Fed statement a vote of no confidence in economy through 2013?

posted at 10:05 am on August 10, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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The current historically-loose monetary policy will continue, according to a Federal Reserve statement last night — for two more years.  The Fed normally doesn’t offer projections with such unambiguously lengthy timelines, preferring to keep its options open.  These, however, are not normal times — nor do we have normal leadership:

    The Federal Reserve announced on Tuesday that it plans to hold the benchmark interest rate at “exceptionally low levels” through at least mid-2013, breaking from the central bank’s usual less precise timelines.

    The action — which sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average swinging wildly up and down — signals the Federal Open Market Committee sees the path to economic recovery as longer and slower than anticipated even a few months ago.

    With the Fed’s decision, the target interest rate will stay flat at between 0 and 0.25 percent for close to the next two years, if not longer.

This appears to be the Fed’s alternative to another round of quantitative easing, a currency-devaluing exercise that remains the only real tool left in the Fed’s bag these days.  So far, the pledge seems to have helped calm global markets, at least for now:

    A pledge by the Federal Reserve to keep extremely low interest rates for another couple of years has calmed investors’ jitters, sending stock markets around the world higher Wednesday.

    The Fed’s surprise announcement Tuesday that it would likely keep its Fed funds rate at near zero percent through 2013 to help the ailing U.S. economy helped Wall Street surge late in the session — the Dow Jones industrial average rallied 6 percent just in the final hour of trading, one of the biggest turnarounds ever seen.

    That continued into the Asian and European trading sessions, although traders remained nervous after the market turmoil of recent weeks, which has sent many global markets officially intobear market territory — falling 20 percent from recent peaks.

This prompts the question, though, of what the Fed does next week or next month if markets get jittery again.  A QE3 won’t make investors any happier, and the Fed has nothing else to do now that they have made a two-year commitment on monetary policy.  Adding a third year in September or October, for instance, won’t have much impact on investment in the short term.

The rather unprecedented move should have people wondering why the Fed feels it has to commit to a loose-money policy for so long.  It was almost certain that they wouldn’t tighten the money supply anyway, not with inflation risks low and the global economy on the cusp of a recession.  Any move to a tighter policy would only come after a period of torrid growth in order to hedge against inflation damaging a full recovery, and that’s obviously a long way off.

So why make this policy so explicit in terms of length?  To calm markets, to be sure, but a six-month statement would have been just as effective.  The only reason to commit to a two-year policy of ultra-loose money is because the Fed doesn’t see any real prospects for economic growth through mid-2013.  They see no real need to have the option of tightening the money supply.  Economic conditions won’t change enough for the Fed to contemplate a change of policy, or so Ben Bernanke and the Fed board appear to say.

That to me sounds like a vote of no-confidence in the American economy, and in American economic leadership.  And, like the S&P downgrade that preceded it, it’s completely understandable, too.

Fed statement a vote of no confidence in economy through 2013?

posted at 10:05 am on August 10, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
printer-friendly

The current historically-loose monetary policy will continue, according to a Federal Reserve statement last night — for two more years.  The Fed normally doesn’t offer projections with such unambiguously lengthy timelines, preferring to keep its options open.  These, however, are not normal times — nor do we have normal leadership:

    The Federal Reserve announced on Tuesday that it plans to hold the benchmark interest rate at “exceptionally low levels” through at least mid-2013, breaking from the central bank’s usual less precise timelines.

    The action — which sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average swinging wildly up and down — signals the Federal Open Market Committee sees the path to economic recovery as longer and slower than anticipated even a few months ago.

    With the Fed’s decision, the target interest rate will stay flat at between 0 and 0.25 percent for close to the next two years, if not longer.

This appears to be the Fed’s alternative to another round of quantitative easing, a currency-devaluing exercise that remains the only real tool left in the Fed’s bag these days.  So far, the pledge seems to have helped calm global markets, at least for now:

    A pledge by the Federal Reserve to keep extremely low interest rates for another couple of years has calmed investors’ jitters, sending stock markets around the world higher Wednesday.

    The Fed’s surprise announcement Tuesday that it would likely keep its Fed funds rate at near zero percent through 2013 to help the ailing U.S. economy helped Wall Street surge late in the session — the Dow Jones industrial average rallied 6 percent just in the final hour of trading, one of the biggest turnarounds ever seen.

    That continued into the Asian and European trading sessions, although traders remained nervous after the market turmoil of recent weeks, which has sent many global markets officially intobear market territory — falling 20 percent from recent peaks.

This prompts the question, though, of what the Fed does next week or next month if markets get jittery again.  A QE3 won’t make investors any happier, and the Fed has nothing else to do now that they have made a two-year commitment on monetary policy.  Adding a third year in September or October, for instance, won’t have much impact on investment in the short term.

The rather unprecedented move should have people wondering why the Fed feels it has to commit to a loose-money policy for so long.  It was almost certain that they wouldn’t tighten the money supply anyway, not with inflation risks low and the global economy on the cusp of a recession.  Any move to a tighter policy would only come after a period of torrid growth in order to hedge against inflation damaging a full recovery, and that’s obviously a long way off.

So why make this policy so explicit in terms of length?  To calm markets, to be sure, but a six-month statement would have been just as effective.  The only reason to commit to a two-year policy of ultra-loose money is because the Fed doesn’t see any real prospects for economic growth through mid-2013.  They see no real need to have the option of tightening the money supply.  Economic conditions won’t change enough for the Fed to contemplate a change of policy, or so Ben Bernanke and the Fed board appear to say.

That to me sounds like a vote of no-confidence in the American economy, and in American economic leadership.  And, like the S&P downgrade that preceded it, it’s completely understandable, too.

Breaking: Reid appoints John Kerry, Patty Murray, and Max Baucus to Super Committee

posted at 6:05 pm on August 9, 2011 by Allahpundit
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That’s precisely what we need to reach a grand bargain. Hard-left dial tone Patty Murray and a guy who spent the past Sunday muttering in front of TV cameras about a “tea-party downgrade.” Bonus fun fact about Murray via Amanda Carpenter: She’s the head of the DSCC this election cycle, which means there ain’t no way no how no chance she’s signing off on any deal that involves even minor Medicare reform.

Not sure what to make of Baucus, though.

    Murray is expected to co-chair the committee, officially named the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, along with a still unnamed House Republican. A spokesman for Reid did not respond to a request for comment.

    Reid’s decision to tap Murray will likely be met with scrutiny, as she is also chairing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for the 2012 election cycle. But she is also a member of leadership, a senior member of the Budget Committee, and a woman on what is likely to be a male-dominated committee.

    Baucus is chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee with jurisdiction over many areas, including entitlement programs, that the committee is expected to examine. Kerry, meanwhile, was selected for his stature and Senate tenure.

None of the three were members of the Gang of Six, but Baucus was part of the Biden deficit group that Cantor walked away from over taxes. Could he potentially be the seventh vote for a deal on the Super Committee? He comes from a red state, he’s an institution in the Senate, and he’s not up for reelection until 2014. He’s as insulated from a tough vote as one can be. He’s also, as noted in the quote, chairman of the Finance Committee, so if he blessed a deal, that would give it added credibility in the Senate. And he’s been reasonably good on taxes, so he might side with Republicans on tax reform. The bad news? He duly wet himself over Paul Ryan’s budget and he’s earned some fans at AARP for supporting “doctor fix,” which contributes mightily to Medicare continuously running over budget. He’s probably not signing off on any serious entitlement reform, in other words, although if the GOP can come up with some revenues via tax reform, that might encourage him to join them in a modest first step. He floated that idea himself, in fact, after Biden’s group melted down, proposing new Medicare cuts in return for new revenues. Then again, Baucus was on Obama’s Deficit Commission and ended up voting no on the final plan. Of course, so did Paul Ryan.

I’ll leave you with this thought, in case you’re under the mistaken impression that anything will be accomplished by this process:

    Congress may undermine the deal that raised the U.S. debt ceiling by failing to agree on a plan to curb the deficit and then softening the impact of automatic spending cuts that would kick in to achieve the budget targets.

    That’s the view of five former directors of the Congressional Budget Office…

    While the cuts are supposed to be automatic, Congress can delay or override them if they prove too painful — defense spending would be reduced by 9.1 percent over a decade while non-defense programs would be cut 7.9 percent. That’s what lawmakers did with the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act, the template for the trigger.

