Big states that are expensive to have a campaign presence in are up next in the GOP primary, and they aren't going to be too friendly to the candidates' dwindling coffers. Seven primaries were held in February, and the contenders drained their funds in order to perform well in the high-stakes contests: Romney spent over $12 million while raising $11.5 million; Santorum raised $9 million, but spent $7.6 million; and Newt Gingrich spent $1.5 million while raising $2.6 million.
Mercifully, the misnamed JOBS Act did not sail through the Senate yesterday as expected. The Republican-sponsored “bipartisan” act is a Wall Street wish list of exemptions from investor protections that would allow some 80 percent of new stock offerings to avoid the usual disclosures. Except for its Orwellian, contrived acronym (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) JOBS has nothing to do with jobs. More likely, it stands for Just Obfuscate with B.S.
The bill would even undo the Sarbanes-Oxley rules, enacted after the Enron scandal, prohibiting “stock analysts” from touting shares in order to help investment bankers get underwriting business.
If you want to know the priorities behind Paul Ryan’s latest budget, “The Path to Prosperity,” look no further than the line he delivered to the audience at the American Enterprise Institute. “We’ve become a nation of net takers versus makers,” said the House budget chair.
The United States is facing a crushing burden of debt – a debt that will soon surpass the size of the entire U.S. economy and ultimately capsize it if left on its present course.
From reality:
This graph shows the amount the United States pays per year on interest for its debt. If this is what being “crushed by debt” looks like, then we’re doing pretty well.
Representative Paul Ryan, chair of the House Budget Committee, plans to unveil his 2013 budget plan this morning, much to the excitement of Democrats and to the chagrin of Republicans, who remember how last year's budget negotiations turned out for them (not well). Although the details of the plan have yet to be released, changes to the tax code and Medicare will be the proposal's big-ticket items.
Later this morning, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan will unveil his latest budget plan, “The Path to Prosperity.” Like the “Roadmap” released last year—and passed by House Republicans—the Path to Prosperity fits neatly within Ryan’s self-described Randian ideology: It would slash social and entitlement spending and direct the savings to lower taxes on rich people and corporations. Despite this, as Matthew Yglesias points out, Ryan has a habit of portraying his policies as somehow beneficial to the broad majority of Americans. I plan to be in the audience for Ryan’s unveiling, but in the meantime, here are a few things to remember and look out for as Ryan tries to sell his program to the public.
Why does Larry Summers have more lives than a cat?
He was fired as president of Harvard, did not exactly serve President Obama brilliantly as economic policy czar, and now seems to be in line for the presidency of the World Bank, a post traditionally chosen by the president of the United States.
The deadline for the selection is this Friday, March 23. The appointment is supposed to be made official at the April meeting of the World Bank.
Earlier this month, the White House leaked a short list of three names, Summers plus U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry—neither of whom want the job. Brilliantly subtle signaling, that.
President Obama in a Chevy Volt (official White House photo by Pete Souza)
or a long time, commentators noted that Barack Obama was going to have a hard time persuading the public with his argument about the economy, since it would come down to, "It could have been worse." Saying that unemployment may still be over 8 percent, and it peaked at 10 percent in October of 2009, but if it hadn't been for the stimulus we passed things would have been much, much worse, isn't going to be a consolation if you're unemployed. The fact that most economists say that the stimulus did in fact have a substantial positive effect on the economy doesn't really matter when it comes to getting people to vote for your re-election. When times are bad, "It could have been worse" is small comfort.
That was the story up until recently. But the last few months have shown strong job growth, and most everyone is expecting that the economy will continue its upward trajectory. And guess what that has done to Mitt Romney: made him argue the mirror image of what everyone said Obama couldn't argue persuasively. Romney's case on the economy now comes down to "It could have been better"...
Apple—the world's most valuable company—announced today that it plans to use some of its $97 billion cash stockpile toward paying a regular dividend of $2.65 per share starting in the fourth quarter, and a stock buyback of up to $10 billion.
This week begins with a little positive news about economic expectations: according to Gallup, 19 percent of Americans say that this is a “good time” to find a “quality” job, the highest since September 2008:
Of course, the larger lesson is that “good” is relative. Five years ago, before the economy collapsed in a horrible mess, 45 percent of Americans said that it was a good time to find a quality job. But the labor market is far worse than it was then, and at the moment, things are actually looking up if one in five Americans think that they could find a decent job in this environment.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $36 billion contribution toward the latest Greek bailout. Along with more than $170 billion from other European governments and institutions, the IMF loans will be doled out over the course of four years, hopefully allowing the country and the eurozone to regain their financial standing.
What should we make of those scary poll numbers? The most recent New York Times/CBS poll, conducted March 7 to March 11, reported a big drop in President Obama’s favorability ratings, which declined to 41 percent from 50 percent just a month ago.
This occurred during a period when the economic news was relatively good—the economy created more than 200,000 jobs for the third straight month; gas prices rose but not steeply; and Obama acquitted himself well on the treacherous terrain of resisting Iran’s nuclear ambitions without embracing war.
Former Goldman Sachs employee Greg Smith wrote an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times that simmers with pathos. Smith describes the devolution of the culture at Goldman: Whereas in the past, the company worked in the interests of its clients, they are now seen merely as the source of transactional profit, to be manipulated for the benefit of the firm. His story emerges in the midst of a huge effort by Wall Street to eviscerate and delay the implementation of the Volcker Rule, which limits bank traders to running a client-service businesses by prohibiting trading for the bank’s own account.
After Goldman Sachs employee Greg Smith quit his job with a loud and blistering New York Times op-ed, Wall Street is once again at the forefront of the national conversation.
