Friday, June 22, 2007

Worrisome Economic Trends...

***Smoot-Hawley Redux? Great editorial in the Washington Post today on Congress’s latest China bashing. “…Were [this legislation] to pass and be implemented, the bill would rain on the ongoing global party of prosperity and would unnecessarily worsen U.S.-China relations without solving the problem it nominally is aimed at.”

That's dead right. China bashing legislation is bad news. It's a horrible idea.

***Witch Hunt Against Rich People...Wall Street Journal front-page story on congressional class warfare. Washington’s war on prosperity and rich people's wallets rages on. We've been banging this drum on Kudlow & Company for a while now. The Democratic thinking seems to be if it moves, tax it. Regulate it. If it's prosperous, kill it. It's in their DNA. One lobbyist (former aide to Sen. Max Baucus) was quoted saying the Blackstone tax "is just the tip of the iceberg. It could be death by a thousand cuts."

This is craziness.

***Jimmy Carter Industrial Policy Planning Nonsense. The latest Energy bill is awful. It's jacking up food prices. Sky high. Why don't they grasp this? Almost everything about this Senate bill stinks. Investors Business Daily has two good articles on this.

Here's one.