Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

 Mother Aetna Heaves A Sigh Connecticut’s House on Monday withdrew its tax infused budget shortly after three large companies – Aetna, General Electric and Travelers– hinted ever so gently they might move some operations out of state if lawmakers did not reconsider the Malloy-Sharkey-Looney budget. Reconsideration followed almost immediately, as legislators knees began to buckle.

The sheer complexity of the … [Dodd-Frank] bill is certainly a threat to future economic growth. But if you sift through the sections and subsections, you find much more than complexity to worry about -- Economist John B. Taylor The 2,319-paged financial reform bill of Senator Christopher Dodd and Representative Barney Frank “widens” the regulatory net, installs “better shock-absorbers,” and “provides a road-map for big firms that fail,” according to the Wall Street Journal. It is supposed to prevent future bail-outs, but it may facilitate them. Here follows a sampling of its provisions. How it will work out, even Senator Dodd says he cannot anticipate, though President Obama, a little behind on reviewing the history of business cycles, anticipates that the bill will ensure that a financial crisis will never happen again. A radio caller dubs the bill the “Frank-Dodd Fraud bill.” What’s in the Bill? The Federal Reserve retains oversight over thousands of community banks. Th...

Gerald and Natalie Sirkin, whose writings have appeared on this site before, wade into the Global Warming swamp and surface with some sound data. GLOBAL-WARMING CYCLES (11-15-06) By Gerald and Natalie Sirkin Europe is stepping up its campaign to persuade the United States to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and stop global warming. The British Government has just released a report commissioned by Parliament, the Stern Report, which finds the future cost of global warming to be very high and the cost of implementing Kyoto very low. How can any country turn down such big benefits at such low costs? One reason the U.S. is not leaping at the bargain is that the cost and benefit estimates of the Stern Report are questionable. The Stern Report estimates that the cost of cutting emissions to 60% to 80% below the 1990 levels would be about 1% of global domestic product. However, other estimates range as high as 16%. As Jerry Taylo...