Since part of Mr. Eisman's complaint is that federal student loans and grants to students at for-profit colleges amount to, in essence, corporate welfare, the left-right consenus isn't all that shocking; you'd find similar agreement against, say, farm subsidies to big agriculture.
Opposition led by Canada killed the idea of a global bank tax -- the so-called Financial Activities Tax, or FAT, the Financial Times reports. Says the FT: "The main proponents of a global banking levy - the UK, Germany, France, the US and the International Monetary Fund - were surprised at the degree of hostility from opponents....Bank levies are still likely to be introduced in the US to pay back the taxpayer cost of the bank bail-out, in the UK and in many, if not all, European Union countries. Without global agreement, the size of the levies is likely to be smaller than otherwise to keep a reasonably level playing field."
We'll wait for the Paul Krugman column praising Canada for this one, but it may be a long wait.
For another example of the government job growth we wrote about in connection with Friday's employment statistics, check out this article from the Associated Press on $234 million in grants for AmeriCorps expansion: "In April 2009, President Barack Obama signed a law to gradually increase the size of the Clinton-era AmeriCorps to 250,000 enrollees from 75,000." It's not clear whether all those people will show up in the statistics as government workers -- some may be counted as part of the non-profit sector -- but it represents significant numbers. Just for comparison's sake, Microsoft has 53,000 U.S. employees, Google about 20,000, Apple about 36,000 worldwide, and the U.S. Marines number about 180,000.
The labor-left Campaign For America's Future is having a big conference in Washington Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Speakers include Service Employees International Union leader Andrew Stern, Senator Richard Durbin, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Senator Tom Udall, and, in a prime lunchtime session, none other than confessed class-action lawsuit felon William Lerach.
Thanks to reader-watchdog-community member-content co-creator-participant JG for sending the link.
Kevin Hassett and Alan Viard of the American Enterprise Institute have posted a detailed article arguing against the effort of some Democrats in Congress and of President Obama to raise the tax on "carried interest" of fund managers. The piece focuses on private equity rather than the other partnerships that would be affected. One highlight:
The Wall Street Journal has an editorial naming names of the companies that it says have been working for "cap and tax" legislation and shaping it -- ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Duke Energy, Honeywell, DuPont, and General Electric. I liked the suggestion in a comment on this site the other day that we should stop calling this sort of thing crony capitalism, and just call it cronyism.
Thanks to reader-participant-watchdog- community member-content co-creator E. for sending the link.
The Daily News has run an an op-ed piece I wrote about the plan to fix up the Brooklyn Bridge. FutureOfCapitalism readers, check it out. Daily News readers, welcome to FutureOfCapitalism.com. Please consider bookmarking us, subscribing to our RSS feed, or signing up for our free daily mailing list. You can also follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
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We hate to read too much into a one-day swing of the stock market, but it's hard to escape the message that the market has lost confidence in the president's spin on the employment figures or even on the economy as a whole.
President Obama, on Wednesday: "we expect to see strong job growth in Friday's report."
President Obama, this morning: "this report is a sign that our economy is getting stronger by the day."
White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Christina Romer, this morning: "Today's employment situation report shows continued signs of labor market recovery."
Today's major U.S. stock market indices: down between 3.15% (the Dow) and 3.64% (Nasdaq).
The New York Times has a fascinating yet severely flawed account of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering involved in an attempt to get Mayor Bloomberg's girlfriend, Diana Taylor, to run for U.S. Senate in New York as a Republican. It tells of Ms. Taylor meeting with "Republican political operatives," identified as "Bill Paxon, a Republican former congressman from New York" and "Susan Molinari, a Republican former congresswoman from New York" who is Mr. Paxon's wife and who began the exploration of the campaign by raising the idea "during a telephone call to Ms. Taylor." A third figure involved in the effort to recruit Ms. Taylor as a candidate is described by the Times as Mr. Paxon's "former chief of staff, Michael Hook, now a Republican political consultant."
The big flaw of the Times story -- and it's a really big flaw -- is that it identifies Mr. Paxon, Ms. Molinari, and Mr. Hook as "Republican former congressman," "Republican former Congresswoman" and "Republican political consultant," rather than as what they really are -- Washington lobbyists.
The governor of Indiana has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal: "The nation is not safe from crony capitalism. In the past year we've experienced the nationalization of the student loan industry and the passage of national health-care and financial-services regulation, each of which is rife with new opportunities for government favoritism and preferential handouts to favored corporations like Chrysler."
The founder of Black Entertainment Television, Robert Johnson, is getting into the debate on taxing "carried interest" of fund managers. He appeared on CNBC to discuss the issue ("It's a bad deal to be raising taxes now, and it's a particularly bad deal to be singling out one industry...We are a convenient target. The assumption is that private equity is a bunch of fat cats."), wrote an op-ed for The Hill about it ("Despite claims by policymakers and others that raising taxes on so-called "carried interest" will only affect a small group of wealthy fund managers, the real impact will be felt by workers and small business owners on Main Street who desperately need access to private capital to survive, prosper and grow."), and issued a statement: "In my opinion, this legislation would cause a rapid decline in minority private equity firms and possibly eliminate minority participation in this important financial sector of the American economy."
We've writtenhere about the regulatory revolving door, in which executive branch or congressional aides go to work for big banks or interest groups. Less mentioned is the revolving door out of the press corps. Mike Allen's Politico playbook today has two examples: "Teddy Davis, ABC News Deputy Political Director joins SEIU as Assistant Director of Communications, working with the SEIU team on their political campaigns and policy agenda. Last day at ABC, 6/11. First day at SEIU, 6/14." And: "Mark Johnson, Capital Bureau of The Charlotte Observer/The News & Observer, with the subject line 'Ch ch changes': 'I'm very much looking forward to going to work for Gov. Bev Perdue starting June 28 as deputy communications director. If you need to reach me, this address will work for another week.'" Governor Perdue is a Democrat.
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