On February 20, 2003, President Bush first coined the term Ownership Society while campaigning for more tax cuts. Bush supporters were quick to latch onto this term and expand its meaning.
In the ownership society, patients control their own health care, parents control their own children's education, and workers control their retirement savings.
Five years later we should measure what the "Ownership Society" means in the real world.
"We're creating...an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property."
- President Bush, October 2004
"This is not a field of specialty for me, but my general feeling is that the recession will be longer and deeper than most people think," Buffett said. "This will not be short and shallow.
"I think consumers are feeling gas and food prices," he added, "and not feeling they've got a lot of money for other things.
America and China appear to be locked in a financial embrace turned toxic. If America is running perennial trade deficits and if American consumers are running dire savings deficits, then China appears to be wrestling with the opposite peril: a worsening inflationary spiral caused by a tsunami of incoming ever-cheaper dollars.
I won't pretend to be an expert on China's stock or bond market, but then again finding such discussion of financial conditions in China seems to be just about impossible. What I do know a little about is financial history, and what conditions in stock and even moreso bond markets can tell us about where an economy is going.
With that in mind, it is worthwhile to look at China's markets and ask ourselves, "If this was the US, where would the economy be heading?" The answer (while enviable compared to America's condition) ain't so pretty.
It's the silly season again, and that means that politicians will say one thing while doing another and then pretend they are being consistent. For instance, President Bush made a big deal of opposing the Democratic-sponsored bill for using the F.H.A. to bailout distressed homeowners. John McCain also opposes a bailout for homeowners.
Do they mention that India, through labor and wage arbitrage, now has a
lot of our money too? ~7.5% of India's GDP to be exact. (note this is
being automatically posted to EP, so if you reply remove the original
text and do not change the subject line).
Even when times are good, it's hard to believe that corporate CEOs can look you in the eye and tell you that they've truly earned their outrageous $10 million, $50 million, $100 million or more pay packages.
But this week I saw another round of stories on corporate CEOs getting multi-million dollar "bonuses" even as their companies lose millions of dollars.
If you are open minded enough to consider evidence that runs contrary to received wisdom and challenges your assumptions, read on, I hope you will find this thought-provoking.
Because there is some excellent evidence that, if "It's the Economy, Stupid", then there are some very powerful people who have operated some very powerful economic levers to the benefit of one certain Senator John McCain. And the cocaine they are injecting into the economy is going to hit full force by about election day.
Those very powerful people are the Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank, including Fed Chairman Ben Bernancke.
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