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Will Anyone Ever Defend Banks?
One of the interesting nuggets coming out of the conservative sweep in the British elections was the failure of bank-bashing by the Labour party. Labour leader Miliband, who has since resigned, was anti-bank, anti-rich, and anti-business. It failed. And while conservative leader David Cameron didn’t necessarily defend banks, he didn’t attack them either.
Now, the case for Tory economic management wasn’t bad. The London Stock Exchange has been hot as a pistol. And the British economy is growing about 2.5 to 3 percent. Not great, not awful. It was enough for a handsome Tory victory. And it may be a message to British pundits that tax-the-rich, redistributionist, bank-bashing talk is old hat. Been there. Won’t work.
But the question is, how will bank-bashing do in the U.S. election next year? It’s already coming from both sides of the aisle.
According to 
Breaking! There’s a major disaster with possible public policy implications! Scramble the hot takes! (I know I often do.)
The jobless rate is falling faster in Decatur, Illinois — an aging industrial city south of Chicago — than almost anywhere else in America. More than three percentage points in the past year. But look closer, as 
This CNNMoney list of 
Don’t expect any miracles from the economy. But don’t expect a collapse either.
Baltimore was torn to bits last night. But according to the economic philosophy introduced by Lord John Maynard Keynes and espoused by the progressive elite across the world, this is great news for the city! Broken windows, burned cars, shattered lives. It’s as if the people of Baltimore have hit the Keynesian Powerball! The people will be swimming in prosperity any day now.
Wikipedia tells me that
A number of GOP candidates are engaging in Hillary-bashing over allegations that she used her office as secretary of state to help her husband’s business dealings, prop up speech-making fees, and grease the path for foreign governments to donate massive amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation. But here’s a warning to my friends on the presidential campaign trail: Bashing Hillary is only going to make the Republican party look mean-spirited and snarky. It’s no road to the White House.
If you want to promote pro-market policies by citing the success of Reaganomics, don’t do it the wrong way. And the wrong way is suggesting that the Reagan tax cuts paid for themselves.
The Senate Finance Committee is taking up the topic of “fast track” trade authority today, which would empower President Obama to negotiate trade deals, namely the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious free-trade area that would cover most of our Asian trading partners (except China) and rival the European Union in size. Some conservatives, however, are resisting the proposal, claiming that it only further consolidates power in an already out-of-control executive. While I’ve been a staunch critic of President Obama’s executive overreach, I don’t think that argument holds up here. As I write 