Update: Weigel sees a new “the Democrats caved again!” narrative brewing on the left over Baucus. “So the Democrats will have one of their compromisers on the committee. Unless the GOP puts up one of its compromisers — a neo-Gang of Sixer, or someone like Bob Corker — the Baucus move alone means a committee that leans right.”

Breaking: Reid appoints John Kerry, Patty Murray, and Max Baucus to Super Committee

posted at 6:05 pm on August 9, 2011 by Allahpundit
printer-friendly

That’s precisely what we need to reach a grand bargain. Hard-left dial tone Patty Murray and a guy who spent the past Sunday muttering in front of TV cameras about a “tea-party downgrade.” Bonus fun fact about Murray via Amanda Carpenter: She’s the head of the DSCC this election cycle, which means there ain’t no way no how no chance she’s signing off on any deal that involves even minor Medicare reform.

Not sure what to make of Baucus, though.

    Murray is expected to co-chair the committee, officially named the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, along with a still unnamed House Republican. A spokesman for Reid did not respond to a request for comment.

    Reid’s decision to tap Murray will likely be met with scrutiny, as she is also chairing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for the 2012 election cycle. But she is also a member of leadership, a senior member of the Budget Committee, and a woman on what is likely to be a male-dominated committee.

    Baucus is chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee with jurisdiction over many areas, including entitlement programs, that the committee is expected to examine. Kerry, meanwhile, was selected for his stature and Senate tenure.

None of the three were members of the Gang of Six, but Baucus was part of the Biden deficit group that Cantor walked away from over taxes. Could he potentially be the seventh vote for a deal on the Super Committee? He comes from a red state, he’s an institution in the Senate, and he’s not up for reelection until 2014. He’s as insulated from a tough vote as one can be. He’s also, as noted in the quote, chairman of the Finance Committee, so if he blessed a deal, that would give it added credibility in the Senate. And he’s been reasonably good on taxes, so he might side with Republicans on tax reform. The bad news? He duly wet himself over Paul Ryan’s budget and he’s earned some fans at AARP for supporting “doctor fix,” which contributes mightily to Medicare continuously running over budget. He’s probably not signing off on any serious entitlement reform, in other words, although if the GOP can come up with some revenues via tax reform, that might encourage him to join them in a modest first step. He floated that idea himself, in fact, after Biden’s group melted down, proposing new Medicare cuts in return for new revenues. Then again, Baucus was on Obama’s Deficit Commission and ended up voting no on the final plan. Of course, so did Paul Ryan.

I’ll leave you with this thought, in case you’re under the mistaken impression that anything will be accomplished by this process:

    Congress may undermine the deal that raised the U.S. debt ceiling by failing to agree on a plan to curb the deficit and then softening the impact of automatic spending cuts that would kick in to achieve the budget targets.

    That’s the view of five former directors of the Congressional Budget Office…

    While the cuts are supposed to be automatic, Congress can delay or override them if they prove too painful — defense spending would be reduced by 9.1 percent over a decade while non-defense programs would be cut 7.9 percent. That’s what lawmakers did with the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act, the template for the trigger.

Update: Weigel sees a new “the Democrats caved again!” narrative brewing on the left over Baucus. “So the Democrats will have one of their compromisers on the committee. Unless the GOP puts up one of its compromisers — a neo-Gang of Sixer, or someone like Bob Corker — the Baucus move alone means a committee that leans right.”

London rioter: “We’re just showing the rich people that we can do what we want”

posted at 4:45 pm on August 9, 2011 by Allahpundit
printer-friendly

Two clips to usher in night four of Droogfest 2011. The common thread is that in both cases you’re watching rampaging cretins behave in a quasi-civilized manner. In the first, two giggly girls chat calmly with the BBC about the “mad fun” they’re having; in the second, rioters handle a wounded boy gingerly … before proceeding to rob him. Maybe we can let the lot of them off easy with a modified version of the Ludovico technique.

If you missed it in Headlines this morning, read Brendan O’Neill’s essay on the riots as a byproduct of welfare-state decay. At the Corner, Iain Murray elaborates:

    Another left-wing friend of mine in the UK has another interesting theory — that the particular targeting of electronics and clothes shops represents an explosion of consumerism. Stay with me, because I think he has a point and I’d like to explain why. Much of the British underclass has had easy access to credit over the past decade or so — and why not, when they are on a secure income stream of state benefits — and they have spent this for the most part on TVs, video games, and “chav” fashion. That easy credit — which I should emphasize was encouraged by the loose monetary policy of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair — has now dried up, so they are looking to take for free what they previously got for nominal sums. There is more evidence for that conclusion in this BBC recording of two girls saying that the riots were about taking what they wanted, for free…

    I think what we are seeing in Britain is a conflation of two liberal dreams — that of the 1960s, in which parenting and tradition went out the window, and that of the 2000s, in which self-help was replaced by easy credit, benefits, and an all-mighty “health and safety” bureaucracy — together with the unfinished nature of the Thatcher revolution. Mrs. T enabled economic Thatcherism but was unable to finish the project of what I termed social Thatcherism, whereby a free society recognized the importance of what once were called manners.

    The result is a feral underclass without any understanding of tradition from right or left.

O’Neill ends by laying into British cops for their paralysis, a ubiquitous critique in stories about the riots after three days of window-smashing. There are a lot of reasons for that. The police have in fact held back, only now considering water cannons and plastic bullets after millions in damage. The prime minister and the mayor of London were both on vacation when the riots began and Scotland Yard’s leadership recently resigned over the phone-hacking scandal, so for several days there’s been no one in charge. The Home Secretary, who was also on vacation, is prone to saying moronic things like, “The way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon, the way we police in Britain is through consent of communities,” even as young degenerates ransack local communities without their consent. And of course it’s comforting in a moment of chaos to focus on the failings of the police, who are, unlike the rioters (oops, I mean “protesters”), accountable to the public. Build a better force and in theory you ensure this can’t happen again. In theory:

    Business owners accused police of adopting a softly-softly approach which left their shops and businesses vulnerable to attack by baying mobs.

    While police were criticised in some quarters for being far too slow to get to riot scenes, officers were accused by shopkeepers in Hackney of standing just yards away from looters as windows were smashed and armfuls of goods were scooped up…

    Firearms units trained to use the rubber bullets are braced in case they are needed. It would be the first time ever the baton rounds have been used in British disturbances.

    Mr Kavanagh said Scotland Yard was ‘not going to throw 180 years of policing with the community away’ as the prospect of using the ammunition for the first time at a British disturbance was raised.

Imagine how bad things could get if they did that. There might be riots.

There are many ways to measure the awfulness of what’s happening but chew on these two while you watch. According to residents in Birmingham, looters are literally stealing the clothes off of people’s backs, stopping them and forcing them to strip. The Daily Mail has a too-bad-to-check photo via Twitter. Beyond that, in the Middle East and elsewhere, there’s gloating going on both by authoritarian governments, who are mocking the Brits for not liquidating all of their troublemakers on the spot, and by the victims of those authoritarian governments, who are mocking the rioters for turning their “protests” into a pretext to steal DVD players. All of which is to say, this is a complete fiasco by any yardstick.

Onto the videos. I’ve included a third (audio) clip below as a little bonus; yes, that is indeed Hulk Hogan’s voice you’re hearing. Click the image to watch.

London rioter: “We’re just showing the rich people that we can do what we want”

posted at 4:45 pm on August 9, 2011 by Allahpundit
printer-friendly

Two clips to usher in night four of Droogfest 2011. The common thread is that in both cases you’re watching rampaging cretins behave in a quasi-civilized manner. In the first, two giggly girls chat calmly with the BBC about the “mad fun” they’re having; in the second, rioters handle a wounded boy gingerly … before proceeding to rob him. Maybe we can let the lot of them off easy with a modified version of the Ludovico technique.

If you missed it in Headlines this morning, read Brendan O’Neill’s essay on the riots as a byproduct of welfare-state decay. At the Corner, Iain Murray elaborates:

    Another left-wing friend of mine in the UK has another interesting theory — that the particular targeting of electronics and clothes shops represents an explosion of consumerism. Stay with me, because I think he has a point and I’d like to explain why. Much of the British underclass has had easy access to credit over the past decade or so — and why not, when they are on a secure income stream of state benefits — and they have spent this for the most part on TVs, video games, and “chav” fashion. That easy credit — which I should emphasize was encouraged by the loose monetary policy of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair — has now dried up, so they are looking to take for free what they previously got for nominal sums. There is more evidence for that conclusion in this BBC recording of two girls saying that the riots were about taking what they wanted, for free…

    I think what we are seeing in Britain is a conflation of two liberal dreams — that of the 1960s, in which parenting and tradition went out the window, and that of the 2000s, in which self-help was replaced by easy credit, benefits, and an all-mighty “health and safety” bureaucracy — together with the unfinished nature of the Thatcher revolution. Mrs. T enabled economic Thatcherism but was unable to finish the project of what I termed social Thatcherism, whereby a free society recognized the importance of what once were called manners.

