this White House who is a true political animal and not a pure ideologue. Obama, David Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett—the three remaining in the Bama Inner Circle—are complete, true-believing Saul Alinsky devotees. For them, the top-to-bottom remaking of America as a wealth-redistributing, socialist state trumps everything, including politics, polls, and even re-election. Rahm is a dedicated Democrat, but he’s not stupid. He tried to throw the brakes on Obamacare and Obama’s misguided Ground Zero mosque comments, as well as other off-the-wall Obama policies. He’s the only character in this White House that could possibly save it from itself.

But he wants out big time. The rats are bailing on the sinking ship: first key economic advisers Christina Romer and Peter Orszag said sayonara. Now Rahm is about to wave goodbye. There will be others after the November election.

This White House will miss Rahm. For all his faults—and they are legion—he was, God help us, the only voice of reason in there.

Soon, he’ll be Mayor Rahm. Hey Chicago: you’ve got that to look forward to.

Big Government

MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO HOST SECOND MEETING OF BELIZE DIASPORA PROGRAM LoveFM That program includes tax exemptions and stuff like that for vehicles that can be brought into the country. The importance of every one attending that can …

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'Meant to Be a Warning'...

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IN RE ACKER Leagle.com The Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") initiated this adversary proceeding on September 28, 2009, asking this Court to determine that the Debtor's liability … IN RE GRISHAMLeagle.com all 7 news articles »

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With the help of two expats living in Panama who know the country inside out, we explore whether Panama is truly an affordable and attractive place for Britons to retire and live a good life abroad
Shelter Offshore

Boston Globe

Swiss Franc Climbs to Record Against Euro on Bank Concern, Yen Strengthens Bloomberg … will give the central bank more reason to resume raising interest rates. The number of people employed rose by 25000 in August and the jobless rate fell … WORLD FOREX: Euro Slips As Risk Sentiment Fades; Pound FallsWall Street Journal Dollar Rallies on Weak German DataForexyard 'Beggar Thy Neighbor' Mentality: Competitive Trade Balance Only Way Out of …Seeking Alpha (blog) Hargreaves Lansdown -Economic Times all 1,315 news articles »

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Boston Globe

Swiss Franc Climbs to Record Against Euro on Bank Concern, Yen Strengthens Bloomberg … will give the central bank more reason to resume raising interest rates. The number of people employed rose by 25000 in August and the jobless rate fell … WORLD FOREX: Euro Slips As Risk Sentiment Fades; Pound FallsWall Street Journal Dollar Rallies on Weak German DataForexyard 'Beggar Thy Neighbor' Mentality: Competitive Trade Balance Only Way Out of …Seeking Alpha (blog) Hargreaves Lansdown -Economic Times all 1,315 news articles »

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Czech Central Banker Janacek Sees No `Immediate' Need for Rate Increase Bloomberg The Ceska Narodni Banka has left its benchmark two-week interest rate at a record-low 0.75 percent, below the European Central Bank's main rate of 1 percent … and more »

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It must be a condition of employment that a journalist who writes about the current recession include in his article the statement, “consumption makes up more than two-thirds of the economy” or “consumption spending accounts for 70 percent of GDP.” This seemingly simple, factual statement, however, is nearly always intended to carry some explanatory weight, and on occasion the writer spells out this explanation by adding a statement such as, “unless consumers begin to open their wallets and spend more, recovery from the current recession will be impossible.”

At first glance, this journalistic commonplace appears to make sense. Anyone can understand that, say, a store at the mall will not hire additional employees unless its sales increase enough to justify the additional expense. Hence, would-be employees will remain unemployed; they will purchase fewer consumption goods than they would have purchased if they had jobs; and therefore the stores will not hire more workers; and so forth. The circle of a theory of income and employment seems to be closed, and thus an explanation provided for the lingering recession: consumers are not spending enough.

