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Politics

power-plant-emission-regulations

Jan. 20, 2015: A coal-fired power plant, Merrimack Station in Bow, N.H. (Photo: AP)

The Obama administration plans to impose the most severe cuts to power plant emissions to date in his pursuit of climate change, the White House confirmed Sunday. The initial plan mandated a 30 percent nationwide cut in carbon dioxide emission by 2030, using 2005 levels as a baseline. However, the actual plan will require a 32 percent cut, instead.

The White House argues they had extensive consultations with environmental groups and the energy industry, but industry opponents disagree and vow to sue the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) immediately. The Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which represents energy companies, said 20 to 30 states were poised to join with industry in suing over the rule and will ask the federal court to block the rule until the lawsuit is decided. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kty., has already begun to urge Republican governors across the country not to comply.

The new, more draconian version granted states an additional two years to comply with the cuts, according to White House officials, which they say was a response to complaints that the original deadline was too soon. The new deadline is set for 2022, and states will also have until 2018 instead of 2017 to submit their plans for how they intend to meet the mandated cuts. Not only are the regulations even more steep than previously expected, but come only two months after the latest in what has been a series of defeats at the Supreme Court.

In June 2014, the Supreme Court ruled to restrict and place limits on the unilateral Obama administration regulation already in place to limit power plant and factory emissions. The high court held that the Obama administration exceeded its statutory authority when they increased regulations on stationary facilities that exclude greenhouse gases, which the left blames for global warming, or now referred to as climate change.

While the decision was a huge setback for the Obama administration, executive power and to the Environmental Protection Agency, it did not directly impact the highly controversial EPA rule finalized this week, which set the first-ever national standards for new and existing power plants. Shortly after the initial proposal to mandate a 30 percent emissions reduction by 2030 was announced, a review by the Chamber of Commerce found it would will kill 224,000 jobs every year through the year 2030, and would impose $50 billion in annual costs. This past June, the Supreme Court did rule on a relevant case that could present the president with a serious problem.

In Michigan v. EPA, the court ruled it was not “appropriate and necessary” for the administration and the EPA to regulate such emissions by imposing billions of dollars of economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits.

“EPA must consider cost — including cost of compliance — before deciding whether regulation is appropriate and necessary,” Justice Scalia wrote. One would not say that it is even rational, never mind ‘appropriate,’ to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits.”

The Obama administration initially predicted emissions limits would cost up to $8.8 billion annually by 2030, but argued those costs would be far outweighed by health savings from fewer asthma attacks. as well as other benefits. The actual, updated price tag is unknown until states decide how they’ll reach their targets. What is known, and conceded by the administration, is the projected increase in electricity prices across the nation. On average, Americans will see at least 4.9 percent in cost increases by 2020 as coal-fired power plants will be forced to close.

The Obama administration plans to impose the

Policy

Medicare is 50 Years-Old, But is on Life Support

healthcare-capitol-hill

Capitol Hill and healthcare emblem.

Not all birthdays are a cause for untrammeled joy. Most of us baby boomers, for instance, don’t like being reminded that we’re getting older. And for folks who follow fiscal policy, the fact that Medicare is now 50 years old is hardly a cause for celebration. That’s because the program, as one of the three big entitlement programs, will turn American into Greece without substantial structural reform. But it’s not just a budgetary issue.

CRFB-Fiscal-Projections

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute opines that this isn’t a happy birthday for taxpayers, seniors, or the healthcare system.

The only birthday gift this middle-age government program merits is a reality check. Health insurance for senior citizens was part of LBJ’s expansion of the welfare state, all in the service of establishing a “Great Society.” Yet many beneficiaries today are struggling to secure access to high-quality care. Future beneficiaries, meanwhile, are forking over billions of dollars today to keep a program afloat that may be bankrupt when they retire.

Like many government programs, it is far more expensive than initially promised.

Medicare spending has zoomed far beyond original expectations and is now anything but sustainable. In its first year, 1966, Medicare spent $3 billion. In 1967 the House Ways and Means Committee predicted that the program would cost $12 billion by 1990. It ended up costing $110 billion that year. Last year the program cost $511 billion, and seven years from now it will double to more than $1 trillion, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

And like many government programs, it is riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse.