    The result is a feral underclass without any understanding of tradition from right or left.

O’Neill ends by laying into British cops for their paralysis, a ubiquitous critique in stories about the riots after three days of window-smashing. There are a lot of reasons for that. The police have in fact held back, only now considering water cannons and plastic bullets after millions in damage. The prime minister and the mayor of London were both on vacation when the riots began and Scotland Yard’s leadership recently resigned over the phone-hacking scandal, so for several days there’s been no one in charge. The Home Secretary, who was also on vacation, is prone to saying moronic things like, “The way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon, the way we police in Britain is through consent of communities,” even as young degenerates ransack local communities without their consent. And of course it’s comforting in a moment of chaos to focus on the failings of the police, who are, unlike the rioters (oops, I mean “protesters”), accountable to the public. Build a better force and in theory you ensure this can’t happen again. In theory:

    Business owners accused police of adopting a softly-softly approach which left their shops and businesses vulnerable to attack by baying mobs.

    While police were criticised in some quarters for being far too slow to get to riot scenes, officers were accused by shopkeepers in Hackney of standing just yards away from looters as windows were smashed and armfuls of goods were scooped up…

    Firearms units trained to use the rubber bullets are braced in case they are needed. It would be the first time ever the baton rounds have been used in British disturbances.

    Mr Kavanagh said Scotland Yard was ‘not going to throw 180 years of policing with the community away’ as the prospect of using the ammunition for the first time at a British disturbance was raised.

Imagine how bad things could get if they did that. There might be riots.

There are many ways to measure the awfulness of what’s happening but chew on these two while you watch. According to residents in Birmingham, looters are literally stealing the clothes off of people’s backs, stopping them and forcing them to strip. The Daily Mail has a too-bad-to-check photo via Twitter. Beyond that, in the Middle East and elsewhere, there’s gloating going on both by authoritarian governments, who are mocking the Brits for not liquidating all of their troublemakers on the spot, and by the victims of those authoritarian governments, who are mocking the rioters for turning their “protests” into a pretext to steal DVD players. All of which is to say, this is a complete fiasco by any yardstick.

Onto the videos. I’ve included a third (audio) clip below as a little bonus; yes, that is indeed Hulk Hogan’s voice you’re hearing. Click the image to watch.

Palin knocks it out of the park

posted at 10:05 am on August 9, 2011 by J.E. Dyer
printer-friendly

Few people in the public eye have said anything useful about the recent unpleasantness with the national debt and the national credit rating.  The president hasn’t.  The vice president hasn’t.  Surprisingly few of the declared Republican candidates have.  The MSM haven’t.  They’re busy trying to make the expression “Tea Party downgrade” go viral.

Indeed, at this hour of reckoning, with the Dow plunging and markets in turmoil around the world, the MSM have achieved another playground-taunt triumph with the silly Newsweek cover featuring an unflattering photo of Michelle Bachmann.  These people seem to have no sense of proportion, no judgment, no recognition that things have become serious and the time for sophomoric media jabs is past.

Who cares how they can make Bachmann look on a magazine cover?  The tabloids demonstrate several times a year that they can make the world’s most beautiful women look like something from the back of the refrigerator, if they photograph them in bad light with a telephoto lens.  The Bachmann cover is the equivalent of a slam-book entry, about as intelligent as holding your nose and chanting “You smell!” at a classmate.  Ridicule is the cheapest thing there is – and in politics, it’s usually deployed to shift the focus from a needed debate to specious topics and emotion.  I’d call it a reversion to high school, but it would be an insult even to middle-schoolers to pin it on their age group.

Meanwhile, Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan have had good, inspiring, on-target things to say about the US fiscal crisis.  Michelle Bachmann has had good things to say.  John Bolton had an important piece making the case that national security is inextricably linked with fiscal security, a much-needed point in the context of the recent debate.

But Sarah Palin came through today with a Facebook post that strikes the right tone and is at once simple, direct, and comprehensive.  It doesn’t rail at past mistakes, nor does it come across as a raised-voice, you’ve-got-to-get-this-people communication.  Palin takes it for granted – with refreshing common sense – that we are in a crisis, its features are obvious, and the task now is to deal with it, not continue to argue whether it’s really a crisis or how big it is or whose name we can pin on it.

She makes no bones about the significance of the problem we face.  I am particularly impressed with her point that if we don’t square ourselves away, the specter hangs over us of IMF staffers showing up on our doorstep with China and France and Germany arrayed behind them, ready to throw folders on a desk and start telling us how much we can spend on cable TV and incidentals each month.  Whether things would really play out for the US as they are playing out for Greece and Ireland is a valid question, but Palin is quite correct that the pitched confrontation is on the horizon now, as it was not six weeks ago – and she has the courage to face that possibility head-on.  It’s not pleasant to mention it, but it’s the right thing to do.

The last third of Palin’s post is devoted to laying out what we need to do.  Grow the economy by releasing the regulatory clamps on it, starting with the energy sector.  Cut spending and reform entitlements.  She doesn’t pretend the latter would be easy, but she faces head-on the fact that it is inescapably necessary.  I urge you to read her post for the discussion of particulars.  It is material and convincing without being in the weeds.

The piece is positive and encouraging for its forthrightness.  There is nothing “clever” to be done in this situation; it’s all straightforward.  The US federal government has to cut spending and let the economy grow, even if that means breaking the stranglehold of unions on the public trough and overruling advocacy groups and government bureaucrats who don’t want the economy to grow.  Pretending that the federal budget is too complex to be governed by the ordinary rules of accounting – or that the US is too special to be limited by the ordinary definition of fiscal solvency – is a dodge, not a sign of insight or expertise.

Palin focuses like any good executive on the big picture.  We have to cut spending and get government out of the economy’s way so it can start pumping out revenues again.  These things are increasingly obvious to everyone, and moreover, they constitute a plan.  Talking ourselves into corners about other, tangential things isn’t even interesting any more.  It feels so wrong that it’s hard to watch anyone’s news program at the moment: no one seems to be talking about what matters.

What is interesting is how few in our national political life have put the case together, as Palin has, without temporizing or bloviating.  I haven’t heard anyone else do what she does with this post.  She acknowledges the actual, enormous scope of the problem, envisions a solution, and outlines what to do to achieve it, with encouragement that it can be done.  It is sad and a little frightening that so many Americans have become unable to see this for what it is:  leadership.  Almost everyone else is focused more narrowly, on one aspect of the problem or another, and a good few commentators don’t seem to even have the vocabulary or the mental infrastructure to address the problem itself; they can only express opinions about the impossibility of the politics surrounding it.

It is the opposite of stupid to recognize the problem’s stark and simple outlines when all around you are swinging blindfolded at piñatas.  We spend too much, and we suppress economic growth and revenues with regulation.  Palin articulates that clearly.  Her ability to reach out directly through social media, and put her case in her terms, is a net positive for our current political climate.  She remains one of the best reasons to not let the MSM dictate our ideas and preferences to us.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.

Palin knocks it out of the park

posted at 10:05 am on August 9, 2011 by J.E. Dyer
printer-friendly

Few people in the public eye have said anything useful about the recent unpleasantness with the national debt and the national credit rating.  The president hasn’t.  The vice president hasn’t.  Surprisingly few of the declared Republican candidates have.  The MSM haven’t.  They’re busy trying to make the expression “Tea Party downgrade” go viral.

Indeed, at this hour of reckoning, with the Dow plunging and markets in turmoil around the world, the MSM have achieved another playground-taunt triumph with the silly Newsweek cover featuring an unflattering photo of Michelle Bachmann.  These people seem to have no sense of proportion, no judgment, no recognition that things have become serious and the time for sophomoric media jabs is past.

Who cares how they can make Bachmann look on a magazine cover?  The tabloids demonstrate several times a year that they can make the world’s most beautiful women look like something from the back of the refrigerator, if they photograph them in bad light with a telephoto lens.  The Bachmann cover is the equivalent of a slam-book entry, about as intelligent as holding your nose and chanting “You smell!” at a classmate.  Ridicule is the cheapest thing there is – and in politics, it’s usually deployed to shift the focus from a needed debate to specious topics and emotion.  I’d call it a reversion to high school, but it would be an insult even to middle-schoolers to pin it on their age group.