One does not need a Ph.D. in economics, however, to discover that something must be wrong with this way of thinking about prosperity and recession. Checking the national economic accounts produced by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (Table l.l.6), one finds, for example, that the most recent quarterly peak in real personal consumption expenditure occurred in the fourth quarter of 2007. This spending (,244 billion at an annual rate) equaled 69.2 percent of contemporary GDP (,364 billion at an annual rate)—where the data are expressed in dollars of 2005 purchasing power. Real GDP did not fall significantly until the third quarter of 2008. When it reached its trough in the second quarter of 2009, it had fallen to ,810 billion, down about 4 percent. At that time, real personal consumption spending was ,117 billion, down only 1.4 percent, and equal to about 71 percent of GDP. Thus, as usual over the course of a boom and bust, consumption spending varied proportionately less than GDP as a whole.

As every student of the business cycle learns early on, the most variable part of aggregate expenditure is private investment. When real gross private domestic investment peaked, in the first quarter of 2006, it was ,265 billion, or 17.5 percent of GDP. When it hit bottom in the second quarter of 2009, it had fallen by 36 percent to ,453 billion, or 11.3 percent of GDP. (Deducting investment expenditures aimed at compensating for depreciation of the private capital stock [Table 1.7.6], we find that real net private investment—the part that contributes to economic growth—in the most recent quarter was only one-third as great as it was at its peak in early 2006.) The ups and downs of the business cycle are obviously driven not by consumption spending, but by investment spending.

In the second quarter of 2010, real personal consumption was ,270 billion, or slightly above its previous peak, at an all-time high. If stimulating consumption spending were the key to an economic revival, we would have achieved one already. And if we accepted real GDP as an adequate index of the economy’s health, we might affirm that conclusion, given that in the most recent quarter, real GDP was only 1.3 percent below its previous peak. With the official unemployment rate stuck near 10 percent and millions of people having left the labor force or having settled for part-time work, however, that conclusion is hard to swallow.

The vulgar Keynesian focus on consumption unfortunately tempts politicians to approve “stimulus” measures aimed at pumping up this part of total spending—measures such as long extensions of unemployment insurance benefits, aid to state and local governments to help them avoid personnel reductions, and increases in the salaries of federal employees. Some economists even go so far as to single out such measures for special praise on the grounds that because such payments are most likely to give rise to consumption spending in the near term, they have the greatest “multiplier effect.”

Such arguments, however, fail to grasp the true nature of the boom-bust cycle, especially the central role of investment spending in driving it—and, more important, in driving the long-run growth of real output that translates into a rising standard of living for the general public. Politicians, if they truly wish to promote genuine, sustainable recovery and long-run economic growth, need to focus on actions that will contribute to a revival of private investment, not on pumping up consumption. In the most recent quarter, real gross private domestic investment was running at an annual rate more than 20 percent below its previous peak and, as noted, real net private investment was fully two-thirds below its previous peak.

To bring about this essential revival of investment, the government needs to put an end to actions that threaten investors’ returns and create uncertainty that paralyzes their undertaking of new long-term projects. Gigantic measures such as the recently enacted health-care legislation and the financial-reform law, which entail hundreds of new regulations whose specific content, enforcement, and costs are impossible to forecast with confidence, contribute to “regime uncertainty” [also see the book Depression, War, and Cold War] and thereby encourage investors to hold large cash balances or to park their funds in short-term, low-yield, less risky securities. Such investments cannot support genuine recovery and sustained long-run growth.

In sum, our crying need at present is for a robust revival of private long-term investment. Consumption-oriented government “stimulus” programs, at best, only ensure a protracted period of economic stagnation.

Big Government

Reuters India

Swiss probe Bettencourt island deal – paper Reuters The heiress may have agreed to transfer the island in a complex operation in order to "regularise" her tax situation, the paper added. … Swiss judge orders searches in l'Oreal sagaReuters UK all 24 news articles »

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