Fed's Sole mission should be maintaining value of currency

All of the Republican presidential candidates have called for getting rid of Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, but only Rep. Ron Paul has advocated abolishing the Fed. Mr. Paul wants to return to a gold standard. There are pros and cons of going back to gold, but, short of that, there are a number of constructive things that can be done.

One reason Fed policy is so confused and conflicted is that the Fed has been given multiple targets and tasks, some of which, at times, conflict with one another. The Fed is supposed to maintain not only price stability but also full employment. In addition, it is supposed to make sure the banking system is sound. The Dodd-Frank bill gave it the additional task of consumer financial protection.

To understand the problem...

There was an arresting line in a recent AP article speculating on Kerry’s VP choices: that he would need to pick a running mate with less charisma than him. That’s a very tall order.

Of those who are running for president, who has the best and worst tax plans? The worst plan is easy: President Obama's.

By way of disclosure, I was part of the small team that developed and helped market President George H. W. Bush's economic platform back in 1988. The first President Bush won, in part, because he had a clear, understandable plan - ‘Read my lips: No new taxes' - and a ‘flexible freeze' to control spending.

Unfortunately for him and the country, he abandoned the ‘flexible freeze' soon after taking office and the tax pledge two years later. His reversal played a big part in his subsequent defeat in 1992.

Mr. Obama seems not to have learned from the mistakes of the first President Bush. He has repeatedly pledged not to increase taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year and to do everything possible to increase jobs. Yet, in fact, he has already signed 21 tax increases into law.

It's easy to have a tax plan better than this.  So let's look at those of all four GOP candidates.

She’s pretending to be John Kerry’s biggest supporter, but no one is rooting for George Bush to win in November more than Hillary. She got behind the best straw candidate Bush could most easily demolish, Dizzy Howard Dean. When he imploded, she looked around and asked, “Who’s the next worst?” A no-brainer: obviously, an egomaniacal gigolo with more negatives than an Algebra student who fantasizes he could be another “JFK.”

Persistence pays off.  At last, after my bugging him for so long, Jack Abramoff has joined the TTP family of writers.  It's not just that he's been my buddy for 30 years.  It's that nobody can expose what slimy things crawl around under the rocks of Washington like him.  Now we get to see him expose that slime on a regular basis.

There was a lot of acclaim for his first column (7/04), Why Lobbyists Love John Roberts.  And was he on the money: we learned the next day after Jack's column (7/05), federalie lawyers have prepared 13,000 pages of new fascist regs for Zerocare, with Zero marshalling an army of IRS agents to enforce Zerocare punishment and fear. K Street is in heaven.

We have another announcement:  The 14-Day Free TTP Trial.  You can tell your friends they can now try out TTP for free for two weeks.  Bring them in to our TTP family!

Meanwhile, the blowback against Judas John Roberts ruling on Zerocare continues to mount - so much that it's giving the Pub Congresspussies some fire in their bellies.

President Obama has just presented his new budget, which again ignores reality. It contains another trillion-dollar deficit, which assumes a large increase in revenue resulting from a tax-rate increase on ‘the wealthy' and corporations. He knows, and so does everyone else, that Congress is not going to pass the tax increase.

Corporate taxes are paid by consumers in higher prices and by workers in lower wages - so much for the promise not to increase taxes on those making less than $250,000. Every good tax economist knows this, but the president chooses to ignore reality and demagogue the issue.

Even more disturbing is the lack of discussion about a contingency plan if his projected economic scenario does not work out - and the probabilities are that it will not work out. The reality is that the United States and most other governments, particularly the Europeans, have reached or are close to reaching the limits of their ability to tax and borrow.

This situation means there is going to have to be either massive cutbacks in government spending or very high inflation.

At a press conference in Kabul, Afghanistan on February 12, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin announced that France will be “increasing its military participation in the international security force” in the war-stricken country. A NATO army unit called Eurocorps, composed by France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, and Luxembourg, will be deployed in Afghanistan by August. “We want to do more,” Villepin declared. “We want Eurocorps to take the lead.”

This was the wire story carried by AP. What was not disclosed is the particular nature of France’s participation. While other countries will be providing soldiers for Eurocorps in Afghanistan, France will be providing intellectuals.