Cirrus Industries Inc., parent company of Cirrus Aircraft, has been sold to China Aviation Industry General Aircraft Co. (CAIGA) of Zhuhai, China, but it appears the company will continue to build parts in Grand Forks, N.D., and assemble airplanes in Duluth, Minn.We can all have a good laugh when our granddaughters are hiding in cargo holds to sneak into China and work in massage parlors. Blonde girls good price--sucky sucky!
The recoil in 2010 against the Obama Democrats' vast expansion of the size and scope of government seems to have a cultural or a moral dimension as well. It was a vote, as my Washington Examiner colleague Timothy P. Carney wrote last week, expressing "anger at those unfairly getting rich -- at the taxpayer's expense."
Those include well-connected Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs that got bailed out and giant corporations like General Electric that shape legislation so they can profit. They include the public employee unions who have bribed politicians to grant them pensions and benefits unavailable to most Americans.
A government intertwined with the private sector inevitably picks winners and losers. It allows well-positioned insiders to game the system for private gain. It bails out the improvident and sticks those who made prudent decisions with the bill.
Modest-income Americans think this is wrong. They want it fixed more than they want a few more bucks in their paychecks.
If you look at the combination of higher rates and energy prices, we are really now running at levels that we haven't seen since just going into the financial meltdown. To quantify it, over the past six months, wage income is up $111 million, and outlays on food and energy are up $116 billion.
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It is delicious in its irony, in a way, that QE is really the driver of this commodity bubble, because, obviously, when the Fed started putting rates to artificially low levels, everyone in the U.S. looked somewhere for higher yields. And the obvious place to go was emerging markets, and all the capital flowing into emerging markets fueled their economies and increased their demand for resources. At the same time, debasing the dollar obviously enhanced the allure of holding hard assets, which also benefited commodities. You can find any number of reasons why QE really drove the commodity boom. So if I'm correct that the Fed is going to have to continue this program to protect the U.S. recovery from these threats of higher rates, and food and energy prices, it is kind of ironic that they are going to be pursuing more aggressive quantitative easing, even though that is really what's driving higher rates and commodities.
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If we pursue this logic to its natural conclusion, and the Fed continues with QE, it begets more of the same result, which is just to continue to inflate commodities. Then what happens is that we see commodity prices rise until they reach the point that something breaks. And my thesis is that, during my lifetime, interest rates have always been the catalyst for crisis. Rates backed up to the point that some weak link in the chain broke. This time, however, higher commodity prices will be the catalyst. But, again, it is deliciously ironic that these higher commodity prices are a function of overaggressive, easy monetary policy. In times past, it has always been tight monetary policy that has precipitated the crisis.
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Q. What about the argument that Bernanke and his team had to do something or the economy was going to fall off a cliff, and that they had to create liquidity?
It is easy to sit back and say this. But had the Fed not had that attitude back in 2000, we wouldn't have been in this predicament. The problem is that we serially try to reflate our way out of these problems, rather than taking the pain and letting the economy actually cleanse itself.
According to McCurley [city finance director], the city faces a fiscal crunch because revenue in several areas has fallen short of projections. Collections from traffic tickets are $819,000 below what was budgeted, and ambulance billing collections are $200,000 under budget, he said.
Seriously have these municipalities and those running government lost their minds? You penalize people to STOP BAD BEHAVIOR. If you are successful, if what you did worked, you succeed in making the world a better place and the reward is no revenue because there are no violators. That's what you want! You do not count on bad behavior as A REVENUE STREAM, especially when it entails hoping people run red lights! 
X : Yes. But also, America's abundance of natural resources and history of fortuitous developments kinda seems like God shed His grace o...