Meanwhile, Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan have had good, inspiring, on-target things to say about the US fiscal crisis.  Michelle Bachmann has had good things to say.  John Bolton had an important piece making the case that national security is inextricably linked with fiscal security, a much-needed point in the context of the recent debate.

But Sarah Palin came through today with a Facebook post that strikes the right tone and is at once simple, direct, and comprehensive.  It doesn’t rail at past mistakes, nor does it come across as a raised-voice, you’ve-got-to-get-this-people communication.  Palin takes it for granted – with refreshing common sense – that we are in a crisis, its features are obvious, and the task now is to deal with it, not continue to argue whether it’s really a crisis or how big it is or whose name we can pin on it.

She makes no bones about the significance of the problem we face.  I am particularly impressed with her point that if we don’t square ourselves away, the specter hangs over us of IMF staffers showing up on our doorstep with China and France and Germany arrayed behind them, ready to throw folders on a desk and start telling us how much we can spend on cable TV and incidentals each month.  Whether things would really play out for the US as they are playing out for Greece and Ireland is a valid question, but Palin is quite correct that the pitched confrontation is on the horizon now, as it was not six weeks ago – and she has the courage to face that possibility head-on.  It’s not pleasant to mention it, but it’s the right thing to do.

The last third of Palin’s post is devoted to laying out what we need to do.  Grow the economy by releasing the regulatory clamps on it, starting with the energy sector.  Cut spending and reform entitlements.  She doesn’t pretend the latter would be easy, but she faces head-on the fact that it is inescapably necessary.  I urge you to read her post for the discussion of particulars.  It is material and convincing without being in the weeds.

The piece is positive and encouraging for its forthrightness.  There is nothing “clever” to be done in this situation; it’s all straightforward.  The US federal government has to cut spending and let the economy grow, even if that means breaking the stranglehold of unions on the public trough and overruling advocacy groups and government bureaucrats who don’t want the economy to grow.  Pretending that the federal budget is too complex to be governed by the ordinary rules of accounting – or that the US is too special to be limited by the ordinary definition of fiscal solvency – is a dodge, not a sign of insight or expertise.

Palin focuses like any good executive on the big picture.  We have to cut spending and get government out of the economy’s way so it can start pumping out revenues again.  These things are increasingly obvious to everyone, and moreover, they constitute a plan.  Talking ourselves into corners about other, tangential things isn’t even interesting any more.  It feels so wrong that it’s hard to watch anyone’s news program at the moment: no one seems to be talking about what matters.

What is interesting is how few in our national political life have put the case together, as Palin has, without temporizing or bloviating.  I haven’t heard anyone else do what she does with this post.  She acknowledges the actual, enormous scope of the problem, envisions a solution, and outlines what to do to achieve it, with encouragement that it can be done.  It is sad and a little frightening that so many Americans have become unable to see this for what it is:  leadership.  Almost everyone else is focused more narrowly, on one aspect of the problem or another, and a good few commentators don’t seem to even have the vocabulary or the mental infrastructure to address the problem itself; they can only express opinions about the impossibility of the politics surrounding it.

It is the opposite of stupid to recognize the problem’s stark and simple outlines when all around you are swinging blindfolded at piñatas.  We spend too much, and we suppress economic growth and revenues with regulation.  Palin articulates that clearly.  Her ability to reach out directly through social media, and put her case in her terms, is a net positive for our current political climate.  She remains one of the best reasons to not let the MSM dictate our ideas and preferences to us.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.

Report: U.S. bracing for possible downgrade from S&P; Update: “Expecting and preparing”; Update: S&P bungles numbers? Update: Calculations off by trillions

posted at 4:59 pm on August 5, 2011 by Allahpundit
printer-friendly

Just a headline right now at CNBC, but stand by. Business Insider heard a rumor about this before lunch but discounted it when they couldn’t substantiate it with analysts. There must be something to it, though; it’s unthinkable that CNBC would toss this grenade without something very solid to support the story. Needless to say, the fact that news is breaking within an hour after the market closed suggests that they held it back to avoid a panic and to let investors digest it over the weekend.

A downgrade, not a default, was always the real worry during the debt-ceiling saga. Moody’s and Fitch reaffirmed the U.S. as AAA (albeit with a negative outlook) a few days ago but S&P was conspicuously silent. Negotiators on the Hill believed early on that the debt package had to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion to avoid a downgrade, but S&P’s president told a congressional committee on July 27 that it wasn’t true and that some alternate plans would be acceptable.

Updates are coming. While we wait for details, read this NYT piece from last weekend speculating that the economic fallout from a downgrade would actually be modest since, after all, treasuries are still comparatively safer than any other investment. The fact that Moody’s and Fitch disagree with S&P will soften the blow too. And frankly, if there’s anything that can force the Super Committee and Congress to get serious about entitlement reform, this may be it. Or am I just putting lipstick on a very smelly pig? We’ll know soon!

Update: A government source tells Tapper they’re “expecting and preparing” for a downgrade to either AA+ or AA. Unbelievable. Here’s the spin:

    Officials reasons given will be the political confusion surrounding the process of raising the debt ceiling, and lack of confidence that the political system will be able to agree to more deficit reduction. A source says Republicans saying that they refuse to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal will be part of the reason cited.

Of course, of course. Any rather large elephants in the room missing from that litany of excuses? Here’s a hint: It rhymes with “shmentitlements.”

Update: CNBC says the downgrade could come as early as this evening. In spite of everything, I’ve never really believed that America is in decline because, well, America simply doesn’t decline. Tonight I believe it.

Update: Lots of tough talk this week from Democrats about the Super Committee, with Reid hinting that they might walk away if Republicans don’t appoint anyone willing to agree to tax hikes and Pelosi promising much harder hardball during the next round of negotiations. Let’s see what they say now.

Update: Karl from the Greenroom e-mails to remind me that S&P’s track record is a bit of a joke given that they failed to see the subprime crisis coming. True enough. Last week Zachary Karabell at the Daily Beast wondered why anyone cares what S&P thinks:

    To those who say that it’s unfair to blame the messenger—and that on the whole, these agencies are simply calling it as they see it and drawing attention to real risks—there is the pesky fact that they have a legacy of either being chronically late (the mortgage crisis) or then too eager to downgrade (overreaction to the mortgage crisis). And even if they were as good as they could be, they are still simply three companies with a few hundred unelected people making calls that drive the entire global financial system.

    There is one last glaring question: should these agencies even be rating a sovereign entity such as the United States? The dollar is now a global currency of commerce, and U.S. Treasuries are a form of safe-haven currency. It’s not as if the world is unaware of the economic issues of the U.S. The Chinese don’t need Moody’s to tell them about the risks of holding a trillion dollars of U.S. bonds. Shouldn’t the “creditworthiness” of the United States, or the viability of a European debt plan for Greece, be left to the determination of investors large and small worldwide along with the governments of those countries and their electorates? The success or failure of their plans will be evident soon enough, and subject to the thumbs up or down of the people, without the ratings agencies piling on or offering a view.

Mark Steyn has the counterargument to that:

    Nobody in Greece, Portugal, Spain, or Ireland is talking about “out years” and exciting plans for spending cuts in 2020. They’re getting on with it now — and they’re still being downgraded.

    By contrast, both U.S. political parties are playing croquet on the lawn in August 1914 — and the ratings agencies are stringing along with them. Whatever the comparisons of debt-to-GDP ratios between Greece, Ireland, and the U.S., the actual hard dollar amount involved here is of an entirely different order. The Boehner plan tells us that real fiscal discipline is impossible within the U.S. political system. At some point, the ratings guys have to call them on it — or render their system meaningless.

Right. What’s ominous about the S&P downgrade isn’t that it comes out of left field, haphazardly, but that it doesn’t. Given the long-term outlook for U.S. sovereign debt even after this week’s deal, why wouldn’t they downgrade us? Why wouldn’t anyone else? What have you seen over the past year that makes you think America’s political class is remotely equal to the task of dealing with this problem before we have a Greece on our hands?

Update: Tapper updates his post with quotes from another government official who says they’re not sure when — or even if — the downgrade will come.

