Tag: Econ

Why loans are so hard to get

Small-business people can’t get the loans they need, reports Sun-Times.

While credit has loosened since the height of the financial crisis, the dollar volume of loans and numbers of loans made by large banks to small businesses still remains well below the levels seen prior to the recession locally and nationally.

Well what I don’t know about bank lending would . . .  (you know the rest) and I hate to go out on a limb. . .

But low, low interest rates decreed by the nation’s fiscal authorities might have something to do with it.  Maybe? 

Was Romney jiving us, as Obama said?

On July 17 in Cincinnati, Obama took as a talking point, without denying it had been said, the question of Romney as felon, offering in the process a malapropism of some magnitude:

When asked whether he thought Romney’s actions were criminal as a top aide implied a few days earlier, the president steered away. “I think that the issue here is simply for Mr. Romney to talk about his business background in a way that jives with the facts,” he said. [italics added]

Jibes.

Moreover, discussing in this interview what makes the economy work, he opposes Romney for saying if big investors do well, everyone does well, offering his position that if middle class does well, everybody does well — probably a fair capsule statement of supply-side vs. consumption-side economics. 

Question is, however, what makes middle class do well?

Argument detective caught in act

Faulty principle proposed by faulty-argument detective:

. . . why does the rarity of the issue have any sway in this debate? Especially when we’re talking about rape victims? Your justification for controversial action should not be: “Well, it only affects a very small minority of the population.” Instead, you should stop dodging the question and give a firm answer with rationale justification. Otherwise you are just using extremely faulty logic which shouldn’t be taken seriously . . .

Rarity-sway matters often, as when rarity-threatened public funds are allocated to prevent occurrences of a problem or even to remedy effects of bad thing.  Which is where big problems deserve more attention.

It’s a public-policy question that should not be dodged.

Silent Cal on film — a Yankee friend to Catholics

 

Calvin Coolidge.
Calvin Coolidge — wasted neither words nor money. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Approached by a young woman at a reception and told she had bet she could get three words out of him, President Coolidge replied, “You lose.”

As mayor of Northampton MA, he bucked the trends and went out of his way for the Irish.

And how’s this for wisdom that lasts?

There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.

And:

I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.

Management talks tough about pension plan

Here’s a neat statement about pension plans and, for that matter, most rich employee benefits or even social welfare programs:

[T]he most important thing we can do is to eliminate the expense, risk and volatility of the defined-benefit pension plans many of our employees have enjoyed over the years. . . .   They are great for employees, but they are, sadly, unaffordable.

Oh, that old affordability business.  Just like an employer, eh? 

In this case it’s New York Times management to its newspaper guild editorialists.  Like something out of the National Assn. of Manufacturers. 

Economics makes strange bedfellows, no?