The end of the recession does not mean we won’t lose more jobs; employment is always a lagging indicator.  And there will be more defaults, foreclosures and financial market problems, too.  But none of these are leading indicators.  In our view, there are no more shoes to drop.

– Economists Brian Wesbury and Bob Stein in their recent Monday Morning Outlook

The true valuation of the market is no where near as dismal as the aggregate earnings reported by Standard & Poor’s suggest.  When portfolios of stocks are weighted by market values, the market is cheap by historical standards.  No one can say for sure whether March 9 will mark the bottom of this dismal bear market (I personally think it will), but I am sure that investors who hold a diversified portfolio of stocks today will be rewarded by above-average returns.

- Jeremy Siegel, Ph.D.

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this:  Politicians invariably respond to crises – that in most cases they themselves created – by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations.  These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs … and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

Read the full article here. 

But when people talk about cash being king, it’s not king if it just sits there and never does anything.

- Warren Buffett on the Charlie Rose Show 10/01/08

Conservatives should never say to voters, “We can lower your taxes.”  Conservatives should say to voters, “You can raise spending.  You, the electorate, can, if you choose, have an infinite number of elaborate and expensive government programs.  But we, the government, will have to pay for those programs.  We have three ways to pay.

“We can inflate the currency, destroying your ability to plan for the future, wrecking the nation’s culture of thrift and common sense, and giving free rein to scallywags to borrow money for worthless scams and pay it back 10 cents on the dollar.

“We can raise taxes.  If the taxes are levied across the board, money will be taken from everyone’s pocket, the economy will stagnate, and the poorest and least advantaged will be harmed the most.  If the taxes are levied only on the wealthy, money will be taken from wealthy people’s pockets, hampering their capacity to make loans and investments, the economy will stagnate, and the poorest and the least advantaged will be harmed the most.

“And we can borrow, building up a massive national debt.  This will cause all of the above things to happen plus it will fund Red Chinese nuclear submarines that will be popping up in San Francisco Bay to get some decent Szechwan take-out.”

Yes, this would make for longer and less pithy stump speeches.  But we’d be showing ourselves to be men and women of principle.  It might cost us, short-term.  We might get knocked down for not whoring after bioenergy votes in the Iowa caucuses.  But at least we wouldn’t land on our scruples.  And we could get up again with dignity intact, dust ourselves off, and take another punch at the liberal bully-boys who want to snatch the citizenry’s freedom and tuck that freedom, like a trophy feather, into the hatbands of their greasy political bowlers.”

~ From The Weekly Standard

 Hat Tip:  Adventures in Capitalism

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt.  People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

– Cicero, 55 BC

Here is the quote of the day:

The one good thing that came out of this whole credit debacle, I now have the perfect pithy response to all the lefties who tell me that the government should take over health care and make it affordable to everyone.  You mean the way they made home ownership affordable to all through Fannie and Freddie?  How did that work out for you?

– Nick Calapa

HT:  Cafe Hayek

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, on, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers.  Instead the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.

– from historian Carroll Quigley, author of Tragedy and Hope:  A History of the World in Our Time (and Bill Clinton’s mentor)

Related and Recommended Reading:

Left vs. Right:  The Illusion of Opposites by G. Edward Griffin

I recently came across this poem which shares many of my own thoughts of how I see the world.

The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.  I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.  I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.  I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!  I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

Continue Reading »

The only difference between Hollywood and Washington is that, while audiences understand Hollywood’s leading men and women to be acting, this same ability to distinguish fantasy from fact disappears when the executive producer is Uncle Sam. 

From Don Boudreaux’s recent editorial.

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Related and Recommended Viewing:

Confusing Wealth and Income

The Laffer Curve Explained