Medicare has been dogged by fraud and other improper payments—$60 billion overall in fiscal 2014, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office.

You can click here if you want some jaw-dropping examples of how the program squanders money.

Moreover, many doctors don’t want to treat Medicare recipients because they lose money after you included the expense of accompanying paperwork and regulations.

…nearly three in 10 seniors on Medicare struggle to find a primary-care doctor who will treat them, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. Another survey conducted by Jackson Healthcare, the health-care staffing company, found that 10% of the more than 2,000 physicians it surveyed don’t see Medicare patients at all.

So what’s the solution? We’ve tried price controls and that doesn’t work. Other approaches also won’t be adequate. So the only answer, Sally explains, is to shift to a form of vouchers sometimes called “premium support.”

…tweaking the eligibility age won’t be enough. If Medicare is to survive into old age, the program has to be converted from an open-ended entitlement to a system of means-tested vouchers. Under such a system, the government would give every senior a voucher based on health status, income and age. Seniors in better health and those who are wealthy would receive smaller vouchers. Sicker or needier seniors would receive larger ones. Seniors would then choose from among privately administered health plans the one that best suited their needs and budget. Insurers would have to compete for beneficiaries’ business, and providers would have to compete to get on the most popular plans. Lower prices and better-quality care would be the result.

Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute and Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation have a similarly pessimistic perspective. In a column for Investor’s Business Daily, they highlight some of the same problems with cost and quality, but they also add important insight about how Medicare has caused rising health care costs.

…health economist Theodore Marmor pointed out: “Hospital price increases presented the most intractable political problem for the Johnson administration. In the first year of Medicare’s operation, the average daily service charge in America’s hospitals increased by an unprecedented 21.9%.Each month the Labor Department’s consumer price survey reported further increases…”

Medicare-Medicaid-Social-Security-GDPGee, what a surprise. With Uncle Sam picking up the tab, normal market forces were eroded and providers responded by jacking up prices. The federal government has responded with price controls, but that’s been predictably ineffective.

Congress imposed a type of price-control mechanism in 1983 called Diagnostic Related Groups, or DRGs. And in the early 1990s, Congress tried to cut spending on physicians by creating the Resource Based Relative Value Scale. Then there was the infamous Medicare “Sustainable Growth Rate,” later dubbed the “doc fix,” which passed in 1996 to contain Medicare spending by cutting doctors’ fees. It was repealed only recently, after Congress had postponed the vote 17 times.

So what’s the bottom line?

Government involvement dramatically increases spending, followed by clampdowns on soaring prices, leading to restrictions on doctors and patients. Perhaps next time, we might try market forces rather than another failed effort at centralized government programs.

Or we can simply leave policy on autopilot and somehow have faith that ObamaCare’s death panels will “solve” the problem. P.S. Here’s the video I narrated which explains the importance of the right kind of Medicare reform.

[brid video=”12592″ player=”1929″ title=”Saving Medicare with Free Market Reforms not Bureaucratic Rationing”]

And if you want (what I think) is a very good description of the program, it’s that Medicare charges seniors for a hamburger and gives them a hamburger, but taxpayers are getting a bill for a steak.

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Not all birthdays are a cause for

Policy

Greek-Prime-Minister-Alexis-Tspiras

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras speaks with the media after a meeting of eurozone heads of state at the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday, July 13, 2015. A summit of eurozone leaders reached a tentative agreement with Greece on Monday for a bailout program that includes “serious reforms” and aid, removing an immediate threat that Greece could collapse financially and leave the euro. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

I wrote last month that the debt burden in Greece doesn’t preclude economic recovery. After all, both the United States and (especially) the United Kingdom had enormous debt burdens after World War II, yet those record levels of red ink didn’t prevent growth.

Climbing out of the debt hole didn’t require anything miraculous. Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom had great economic policy during the post-war decades. They didn’t even comply with Mitchell’s Golden Rule on spending.

uk-public-debt-line

But both nations managed to at least shrink the relative burden of debt by having the private sector grow faster than red ink. And the recipe for that is very simple.

