Thursday round up: Ryan on tax competitiveness; Baum on inflation; Moore on the Buffett Rule.

The NY Post excerpts US Rep. Paul Ryan’s (WI) speech on tax competitiveness to the GW Bush Institute.

In The WSJ, Dan Henninger reports the Left’s attack on Ryan’s budget.

On The Kudlow Report, Steve Forbes discusses the economy:



At Bloomberg, Caroline Baum opposes calls for higher inflation.

From The Council on Foreign Relations, Benn Steil critiques the Volcker Rule.

Reuters reports on China economic and currency liberalization initiatives.

On C-SPAN, Stephen Moore discusses plans to raise tax rates:



From Heritage, John Stossel discusses media opposition to free market ideas.

Monday round up: Forbes, Ferrara and Moore review the President's jobs and tax plan; Benko remembers the German Miracle; Volcker warns against inflation.

At CBS News, Steve Forbes critiques the President’s call for higher taxes.

From Forbes, Peter Ferrara proposes an alternative to the Obama jobs plan.

In The WSJ, Stephen Moore suggests the President lacks credibility on the economy.

On The Kudlow Report, Moore debates the Obama/Buffett tax hike proposal:



In The NY Times, former Fed chairman and Obama economic advisor Paul Volcker warns against purposeful creation of inflation.

At Forbes, Nathan Lewis explains how to run a gold standard.

On TGSN, Ralph Benko recounts Ludwig Erhard’s role in the German post-war economic miracle.

From Mercatus, Lawrence White of George Mason supports the Free Competition in Currency Act of 2011.

At Forbes, Rich Miniter suggests Hugo Chavez seized his nation's gold supply in anticipation of adverse court rulings.

At New World Economics, Nathan Lewis examines the balance of payments under gold-linked currency.

In Forbes, John Tamny argues for liberalized immigration laws.

On Kudlow, Larry challenges Scott Paul of the Alliance for American Manufacturing on China trade:

 

At RCM, Larry Kudlow chides NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg for warning of riots if the Obama jobs package isn’t passed.

From Bloomberg, conservative Keynesian John B. Taylor argues for ending the Fed’s dual mandate.

At ritholtz.com, Hale Stewart claims supply-side solutions won’t help the current economy.

Wednesday update: Hanke on the fed funds rate; Ranson on tax rate stability; Woodhill on growth.

From Cato, Steve Hanke makes the crucial point that the near-zero percent federal funds rate has created a credit crunch.

On Forbes, David Ranson argues federal revenues are maximized by moderate and stable tax rates.

At Forbes, Louis Woodhill stresses fast growth to get unemployment down.

On The Kudlow Report, Rep. Ron Paul (TX), Wayne Angell, and others debate Fed Chairman Bernanke’s speech:




Newt Gingrich’s website features today's speech on Federal Reserve reform.

From First Trust, Brian Wesbury sees inflation signs.

At TGSN, Ralph Benko recounts the story of Scottsman John Law’s disastrous experiment with paper money.

In UK’s IB Times, Gabriel Mueller defends the gold standard.

At Bloomberg, Jim Grant offers a terrific critique of the floating dollar system and the Federal Reserve:




In The WSJ, Stephen Moore reports freshman Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) is a top VP contender.

On International Liberty, Dan Mitchell notes that Herbert Hoover was no budget cutter.

From Bloomberg, conservative Keynesian John Taylor highlights Paul Volcker’s policy of floating the fed funds rate while controlling the money supply.

Tuesday update: Domitrovic on stagflation; Tamny on easy money; Kudlow discusses purposeful inflation.

From Forbes, Brian Domitrovic recommends supply-side measures to counter the current stagflation.

At RCM, John Tamny rebuts the claim that Wall Street loves easy money.

On The Kudlow Report, WSJ columnist Brett Arends proposes raising CPI to 5% to devalue the debt and bolster the economy:




The Atlantic reports Newt Gingrich will give a speech Wednesday on the dollar and the Fed.

At NRO, Larry Kudlow cheers the Supreme Court’s decision on Walmart.

From Bloomberg, Amity Schlaes suggests Paul Volcker’s sky-high interest rates are what we need now.

On Fox News, Steve Forbes argues the weak dollar is behind the weak economy:




In The NYT, Bruce Bartlett expands his argument that taxes are low.

On Kudlow, James Pethokoukis discusses the slow economy and Bruce Bartlett’s tax analysis:




On NRO, Kevin Williamson continues to respond to critics of his growth agnosticism.

In The WSJ, Keynesian Alan Blinder argues spending cuts will hurt the economy.

On MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Bruce Bartlett appears to refute Republican “lies” about tax cuts, but then confirms some parts of their claims:




At Bloomberg, UVA’s Joseph Thorndyke dredges up arguments that the Reagan Boom starting in 1982 was due to Fed loosening and deficit spending.

Tuesday round up: Steil and Hinds on the dollar; Domitrovic on the IMF; McKinnon sees stagflation.

From The Financial Times, Benn Steil and Manuel Hinds explain that the dollar’s reserve status is bad for the world and for the U.S.

At Forbes, Brian Domitrovic suggests the IMF has little purpose without fixed exchange rates.

In The WSJ, Stanford’s Ronald McKinnon sees stagflation in the economy.

Not having an exchange-rate constraint, the Fed can conduct a more independent monetary policy than other central banks can. How it chooses to exercise this independence is crucial to the stability of the international monetary system as a whole. For more than two years, the Fed has chosen to keep short-term interest rates on dollar assets close to zero and—over the past year—applied downward pressure on long rates through the so-called quantitative easing measures to increase purchases of Treasury bonds. The result has been a flood of hot money (i.e., volatile financial flows that are subject to reversals) from the New York financial markets into emerging markets on the dollar's periphery—particularly in Asia and Latin America, where natural rates of interest are much higher.

Wanting to avoid sharp appreciations of their currencies and losses in international competitiveness, many Asian and Latin American central banks intervened to buy dollars with domestic base monies and lost monetary control. This caused a surge in consumer price index (CPI) inflation of more than 5% in major emerging markets such as China, Brazil and Indonesia, with the dollar prices of primary commodities rising more than 40% world-wide over the past year. So the proximate cause of the rise in U.S. prices is inflation in emerging markets, but its true origin is in Washington.

In India’s Free Press Journal, S.S. Tarapore discusses the gold standard and that nation’s economy.

In The Washington Times, Richard Rahn reports on a destructive banking regulation that would require U.S. banks to report the names of foreign account holders to their home governments.

From Alhambra Investments, Joe Calhoun suggests Fed Chairman Bernanke has turned the U.S. into a nation of speculators – again.

At CNBC, supply-side foe Peter Peterson talks about the need for higher taxes to fight the debt, but doesn’t mention growth:

Bloomberg notes Grover Norquist’s clout in opposing tax increases as part of a budget deal.

The Washington Post reports Paul Volcker saying that we need tax reforms that raise more than 19 percent of GDP.

Cato’s Steve Hanke challenges Keynesian claims about deficits and growth.

The Washington Post explains how Chinese manufacturers evade U.S. tariffs.

On Forbes, Ralph Benko sees politics behind a recent IRS rules change to tax donations to 501(c)(4) organizations.

Chris Powell of GATA comments on our WSJ article on Mundell.

At Asia Times, David Goldman disagrees with some elements of Mundell’s analysis.

The National Foundation For American Policy reports that children of immigrants drive U.S. achievements in science and math.

In The NYT, Bruce Bartlett critiques the Fair Tax.

Friday items.

At The Gold Standard Now, Ralph Benko examines the Triffin Dilemma and how a gold standard would solve it.

CNN reports the IMF's call for a dollar alternative. (Hat tip: Dan Clifton, Strategas Research Partners.)

Gulf News suggests Robert Mundell supports moving away from the dollar as reserve currency.

On The Kudlow Report, Stephen Moore discusses the economy’s strength:



From Forbes, Bill Flax argues supply-side economics’ flaw is that it brings in too much revenue.

At RCM, Keynesian Robert Samuelson correctly concludes that President Reagan’s greatest economic achievement was defeating inflation, but gives Fed Chairman Volcker more credit than he deserves (see last night’s Domitrovic item), and downplays the impact of lower tax rates.

Youtube provides the new Atlas Shrugged movie trailer:



In Forbes, Reuven Brenner notes Social Security may alter the relationship of children and parents.

At The NYT, Paul Krugman derides U.S. Reps. Paul Ryan (WI) and Ron Paul (TX) for advocating sound money.

Monday items.

In advance of Wednesday’s congressional vote on China, Nobel Laureate and supply-side economics creator Robert Mundell says forcing the yuan significantly higher would be disastrous for China and the U.S.

In The Financial Times, Mundell student Komal Sri-Kumar argues for expanded access to Chinese markets, rather than yuan manipulation.

In pioneering work on exchange rates done during the 1960s, my Columbia University doctoral dissertation adviser, Robert Mundell, showed that if exchange rates are fixed, adjustment by the trading economies occurs in terms of changes in domestic costs and prices. The inflationary pressures evident in China validate Professor Mundell’s theories. There is, therefore, nothing “manipulative” about simply maintaining fixed exchange rates. Keep in mind that under the Bretton Woods system of exchange rates from the end of the Second World War until the early 1970s, keeping the rates fixed with respect to the dollar was a sign of good economic housekeeping!

