A Strong Case against Health Care "Reform"

By Gerard Lameiro

It Means Higher Taxes and Additional New Taxes. Yes, a new entitlement program for all Americans will cost lots of money. Higher taxes and totally new taxes will be needed. Already proposed tax increases include the extension of a 2.9% Medicare payroll tax to interest, dividends, capital gains, annuities, royalties, and rents for some tax payers. An additional 0.9% payroll tax has also been proposed. Forcing every American to purchase health care insurance (possibly at a higher cost) is also an implicit tax.

It Means Fewer Jobs. Yes, taxes and jobs are closely correlated. With higher taxes pulling dollars out of the private sector to pay for health care, comes declining investment dollars for new businesses and new jobs. Government spending for health care has a much lower economic multiplier than private sector dollars spent for health care. Overall new job creation will be lower under government-controlled health care. [more...]

Dallas Fed Chief Calls for Breakup of 'Too Big to Fail' Banks

By Tim Connolly

Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher is calling for the breakup of banks too big to fail; and at Winning Strategies, we believe this is an idea whose time has come.

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher traveled to New York to trumpet a message he's told Texas audiences before: Banks that are too big to fail are too big to exist in the first place. Speaking Wednesday at the Council on Foreign Relations, Fisher said big, systemically important banks should be dismantled before regulators have to deal with another crisis like the one that nearly brought down Wall Street and the rest of the U.S. financial system in late 2008. "The dangers posed by too-big-to-fail banks are too great," he said. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and others have said Congress should pass a law giving regulators "resolution authority" to close down failing financial companies. But Fisher, acknowledging that his views might be "slightly radical," called for an international agreement to break giant banks into more manageable pieces. [more…]