Tag Archives: Economy
Scrap Stimulus
Demand is up for used cars because people are poorer. Supply is down because last year’s Cash for Clunkers program turned used cars into scrap. The scrapped used car market was, according to George Will, “an important mechanism for redistributing wealth to low income persons”. In the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby sums up the program as, “a deplorable exercise in budgetary wastefulness, asset destruction, environmental irrelevance, and economic idiocy”.
Not All Gloom and Doom
Illegal immigration has dropped 67% over the past 10 years . Meanwhile, unemployment notched up to a rate of 9.6% for August. In an unrelated move, chief economic adviser, Christina Romer, gave her farewell address at the National Press Club. According to Dana Milbank, she explained that economists don’t know why the economy stinks.
Welcome to the Recovery
Kind of a dippy cartoon but Obama’s Recovery Summer slogan might be right up there with President Ford’s WIN buttons, and about as effective. While Biden was on the Recovery Victory Tour, Geithner was touting the economy in the NY Times.
