A Quick Dose of Midday DOOM!

Ace beat me to the tip of the DOOM! iceberg, but no worries. There's plenty more where that come from.

First up, the ghost of John Maynard Keynes tweets: @Democrats UR doin it wrong #asshats

I am tired of politicians like President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner quoting Keynes to justify their spending plans when politicians consistently refuse to listen to Keynes' complete message
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What Keynes said on not cutting spending in a recession has been widely quoted, correctly
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What those quoting him forget though is that Keynes said governments should run a budget surplus in the good times

That link goes to CNBC, so I'm wondering if maybe the @ tweet was really supposed to be DM. There's a lot of that going around lately.

Now Keynes was, in scientific terms, not even wrong, but it really is unfair to call what we're doing "Keynesian Economics." It's even more half-assed than that.

Keynesian "pump priming" presumes you have something with which to prime the pump. That "something" is fiscal prudence during the good times. We walked away from that boring old concept with the New Deal and broke into a full sprint with the Great Society. Result: boned!

Related: Amity Shlaes kicks teh Krugman in the poon.

On to the Loyal Order of the Terminally Boned. Charter member Illinois tried an innovative solution to their fiscal problems. They raised taxes. Unexpectedly™, businesses made noise about fleeing the state, so they gave them ... wait for it ... tax incentives to stay put.

The good news is that corporate tax receipts in Springfield are up by about $300 million amid the economic recovery—though the state comptroller's office announced in April that the state still faces $8 billion in unpaid bills. The bad news is that, according to the state's Department of Commerce, Illinois has already shelled out some $230 million in corporate subsidies to keep more than two dozen companies from fleeing the state. And more are on the way.
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The irony is that the recipients of these sweetheart deals are the very enterprises that [Governor] Quinn was counting on to pay more taxes. Six months ago the Governor and union economists said the Illinois tax hike wouldn't chase businesses out of the state. Now Mr. Quinn is seducing businesses to stay by chopping their tax liabilities.

Brilliant! The article might be behind the WSJ's paywall, but read the whole thing for a good laugh or two if you can. Unless you live in Illinois.

L; R - Obamanomics; reality

posted by Andy at 01:42 PM

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