…all that’s needed is a semi-sincere effort to avoid big deficits, combined with a semi-decent amount of economic growth. Which is an apt description of…policy between WWII and the 1970s.

Greece could achieve that goal, particularly if politicians would allow faster growth. The government could reduce red tape, which would be a good start since the nation ranks a miserable #114 for regulation in Economic Freedom of the World.

But Greece also should try to reverse some of the economy-stifling tax increases that have been imposed in recent years.

That may seem a challenge considering the level of red ink, but good tax policy would be possible if the Greek government was more aggressive about reducing the burden of government spending.

And if that’s the goal, then the Baltic nations are a good role model, as explained by Anders Aslund in the Berlin Policy Journal. With Latvia being the star pupil.

…austerity policies have not been attempted most aggressively in Greece: all three Baltic countries pursued more aggressive fiscal adjustments, especially Latvia. The Latvian government faced the global financial crisis head-on. …The Latvian government carried out a fiscal adjustment of 8.8 percent of GDP in 2009 and 5.9 percent of GDP in 2010, amounting to a fiscal adjustment of 14.7 percent of GDP over the course of two years, totaling 17.5 percent of GDP over four years, according to IMF calculations. Greece did the opposite. According to the IMF, its fiscal adjustment in the initial crisis year of 2010 was a paltry 2.5 percent of GDP, and in 2011 only 4.1 percent, a total of only 6.6 percent of GDP over two years. Greece’s total fiscal adjustment over four years was only 11.1 percent of GDP.

In other words, Latvia (like the other Baltic nations) did more reform and did it faster. And it’s also worth noting that the reforms were generally the right kind of austerity, meaning that expenditure commitments were reduced. Whereas Greece has implemented some expenditure reforms, but has relied far more on tax increases.

baltic cuts

Better policy, not surprisingly, meant better results.

In 2008-10 Latvia suffered an output decline of 24 percent, as much as Greece did in the six-year span from 2009-14. However, thanks to its front-loaded fiscal adjustment, Latvia was able to restore its public finances after two years. The country has shown solid economic growth, averaging 4.3 percent per year from 2011-14, according to Eurostat. …The consequences of tepid Greek fiscal stabilization have been a devastating six years of declining output, even as the Latvian economy has revived. In 2013 Latvia’s GDP at constant prices was 4 percent lower than in 2008, while Greece’s was 23 percent less than in 2008, according to the IMF. A cumulative difference in GDP development of 19 percentage points over six years cannot be a statistical blip – it is real.

The bottom line is that Latvia and the other Baltics were willing to endure more short-term pain in order to achieve a quicker economic rebound.

That was a wise choice, particularly since the alternative, as we see in Greece, is seemingly permanent stagnation.

Anders Paalzow of the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga also suggests, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, that Latvia is a good role model.

Professor Paalzow starts by explaining that Latvia is now enjoying good growth after enduring a dramatic boom-bust cycle last decade.

In 2008, Europe’s most overheated economy, which had been fuelled by cheap credit and rapidly raising wages and real estate prices, collapsed. GDP dropped by 20 percent and unemployment rose to more than 20 percent. But here’s where things take an unexpected turn. By late 2010, the first glimmers of recovery became apparent. Today, the economy is among Europe’s fastest growing, and its GDP is back at pre-crisis levels. So how did Latvia, the hero of this story, do it?

The first thing to understand is that Latvia was determined to join the eurozone, so that meant it wasn’t going to devalue its currency in hopes of inflating away its problems. Which meant the only other choice was “internal devaluation.”

…the Latvian government’s only real option was fiscal policy adjustment, the details of which it unveiled in its supplementary budget for 2009 and its budget for 2010. Both of these saw substantial reductions in social benefits accompanied by long overdue cuts in public employment with close to 30 percent of civil servants laid off. Those who remained in the public sector saw their salaries cut by 25 percent, on average, whereas salaries in the private sector fell by on average ten percent. …the reductions made during the crisis years amounted to approximately 11 percent of GDP. Most of the fiscal consolidation was done on the expenditure side of the public budget… The fiscal consolidation program continued into 2011 and the years following, even though the economy started to grow again.

