The New Ledger, an online journal, offers informed commentary on politics, the economy, and foreign affairs. It also presents a daily podcast on markets and policy, sponsored by BigGovernment.com.

The New Ledger
Financial Regulation, Health Care, and Could Insurers Demand the Next Bailout?
by The New LedgerIt’s time for your weekly dose of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, a podcast brought to you by the fine folks at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com, your home for conservative podcasts. In this week’s edition, we’ll talk about the fallout from a failed attempt by Senators Dodd and Corker to make new financial regulations bipartisan, the latest activity on the bond markets, and what’s next for Obamacare.
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Related Links:
TNL: Obamacare’s Two Americas
Frum: Will Health Reform Cause the Next Bailout?
The Hill: No Votes on HCR Pile Up
HCN: Democrats Consider Drastic Moves to Pass Health Care Bill
T-Shirt: Lobby the Rahm Emanuel Way
The Unemployment Numbers and America’s Jobs Problem
by The New LedgerIt’s time for your weekly dose of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, a podcast brought to you by the fine folks at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com, your home for conservative podcasts. In this week’s edition, we’ll talk about the unemployment numbers released this morning and the debate about America’s jobs problem in the context of declines in education.
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Related Links:
American Spectator: 36,000 Jobs Lost in February
Tom Friedman on Intel and Jobs
Abe Greenwald on LAX
TNL: The End of Easy Fixes
Coffee and Markets: The President’s Summit of Broken Promises
by The New LedgerIt’s time for your weekly dose of markets and politics with Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, a podcast brought to you by the fine folks at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com, your new home for conservative podcasts. In this week’s edition, we’re recording on-site from the president’s Blair House summit by the White House, and we’re talking about the bond market, the targeting of Toyota, and the future of health care reform (note: the quality on this one is a bit below our normal episodes, since we had to record remotely).
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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
TNL: The White House vs. Toyota?
Daily Caller: Summit of Broken Promises
Health Care News: Obamacare’s Last Stand
Gergen: Best Day in Years for GOP
Protein Wisdom: Full Speed off the Cliff
TNL: Paul Ryan’s Moment
The Stimulus is Like, You Know, Totally Awesome
by The New LedgerIt’s time for your weekly dose of markets and politics with Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, a podcast brought to you by the fine folks at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com, your new home for Conservative podcasts. In this week’s edition, we celebrate the anniversary of the stimulus (celebrate probably isn’t the right word), unpack the ramifications of the financial meltdown in Europe, and hash out the realities of America’s jobless future.
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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
TNL: The President Thinks You’re Stoo-pid
The Atlantic: America’s Jobless Future
Business Insider: If You Think Greece is Bad…
The American: The Straw Stimulus
TNL: The Inconvenient Truth About Spending and Job Creation
Why Obama’s Going to Have to Raise Taxes on the Middle Class
by The New LedgerIt’s time for your weekly dose of markets and politics with Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, a podcast brought to you by the fine folks at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com, your new home for Conservative podcasts. In this week’s edition, we hash out what’s happening in Greece and the global markets, President Obama’s broken promises on taxes, and what lies ahead for the big entitlement bomb.
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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
The Daily Caller: Showmanship is Not Leadership
Politico: Obama’s Bipartisan Health Summit
America’s Decline, And Where Recovery Begins
by The New Ledger“We have never had, in the history of the world, periods of sustained economic prosperity and growth accompanied by a sustained decline in population. Today, every developed nation in the world is witnessing this decline.”
It’s time for your weekly dose of markets and politics with Coffee and Markets, our podcast from The New Ledger with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.
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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
Sanger: Obama’s Permanent Deficits
TNL: Once Was America
TNL: Marriage and Children in Our New America
Hymowitz: Explosion in Single Young American Men
Spengler: America’s Decline
The Return of Bernanke and Obama’s Incomprehensible SOTU
by The New LedgerIt’s time for your weekly dose of markets and politics with Coffee and Markets, our podcast from The New Ledger with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.
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Related Links:
Yousefzadeh: A State of the Union in Contradiction
Domenech: The Speech Obama Didn’t Give
After the Massachusetts Upset, the Left Turns on Obama
by The New LedgerIn the wake of a stunning political result in Massachusetts, it’s time to assess the future Scott Brown dictates for health care, the market, the Democrats, and the country. It’s the third week of January 2010, and here’s the latest edition of Coffee and Markets, a weekly podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.
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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
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Dan McLaughlin: Seven Lessons of the Brown Bombshell
Coffee and Markets: Obama’s Big New Bank Fee
by The New LedgerFor the past year, Francis Cianfrocca and Ben Domenech sat down every weekday morning to chat about politics, economics and the shifting global marketplace. For 2010, we’ll shift to recording once a week. We hope you don’t mind, and we’ll still jump in with an emergency episode or two if breaking news demands it. Thanks for listening, and welcome to today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, a weekly podcast from The New Ledger, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.
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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
Cianfrocca: China is the World’s Most Keynesian State
Bloomberg: Obama to Announce Fee on Large Banks
TAPPER: On the fee for banks, without asking for any details,* how can you guarantee that this, that this fee, tax, levy, whatever it ends up being, is not passed on to consumers and they take another hit when it comes to Wall Street?
GIBBS: Yeah, well, look, obviously, Jake we’ll have a chance to go through the structure of this. The economic team has worked for quite some time on a structure that will ensure that what taxpayers gave to banks to ensure their safety and security, in a time of crisis, is paid back in full. And I can assure you that is one of the things the economic team has taken into account in the structure.
The Most Important Book You Can Read About the War Against Faith in Politics
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With Christmas coming up, we wanted to spend some time on books we think are worthy of giving to your friends and even, perhaps, your enemies. My personal choice for that would be The End of Secularism, written by Hunter Baker, JD, PhD, longtime contributor to the American Spectator, The City and what feels like dozens of blogs. Published by Crossway Books, The End of Secularism is an important book, one that I highly recommend — and it’s been the subject of some fascinating podcasts on faith, politics and the public square.
So in today’s special edition of The New Ledger podcast, I ask Dr. Baker questions like: “During a passage on Marxism and science, you give a nod to Whittaker Chambers’ acknowledgment that by shifting from the side of communism to the side of its opponents, he was joining the losing side. This year marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it seems clear history proved Chambers wrong, at least in the form of communism he opposed. Do you think that communism’s force lives on in the less violent but still all-encompassing secularism of today — on issues like climate change and economic socialism? And second, do you think that those who strive against secularism today are on the losing side of history?”
The End of Secularism comes highly recommended by bestselling author Andrew Klavan, who says: “This is a very well written, concise and learned primer on the secularization of the public square. It gives a fair recital of the arguments in favor of it, and a strong but sensible and moderate outline of the arguments against. It has a firm grasp of history and neither falls for the usual ‘This is a Christian country!’ rhetoric that makes its way onto television nor accepts the ’separation of church and state,’ pieties that were rendered obsolete by the state’s aggressive intrustion into what Dr. Baker calls ‘the life-world,’ i.e. our values and private lives. It’s a book you’ll be glad you read the next time you get in an argument about religion’s role in politics.” I hope you’ll consider it as a gift this Christmas.
As always, you can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Where Does Too Big to Fail Come From?
by The New LedgerMuscling through a rough cold, Francis shares his thoughts on an interesting piece on the Too Big to Fail concept in the latest issue of National Affairs on today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

