Comments on: I’ve Been Warning About This

By: Larry

Larry — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:04:03 +0000

Excellent observation. If you harken back to Rev Ruling 96-8, which had to do about how pension plans were to be treated relative to conversion to a cash balance plan, you will discover that many plan sponsors relied on this revenue ruling which was NEVER finalized. This lead to nearly all of the litigation on pension plans in the early 2000′s including the landmark IBM case.

By: threecollie

threecollie — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:25:40 +0000

Stimulus checks here in our county appear to be going to paint a couple of bridges. (I hope they use real bright colors so we can get real stimulated, because that is about it.) Meanwhile I am cringing in horror at the thought of being forced to either pay for health insurance or be fined for not buying it.
We used to have insurance.
Small business=self insured.
When the economy went south along with ALL our profits, we let it go so we could eat. Guess we will have to give up eating when the health care bill passes. At least that will be good for the obesity “epidemic”.

By: Mesa Econoguy

Mesa Econoguy — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:17:14 +0000

Regime uncertainty.

The real danger here is that additional uncertainty, i.e. threatened increased government intervention beyond what we’ve seen already, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in which government effectively assumes control of the financial sector, is actively talking about same in medicine, and a variety of other areas.

The more areas into which government moves (because it sees an opportunity or is effectively forced to do so), the more private enterprise will leave those areas, productive capital will dry up or flee, etc.

Austan Goolsbee has no clue about this, Jared Bernstein is unfamiliar with this concept, and I’m damn sure Rahm Emanuel knows nothing about this (or anything else).