Not only did the economy grow, but the government was rewarded for making tough choices.

…in 2010, the government responsible for austerity was reelected.

But here’s the challenge. Professor Paalzow warns that fiscal reforms won’t mean much unless the chronic dysfunction of the Greek government is somehow addressed.

The importance of the institutional framework cannot be overestimated. …it seems like a fool’s errand to try to sell off the public assets of a country riddled with high corruption… Furthermore, with a legal system incapable of enforcing current legislation and characterized by slow judicial processes, inefficient courts, and weak investor protection, legal reform will be a necessary condition for an economic turnaround.

So he suggests that Latvian-type fiscal reforms should be accompanied by Nordic-style institutional reforms.

Greece should look further north to Finland and Sweden, which overcame their own crises in the early 1990s. …The three to four years following the initial economic disaster saw remarkable institutional reform…substantial changes in both welfare systems. …both countries pursued austerity…, a remedy that both nations had frequently tried in the 1970s and 1980s without any success. What made the difference this time was that the institutional, and hence the fundamental roots, of the problems were addressed.

While I like his prescription, I suspect Paalzow is being too optimistic.

You can’t turn the Greeks into Finns or Swedes, at least not without some sort of massive jolt.

Which is why my preferred policy is to end bailouts, even if it means that Greece repudiates its existing debt. If the Greeks no longer got any handouts, that necessarily would mean an immediate end to deficit spending (assuming the government doesn’t ditch the euro in order to finance spending by printing drachmas).

Welfare State Wagon CartoonsAnd that might be a very sobering experience that would teach the Greek people about the dangers of having too many people trying to ride in the wagon of government dependency.

That might not turn the Greeks into Nordics, but it presumably would help them understand that you can’t (at least in the long run) consume more than you produce.

That’s also a lesson that some American politicians need to learn!

P.S. I wonder if Paul Krugman will attack Latvia’s good reforms. When he went after Estonia for adopting similar policies, he wound up with egg on his face.

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CATO economist and PPD contributor Dan Mitchell

Entertainment

Rowdy-Roddy-Piper

WWE legend Roddy Piper smiles for the press. (Photo: Associated Press)

WWE wrestling legend ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper has died at his California home at the age of 61, the athlete and actor’s agent confirmed Friday. The WWE also confirmed that Piper died Friday, allegedly shortly after suffering from cardiac arrest.

“Rod passed peacefully in his sleep last night,” Jay Schacter told the publication in an e-mail.

The famous wrestler joined the WWE in 1984 — when it was still WWF, the World Wrestling Federation — after spending a number of years with the National Wrestling Alliance. He is survived by his wife, Kitty, and four children.

Born Roderick George Toombs in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, he was well known for his bouts with fellow wrestler Hulk Hogan, his biggest rival for decades, who was fired by the WWE.

Piper and Hogan battled for years and headlined some of the biggest matches during the 1980s. In one of the biggest, most memorable matches, Hogan and Mr. T defeated Piper and Paul Orndorff on March 31, 1985, at the very first WrestleMania at Madison Square Garden.

He was also known for matches against stars like Jack Brisco, Ric Flair and Greg “The Hammer” Valentine. Piper was a villain for the early portion of his career, once cracking a coconut over the skull of Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka.

The six-foot-two WWE Hall of Fame inductee’s signature move was the Sleeper Hold. Despite his Canadian roots, Piper focused on his Scottish heritage, coming down to the ring wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes as a brawler from Glasgow. Piper retired in 2011 after wrestling and entertaining fans in over 7,000 matches. Mixed martial arts fighter Ronda Rousey adopted Piper’s “Rowdy” nickname, with the wrestler’s permission, following his retirement.

Piper was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma in 2006, but was reportedly declared cancer-free in 2014. Fellow wrestlers and celebrities lamented his death on social media, with WWE chairman Vince McMahon calling Piper “one of the most entertaining, controversial and bombastic performers ever in WWE, beloved by millions of fans around the world.”