Update: It goes without saying that between the downgrade and polling showing 60+% support for tax increases on the rich, the GOP will be under intense pressure during the Super Committee phase to add some new revenue to the package. That doesn’t necessarily mean tax hikes; it does necessarily mean tax reform, which might involve lower rates but many fewer loopholes. Krauthammer floats a few ideas about that today, starting with getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction.

Update: Greg Pollowitz of NRO notes that, if the downgrade happens, the U.S. will technically be a greater credit risk than Britain, Germany, and France. Given the debt contagion spreading in Europe first from Greece and now Italy and Spain, does anyone seriously believe that’s true?

Update: No idea yet if this is the truth or White House spin, but if S&P actually botched its analysis on a matter as explosive and closely watched as this, then whatever’s left of their credibility is gone for good:

    A third official says that S&P made a “serious mistake” in its analysis, “based on flawed math and assumptions,” so the Obama administration is pushing back. But even though “S&P has acknowledged its numbers are wrong, it’s unclear what they’re going to do.,” the official said.

    S&P refused to comment.

Update: You’ve got to be kidding: “S+P was set to downgrade. Obama admin. said their analysis off by ‘trillions’. Now S+P revising figures. Downgrade still poss.”

Update: Still waiting for S&P’s side of this, but if the White House was lying in accusing them of a trillion-dollar error, you’d expect vehement pushback. Instead, silence.

    Standard & Poor’s told the U.S. government Friday afternoon that it was preparing to downgrade the U.S.’s triple-A credit rating but U.S. officials notified the S&P that they had made a mathematical error that was off by “trillions,” an administration source told CNBC.

    Apparently the error was in the calculation of the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio over time and was based on a misreading of what the correct congressional baseline was…

    An S&P spokesman declined to comment on any possible plans for a downgrade or statement later Friday.

If it’s true, they’ll never recover. They’ve barely recovered from the subprime mess as it is. Then again, it could be that their math is fine and the White House is simply challenging them on a conceptual point, much like how Dems and the GOP argued this week over what tax baseline is appropriate for the Super Committee. In that case it wouldn’t be a math error, it’d be an accounting dispute.

A question from Megan McArdle, though: Who leaked this report? She wonders if the White House might have done it “just to get people yelling at the GOP,” but if that were true, why is the White House pressing so hard to get S&P change its numbers? It’s hard to yell at the GOP when the math is wrong.

Update: The Journal describes it as a “mathematical error” and claims S&P copped to it privately:

    After two hours of analysis, Treasury officials discovered that S&P officials had miscalculated future deficit projections by close to $2 trillion. It immediately notified the company of the mistakes.

    S&P officials later called administration officials back to say they agreed about the mistakes, though they didn’t say whether it would affect the rating. White House officials remained waiting Friday evening to see what the company would do…

    A downgrade by S&P could serve as a psychological haymaker for an American economic recovery that can’t find much traction. It could lead to the prompt downgrades of numerous companies and states, driving up their costs of borrowing. Policymakers are also feeling anxious about the hidden icebergs that the move could suddenly reveal.

Imagine if this had happened during trading hours.

Report: U.S. bracing for possible downgrade from S&P; Update: “Expecting and preparing”; Update: S&P bungles numbers? Update: Calculations off by trillions

posted at 4:59 pm on August 5, 2011 by Allahpundit
printer-friendly

Just a headline right now at CNBC, but stand by. Business Insider heard a rumor about this before lunch but discounted it when they couldn’t substantiate it with analysts. There must be something to it, though; it’s unthinkable that CNBC would toss this grenade without something very solid to support the story. Needless to say, the fact that news is breaking within an hour after the market closed suggests that they held it back to avoid a panic and to let investors digest it over the weekend.

A downgrade, not a default, was always the real worry during the debt-ceiling saga. Moody’s and Fitch reaffirmed the U.S. as AAA (albeit with a negative outlook) a few days ago but S&P was conspicuously silent. Negotiators on the Hill believed early on that the debt package had to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion to avoid a downgrade, but S&P’s president told a congressional committee on July 27 that it wasn’t true and that some alternate plans would be acceptable.

Updates are coming. While we wait for details, read this NYT piece from last weekend speculating that the economic fallout from a downgrade would actually be modest since, after all, treasuries are still comparatively safer than any other investment. The fact that Moody’s and Fitch disagree with S&P will soften the blow too. And frankly, if there’s anything that can force the Super Committee and Congress to get serious about entitlement reform, this may be it. Or am I just putting lipstick on a very smelly pig? We’ll know soon!

Update: A government source tells Tapper they’re “expecting and preparing” for a downgrade to either AA+ or AA. Unbelievable. Here’s the spin:

    Officials reasons given will be the political confusion surrounding the process of raising the debt ceiling, and lack of confidence that the political system will be able to agree to more deficit reduction. A source says Republicans saying that they refuse to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal will be part of the reason cited.

Of course, of course. Any rather large elephants in the room missing from that litany of excuses? Here’s a hint: It rhymes with “shmentitlements.”

Update: CNBC says the downgrade could come as early as this evening. In spite of everything, I’ve never really believed that America is in decline because, well, America simply doesn’t decline. Tonight I believe it.

Update: Lots of tough talk this week from Democrats about the Super Committee, with Reid hinting that they might walk away if Republicans don’t appoint anyone willing to agree to tax hikes and Pelosi promising much harder hardball during the next round of negotiations. Let’s see what they say now.

Update: Karl from the Greenroom e-mails to remind me that S&P’s track record is a bit of a joke given that they failed to see the subprime crisis coming. True enough. Last week Zachary Karabell at the Daily Beast wondered why anyone cares what S&P thinks:

    To those who say that it’s unfair to blame the messenger—and that on the whole, these agencies are simply calling it as they see it and drawing attention to real risks—there is the pesky fact that they have a legacy of either being chronically late (the mortgage crisis) or then too eager to downgrade (overreaction to the mortgage crisis). And even if they were as good as they could be, they are still simply three companies with a few hundred unelected people making calls that drive the entire global financial system.

    There is one last glaring question: should these agencies even be rating a sovereign entity such as the United States? The dollar is now a global currency of commerce, and U.S. Treasuries are a form of safe-haven currency. It’s not as if the world is unaware of the economic issues of the U.S. The Chinese don’t need Moody’s to tell them about the risks of holding a trillion dollars of U.S. bonds. Shouldn’t the “creditworthiness” of the United States, or the viability of a European debt plan for Greece, be left to the determination of investors large and small worldwide along with the governments of those countries and their electorates? The success or failure of their plans will be evident soon enough, and subject to the thumbs up or down of the people, without the ratings agencies piling on or offering a view.

Mark Steyn has the counterargument to that:

    Nobody in Greece, Portugal, Spain, or Ireland is talking about “out years” and exciting plans for spending cuts in 2020. They’re getting on with it now — and they’re still being downgraded.

    By contrast, both U.S. political parties are playing croquet on the lawn in August 1914 — and the ratings agencies are stringing along with them. Whatever the comparisons of debt-to-GDP ratios between Greece, Ireland, and the U.S., the actual hard dollar amount involved here is of an entirely different order. The Boehner plan tells us that real fiscal discipline is impossible within the U.S. political system. At some point, the ratings guys have to call them on it — or render their system meaningless.

Right. What’s ominous about the S&P downgrade isn’t that it comes out of left field, haphazardly, but that it doesn’t. Given the long-term outlook for U.S. sovereign debt even after this week’s deal, why wouldn’t they downgrade us? Why wouldn’t anyone else? What have you seen over the past year that makes you think America’s political class is remotely equal to the task of dealing with this problem before we have a Greece on our hands?

Update: Tapper updates his post with quotes from another government official who says they’re not sure when — or even if — the downgrade will come.

Update: It goes without saying that between the downgrade and polling showing 60+% support for tax increases on the rich, the GOP will be under intense pressure during the Super Committee phase to add some new revenue to the package. That doesn’t necessarily mean tax hikes; it does necessarily mean tax reform, which might involve lower rates but many fewer loopholes. Krauthammer floats a few ideas about that today, starting with getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction.

Update: Greg Pollowitz of NRO notes that, if the downgrade happens, the U.S. will technically be a greater credit risk than Britain, Germany, and France. Given the debt contagion spreading in Europe first from Greece and now Italy and Spain, does anyone seriously believe that’s true?

Update: No idea yet if this is the truth or White House spin, but if S&P actually botched its analysis on a matter as explosive and closely watched as this, then whatever’s left of their credibility is gone for good:

    A third official says that S&P made a “serious mistake” in its analysis, “based on flawed math and assumptions,” so the Obama administration is pushing back. But even though “S&P has acknowledged its numbers are wrong, it’s unclear what they’re going to do.,” the official said.

