Keith Hennessey has thoughts on the Obama budget: "The President is choosing both a policy path and a campaign strategy. He is betting that having no proposal to address the looming fiscal crisis is better for his reelection prospects than having one."

And: "The President is proposing an ordinary liberal spending agenda at an extraordinary time in our fiscal history....Demographics, unsustainable benefit promises, and health care cost growth are the problems to be solved. The President instead wants to build more trains and make sure rural areas have 4G smartphone coverage."

The decision by President Obama and Congress to extend unemployment benefits has contributed to the higher unemployment rate, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco says in a new economic letter:

Economists have cited a number of possible reasons why the natural rate of unemployment may have risen in recent years. In early 2009, eligibility for unemployment benefits was extended from 26 weeks to as much as 99 weeks. Extended benefits reduce the hardship on unemployed workers and their families during this severe downturn. However, they may also reduce the incentive of the unemployed to seek and accept less desirable jobs, which in turn may raise the measured unemployment rate. Indeed, some European countries may have higher natural rates of unemployment because they offer more generous unemployment benefits than the United States....

The Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, "young gun" Paul Ryan, was on Good Morning America this morning talking about President Obama's budget.

President Obama's austerity budget includes "$861.5 million for the Smithsonian Institution, an increase of $100 million over the Smithsonian's last appropriation, in fiscal year 2010," and, for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, "an overall budget of $308 million for 2012, up from $168 million in 2010," the New York Times notices.

The Heritage Foundation notes that the Obama budget also increases federal education spending: "If the President's request is enacted, the agency's budget will have increased 57 percent in the past decade alone – after adjusting for inflation – from $49 billion in 2000 to $69.7 billion in 2008 and to $77.4 billion in 2012."

This is fiscal belt-tightening, Washington style.

Thomas Sowell:

What are called "tax cuts for the rich" have been reductions in high tax rates under four different administrations, including the Democratic administration of John F. Kennedy. In each case, going all the way back to the 1920s, the reduced tax rates have led to increased tax revenues for the government.

"The rich" have ended up paying both a higher total amount of taxes and a larger share of all taxes than they did before what were called "tax cuts for the rich." The reason is very straightforward: high tax rates that people don't actually pay do not bring the government as much revenue as lower tax rates that they do pay.

High tax rates drive investors into tax shelters like tax-exempt bonds or drive their investments out of the country altogether, costing Americans jobs. This is not rocket science-- and the data are there to prove it. But somebody has to say it.

Bob Herbert:

The manager of Vanguard's $85 billion municipal bond portfolio, Christopher Alwine, is applauding the Illinois state tax increase, according to the transcript of a recent Vanguard webcast for its clients:

Most issuers are going to have taxing ability, and that's a very powerful tool to have in your tool kit to raise the revenue to service the debt. It's not an attractive option for the politician to make; but it's an option there, and they've proven through time that they are willing to do it.

The latest example that really hasn't gotten as much positive press as it should is Illinois. Illinois certainly has challenges in their budget situation and their pensions. But they took the step raising personal income taxes about 67% to raise 6 billion additional dollars a year, and they're the type of tough decisions that we expect to be made by the issuers over this year.

From the president's budget message: "In the last century, America's economic leadership in the world went unchallenged."

It went unsurpassed, but it certainly was challenged by both the Soviet Union and Japan.

More: "our mobile networks and high-speed Internet access have not kept pace with some of our rivals, putting America's businesses and our people at a competitive disadvantage."

Yeah, such a disadvantage that Internet users around the world rely on American companies like Google, Twitter, eBay, and Facebook.

Forbes.com has a post by Warren Meyer about the effect of ObamaCare on prices:

...with a single buyer (or one government buyer and a few government regulated insurance company buyers) the feedback loop of millions of customers testing and voting on prices and features goes away. The government will be presented with prices that are the demand, or even the fantasy, of individual sellers. Do they accept these rates, or set their own? How can they know the rate is fair?

Many of those in power have convinced themselves that a group of smart enough people can figure this out, but they can't. It's simply too complex. ...

Mary O'Grady has a column from Tegucigalpa on Honduras's experiment with "free-market cities."

Last year's commentary here on Obama's $3.8 trillion budget applies pretty well also to this year's $3.7 trillion budget:

Venture capitalist Mark Suster has an interview with an AOL Time Warner veteran, Tige Savage:

AOL was as big and infallible-seeming at Facebook is today. To think about these gigantic forces (AOL and Time Warner) combining bordered on monopoly. In hindsight, the concept of this failed merger being monopolistic sounds almost ludicrous.

You could delete the "almost." The article doesn't report how much time or legal fee and consultant money was spent getting antitrust approval at the time, but it's not money that the shareholders of either company ever get back.

This is something that the Obama administration's new tech antitrust adviser, Tim Wu, does not show many signs of understanding.

Felix Salmon of Reuters has an op-ed piece in the New York Times that makes a number of faulty points. He writes:

The glory days of publicly traded companies dominating the American business landscape may be over. The number of companies listed on the major domestic exchanges peaked in 1997 at more than 7,000, and it has been falling ever since. It's now down to about 4,000 companies, and given its steep downward trend will surely continue to shrink.

The "number of companies listed" statistic doesn't necessarily show what Mr. Salmon says it does. Suppose that the number went from 4,000 to 7,000 because many of the 7,000 companies merged with each other to become even larger and more dominant, and that the current 4,000 listed companies have three times the sales and three times the market capitalization they did in 1997.

More:

Reuters and the Wall Street Journal both have coverage of Senator Schumer's press conference about the proposed merger between Deutsche Boerse and NYSE Euronext. Reuters: "Schumer told reporters he met with NYSE Euronext Chief Executive Duncan Niederauer -- who would lead the combined entity -- on Friday and again on Saturday." The Journal says Mr. Schumer, "liked the fact that Mr. Niederauer would remain CEO," but is insisting that NYSE come first in the name of the new entity.

Neither news organization asks why Mr. Schumer rather than the owners of the company should be deciding its name or who will manage it, or why a top executive would be spending his time meeting twice with the senator rather than working on closing the deal and planning for the merged company.

The non-profit online news organization the Connecticut Mirror reports: "A new report from state legislative researchers shows government salaries tend to outstrip the private sector when less training or education is required...The report found most clerical posts, including typists, clerks and secretaries, earn between $1,800 and $17,200 more per year working for the state....personal, home care and nursing aides can earn $15,000 to $19,000 more per year in government service."

John Hempton has a post up about what Carlyle is up to in Asia.