{"id":5251,"date":"2010-05-12T13:54:41","date_gmt":"2010-05-12T17:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=5251"},"modified":"2010-05-12T14:38:41","modified_gmt":"2010-05-12T18:38:41","slug":"dont-just-stand-there-do-what-bush-did","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/5251\/dont-just-stand-there-do-what-bush-did\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Just Stand There; Do What Bush Did!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s perpetual insistence to \u201cact boldly.\u201d\u00a0 On the heels of reports that he cajoled German Chancellor Angela Merkel into forsaking her voters<\/a> and bailing out Greece comes this breathless update<\/a>: Obama is twisting arms in Spain!<\/p>\n

Spain is one of the \u201cPIGS\u201d countries, a group of economic basket cases including Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain.\u00a0 Like the others, Spain is suffering from extreme budget deficits caused by rampant government spending to prop up unsustainable social welfare programs.\u00a0 Obama called to convey some tough love:<\/p>\n

Mr Obama’s call yesterday to Mr Zapatero added an American voice to European pressure on Spain.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If it\u2019s true that Obama is urging Spain to cut spending, then three cheers for fiscal sanity!\u00a0 Unfortunately, there are no indications that approach is being seriously considered on this side of the pond.\u00a0 As proof, the Obama Administration is holding out a curious example for Europeans to follow: the Bush era\u2019s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

While politically unpopular, the U.S. rescue plan convinced markets that authorities were serious about keeping banks afloat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or it convinced those who play in the markets that the American government wasn\u2019t serious about letting the invisible hand apply the rules of risk and reward to credit default swaps.\u00a0 If anything, TARP is a monument to the kind of taxpayer funded subsidy for bad behavior that should be avoided<\/em> by other countries because it socializes the risk yet personalizes the reward.<\/p>\n

If European leaders want to speed the decline in trust for economic \u201cexperts\u201d by all means, TARP away \u2013 just don\u2019t whine when China buys chunks of real estate for pennies on the Euro.<\/p>\n

H\/T: Daily Mail (UK)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s perpetual insistence to \u201cact boldly.\u201d\u00a0 On the heels of reports that he cajoled German Chancellor Angela Merkel into forsaking her voters and bailing out Greece comes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1263,1132,143,491,786,1262,183],"class_list":["post-5251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-angela-merkel","tag-bailout","tag-barack-obama","tag-george-w-bush","tag-greece","tag-spain","tag-tarp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5251"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5263,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5251\/revisions\/5263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}