    S&P refused to comment.

Update: You’ve got to be kidding: “S+P was set to downgrade. Obama admin. said their analysis off by ‘trillions’. Now S+P revising figures. Downgrade still poss.”

Update: Still waiting for S&P’s side of this, but if the White House was lying in accusing them of a trillion-dollar error, you’d expect vehement pushback. Instead, silence.

    Standard & Poor’s told the U.S. government Friday afternoon that it was preparing to downgrade the U.S.’s triple-A credit rating but U.S. officials notified the S&P that they had made a mathematical error that was off by “trillions,” an administration source told CNBC.

    Apparently the error was in the calculation of the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio over time and was based on a misreading of what the correct congressional baseline was…

    An S&P spokesman declined to comment on any possible plans for a downgrade or statement later Friday.

If it’s true, they’ll never recover. They’ve barely recovered from the subprime mess as it is. Then again, it could be that their math is fine and the White House is simply challenging them on a conceptual point, much like how Dems and the GOP argued this week over what tax baseline is appropriate for the Super Committee. In that case it wouldn’t be a math error, it’d be an accounting dispute.

A question from Megan McArdle, though: Who leaked this report? She wonders if the White House might have done it “just to get people yelling at the GOP,” but if that were true, why is the White House pressing so hard to get S&P change its numbers? It’s hard to yell at the GOP when the math is wrong.

Update: The Journal describes it as a “mathematical error” and claims S&P copped to it privately:

    After two hours of analysis, Treasury officials discovered that S&P officials had miscalculated future deficit projections by close to $2 trillion. It immediately notified the company of the mistakes.

    S&P officials later called administration officials back to say they agreed about the mistakes, though they didn’t say whether it would affect the rating. White House officials remained waiting Friday evening to see what the company would do…

    A downgrade by S&P could serve as a psychological haymaker for an American economic recovery that can’t find much traction. It could lead to the prompt downgrades of numerous companies and states, driving up their costs of borrowing. Policymakers are also feeling anxious about the hidden icebergs that the move could suddenly reveal.

Imagine if this had happened during trading hours.

Report: U.S. bracing for possible downgrade from S&P; Update: “Expecting and preparing”; Update: S&P bungles numbers? Update: Calculations off by trillions

posted at 4:59 pm on August 5, 2011 by Allahpundit

printer-friendly

Just a headline right now at CNBC, but stand by. Business Insider heard a rumor about this before lunch but discounted it when they couldn’t substantiate it with analysts. There must be something to it, though; it’s unthinkable that CNBC would toss this grenade without something very solid to support the story. Needless to say, the fact that news is breaking within an hour after the market closed suggests that they held it back to avoid a panic and to let investors digest it over the weekend.

A downgrade, not a default, was always the real worry during the debt-ceiling saga. Moody’s and Fitch reaffirmed the U.S. as AAA (albeit with a negative outlook) a few days ago but S&P was conspicuously silent. Negotiators on the Hill believed early on that the debt package had to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion to avoid a downgrade, but S&P’s president told a congressional committee on July 27 that it wasn’t true and that some alternate plans would be acceptable.

Updates are coming. While we wait for details, read this NYT piece from last weekend speculating that the economic fallout from a downgrade would actually be modest since, after all, treasuries are still comparatively safer than any other investment. The fact that Moody’s and Fitch disagree with S&P will soften the blow too. And frankly, if there’s anything that can force the Super Committee and Congress to get serious about entitlement reform, this may be it. Or am I just putting lipstick on a very smelly pig? We’ll know soon!

Update: A government source tells Tapper they’re “expecting and preparing” for a downgrade to either AA+ or AA. Unbelievable. Here’s the spin:

Officials reasons given will be the political confusion surrounding the process of raising the debt ceiling, and lack of confidence that the political system will be able to agree to more deficit reduction. A source says Republicans saying that they refuse to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal will be part of the reason cited.

Of course, of course. Any rather large elephants in the room missing from that litany of excuses? Here’s a hint: It rhymes with “shmentitlements.”

Update: CNBC says the downgrade could come as early as this evening. In spite of everything, I’ve never really believed that America is in decline because, well, America simply doesn’t decline. Tonight I believe it.

Update: Lots of tough talk this week from Democrats about the Super Committee, with Reid hinting that they might walk away if Republicans don’t appoint anyone willing to agree to tax hikes and Pelosi promising much harder hardball during the next round of negotiations. Let’s see what they say now.

Update: Karl from the Greenroom e-mails to remind me that S&P’s track record is a bit of a joke given that they failed to see the subprime crisis coming. True enough. Last week Zachary Karabell at the Daily Beast wondered why anyone cares what S&P thinks:

To those who say that it’s unfair to blame the messenger—and that on the whole, these agencies are simply calling it as they see it and drawing attention to real risks—there is the pesky fact that they have a legacy of either being chronically late (the mortgage crisis) or then too eager to downgrade (overreaction to the mortgage crisis). And even if they were as good as they could be, they are still simply three companies with a few hundred unelected people making calls that drive the entire global financial system.

There is one last glaring question: should these agencies even be rating a sovereign entity such as the United States? The dollar is now a global currency of commerce, and U.S. Treasuries are a form of safe-haven currency. It’s not as if the world is unaware of the economic issues of the U.S. The Chinese don’t need Moody’s to tell them about the risks of holding a trillion dollars of U.S. bonds. Shouldn’t the “creditworthiness” of the United States, or the viability of a European debt plan for Greece, be left to the determination of investors large and small worldwide along with the governments of those countries and their electorates? The success or failure of their plans will be evident soon enough, and subject to the thumbs up or down of the people, without the ratings agencies piling on or offering a view.

Mark Steyn has the counterargument to that:

Nobody in Greece, Portugal, Spain, or Ireland is talking about “out years” and exciting plans for spending cuts in 2020. They’re getting on with it now — and they’re still being downgraded.

By contrast, both U.S. political parties are playing croquet on the lawn in August 1914 — and the ratings agencies are stringing along with them. Whatever the comparisons of debt-to-GDP ratios between Greece, Ireland, and the U.S., the actual hard dollar amount involved here is of an entirely different order. The Boehner plan tells us that real fiscal discipline is impossible within the U.S. political system. At some point, the ratings guys have to call them on it — or render their system meaningless.

Right. What’s ominous about the S&P downgrade isn’t that it comes out of left field, haphazardly, but that it doesn’t. Given the long-term outlook for U.S. sovereign debt even after this week’s deal, why wouldn’t they downgrade us? Why wouldn’t anyone else? What have you seen over the past year that makes you think America’s political class is remotely equal to the task of dealing with this problem before we have a Greece on our hands?

Update: Tapper updates his post with quotes from another government official who says they’re not sure when — or even if — the downgrade will come.

Update: It goes without saying that between the downgrade and polling showing 60+% support for tax increases on the rich, the GOP will be under intense pressure during the Super Committee phase to add some new revenue to the package. That doesn’t necessarily mean tax hikes; it does necessarily mean tax reform, which might involve lower rates but many fewer loopholes. Krauthammer floats a few ideas about that today, starting with getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction.

Update: Greg Pollowitz of NRO notes that, if the downgrade happens, the U.S. will technically be a greater credit risk than Britain, Germany, and France. Given the debt contagion spreading in Europe first from Greece and now Italy and Spain, does anyone seriously believe that’s true?

Update: No idea yet if this is the truth or White House spin, but if S&P actually botched its analysis on a matter as explosive and closely watched as this, then whatever’s left of their credibility is gone for good:

A third official says that S&P made a “serious mistake” in its analysis, “based on flawed math and assumptions,” so the Obama administration is pushing back. But even though “S&P has acknowledged its numbers are wrong, it’s unclear what they’re going to do.,” the official said.

S&P refused to comment.

Update: You’ve got to be kidding: “S+P was set to downgrade. Obama admin. said their analysis off by ‘trillions’. Now S+P revising figures. Downgrade still poss.”

Update: Still waiting for S&P’s side of this, but if the White House was lying in accusing them of a trillion-dollar error, you’d expect vehement pushback. Instead, silence.

Standard & Poor’s told the U.S. government Friday afternoon that it was preparing to downgrade the U.S.’s triple-A credit rating but U.S. officials notified the S&P that they had made a mathematical error that was off by “trillions,” an administration source told CNBC.

