GlobalTrekker

Obama's Trade Battle Explained

This is indeed a mistake of the left. But there could be a more reasoned discussion on all these economic issues if the right would not so blindly and violently attack every necessary non-conservative idea. At this point, health care reform is desperately needed by us small business owners to stay afloat. The right has no ideas and offers zero cooperation with policy exploration. Why should Obama discuss anything with them? Their record for dialogue is Joe Wilson, and to them post-partisanship is anathema. All the right suggests is caps on doctors' malpractice claims. The left-ish CA legislature already passed that. Seeking Alpha readers, who are overwhelmingly conservative, should get their representatives to move past this mindless, extreme partisanship. When there's some cooperation from the right, I am certain Obama will listen and guide a far more moderate trade policy.

State and Local Governments Increase Jobs: Even the Experts Are Shocked

Michale Clark is not just correct, he's far more objective than most of you seemingly right-wing bloggers. I bet everyone of you who keep blathering on about the evils of government workers and the sanctity of the private sector voted for GWB who got us into this mess in the first place. Bush presided over the biggest expansion of government in the modern era and left as his legacy to an Obama or a McCain a stratospheric deficit hidden in war appropriations and special "one-time" funding.

I have worked in the private sector all my life (trained as an engineer; you know, that profession that actually does something but has little prestige in your utopian private sector), and there's no magic or purity in it. Just like government, everyone seeks his personal gain. I've seen entrepreneurs who routinely abuse the system; I've seen realtors of every stripe who were all pure odium; I've seen private power company workers whose only fear in the world was getting caught polluting or fudging the law; I've seen bankers who believe that capitalism means no regulation of anything they do and the only controls should be SROs (i.e., the foxes guarding the hen-house). As to the last, any of you ever try to make a complaint about being cheated on a trade? Try filing a complaint with FINRA, a non-governmental "regulator" run by the brokerage firms. Fees *start* at $50 to make a claim and go up with the size of your complaint.

Anyway, the underlying point of this article is weak because the author correctly points out that employment increased until August of last year. The government that you rail against so was supposed to divine a year before the private sector that the country had entered into recession (based, magically, on analyzing and re-analyzing past economic data !!) and to have proactively cut employment, an action that would have cratered consumer purchasing and probably would have worsened the recession. Actually, hearing that government employment peaked last August, a year ago I find encouraging and a good and balanced response to the downturn.

Lastly, you think that the government getting more into healthcare is terrible. Brother, you have not run a business. My health insurance costs for my employees have gone up often TEN TIMES the cost of inflation, and 30%+ of those costs in my state are private insurers' overhead. For all the abuse the government takes, some of it deserved to be sure, their overhead is around 1%-2%. I'll take the cost of Medicare over HealthNet or BlueCross any minute of any hour of any day. So would you if you had to actually sit down and write the checks from your own bank account as do I.

China Growth Story: Fact or Fiction?

Green "shots"? Are we talking Tiananmen Square or isn't it green 'shoots'?