The John Batchelor Show

Tuesday 24 July 2012

Air Date: 
July 24, 2012

 

Calvin Coolidge With Native American Visitors, approximately 1925

Co-host: Larry Kudlow, The Kudlow Report, CNBC, and WABC radio

Tuesday 905P Eastern Time:  Ari Fleischer,  Fleischer Communications, in re:  the top 15 (>$240K PA) make 13.4% of the natl income and they pay 23%-plus. This president is all about redistribution of income, not fairness nor economic growth.  Historically, esp in capital gains tax, the lower the tax rate the greater the revenues. Buffet Tax: a secretary pays greater rate than a millionaire?  Not accurate.  Tax reform would be a great conversation.  Joe the Plumber.  The president's tortured rhetoric from Roanoke – you didn’t build that.  Were it not for entrepreneurs, the govt would have no money.  Romney came alive in speaking on that.  Pres Obama is for entrepreneurs until they make it; when they make it, he turns against them.

Senate Subway R.R.

Tuesday 920P Eastern Time:   Steve Moore, WSJ, in re: Romney's most animated answer to the president's accusation, You didn’t build your own company.  HHS: historic health reforms signed by Clinton, a great bipartisan achievement, now being gutted by Obama. If you pay people to work less, you get less work.   The 1996 law: you can’t just waive requirements; you have to go back and get new legislation.   In a recent Rasmussen poll, 83% of Americans support the work requirement. President wants more and more people to be dependent on the govt.  Fifty-seven per cent of US households have at least one person getting a federal check. Steny Hoyer believes that food stamps are economically stimulative.  LK: This is pure, old-fashioned vote buying.

Tuesday 935P Eastern Time:  Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover, in re:  Russia sticks very close to Damascus, as does Teheran; neither is wed to Assad, but both consider the alternative to be worse.  The Obama Administration has no plan, is waiting for the locals to do something and then follow along.  VDH: After Assad, it'll be a bloodbath among the many groups.

"Romney tells Larry Kudlow that Obama has been too soft on Assad. 'I think from the very beginning we misread the setting in Syria,' he said."

"Barack Obama, both substantively and symbolically, ran in 2008 as a much-needed healer. He was to bring the nation together as never before — a vow taken to heart by millions of voters of all backgrounds who ensured Obama’s 2008 victory. His biracial background and his uncanny ability to navigate through both Harvard Law School and the politics of Chicago community organizing seemed to make him ideally suited to usher in a postracial era — as was acknowledged, albeit quite crudely and insensitively, by both Harry Reid and Joe Biden in the 2008 campaign."

Tuesday 950P Eastern Time:  Larry Kudlow, in re: Will the Federal Reserve use QE3 and intervene in the marketplace?

 

Tuesday 1005P (705P Pacific Time):   Brendan Miniter,  Bush Inst Fellow and editor, 4% Solution, and Amity Shlaes, director, 4% Solution project,  andBush Inst Fellow, in re: The 4% Solution: Unleashing the Economic Growth America Needs, on 4% annual growth in the US.  We've grown at 3% average since WWI; if we do better than the past average, it’ll have a dramatic effect.   Bringing certainty back to American tax rates is essential. We have $2 Trillion parked on the sidelines that could come back if entrepreneurs knew what the tax rates would be. "The rent-seeking society" – one in which the political landscape is where people prosper by taking advantage of their friends in Washington, using the political process.  Favoring certain investors with loans from the DoE, and the like. This is the other side of the spending coin – how govt spends encourages people to seek out govt funds –easier than inventing the next iPhone.

Silent Cal – Calvin Coolidge – in his taciturnity stood aside, different from predecessors who expanded govt too much. Wilson nationalized everything he could. If we do not reform, we'll leave on the table a significan amt of economic growth; we'll follow Europe.

Tuesday 1020P (720P Pacific Time):  David Malpass, Encima Global & former Treasury official; Brendan Miniter, Amity Shlaes, in re:  Sound money today – at market close, Apple down by $1bil & 10-yr Treasurys at less than 1.4%.  If we had better policies we'd gorw faster, which would help the world do so. Moral bond between the govt and the people.   Long ago we had sound money" – countries that adopt sound money – businesses can have confidence that the dollar will have about the same value it has now - get faster growth right away, incl Hong Kong and Brazil.  Process matters; the Constitution matters: it created rule of law and private property as enduring principles for America. Now, we’re under the shadow of a govt that overreaches; Founding Fathers couldn’t have imagined the Fed, which buys govt debt.  No restraint on govt spending. We need a law that if debt-to-GDP-ratio is over 50%, must be reined in. We’re not at 70%, headed to 90% - marketable debt, which the Fed sells to the public, but not that held by Social Security trust fund! Greater than the $15Trillion we produce. Debt must not grow faster than the economy, itself. Unsurvivable.   Central banks grow ever more powerful, not intended when they started 100 years ago.  In Europe, ECB required to have one goal: price stability.   Canadian looney has held its value better than the US dollar has.  Sound money will attract capital from all over the world, and unleash it.

