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Posts Tagged ‘Spain’
May 17th, 2012 at 3:41 pm
The Case for Green Jobs: America Should be More Like Bankrupt Countries
Posted by Print

At a time when Spain is in the news because it lingers on the edge of a full-blown economic meltdown, it’s instructive to remember that this is the country that’s supposed to be the model for the green jobs revolution that President Obama continually claims will help revitalize the American economy. Over at The Blaze, the American Enterprise Institute’s Kenneth Green looks at the factual case and finds it far from compelling:

Now, to the empirical evidence. When talking about our bold green energy future, President Obama held up Spain as an example of what America should be doing. Spain invested heavily in wind power and other types of renewable energy. Alas, after studying the Spanish Experience, Professor Gabriel Calzada Álvarez and colleagues at Spain’s Universidad Rey Juan Carlos found if America followed Spain’s example, for every renewable energy job that the U.S. managed to create, the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 traditional jobs on average. And they found that green jobs are costly: each green job created in Spain’s effort cost about $750,000, and only one in 10 of the new green jobs were permanent. Doing the math on that, creating even 3 million new green jobs would cost $2.25 trillion. Even in a time where the trillion is the new billion, that’s a lot of money.

Indeed it is. But the money isn’t the real issue. Any “jobs plan” that entails a net loss in jobs shouldn’t be taken seriously by anybody, let alone the President of the United States. If green jobs really are the future of the economy, then sufficient market demand will arise to compel their creation. If, as is far more likely, they are simply a progressive fantasy financed at taxpayer expense, they deserve to have their grip on the public purse shaken as abruptly as possible.

June 7th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
The European Financial Crisis Explained
Posted by Print

From the Australian Comedy duo of Clarke and Dawe. Sadly this may be more accurate and succint than anything you’ll see on network news:

May 12th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Don’t Just Stand There; Do What Bush Did!

The White House phone bill might be ticking sharply north this month because, lo and behold, it turns out there are more politicians in desperate need of President Obama’s perpetual insistence to “act boldly.”  On the heels of reports that he cajoled German Chancellor Angela Merkel into forsaking her voters and bailing out Greece comes this breathless update: Obama is twisting arms in Spain!

Spain is one of the “PIGS” countries, a group of economic basket cases including Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain.  Like the others, Spain is suffering from extreme budget deficits caused by rampant government spending to prop up unsustainable social welfare programs.  Obama called to convey some tough love:

Mr Obama’s call yesterday to Mr Zapatero added an American voice to European pressure on Spain.

Mr Zapatero has so far shied away from structural reforms opposed by trade unions but is now facing new calls from EU leaders to slash spending again and tackle his country’s economic crisis.

If it’s true that Obama is urging Spain to cut spending, then three cheers for fiscal sanity!  Unfortunately, there are no indications that approach is being seriously considered on this side of the pond.  As proof, the Obama Administration is holding out a curious example for Europeans to follow: the Bush era’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

American officials urged that Mr Sarkozy and Mrs Merkel recall the U.S. lesson of 2008-2009 when the Bush administration persuaded a reluctant Congress to approve a massive $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

While politically unpopular, the U.S. rescue plan convinced markets that authorities were serious about keeping banks afloat.

Or it convinced those who play in the markets that the American government wasn’t serious about letting the invisible hand apply the rules of risk and reward to credit default swaps.  If anything, TARP is a monument to the kind of taxpayer funded subsidy for bad behavior that should be avoided by other countries because it socializes the risk yet personalizes the reward.

If European leaders want to speed the decline in trust for economic “experts” by all means, TARP away – just don’t whine when China buys chunks of real estate for pennies on the Euro.

H/T: Daily Mail (UK)