Piper starred in Carpenter’s 1988 science-fiction film, “They Live,” in which he played a tough-guy drifter who discovers a pair of sunglasses that allow him to wake up to the fact that aliens have taken over the Earth.

“Devastated to hear the news of my friend Roddy Piper’s passing today. He was a great wrestler, a masterful entertainer and a good friend,” film director John Carpenter wrote on Facebook.

“Rest well friend, you will be missed. #lifeWellLived,” tweeted John Layfield.

“Roddy Piper. I love you forever. God bless you, Bubba,” The Iron Sheik tweeted.

WWE wrestling legend 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper has

Policy

us-president-obama-greece-pm-tsipiras

U.S. President Barack Obama, right, and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, left. (Photos: AP)

One of the reasons I repeatedly compare market-oriented countries with statist nations is to show that even minor differences in growth, if sustained over time, can have enormous impact on living standards for ordinary people.

And that’s why we should be very worried that America’s economy is sputtering. During the 138 years between 1870 and 2008,  our economy expanded by an average of about 3 percent per year, but now it seems like 2 percent growth is the “new normal.” That may not sound like a big difference, but it takes more than 35 years to double economic output if an economy grows 2 percent annually. With 3 percent yearly growth, by contrast, GDP doubles in less than 25 years.

years-to-double-gdp

The Wall Street Journal understands that we should be worried about the recent slowdown. Citing new research from the Joint Economic Committee, theWSJ opines on the high cost of Obamanomics.

…the American economy has become a slow-growth machine. That’s the story underscored by the annual government revisions in historical GDP that accompanied the second-quarter report. The news, which most Americans have long felt in slow-growing wages, is that the worst expansion in 70 years has been even weaker than we thought. …Since the recession ended in June 2009, the economy has grown at an annual rate of about 2.1%. That’s 0.6-percentage points worse than even during the much-maligned George W. Bush expansion.

And it’s far below the economic performance America enjoyed during the more market-friendly policies of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

comparing economic expansion reagan vs obamaThe WSJ compares Obama’s six-year “expansion” with the growth of the economy after six years of expansion in the 1980s and 1990s.

Real GDP growth averaged 4.6% in the first six years of the Reagan expansion, and more than 3.6% a year in the first six years of the George H.W. Bush-Bill Clinton expansion… Had the current expansion been as robust as the average expansion since 1960, GDP would be some $1.89 trillion larger today, according to Congress’s Joint Economic Committee.

Wow, nearly $1.9 trillion in foregone economic output. No wonder median household income is lower than when Obama took office. And no wonder employee compensation has been stagnant. So why is the economy so moribund?

There’s no great mystery about why growth has been so slow. The natural dynamism of the U.S. economy has been swamped by waves of bad policies. Unprecedented new regulation has hamstrung finance, health care, the coal and power industries, for-profit education, and so much more. …Higher taxes—their anticipation and then the reality in 2013—slowed risk-taking and investment. Profits fell in the first quarter of 2013 thanks to the tax cliff, and growth for 2013 was a mere 1.5% after the latest revisions.

Amen. I’ve made this same point, over and over and over again.

Simply stated, prosperity and big government are not very compatible. Now let’s close with a bit of optimism. Yes, the aggregate burden of government has increased in the United States in recent years. But we’re nonetheless the 12th-freest economy in the world. based on a comprehensive analysis of fiscal policy, regulatory policy, trade policy, monetary policy, and the rule of law.

Sure, that’s down from being the 7th-freest economy in 2008 and the 3rd-freest economy in 2001, yet we’re still ahead of Japan (#23), Sweden (#32), France (#58), Greece (#84), and China (#115).

And while the overall size and scope of government has increased in the past six years, we’ve actually enjoyed a small bit of progress in terms of reducing government spending relative to the economy’s productive sector.

So while I sometimes sound like a Cassandra about what’s been happening and where we’re heading, the good news is that we still have time to reverse course. Our most pressing need is genuine entitlement reform, and there’s a non-trivial chance that may happen in 2017. So no need to abandon ship quite yet.