Tuesday 1035P (735P Pacific Time):  Vernon Smith, economics Nobelist; in re: economics of Thailand, Finland, Iceland: when the flow of capital investment began to decline, the currency depreciated – which was a boon to their export industry, Iceland, with no fiscal stimulus, is growing at 6% PA, via an export boom.  Austerity: if you tighten up and quit floating so much debt, currency depreciates which repairs balance sheets.  It’s a market reacting by correcting the overvalued currency.  AS: Counterintuitive things in your paper: housing is not a large part of GDP – purchases of new single- and multifamily houses; also, housing purchases matter a lot even though they’re a small portion. Also, monetary policy is sometimes no use in bringing recovery. When is loosening no use?  It works if most of the decision-making units are in a positive equity position – don’t owe more than they’re worth. When large numbers of entities have a debt load exceeding he value of heir assets, they tighten up.  Four years of very low interest rates and only now is the housing market starting to improve.  Fiscal policy doesn’t work for the same reason.  There's been a lot of lowering of interest rate on mortgages, but you still owe the same amt; If you get a good job offer elsewhere & have to sell, you’re still underwater.  Need to clean out the huge inventory.  Summary: no growth till the housing crater is filled.

Tuesday 1050P (750P Pacific Time):  Brendan Miniter, Amity Shlaes, in re:  . . . carve a hole in the center of our civil society.  When a banker or businessman acts badly, it erodes trust. A second group is working to carve a hole: in Washington, push policies in the name of helping people and the economy; but ultimately, these policies damage poor people. AS: "This book is about opportunity that will help us get past the resentment."  

"From such crooked wood of which Man is made; nothing straight can be fashioned" – Kant 1785.

Regulators are captured by those they regulate; e.g., the SEC.  Wall Street repeatedly after crashes tends to innovate around regs. What we need to see in Washington is for it to stop assaulting the free economy.

Tuesday 1105P (805P Pacific Time):  Landon Thomas, NY, in re: the troubles with Greece get worse. Germany vs the bond vigilantes.  Greek codes now do not have the €3.1 billion owed no 20 August.

Tuesday 1120P (820P Pacific Time): Eric Trager, Washington Institute, in re: Pyramidicide - is it a genuine threat in Egypt? Who's the new Egyptian Prime Minister,  and what next for Egypt?

Tuesday 1135P (835P Pacific Time):  Bob Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: For several days this month, Greenland's surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations. Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland experienced some degree of melting, according to measurements from three independent satellites. Sally Ride has passed away.  Russian test of a new docking system had to be aborted last night. The new Discovery Channel Telescope has seen first light, producing amazing images. Water on the Moon? Maybe not so much. There's a big fight going on between the scientists of different instruments on LRO over how much water might be hidden at the poles.

Tuesday 1150P (850P Pacific Time): Bill McGurn, WSJ, in re: the Penn State verdict by NCAA: what's wrong and what will not happen, and why does the NCAA sit in judgment of Division 1 football?

 

Tuesday/Wed 1205A (905 Pacific Time): Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You A Better Friend to Your Pet by John Bradshaw, 1 of 2

Tuesday/Wed  1220A (920 Pacific Time): Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You A Better Friend to Your Pet by John Bradshaw, 2 of 2

William Howard Taft on campaign train at Redfield

Tuesday/Wed  1235A (935P Pacific Time): Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover, in re:  Russia sticks very close to Damascus, as does Teheran; neither is wed to Assad, but both consider the alternative to be worse.  The Obama Administration has no plan, is waiting for the locals to do something and then follow along.  VDH: After Assad, it'll be a bloodbath among the many groups.

"Romney tells Larry Kudlow that Obama has been too soft on Assad. 'I think from the very beginning we misread the setting in Syria,' he said."

"Barack Obama, both substantively and symbolically, ran in 2008 as a much-needed healer. He was to bring the nation together as never before — a vow taken to heart by millions of voters of all backgrounds who ensured Obama’s 2008 victory. His biracial background and his uncanny ability to navigate through both Harvard Law School and the politics of Chicago community organizing seemed to make him ideally suited to usher in a postracial era — as was acknowledged, albeit quite crudely and insensitively, by both Harry Reid and Joe Biden in the 2008 campaign."

Tuesday/Wed  1250A  (950P Pacific Time): Exeunt. Krystnell Storr, Science magazine, in re: Why do California ground squirrels wag their tails?

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Music (using Eastern broadcast times)

9-hour:   The Grey; Dark Shadows

10-hour:  Dark Shadows; Anonymous; Brake

11-hour:  Brake; Star Trek 2

midnight hour:   The Eagle; Star Trek

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