Is it dead? It seems to be on life support, particularly with the passage of the latest legislative atrocity, but let’s hope it’s not beyond resuscitation.
[Update a couple minutes later]
This seems related — is VAT coming? Europe, here we come.
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The weird thing is, VAT popped into my head this morning as I was leaving the grocery store. Actually, all sorts of tax stuff popped into my head this morning, but VAT was the end of the line in my thought process.
Here’s hoping that we, the people, find a way to stop this short, steep slide into Europeanism that the administration seems hell-bent on making happen.
This does bring up the interesting question. What does the Obama administration do next? Cap and trade looms on the horizon. He’s mentioned another round of immigration reform. And there’s always room for another stimulus package in time for November.
Current projections on Intrade indicate that the Democrats have a slightly better than 50% chance of keeping their majority in the House (and are almost certain to keep their majority in the Senate). They still are expected to lose a bunch of seats. That leaves a window of opportunity for one or more big legislative packages by next January past which things will get more difficult.
As an aside, Obama plans to use funds from TARP to prop up home prices.
This also illustrates one of the great evils of the bailout. Even when parties repay their TARP funds, the government turns around and sinks those funds into something else. I think we need to consider the possibility that we never see the TARP money again, that it’ll evolve into a slush fund to be used by the president for his whims. We also need to consider that Obama may be creating liabilities beyond the ability of the TARP program to cover, especially if government provides guarantees for any of these loans it backs.
it’ll evolve into a slush fund to be used by the president for his whims.
This isn’t evolution, this is creationism… it was a slush fund from the beginning.
We do need immigration reform. We need to figure out how to deport all the idiots that voted for Obama.
From what I understood, most of the companies (all?) who repaid TARP funds did it raising capital by selling stock, or much worse issuing debt. I am still wondering who actually bought the stock. Or lend them the money. Would they still have done without having basically a guarantee the state would prop the company up in case of further trouble in the future?
In my experience these sorts of troubled companies are more often than not perennially in trouble. Once they get the taste of government help, they can’t go off it for long.
VAT was a possibility even without Obamacare. There is basically no way for the state impact in the economy to go back to pre-WWII levels unless there are both massive cutbacks in social and defense spending, which no one in either party’s leadership really wants.