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To demonstrate the cost of Obamanomics, economist

Polls

Obama-Ethiopia-AP

President Obama speaks in Ethiopia, where he scolded African leaders for staying in office too long. Obama said that in the U.S., presidents can’t run for more than two terms, but if they could he’d win. (Photo: Mulugeta Ayene/AP

President Obama recently bragged he could win a third term if the law didn’t prevent him from running again to occupy the White House, but voters disagree. While speaking in Ethiopia during his final speech on his African tour, he scolded the continent’s leaders for staying in office too long.

“I actually think I’m a pretty good president,” he said with a smirk. “I think if I ran I could win. But I can’t. The law is the law, and no one person is above the law, not even the president.”

Unfortunately, for Obama’s ego, a new Rasmussen Reports survey finds that just 30 percent of likely voters say they would vote for the president if he ran for a third term. In this highly polarized political environment, it is viable to expect a number of his core supporters to come home in an actual election environment. However, a whopping 63 percent of likely voters polled flat-out said they would not vote for an Obama third term.

Critics pounced on the president for what they see as hypocrisy, considering he has ignored the law on immigration, ObamaCare and a host of other issues during his presidency. But the law the president was referring to is the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which limits a president to two four-year terms. The 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951, following the near-never-ending presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won his fourth term in 1944. Prior to its ratification, presidents followed in the footsteps of the nation’s first president — George Washington — who removed himself from office as a matter of virtue after his second term, despite overwhelming popular support for him to stay.

Obama is the first and only president to win reelection with a smaller majority of the popular and Electoral College vote, defeating John McCain by a 53 — 46 percent margin in 2008 but only earning 51 percent of the vote against Mitt Romney in 2012. Separate research conducted by PPD on available polling data shows Mitt Romney would handily defeat Obama in a rematch election. Worth noting, our research shows that it is true that Romney’s popular vote margin would overestimate the actual Electoral College margin.

Party & Demographic Breakdown

A surprisingly small majority of Democrats — 57 percent — would vote to give Obama a third term, while 93 percent of Republicans, 32 percent of his own party and 68 percent of voters not affiliated with either major party, would not. Hillary is hoping to hold together the Obama coalition against her eventual Republican rival in 2016 due to the bleeding of support for Democrats among working- and educated-class whites. But there’s some indication that Obama is having a hard time holding his own coalition, as 69 percent of black voters would vote to elect Obama to a third term, compared to only 22 percent of white voters and 39 percent of other minority voters.

Only 19 percent of all likely voters say that the 22nd Amendment should be changed so presidents can serve longer, but a dominant 78 percent are opposed to such an idea. Though only 32 percent of Democrats support changing the constitutional restriction, which is meant to safeguard against popularly supported executive tyranny, the number includes 54 percent of black voters. The Democratic Party’s core voting bloc represents the only demographic group willing to throw the safeguard out, as only 22 percent of white voters and 39 percent of other minority voters agree.

By comparison, a whopping 90 percent of Republican voters and 82 percent of unaffiliated voters are vehemently opposed to the idea. Majorities of voters across every demographic group — save for black voters — oppose both changing the Constitution to allow presidents to serve more than two terms and would not vote for Obama if he ran for a third term. Among voters who favor changing the Constitution to allow presidents to serve more than two terms, 74 percent would vote for Obama if he ran again.

Unsurprisingly, the older the voter the less likely they are to say they would vote for Obama. According to the PPD average, Obama’s approval rating has ticked back up into the mid-40s, though this presents a challenge to the eventual Democratic nominee.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on July 28-29, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

President Obama recently bragged he could win

Economy

ISM-manufacturing-index

The Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing Report On Business Survey. (Photo: REUTERS)

The Chicago Business Barometer in July found manufacturing activity in the U.S. Midwest increased to a six-month high in July, topping economists’ forecasts. The Institute for Supply Management survey showing expansion in the region for the first time since April, a report showed on Friday.

“The recent weakness in the Chicago Business Barometer had sounded a few alarm bells over the resilience of the US economic recovery,” Chief Economist of MNI Indicators Philip Uglow said. “The positive start to the third quarter, however, suggests that activity bounced back firmly as firms saw orders and output increase sharply.“

The Chicago Business Barometer for July was 54.7, according to the MNI Chicago Report. Economists had forecast the index at 50.5 for July, after June’s reading of 49.4. A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector. July’s reading was the highest since January, when it read 59.4.

