Weekend edition: Laffer and Moore on state taxes; Forbes on Romney; Spitznagel on the Fed.

From The WSJ, Art Laffer and Stephen Moore argue states without income taxes are economically healthier.

At Forbes, Steve Forbes urges Mitt Romney to defend free markets vigorously.

In The WSJ, Mark Spitznagel explains how the Fed enriches the top 1%.

On The Kudlow Report, David Malpass analyzes the slow recovery:



At Forbes, Peter Ferrara analyzes progressive economic fallacies.

In The WSJ, Stephen Moore reports a Florida Tea Party dust up.

From The Manhattan Institute, Diana Furchtgott-Roth explains that raising investment taxes will result in less investment and push capital overseas.

At NRO, Larry Kudlow highlights the slow 2.5% growth rate.

The NY Sun applauds the Shadow Open Market Committee.

At The Mises Institute, Frank Shostak doubts that Ben Bernanke saved the economy from another depression.

From The Peterson Institute, C. Fred Bergsten argues for a lower dollar, tax increases (though not on businesses or incomes), and trade barriers on China unless it raises the yuan. Around 1:06, he suggests President Nixon’s 1971 import surcharge to “rebalance” world exchange rates was a success:



The Examiner reports US Rep. Eric Cantor (VA) citing supply-side economics in support of his small business tax cut bill.

At The American, Steve Hayward doubts the instability of the oil-to-gold ratio.

Wednesday update: Swanson profiles Cochrane; Benko recounts fiat money's political disorders; Laffer talks inflation.

From Forbes, Bret Swanson surveys the compelling opinions of University of Chicago economist John Cochrane.

AT TGSN, Ralph Benko recounts the dollar standard’s three political disorders (here, here and here).

On The Kudlow Report, Art Laffer discusses the producer price index’s surge:



At RCM, John Tamny advises Japan to avoid bad economics as it strives to recover.

In The Journal, James Grant reviews Douglas Irwin’s book on Smoot-Hawley.

From Bloomberg, Caroline Baum notes Bastiat’s counter to Keynesian ideas about government projects creating prosperity.

From Mises.org, David Stockman unleashes on the 2008 bailout and the dollar standard:

Viewed more broadly, the carnage on Wall Street in September 2008 was the inevitable crash of a 40-year financial bubble spawned by the Fed after Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971. As time passed, the Fed's market-rigging and money-printing actions had become increasingly destructive — leaving the banking system ever more unstable and populated with a growing bevy of Too Big to Fail institutions.

The 1984 rescue of Continental Illinois; the 1994 Mexican peso crisis bailouts; the Fed's 1998 life-support operation for LTCM — were all just steps along the way to the fall of 2008.

Then, faced with the collapse of their own handiwork, Washington panicked and joined the Fed in unleashing an indiscriminate bailout capitalism that has now thoroughly corrupted the halls of government, even as it has become a debilitating blight on the free market.

In The WSJ, Newt Gingrich and Peter Ferrara advocate making the Bush tax rates permanent.

At The Journal, Stephen Moore reports congressional conservatives are unsatisfied with the pace of spending cuts.

On the Peter Peterson funded Fiscal Times, James C. Cooper cites weak dollar advocate Fred Bergsten (of the Peterson Institute for International Economics) calling for dollar depreciation to boost exports. The irony is, the biggest barrier to US exports is the dollar standard Bergsten helped create in the 1970s.

At Mises.org, Frank Shostak argues economic growth doesn’t cause inflation.

Tuesday summary.

On NRO, Larry Kudlow explains that continued volatility between the dollar and euro is damaging the world economy.

At Forbes, Brian Domitrovic recounts how Sen. George Mitchell derailed George H.W. Bush’s drive for a capital gains tax cut in favor of higher taxes, dooming Bush’s presidency.

On The Kudlow Report, Heritage’s Curtis Dubay debates tax rates:




In The WSJ, Seth Lipsky reviews Nixon Fed chairman Arthur Burns’ diary.

At Alhambra Investments, Joseph Calhoun expresses cautious optimism on the economy.

Also on Kudlow, Brian Wesbury discusses the stock market’s weakness:




In Forbes, Wesbury and Robert Stein see the economy improving.

On NRO, Reihan Salam explains the negative budget impact of raising upper income tax rates.

NRO’s editors cite Art Laffer in opposing Sen. McCaskill’s (MO) millionaire tax rate increase.

The economic facts are a good deal more complicated. As the always-sensible Reihan Salam reports in the current edition of National Review, economists expect that raising taxes at the top end would reduce economic growth significantly. Democrats will call that a Republican talking point, but it is consistent with the findings of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, currently under the management of Douglas Elmendorf, a Democratic appointee. The CBO numbers suggest that a partial preservation of the Bush tax rates — meaning a compromise that raises taxes on “the rich,” in this instance defined as those earning $250,000 or more — would reduce real GNP by 1.2 percent, as lower revenue necessitates more government borrowing, slowing down long-term economic growth. But an across-the-board extension would reduce real GNP by only 0.6 percent, cutting the economic losses in half. Another way of saying that is that the growth effects of extending the tax cuts at the affluent end of the scale would make up half of the forgone real GNP associated with the tax cuts. That isn’t Arthur Laffer’s analysis, it’s the Democratic-led CBO’s.

From the Mises Institute, Frank Shostak rebuts Nouriel Roubini on the gold standard. (Hat tip: Ralph Benko.)

At Capital Gains and Games, Bruce Bartlett continues to drift from classical economics by endorsing floating currencies.