-
Carbon Tax? Cap and Trade? How About Both?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 23, 2008 Comment (1)Conservatives always fret that if we instituted a replacement for the income tax, like the Fair Tax, without repealing the federal income tax, eventually we would end up with both. I couldn't help thinking about that when I saw this article on the fine WorldChanging site that addresses the issue of whether it's better to have an expensive cap-and-trade system to deal with carbon emissions or an expensive carbon tax. Hey, why not both! Hoo-boy...
-
Best of the Blogosphere: May 23, 2008
Tweet Share on Facebook May 23, 2008 Comment (2)John Tamny of RealClearMarkets thinks addressing the weak dollar is more important right now than tax policy.
Mark Perry of Carpe Diem looks at the minimal environmental impact of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Long Views looks at what San Francisco might look like in 2108. Cool picture.
Arnold Kling of EconLog has a fix for Medicare.
-
A Bullish Scenario for the Economy and Market
Tweet Share on Facebook May 22, 2008 Comment (5)This I could use right about now. Liz Ann Sonders, the chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, outlines a bullish scenario for the economy and for stocks:
I think it's time to begin discussing a new paradigm that could emerge—with potentially positive implications for both the U.S. economy and stocks. The story goes something like this:
-
Wall Street Succumbs to Peak Oil
Tweet Share on Facebook May 22, 2008 Comment (21)It's interesting that two of the biggest factors driving markets and economic policy right now are scientific theories, those of climate change and peak oil. For the past two years, every time I've chatted with an energy or commodities analyst, I have asked whether he or she believed in peak oil, the theory that global oil production has reached its zenith. The answers have slowly transformed from an outright "No" to "Well..." to "Certainly, investors seem to buy the theory more and more."
Yeah, $135-a-barrel oil will do that to you. I was on CNBC's Kudlow & Co. last night with oil guru Daniel Yergin, who has consistently dismissed peak oil while at the same time consistently missing the continual rise in oil prices. I didn't get a chance to ask him whether he was changing his position. (He seems to have undue faith in the Saudis' oil reserve claims.)
-
$200 a Barrel or Bust: the Oil Price Spike
Tweet Share on Facebook May 21, 2008 Comment (3)A few thoughts on the spike in oil prices:
1) Is there a ton of speculation in the price? You bet. (And that has caused plenty of fear in stocks.) But picking the top in a bubble requires more smarts than I have or anyone I have ever met has. Still, that contango situation in oil prices—where spot contracts trade at a lower price than futures—is often a sign of the beginning of the end.
2) What Arjun Murti of Goldman Sachs and oilman turned wind entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens say right now is more important than what anyone in Washington says.
-
Sour Fed Outlook Undercuts Obamanomics
Tweet Share on Facebook May 21, 2008 CommentThe first thing I thought of when I read the Federal Reserve's dreary economic outlook—as contained in the meeting minutes released this afternoon (and in the chart below)—is how Barack Obama, if elected, is ever going to pass his big tax hikes on income and investment in that sort of economic climate. That slow growth would also mean higher budget deficits. To me, it seems more like a time to slash spending and taxes.
-
Merrill Lynch: Is Hillary Sabotaging Obama?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 21, 2008 Comment (6)This from David Rosenberg, the North American economist at Merrill Lynch (bold is mine):
Barack Obama moved closer to the DEM nomination after yesterday's victory in Oregon (despite Hillary's resounding victory in KY, Obama went into yesterday's primaries needing just 17 delegates to garner a majority and the way the DEMS allocate votes, he came out with more than 100 new delegates yesterday evening, putting him over the top). We're not going to claim to be political junkies, but all this is highly reminiscent of the intense battle between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan back in 1976 that also went all the way to the convention (Ford ended garnering barely more than 52% of the delegates)—and what happened when all was said and done was a Jimmy Carter victory as the GOP was still in healing mode during the presidential campaign (maybe this is why Hillary wants to take this to the finale—Reagan took the White House in resounding fashion in the next election in 1980).
-
The Mother of Middle-Class Tax Cuts
Tweet Share on Facebook May 21, 2008 Comment (6)For a growing number of taxpayers, income taxes really don't matter. Roughly 60 million tax filers, representing 120 million Americans, pay no income taxes, thanks in large part to an increase in various tax credits, deductions, and exemptions. (As a result, the top 1 percent in income now pay around 40 percent of all income taxes.) But it's pretty tough to escape payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare. Indeed, two thirds of Americans pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes. So how to give America a payroll tax cut? Here are a couple of options:
1) Extend the retirement age and start indexing benefits to inflation rather than wages. That would leave Social Security overfunded by trillions of dollars, and thus payroll taxes could be slashed.
-
Capital Commerce vs. the (In)Curious Capitalist
Tweet Share on Facebook May 21, 2008 CommentIt could have been a blood feud right up there with the Yankees and Red Sox, humans and Cylons, and Luskin, and Krugman. But as much as I tried to whip up a cyberspace cage match with Justin Fox, the economics columnist and Curious Capitalist at Time, Fox just wouldn't bite. See, I recently posted a brief-but-masterful takedown of his cover story "How the Next President Should Fix the Economy" by countering with my own "5 Ways the Next President Can Fix the Economy".
But instead of hitting me across the back with a folding chair—or the journalistic equivalent thereof—Fox calmly critiqued my response in his blog, agreeing with some points, objecting to others. (He even added me to his blogroll—an obvious ruse.) Then again, the whole thing was probably vetted and watered-down by a legion of Time Warner corporate attorneys. I'm pretty sure Fox would have preferred to have given me a nasty forearm shiver, or the journalistic equivalent thereof. Oh well, back to my continued attempts at baiting Robert Samuelson at Newsweek and Lex at the Economist.
-
Best of the Blogosphere, May 20, 2008
Tweet Share on Facebook May 20, 2008 Comment (19)Here's what I have been reading:
- Newmark's Door exposes congressional hypocrisy over the idea of a windfall-profits tax on oil companies.
- The Entrepreneurial Mind shows how government, in this case Canada's, has a hard time promoting innovation.
- Carpe Diem says the global economy is actually holding up quite well, despite the credit crunch.
- Café Hayek looks at the potential impact of taxing large university endowments.
advertisement
Follow U.S. News Money
Like Us On Facebook
advertisement
Subscribe
U.S. News Weekly
An insider's guide to politics and policy, available on the iPad or as a PDF download.
