Investment-Not Consumption Spending Needed

The ups and downs of the business cycle are obviously driven not by consumption spending, but by investment spending.  In the second quarter of 2010, real personal consumption was $9,270 billion, or slightly above its previous peak, at an all-time high. If stimulating consumption spending were the key to an economic revival, we would have achieved one already.  The vulgar Keynesian focus on consumption unfortunately tempts politicians to approve “stimulus” measures aimed at pumping up this part of total spending.  In sum, our crying need at present is for a robust revival of private long-term investment. Consumption-oriented government “stimulus” programs, at best, only ensure a protracted period of economic stagnation. Read More Here.

Funding oil exploration in Mexico for Mexico, but implementing moratoriums in the US?!?!?  The U.S. Export-Import Bank, an independent federal agency, loaned more than $1 billion to the Mexican state oil company PEMEX in 2009 to support the company’s oil drilling in the southern Gulf of Mexico. The bank has another $1 billion in loans in the pipeline for 2010, unless Congress objects. PEMEX was the Export-Import Bank’s largest borrower in 2009 and has borrowed $8.3 billion from the U.S. federal government since 1998.  Read More Here.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) says that as of Sunday, Sept. 5, it had caught-and-released 506,232 illegal aliens who are now fugitives.  Read More Here.  Letting illegal immigrants go free? Hard to believe but that could be the new federal mandate if a proposed ICE policy change is approved.  Here's the idea: If authorities pull someone over for a traffic stop and discover they are in the country illegally, authorities would be forced to let the illegal immigrant go without calling federal agents unless the individual is a convicted felon.  Read More Here.