Nuclear Power Practicality

It’s expensive to build a nuclear power plant, but atomic power is cheaper to produce once the plant is built. And the taxpayers do not have to constantly subsidize operations as they do alternative “green” energy sources, such as wind and solar power.

And It took a tsunami PLUS an earthquake to cause the century-rare earthquake damage that occurred in Japan. This can be easily avoided in the U.S..

Atomic waste can be used so that it is minimized. We have a vast mountain in Nevada to store what little there is. The bulk of French electric power comes from atomic sources. They store their relatively little waste in one room in a small town.

Tests prove a passenger jet at full speed could not dent the walls of an atomic installation. Only past misconceptions cause prejudice that prevails against atomic power, particularly on the political Left.

Those Who Love Alternate Energy at Any Cost

The Obama administration has been sponsoring what it calls clean, alternative energy. So it is going full steam ahead in its attempt to achieve “green” sources at any cost. Despite the fact we are in the midst of a stagnant economy when industry cannot afford added costs that subtract directly from economic growth.

Apart from the damage of the mad dash for high-cost, taxpayer-subsidized alternate energy, there are social burdens. Such as the fact the commercial windmills used for energy make lots of noise. So much noise that folks living near them find them unbearable? Any residence has to be well over a mile away.

And that thousands of birds are often killed at a time in recurring incidents.

And then you have the landscape eyesore.

Intended Regulatory Rules and Real Life

A review of the Dodd-Frank Legislation is always in order as a lesson as to why intended regulatory rules never work in real life.

Such rules give regulators unlimited powers to do what corporate experts have always found difficult to accomplish. Still, politically-oriented bureaucrat attempt to undertake the tasks anyway, despite their lack of business acumen.

A Treasury committee determination of which financial entities pose systemic risk to our economic system is impossible in the real world, where risk is hard to identify. This cannot be easily done in the political world. Determining potential systemic risk is 100% conjecture. What steps to take, and when to take them, in order to eliminate problems, is not a practical matter.

Few experts in the business world have had the foresight to make the decisions for past incidents. Rarely do bureaucrats at the Fed or Treasury have the ability or objectivity.

The Fed and the Treasury did a poor job with the past financial meltdown and bailout function up to now.

Bank Bailouts and the Dodd-Frank Folly

The bank bailout idea was a theoretical and practical failure; done by academics, in combination with Wall Street insiders with only securities trading background. Real banking acumen was missing.

They saw to it that banks acquired more clean capital and reserves, having gotten rid of some, not all of their questionable assets.

Government honchos have seen to it that banks now earn interest kept on reserves over at the Federal Reserve. Banks can borrow from the Fed at practically no cost.

That adds to bank earnings. But regulators cannot force banks to make loans to their customers. Not when customers are spooked by anti-business Obama administration tax and anti-industrial rhetoric and policy.

In fact, banks are now sitting with loads of available cash for industry and consumers but relatively little is getting out. Because they are still afraid to lend it as they do in normal times. They can make more, investing in securities.

So much for the smart guys in government with trillions of inflationary bail out money. All they had to do to bail out banks in the first place, apart from seeing that banks added to capital, was guarantee their assets.

No inflationary bailout loot required.

Athlete Income

Hiring, firing and controlling employee wages by government bureaucracy is now an American fact of life and has just recently been evidenced by the forced firing of a pharmaceutical CEO who has not been found guilty of a crime.

Yet you must also consider how government stimulus funds affected even entertainers such as sports stars. Government can be very uneven-handed and injudicious.

Athletes probably get far too much salary for what they do. Considerably more earnings than top-notch CEOs. But they are under the public’s radar. So the media, in its ignorance, let’s them get away with the notoriety executives must suffer.

Ballparks and ball clubs are subsidized by state and local taxpayers. Each time a new ballpark is built, some government body has provided long-term assistance in the financing, via cash, tax abatement or bond funding.

Federal stimulus funds backed local and state entities. So funds were made available to fund ball clubs.

Remember: Money is fungible. The payment does not have to be direct. Money can be substituted from one recipient’s pocket to the other, to hide the source of funding. It all adds up to the same total outlay.

The public complains about an executive getting more than is “fair.” What about a ball player who operates no business, and hires no one, who makes up to thirty million, and more a year? And may actually be a loser on the field?

Government Controls of Industry and State Socialism in Italy

I have noted in my reports how the present government has set wages of some employees. How they fire some employees, as the feds have done with General Motors and Chrysler. Or how bank management are controlled. Right now Boeing is being told where to build a new plane in order to give preference to its union employees.

This happens with excessive federal government politics, and it is one of the problems encountered in such forms of state socialism.

If you think I am exaggerating, look up the discussion of state socialism in an encyclopedia. Review your history of Italy under Benito Mussolini in the 1920s and 1930s. It will be an eye-opener for every American today, who worries about the government controlling or influencing industry.

How to Resolve The Enormous Debt Problem

How will we be able to ever surmount the extraordinary U.S. debt? Despite what the politicians on the left say and the Federal Reserve attempts to reassure us, there is probably only one way governments do it. Inflation. Governments inflate themselves out of the debt.

Jobs and a booming economy can produce tax revenues without increasing tax rates. But I’m talking 7% to 10% growth not 2%.

You can be sure of certain events that never happen. You cannot tax yourself out of debt. It has never been done before.