Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner boasted on December 16 that 2008’s $700 billion bailout of an assortment of private enterprises would ultimately cost taxpayers less than congressional analysts had predicted. The green eyeshades had calculated that the enormous wealth transfer would end up docking us taxpayers a mere $25 billion. Without providing further detail, the secretary...
Author: Mark G. Brennan (Mark G. Brennan)
Post
It Takes a Crisis
While Europe’s monetary crisis spreads, Americans watch in astonishment as the German government bails out its feckless co-unionists. Greece’s financial predicaments boiled over last summer with baton-wielding riot police pummeling Greek civil servants who objected to their government’s modest proposal to raise the official retirement age from 61 to 63 by 2015. In response, Germany...
Post
Hitting the Wall
On October 8, Americans awoke to government reports that the domestic economy had shed another 95,000 jobs in September. Despite the billions of dollars mailed to select citizens in the form of stimulus checks and the politicized bailouts of protected industries, U.S. policymakers have failed to resuscitate the moribund economy or coax unemployment down from...
Post
The Borrower’s Crisis
Like the mindless day traders of the 1990’s who piled into the same hot internet stocks, today’s commentators on the causes of 2008’s residential-real-estate implosion have exhibited a similar obtuseness regarding the workings of financial markets. One will search in vain for any article that identifies a party other than Wall Street or large commercial...
Post
Unhappy Anniversary
The one-year anniversary of the 2008 global financial-market implosion passed with little fanfare. With the U.S. stock market soaring throughout the spring and summer, the Pollyannas of the American media preferred to focus their attention on the return of good times while ignoring all that ancient ugliness of last year. In September 2008, at the...
Post
Family Matters
Cesar Rodriguez, a 27-year-old unemployed security guard, had it in for 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown, the daughter of Nixzaliz Santiago, his common-law wife. After losing his job a few days before Christmas, Rodriguez increased the frequency of his daily beatings of the helpless, undernourished four-foot-tall girl. Police records indicate that Rodriguez had been beating her for...
Post
The Dissenting Eagle
Few decisions require more prudence and judiciousness than when a country’s leaders determine whether to go to war. They must weigh the cost in lives, national treasure, and security against the price of inaction. Morality may enter their calculations through the application of just-war theory. They will listen to, if not necessarily heed, diverse voices...