Apparently the error was in the calculation of the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio over time and was based on a misreading of what the correct congressional baseline was…

An S&P spokesman declined to comment on any possible plans for a downgrade or statement later Friday.

If it’s true, they’ll never recover. They’ve barely recovered from the subprime mess as it is. Then again, it could be that their math is fine and the White House is simply challenging them on a conceptual point, much like how Dems and the GOP argued this week over what tax baseline is appropriate for the Super Committee. In that case it wouldn’t be a math error, it’d be an accounting dispute.

A question from Megan McArdle, though: Who leaked this report? She wonders if the White House might have done it “just to get people yelling at the GOP,” but if that were true, why is the White House pressing so hard to get S&P change its numbers? It’s hard to yell at the GOP when the math is wrong.

Update: The Journal describes it as a “mathematical error” and claims S&P copped to it privately:

After two hours of analysis, Treasury officials discovered that S&P officials had miscalculated future deficit projections by close to $2 trillion. It immediately notified the company of the mistakes.

S&P officials later called administration officials back to say they agreed about the mistakes, though they didn’t say whether it would affect the rating. White House officials remained waiting Friday evening to see what the company would do…

A downgrade by S&P could serve as a psychological haymaker for an American economic recovery that can’t find much traction. It could lead to the prompt downgrades of numerous companies and states, driving up their costs of borrowing. Policymakers are also feeling anxious about the hidden icebergs that the move could suddenly reveal.

Imagine if this had happened during trading hours.

Report: U.S. bracing for possible downgrade from S&P; Update: “Expecting and preparing”; Update: S&P bungles numbers? Update: Calculations off by trillions

posted at 4:59 pm on August 5, 2011 by Allahpundit

printer-friendly

Just a headline right now at CNBC, but stand by. Business Insider heard a rumor about this before lunch but discounted it when they couldn’t substantiate it with analysts. There must be something to it, though; it’s unthinkable that CNBC would toss this grenade without something very solid to support the story. Needless to say, the fact that news is breaking within an hour after the market closed suggests that they held it back to avoid a panic and to let investors digest it over the weekend.

A downgrade, not a default, was always the real worry during the debt-ceiling saga. Moody’s and Fitch reaffirmed the U.S. as AAA (albeit with a negative outlook) a few days ago but S&P was conspicuously silent. Negotiators on the Hill believed early on that the debt package had to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion to avoid a downgrade, but S&P’s president told a congressional committee on July 27 that it wasn’t true and that some alternate plans would be acceptable.

Updates are coming. While we wait for details, read this NYT piece from last weekend speculating that the economic fallout from a downgrade would actually be modest since, after all, treasuries are still comparatively safer than any other investment. The fact that Moody’s and Fitch disagree with S&P will soften the blow too. And frankly, if there’s anything that can force the Super Committee and Congress to get serious about entitlement reform, this may be it. Or am I just putting lipstick on a very smelly pig? We’ll know soon!

Update: A government source tells Tapper they’re “expecting and preparing” for a downgrade to either AA+ or AA. Unbelievable. Here’s the spin:

Officials reasons given will be the political confusion surrounding the process of raising the debt ceiling, and lack of confidence that the political system will be able to agree to more deficit reduction. A source says Republicans saying that they refuse to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal will be part of the reason cited.

Of course, of course. Any rather large elephants in the room missing from that litany of excuses? Here’s a hint: It rhymes with “shmentitlements.”

Update: CNBC says the downgrade could come as early as this evening. In spite of everything, I’ve never really believed that America is in decline because, well, America simply doesn’t decline. Tonight I believe it.

Update: Lots of tough talk this week from Democrats about the Super Committee, with Reid hinting that they might walk away if Republicans don’t appoint anyone willing to agree to tax hikes and Pelosi promising much harder hardball during the next round of negotiations. Let’s see what they say now.

Update: Karl from the Greenroom e-mails to remind me that S&P’s track record is a bit of a joke given that they failed to see the subprime crisis coming. True enough. Last week Zachary Karabell at the Daily Beast wondered why anyone cares what S&P thinks:

To those who say that it’s unfair to blame the messenger—and that on the whole, these agencies are simply calling it as they see it and drawing attention to real risks—there is the pesky fact that they have a legacy of either being chronically late (the mortgage crisis) or then too eager to downgrade (overreaction to the mortgage crisis). And even if they were as good as they could be, they are still simply three companies with a few hundred unelected people making calls that drive the entire global financial system.

There is one last glaring question: should these agencies even be rating a sovereign entity such as the United States? The dollar is now a global currency of commerce, and U.S. Treasuries are a form of safe-haven currency. It’s not as if the world is unaware of the economic issues of the U.S. The Chinese don’t need Moody’s to tell them about the risks of holding a trillion dollars of U.S. bonds. Shouldn’t the “creditworthiness” of the United States, or the viability of a European debt plan for Greece, be left to the determination of investors large and small worldwide along with the governments of those countries and their electorates? The success or failure of their plans will be evident soon enough, and subject to the thumbs up or down of the people, without the ratings agencies piling on or offering a view.

Mark Steyn has the counterargument to that:

Nobody in Greece, Portugal, Spain, or Ireland is talking about “out years” and exciting plans for spending cuts in 2020. They’re getting on with it now — and they’re still being downgraded.

By contrast, both U.S. political parties are playing croquet on the lawn in August 1914 — and the ratings agencies are stringing along with them. Whatever the comparisons of debt-to-GDP ratios between Greece, Ireland, and the U.S., the actual hard dollar amount involved here is of an entirely different order. The Boehner plan tells us that real fiscal discipline is impossible within the U.S. political system. At some point, the ratings guys have to call them on it — or render their system meaningless.

Right. What’s ominous about the S&P downgrade isn’t that it comes out of left field, haphazardly, but that it doesn’t. Given the long-term outlook for U.S. sovereign debt even after this week’s deal, why wouldn’t they downgrade us? Why wouldn’t anyone else? What have you seen over the past year that makes you think America’s political class is remotely equal to the task of dealing with this problem before we have a Greece on our hands?

Update: Tapper updates his post with quotes from another government official who says they’re not sure when — or even if — the downgrade will come.

Update: It goes without saying that between the downgrade and polling showing 60+% support for tax increases on the rich, the GOP will be under intense pressure during the Super Committee phase to add some new revenue to the package. That doesn’t necessarily mean tax hikes; it does necessarily mean tax reform, which might involve lower rates but many fewer loopholes. Krauthammer floats a few ideas about that today, starting with getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction.

Update: Greg Pollowitz of NRO notes that, if the downgrade happens, the U.S. will technically be a greater credit risk than Britain, Germany, and France. Given the debt contagion spreading in Europe first from Greece and now Italy and Spain, does anyone seriously believe that’s true?

Update: No idea yet if this is the truth or White House spin, but if S&P actually botched its analysis on a matter as explosive and closely watched as this, then whatever’s left of their credibility is gone for good:

A third official says that S&P made a “serious mistake” in its analysis, “based on flawed math and assumptions,” so the Obama administration is pushing back. But even though “S&P has acknowledged its numbers are wrong, it’s unclear what they’re going to do.,” the official said.

S&P refused to comment.

Update: You’ve got to be kidding: “S+P was set to downgrade. Obama admin. said their analysis off by ‘trillions’. Now S+P revising figures. Downgrade still poss.”

Update: Still waiting for S&P’s side of this, but if the White House was lying in accusing them of a trillion-dollar error, you’d expect vehement pushback. Instead, silence.

Standard & Poor’s told the U.S. government Friday afternoon that it was preparing to downgrade the U.S.’s triple-A credit rating but U.S. officials notified the S&P that they had made a mathematical error that was off by “trillions,” an administration source told CNBC.

Apparently the error was in the calculation of the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio over time and was based on a misreading of what the correct congressional baseline was…

An S&P spokesman declined to comment on any possible plans for a downgrade or statement later Friday.

If it’s true, they’ll never recover. They’ve barely recovered from the subprime mess as it is. Then again, it could be that their math is fine and the White House is simply challenging them on a conceptual point, much like how Dems and the GOP argued this week over what tax baseline is appropriate for the Super Committee. In that case it wouldn’t be a math error, it’d be an accounting dispute.

A question from Megan McArdle, though: Who leaked this report? She wonders if the White House might have done it “just to get people yelling at the GOP,” but if that were true, why is the White House pressing so hard to get S&P change its numbers? It’s hard to yell at the GOP when the math is wrong.