“Prices Paid increased by 1.2 points to 54.5 in July, the highest since December and the third consecutive rise,” the ISM report said. “It was, though, too early for the recent sharp fall in crude oil prices to be reflected in the survey results and the small increase in Prices Paid may well prove short-lived.”

The Chicago Business Barometer in July found

Economy

Gap-consumer-sentiment-reuters

(A shopper leaves the Gap with a bag in New York City. (Photo: REUTERS)

The University of Michigan’s final July reading on the overall index on consumer sentiment came in at 93.1, down from 96.1 in June. The results were even lower than the survey’s preliminary reading of 93.3, and the lowest since May.

Consumer sentiment was also below the median forecast of 94.0 among economists polled by Reuters.

Yet, the Commerce Department said Thursday that U.S. economic growth bounced back in the second quarter to bring gross domestic product (GDP) to a 2.3 percent annual rate. Each time the government changes GDP calculation methods, it alters the data that should in reality show a recession. In a blog post published in May, which PPD and very few others covered, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced a number of “alterations” it planned to make in seasonally adjusting data used to calculate economic growth.

These changes, which were implemented with the release of the initial second-quarter GDP estimate Thursday, on July 30, were pushed by the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank to mask a potential recession in light of first-quarter contraction. PPD offered an expanded analysis on the latest gross domestic product report.

The University of Michigan's final July reading

Sports

beijing-olympics

July 31, 2015: Chinese delegation, from left, Yao Ming, Li Nina, Yang Lan, Liu Peng, Yang Yang, Vice President of the China Olympics Council Yu Zaiqing, China Vice Premier Liu Yandong, Wang Anshun, Zhang Haidi, Li Lingwei, Hou Liang and Zhang Li attend the Beijing’s bid presentation for the host city for the 2022 Winter Games, at the 128th International Olympic Committee session in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Photo: AP)

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Beijing was chosen Friday to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, making the city the first ever to be awarded both the winter and summer games. In a vote taken by the International Olympic Committee, the Chinese capital defeated Almaty, Kazakhstan, though the voting numbers were not immediately released.

Beijing hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics yet still went in the vote as the heavy favorite, despite its lack of natural snow and winter conditions. It was the safe choice for the IOC, according to them, as well as the reliable choice. It also didn’t hurt to offer more commercial opportunities than the competition in a new winter sports market that has grown to more than 300 million people in northern China.

Choosing Almaty would have brought the games to Central Asia for the first time. But they were seen by the Committee as a riskier choice with lower name recognition. Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov made a last-minute impassioned plea for the IOC to be “brave,” and give the games to his country. Ultimately, it wasn’t good enough for the Committee to ignore the cold hard cash Beijing can offer. China’s sheer size, political and economic strength proved an enormous advantage against its northwestern neighbor, which only became independent in 1991.

Almaty was a former Soviet republic satellite state that is now seeking to establish itself on the world stage. Ironically, both Beijing and Almaty had been widely considered to be underdogs when the 2022 bid race opened two years ago. But, in an unexpected turn of events, they were the only two candidates left after four European cities — including Oslo and Stockholm — pulled out for political or financial reasons.

Beijing plans to use several venues from the 2008 Olympics, including the “Bird’s Nest” stadium and “Water Cube” arena. But the snow and sliding events would be at venues in Yangqing and Zhangjiakou, 40 and 90 miles outside Beijing. A planned high-speed rail line to Zhangjiakou is supposed to cut travel time to 50 minutes.

China’s mountain venues also rely heavily on man-made snow, which was considered one of the bid’s main weaknesses and one that was the target of Almaty’s “Keeping it Real” slogan. Almaty is surrounded by towering mountains and plenty of natural snow, but Beijing bid leaders insisted they have sufficient water supplies and snow-making equipment for ideal skiing conditions.