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National Affairs: Too Big Not To Fail
The catastrophe that struck America’s financial system in 2008 was not inevitable. Rather than a failure of markets, it was a failure by government to understand its proper role in markets — and the product of an unwise (and unnecessary) abandonment of a sensible system of rules and boundaries that had served American finance well for six decades.
Beginning in the 1980s, and continuing over the quarter-century that followed, Washington afforded the world of big finance a terrible luxury: freedom from the fear of failure. Managers and lenders at financial companies came to understand that the larger and more complex their firms got, the more immunity from market discipline they would enjoy — since they could depend on government guarantees when necessary to protect the broader economy from their mistakes. The government thus countenanced and subsidized an untenable financial system. And it inevitably got more of what it paid for: reckless risk building up to disaster.
The errors laid bare by the financial crisis clearly call for regulatory reform. But in designing that reform, we should avoid the temptation to seek heavy-handed new approaches — and should instead look to the long-term success of the system of rules whose decay brought about the crisis.
Bernanke’s the Person of the Year, Dean Takes on Health Care, and You Have to Pay Your Mortgage
by The New LedgerBen Bernanke is Time’s person of the year, Howard Dean takes up arms against the Senate health care bill, and Megan McArdle says we all have a moral obligation to pay our mortgages, whether it makes financial sense or not. We’ll discuss all that and more on today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