Update: The Journal describes it as a “mathematical error” and claims S&P copped to it privately:

After two hours of analysis, Treasury officials discovered that S&P officials had miscalculated future deficit projections by close to $2 trillion. It immediately notified the company of the mistakes.

S&P officials later called administration officials back to say they agreed about the mistakes, though they didn’t say whether it would affect the rating. White House officials remained waiting Friday evening to see what the company would do…

A downgrade by S&P could serve as a psychological haymaker for an American economic recovery that can’t find much traction. It could lead to the prompt downgrades of numerous companies and states, driving up their costs of borrowing. Policymakers are also feeling anxious about the hidden icebergs that the move could suddenly reveal.

Imagine if this had happened during trading hours.

Roseanne Barr: Palin’s stealing my act

posted at 12:50 pm on August 5, 2011 by Tina Korbe
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Looks like somebody is jealous. Former sitcom star Roseanne Barr, who has never betrayed any political ambition beyond supporting President Barack Obama, now sarcastically says she wants to run for president — and cites former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as her inspiration:

    “That’s kind of what got me to thinking that I too should run for president if she can,” Barr told host Jay Leno [last night on "The Tonight Show"]. “I wanted to edge her out because I feel like she’s stealing my act anyway.”

    Barr said Palin, who is flirting with a White House bid, was also her motivation for appearing in a reality show. Her Lifetime show “Roseanne’s Nuts,” premiered a few weeks ago and follows the former sitcom star running a Hawaiian nut farm.

    Barr, a former supporter of President Barack Obama, claimed she is “totally serious” about a bid and said she will run as a candidate from the Green Tea Party. No taxes, the forgiveness of student loans and all debts and the use of vegetables instead of money will be the cornerstones of her campaign, she said.

Barr must not have gotten the memo that Palin hasn’t yet declared presidential candidacy (and might not at all). Barr also said she assumes all you have to do to be president is “show up and give a speech.” No, Roseanne, that’s what you have to do to be a sitcom star. Obama is Exhibit A: Charisma and eloquence do not a competent president make.

All of which reminds me: Why, in all of his talk of taxing the rich, does Obama never add “Hollywood entertainers” to his oh-so-redundant list of “corporate jet owners, hedge fund managers and oil company executives”? Seems to me they could pitch in more than a few dimes to reduce the debt and deficit.

Roseanne Barr: Palin’s stealing my act

posted at 12:50 pm on August 5, 2011 by Tina Korbe
printer-friendly

Looks like somebody is jealous. Former sitcom star Roseanne Barr, who has never betrayed any political ambition beyond supporting President Barack Obama, now sarcastically says she wants to run for president — and cites former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as her inspiration:

    “That’s kind of what got me to thinking that I too should run for president if she can,” Barr told host Jay Leno [last night on "The Tonight Show"]. “I wanted to edge her out because I feel like she’s stealing my act anyway.”

    Barr said Palin, who is flirting with a White House bid, was also her motivation for appearing in a reality show. Her Lifetime show “Roseanne’s Nuts,” premiered a few weeks ago and follows the former sitcom star running a Hawaiian nut farm.

    Barr, a former supporter of President Barack Obama, claimed she is “totally serious” about a bid and said she will run as a candidate from the Green Tea Party. No taxes, the forgiveness of student loans and all debts and the use of vegetables instead of money will be the cornerstones of her campaign, she said.

Barr must not have gotten the memo that Palin hasn’t yet declared presidential candidacy (and might not at all). Barr also said she assumes all you have to do to be president is “show up and give a speech.” No, Roseanne, that’s what you have to do to be a sitcom star. Obama is Exhibit A: Charisma and eloquence do not a competent president make.

All of which reminds me: Why, in all of his talk of taxing the rich, does Obama never add “Hollywood entertainers” to his oh-so-redundant list of “corporate jet owners, hedge fund managers and oil company executives”? Seems to me they could pitch in more than a few dimes to reduce the debt and deficit.

Obama: Hey, my “singular focus” is on jobs!

posted at 12:10 pm on August 5, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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Barack Obama has given a response to the jobs report this morning while speaking at the Washington Navy Yard.  I’ll bet most people have already guessed how the President sought to reassure Americans that “things will get better“:

    “We are going to get through this. Things will get better. We’re going to get there together,” Obama told a crowd of veterans at the Washington Navy Yard Friday, where he was speaking about lowering unemployment among the nation’s veterans. Neither he nor any member of the administration commented after the Dow plunged over 500 points Thursday, and Obama avoided addressing the market crash directly.

    “There is no doubt this has been a tumultuous year,” said Obama. “My singular focus is the American people. Getting the unemployed back on the job.”

First, it’s interesting that Obama didn’t attempt to sell the jobs report this morning as good news.  Wall Street wasn’t impressed by it; after yesterday’s selloff, the Dow Jones was off another 150 points by noon today.  European stocks had a 3-year drubbing this week as well.

But even Obama’s allies aren’t buying the “singular focus” line any longer. Arianna Huffington told Lawrence O’Donnell earlier this week that no one believes Obama when he claims that jobs are his highest priority, but rather think it’s one job in particular, emphasis mine:

But the point is that the most important number going into 2012 is going to be the unemployment number. And there is absolutely no prospect at the moment that would make us believe that unemployment number is going to be below nine percent. Now that is really the greatest fear for the White House. And of course Mitt Romney again and again is talking about the failure of the President to produce jobs, and he doesn’t have to tell us how he would have done it. He just has to point out to that failure. And when the President again and again talks about how, I mean, I went through and looked since 2009 how many times he has said, “Jobs priority number one,” “The sustained focus of this administration,” “The relentless focus of this administration,” “We’re pivoting to jobs.” Nobody believes it any more.

For all of this focus, Obama has yet to put forward his own plan to promote massive job growth, or any kind of private-sector growth at all. If that sounds familiar, it should; Obama failed to put forward any specific plan to deal with deficit reduction and the debt ceiling, and the only specific demand he made — tax hikes — would have stunted job growth. In fact, he’s still talking about tax hikes, which is a highly strange way to claim that job creation is one’s “singular focus.”

As long as Obama’s actual “singular” focus remains on expanding regulation and raising taxes, things won’t get better until he leaves office … hopefully in 2013.

Obama: Hey, my “singular focus” is on jobs!

posted at 12:10 pm on August 5, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
printer-friendly

Barack Obama has given a response to the jobs report this morning while speaking at the Washington Navy Yard.  I’ll bet most people have already guessed how the President sought to reassure Americans that “things will get better“:

    “We are going to get through this. Things will get better. We’re going to get there together,” Obama told a crowd of veterans at the Washington Navy Yard Friday, where he was speaking about lowering unemployment among the nation’s veterans. Neither he nor any member of the administration commented after the Dow plunged over 500 points Thursday, and Obama avoided addressing the market crash directly.

    “There is no doubt this has been a tumultuous year,” said Obama. “My singular focus is the American people. Getting the unemployed back on the job.”

First, it’s interesting that Obama didn’t attempt to sell the jobs report this morning as good news.  Wall Street wasn’t impressed by it; after yesterday’s selloff, the Dow Jones was off another 150 points by noon today.  European stocks had a 3-year drubbing this week as well.

But even Obama’s allies aren’t buying the “singular focus” line any longer. Arianna Huffington told Lawrence O’Donnell earlier this week that no one believes Obama when he claims that jobs are his highest priority, but rather think it’s one job in particular, emphasis mine:

But the point is that the most important number going into 2012 is going to be the unemployment number. And there is absolutely no prospect at the moment that would make us believe that unemployment number is going to be below nine percent. Now that is really the greatest fear for the White House. And of course Mitt Romney again and again is talking about the failure of the President to produce jobs, and he doesn’t have to tell us how he would have done it. He just has to point out to that failure. And when the President again and again talks about how, I mean, I went through and looked since 2009 how many times he has said, “Jobs priority number one,” “The sustained focus of this administration,” “The relentless focus of this administration,” “We’re pivoting to jobs.” Nobody believes it any more.

For all of this focus, Obama has yet to put forward his own plan to promote massive job growth, or any kind of private-sector growth at all. If that sounds familiar, it should; Obama failed to put forward any specific plan to deal with deficit reduction and the debt ceiling, and the only specific demand he made — tax hikes — would have stunted job growth. In fact, he’s still talking about tax hikes, which is a highly strange way to claim that job creation is one’s “singular focus.”

As long as Obama’s actual “singular” focus remains on expanding regulation and raising taxes, things won’t get better until he leaves office … hopefully in 2013.