(Malaysia) -- Beijing was chosen Friday to

Opinion

Mark-Levine-Show

Mark Levin Show

Can we simultaneously love our children and betray their generation and generations unborn? Do I have your attention? I hope so, but I can’t take credit for that lead. I stole it from Page 1 of Mark Levin’s new book, Plunder and Deceit: Big Government’s Exploitation of Young People and the Future.

Conservatives have long decried the left’s feigned concern “for the children” while it pursues an agenda that is wrecking their future, from Social Security and other budget-busting entitlements to the undermining of our national security. But no one has devoted a book to turning this meme on its head and cogently proving the statists guilty of that which they falsely accuse others.

There’s a big difference between the left’s invoking “the children” and Levin’s doing so, for leftists only do it to obscure policy issues they can’t argue on the merits. Levin mentions the children not to divert you from logical thinking but to coax you into it.

Universally, parents strive to give their children better opportunities than they had. Today, however, the situation is — shockingly — reversed. The current generation, at the behest of the statist political class and its enablers, is living on the backs of its children in the cynical name of safeguarding their interests. Those in this generation are mortgaging their children’s future to make their own lives more comfortable.

Statist defenders of the status quo will protest that these are outrageous charges and that they are trying to improve everyone’s life, including those in the rising generation. But the stubborn facts belie their claims. When anyone brings up these subjects, they either change the channel or start their familiar fearmongering and scapegoating — anything to avoid a fair examination of the issues.

Levin’s book is precisely what the nation needs to force a public discussion of these issues and to keep statists’ hands off the remote. Levin is uniquely suited to call our attention to the horrifying facts because 1) he makes the complex understandable; 2) people read his books; 3) he meticulously documents every position he takes; 4) he understands statists’ motivations; 5) he has the credibility to sound another national warning; 6) no matter how dire our circumstances appear, he refuses to accept defeat; and 7) unlike so many other critics, he offers concrete, practical and realistic solutions.

Anyone remotely attuned to current events knows that the United States is racing toward Greek-level insolvency. He knows our national debt exceeds $18 trillion. But does he know this figure is vastly understated, as Levin demonstrates? Does he realize that our government’s unfunded liabilities are about $100 trillion and that if we don’t make structural adjustments to our smorgasbord of “entitlement” programs, they will consume 100 percent of tax revenues by 2039 — conservatively estimated?

Everyone should know these things, yet people seem to assume there’s no need for panic because our ruling class isn’t concerned. Every time any conservative warns of this inevitable fiscal Armageddon, the statists and their media henchmen set out to destroy him as an evil Scrooge hellbent on hoarding all the wealth for “the rich.”

Imagine if the political left in this country expended one-fourth the energy calling the public’s attention to the looming fiscal crisis, which actually threatens our kids’ future, as it does in hyping “global warming,” which doesn’t. We could turn things around within a generation — provided we were willing to make modest sacrifices, which truly would be for the children.

Dream on. Leftists are not about to join us and will continue to slander everyone who sounds the alarm. That’s why Levin’s book is so necessary and so timely.

I have long understood that Social Security and Medicare are upside-down, but after reading Levin’s book, I know exactly why. I now have all the facts and figures at my fingertips, unpleasant as they are. Levin deals with one devastating issue per chapter: the debt, Social Security, education, immigration, the environment, the minimum wage, national security and the Constitution. He documents how the statists are destroying this nation — and our children’s future — in all these categories.

I admit that Mark Levin is my good friend, but it honestly amazes me how, in a relatively short book, he can present power-packed information on all these critical issues as thoroughly as the densest textbook yet in a style as readable and riveting as any best-selling novel.

This book is a one-stop shop on the vital issues that our generation must address. As Levin points out, ultimately these are more than economic and national security issues. They are moral issues. We have a moral obligation to place these matters on the front burner, no matter how deceptively distant they may seem to us now and regardless of what kind of heat we take.

Don’t give the statists the benefit of the doubt, for they have to know what they are doing. The numbers do not lie, and Levin provides all the numbers in this book. This is purely a matter of plunder by deceit.

Despite how ominous all this sounds, we can make the necessary changes to turn this ship around. God bless Mark Levin for once again warning the nation and providing us a way out of this nightmare.

David Limbaugh discusses thesis question from Mark

People's Pundit Daily
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