The conservative Heritage Foundation releases its own detailed policy agenda. Sound money is not included:



At Bloomberg, Steve Forbes predicts weak growth but doubts a double dip recession.

On Forbes, John Tamny suggests emulating rather than bashing the rich.

At NRO, Kevin Williamson makes the vital distinction that production, not consumption, is the heart of economic progress.

The problem of economic policy is not getting people to consume. It is getting them to produce. You can train a monkey to consume. (In fact, he requires no training, especially once you get him coked up on the taxpayers’ dime.) Americans are extraordinarily productive people, but our economy has taken a hit because we have a couple of trillion dollars’ worth of capital locked up in dead real estate, dead securities, and the swelling sovereign debt upon which our pet Leviathan battens. If you have a trillion dollars locked up in residential real estate that still is over-valued — its inflated price being sustained by hook and by crook by the geniuses in Washington — that capital can’t be put to real productive uses. (Also, people who could otherwise buy or rent cheap real estate will be paying too much for housing, taking yet more potentially productive capital out of the markets.)

At Econ Log, Arnold Kling discusses Paul Volcker’s early-1980s tenure as Fed chairman.

The WSJ reports on policy differences among European policy makers on how to save the euro.

Also in the Journal, former GW Bush economic advisor Edward Lazear suggests limiting federal spending to inflation minus one percent will balance the budget in less than a decade.

Cato’s Dan Mitchell promotes spending cuts, not faster economic growth, as the key to balancing the budget.

Weekend items.

On the Kudlow Report, Jim Glassman analyzes the economy.

At SmartMoney, Don Luskin examines China's economy.

In The American Spectator, Quin Hillyer outlines an agenda to restore the economy.

WSJ columnist Jeff Opdyke observes that gold mirrors the dollar's value but not necessarily the inflation rate.

Steve Forbes interviews Paul Volcker on financial regulation.

In The Weekly Standard, James Pethokoukis looks at what went wrong with Recovery Summer.

The NYT reports that small investors are leaving the stock market.

At This Week, George Will and Robert Reich spar over Herbert Hoover's balanced budget record, but omit his real mistakes: the Smoot-Hawley tariff and the Revenue Act of 1932, which raised the top tax rate from 25 to 63 percent.

Liberal Washington Post columnist Dan Balz urges Republicans to follow Britain's conservatives by raising taxes.

Friday round up.

On The Kudlow Report, Stephen Moore discusses the economy:

At Canada's National Post, Tim Mak explains Art Laffer's support for a carbon tax.

In The WSJ, Robert C. Pozen suggests yuan appreciation will not raise U.S. exports.

From last December, Reuven Brenner and David Goldman argue that the best way to increase China's consumption is through a formal yuan/dollar link.

The United States should establish a fixed parity for the dollar with the currencies of its largest trading partners, starting with China. By stabilizing the dollar against the yuan and, eventually, other currencies, the United States can create a shield behind which the capital markets of developing countries can flourish and capital can continue to flow to the United States. Developed nations can protect themselves against sudden shifts in the flow of capital, but poor nations with nascent capital markets cannot. Currency stability is the first precondition for the creation of capital markets in the developing world.

The WSJ editorializes in support of Beijing's latest step towards yuan convertability.

David Goldman sees disinflation impacting stocks and bonds.

At Reuters, James Pethokoukis exposes the deficit's true size.

NRO rebuts claims that the Reagan and Obama economies are similar.

From 1998, Jude Wanniski recounts the Paul Volcker deflation of 1981-82.

The Heritage Foundation's 2010 policy guide omits sound money.

Friday update.

David P. Goldman analyzes today’s unemployment report.

The Heritage Foundation’s Brian Riedl looks at federal spending.

AEI’s John Makin says fiscal discipline must be shared across a currency union.

Recently, though, Robert Mundell explained: “I don’t see how the economic crisis in Greece would affect the euro. This is a fiscal problem, not a problem of the euro. If California has a fiscal problem, this is a problem of California, not a problem of the dollar."

Paul Krugman supports the Left’s growing pro-growth contingent, against fiscal austerity.

Steve Hanke thinks Krugman is wrong on spending.

Australia’s Clarke and Dawe offer an economic satire.

Paul Volker pens a long economic analysis at the NY Review of Books.

Regarding Volcker – especially his performance in 1981-82 -- supply-siders are generally critical, see here, here, here, here, here and here.