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Related Links:
Heartland: Dean Opposes Health Care Bill
AmSpec: Dean Wants to Kill Bill
Bloomberg: Bernanke is Time’s Person of the Year
McArdle: New Breed of Deadbeats
Francis adds: I couldn’t agree more with McArdle, because (contrary to popular opinion) I believe deeply in traditional moral norms. But I also believe in pointing out the macro consequences of such behavior.
She’s pointing out macro consequences of a different kind with her story about Memphis. But that just made me think of Argentina and Mexico, the poster children for sovereign moral hazard. These countries (and others) have a history of stiffing global banks every few years. Do they end up like Memphis? Of course not. Bankers always come around offering more later.
The whole country won’t become like Memphis, not with Congress and the Administration pursuing a reflate-even-at-the-cost-of-moral-hazard policy, and with the Fed tacitly supporting that policy. If people who can afford to pay off mortgages on inflated property values continue to do so, then they will have shouldered the collapse of the housing bubble. McArdle implicitly believes this is a good and right outcome. I don’t disagree in the slightest, but it does mean that we’re facing years of economic underperformance.
Joe Lieberman Got His Way – So What Happens Next?
by The New LedgerIf there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past few years, it’s that we should never doubt the abilities of Joe Lieberman to get what he wants, and the willingness of Harry Reid to cave in the clutch. We’ll discuss where health care goes from here, the latest on the markets, and a disturbing trend in food prices on today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
The Hill: Lieberman and Nelson Get What They Want
New Ledger: On Lieberman, How Reality Based Are Klein and Yglesias?
Business Insider: If You Thought The Economy Was Being Inflated By The Stimulus, You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet
Bloomberg: Fastest Food Inflation Since Riots Means Milk Up 39%
Francis adds: Keep your eyes peeled on food prices, because it’s an explosive sleeper issue. For the first eight months of 2008, nobody except finance geeks was aware that we were in a financial crisis. The Lehman collapse took an ongoing situation and planted it into public consciousness.
But during those months before Lehman, commodity prices around the world were on an insane tear. Oil at $147 wasn’t the only thing affected by huge inflation. And it was starting to cause real social upheaval in places like the Philippines (which couldn’t beg borrow or steal enough rice) and West Africa (which couldn’t beg borrow or steal anything).
The acute financial crisis of late 2008 damped out the inflation, because it damped out all economic activity. But I never felt like I really understood the food-price inflation, and I don’t think anyone else did either. If it’s back, it’ll be a major story in 2010.
Obama’s Credit Solution: ‘Serious Talk’ With Bankers
by The New LedgerPresident Obama says he’s going to have a “serious talk” with bankers today to pressure them to provide more credit. Why? Well, because if you’re upside down on your house and want to take advantage of low rates, your bank is just as likely to say, “eh, no thanks, we’ll just keep making money.” We’ll discuss this and more on today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
TNL: Want to Refinance? Tough Luck Pal
Business Insider: Citi’s TARP Repayment Bilks Taxpayers
Bloomberg: Obama to Have “Serious Talk” With Bankers
NYT: Refinancing Woes Mount
Better Living Through Defaulting: Everyone’s Ditching Their Mortgage
by The New LedgerSo let’s say you’re stuck in a house that the bank says is worth half a million, but the market says it’s worth only a quarter of that. What if it turned out you could walk away from it and rent not just another house, but a bigger house, for less money? What if four million of your friends figured this was a good idea, too? We’ll discuss this and more on today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

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Related Links:
WSJ: Rethinking the American Dream
Bond Buyer Update
Dow Jones: Downgrades on Illinois Debt
Everyone Hates The Latest Jobs Idea, and They Should
by The New LedgerSo before jetting off to accept his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, President Obama went on a sales run for his jobs package idea — and he came back empty handed. Why do the left and the right both hate this idea for spending TARP funds? We’ll discuss this and more on today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

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Related Links:
LAT: Obama Jobs Plan Draws Fire from Left and Right
Politico: GOP Concerns on Jobs
FNC: Special Report on Jobs Package
Obama’s TARP Solution: See, All Fixed!
by The New LedgerPresident Obama wants to expand TARP to cover stimulus spending, handing out cash to small businesses to offset the egregious economic policies he’s adopted (and in the case of health care, plans to adopt) damaging their ability to hire anyone. We’ll discuss his Brookings Institution speech on today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
WSJ: Roadblocks in Using TARP Funds
CNN: Throwing TARP Cash at the Problem
Obama’s Remarks at Brookings
Health Care News Update: What’s Happening in the Senate?
by The New LedgerAs the Senate considers a health care bill that amounts to the largest entitlement expansion in American history, we sit down today with health care and budget policy expert James Capretta to discuss the prospects in the Senate and the wide-ranging economic ramifications of the current legislation. It’s a special edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace, brought to you by BigGovernment.com and by The Heartland Institute’s Health Care News.

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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
James Capretta’s Blog: Diagnosis
First Things: The Health Care Bill in the Senate
AEI: Opportunities Missed on Health Care
Abortion Vote Could Decide Fate of Health Care Bill
For more on this topic, see Health Care News, a publication of The Heartland Institute.
The Market, Job Numbers, and Who Could Replace Bernanke
by The New LedgerSo it’s time we asked the question: if not Ben Bernanke, who could be the next Fed chairman? And what are we going to do about job creation, since the president seems more interested in holding pointless conferences to waste time talking about job creation? Today’s the 100th episode of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
Barnes: Infatuated with the New Deal
Politico: Strange Coalition Targets Bernanke
Three Strikes Against Bernanke
Unpacking the Job Numbers, Roadblocks for Bernanke, and the Future of Mainstream Media
by The New LedgerTons of news in the market today as we unpack the surprisingly good job numbers, the Senate holds placed on Ben Bernanke’s renomination, and the massive Comcast-NBC deal and what it says about the new realities for mass media. Today’s the 99th edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
On Bernanke: Vitter, DeMint, Corker, Bunning
FTC on Media Bailout
New Realities for Mass Media
The FTC’s Shallow Dive into Journalism’s Future
The Real Reason Comcast is Buying NBC
Mainstream Media’s Broken Business Model






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