If you are the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a company that has received $50 billion in federal bailout coin, there are certain things that you realistically shouldn’t say or do.

Both from a substantive policy and an optics perspective, you should walk a pretty straight line until We the People are made whole.

Behold General Motors (GM) CEO Dan Akerson – a man who obviously doesn’t adhere to this philosophy.

As we said back in March, Akerson is a foundational part of the Washington, D.C.-Wall Street crony capitalism nexus.

Akerson is not – and never has been – a car guy.  He himself said so.  What is he?  He is a DC-connected, Wall Street hedge fund big coin guy.

Akerson’s immediately preceding gig was Managing Director and head of Global Buyout for the incredibly inside-the-Beltway-connected Carlyle Group.

This hip-joined relationship with the federal Leviathan means Akerson’s a cardboard cutout for the real CEO of Government Motors – U.S. Treasury Secretary (and yet another fellow DC-Wall Streeter) Tim Geithner.

And from all we have since seen, Akerson is one giant toe on the Huge Government, Obama Administration line.

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In this, the third Age of Bailout, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)’s $50 billion General Motors (GM) bailout (upped from $20 billion by President Barack Obama) is yet another unmitigated disaster.

But a few of the many failures:

• GM had to file for bankruptcy anyway.

• President Obama originally claimed we’d make money on our $50 billion.  Seven months later, the Administration admitted we’d lose more than $16 billion – and dishonestly claimed the loss they had said would be a profit was “less than the(y) originally expected.”

• GM last year claimed in a television ad campaign to have “repaid (their) government loan in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule.”  Which was another total lie.  They had in fact paid back only a tiny fraction thereof – and had done so so with other government TARP money.

• So fraudulent was GM’s media-buy proclamation that there has been a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint filed against them.

• As of November 16, 2010 – more than half a year after the “paid in full with interest” ad – GM had only paid back $361 million.

• GM and Chrysler has been dominating the Forbes Worst Cars of the Year list.

• With the exception of the 2011 Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the 2011 Smart For Two and the 2011 Nissan Titan, the cars on the list are all American-made. Worse than that, they all come from two manufacturers: General Motors and Chrysler. Ford managed to avoid the list completely…. (GM) offerings from Chevrolet and Cadillac crowded the picture…

• GM has some work to do before it can regain a good reputation fleet-wide. Four GM-made vehicles–the Cadillac Escalade, Chevy Tahoe Hybrid, Chevrolet Colorado, and Chevrolet Aveo/Aveo 5–are ranked as among the worst on the market today. All but the Tahoe Hybrid qualified for the Worst Cars list last year as well.

• Probably also due at least in part to these distractions, GM has had to recall their cars – again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and….

As horrendous as all of this is, it can at least perhaps be written-off as the utterly predictable, yet unintentional, ruinous outcome of government involvement in the private sector.

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Regardless of where you stand on the budget debate the most fascinating result has been the undeniable realization that President Obama has been marginalized and is now fighting for a seat at the table. I believe it is a first in my lifetime that a sitting President has been removed from any political debate not to mention one as serious as our budget. It was made clear when Boehner left the White House over the weekend and said he would work with the Congress to fashion a solution. There can be no question that Boehner’s political skills and Obama’s lack of them created this vacuum. The son of a bar tender has outperformed the Professor; it renews my confidence in our system of Government.

Cowboys know a lot about life. For instance they know that as soon as you think you know everything about horses and you can control them, you get hurt. The same is true of power and President Obama has been intoxicated with ego and power from the time he entered the White House, dictating his demands to a Democratic Party that was stunned into subservience by a victory that could not be explained. Most important is that the President believed in his own invulnerability. Only recently have the facts emerged. David Border writing for the Post in an August 9, 2010 article entitled “Senate as Civil as Ever, We’re Told” that Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mc Connell was first invited for a one on one with the President one year and seven months after Obama took office.

In recent weeks Time Magazine stated that the White House didn’t have Boehner’s phone number which was later confirmed by Stephanopoulos on ABC News that a top aid to the President didn’t know Boehner the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. These are truly amazing revelations when you think back on the relationships that Presidents have had with members of their opposing parties. Reagan with Tip O’ Neil and Rostenkowski. Clinton with Newt Gingrich. While these Presidents fought with leaders of the opposite party, sometimes publically, they respected and knew one another well.

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By now, you likely have heard of Dr. David Ludwig, Harvard professor and child obesity specialist at Children’s Hospital in Boston. He and attorney and research partner Lindsey Murtagh authored a piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggesting that severely obese children might require the government to remove them from custody of their parents.

If this doesn’t convince you that liberals support a nanny state, nothing will.

As a child psychologist with over 20 years of experience, I can say with supreme confidence that taking a child from his or her parents is almost always traumatic. Sometimes it is justified, of course; in cases of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, the child is sometimes far better off living without the offending parent. Similarly, when a parent evidences a profound inability to provide the basic needs of a child, the child might be safer with a relative or, rarely, with a foster parent. But removing a child from the home because the parent doesn’t adequately assist the child in losing weight? This is nothing short of ridiculous.

Such a proposal includes several dangerous messages. First, the messages to children: your parents are so screwed up that they can’t take care of you. They aren’t good enough for you and you aren’t good enough to stay with them. Second, the messages to parents:  ultimately, you do not control the destiny of your child; the government does.  Also, the state has the right to take your children away if you don’t get their weight (or other variables) under control. Third, the message to departments of child protective services: now you have more power to control parents and children. Finally, the message to taxpayers: you will now bear the burden of paying for a state-run juvenile weight-loss program.

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From the same Department of Justice that has given us operation Fast and Furious, we now have a new twist on our (disappearing) right to petition the government for redress of our grievances.  In classic “heads I win, tails you lose” style, the Justice Department is now arguing that if you protect your medical privacy by refusing to comply with the Individual Mandate, you can’t sue them.  Oh, you’ll still have to pay a fine, though.

As some of you may know, our case here in Mississippi is unique in that we are using the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade (and other medical privacy rights cases) to argue that Obamacare is unconstitutional.  Part of our reasoning is that the Individual Mandate forces individuals to contract with health insurance companies, which then in turn gather reams of highly confidential medical information from us without our consent.  We make the point that even if health insurers suddenly stopped gathering our past medical history when we apply for coverage (and there is nothing to indicate that this practice will stop), the fact remains that health insurers absolutely must gather treatment information for billing purposes.

For example, if you are concerned that you might have contracted a disease and go in for a blood test, that information will be sent to your insurer for billing purposes.  Even if you try to pay for that separately, your insurer will still gather that information.  Given that inadvertent disclosures of such information is a fairly common occurrence, you can count on innumerable instances of harmful public disclosures of private medical information to result.

The feds, of course, see it differently.  Still, I did not expect this argument:

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Imagine being able to choose how we spend our healthcare dollars, without a health insurance company, or the government, telling us how to do it. We choose to buy an over-the-counter medication that performs just as well as a high-priced drug that requires a prescription. We save money. We pay only for what our family needs, and we don’t shift the costs to others.

Actually, we don’t have to imagine it. Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s), tax-exempt trust accounts that are offered by some employers as an alternative to traditional health insurance plans, have been around since 2004. With an HSA option, employees are generally offered a lower insurance premium if they agree to place money into a special account from which they pay for most of their lower-cost, basic healthcare. A “catastrophic,” high deductible insurance plan is in place for larger medical bills due to hospitalizations, surgeries, or other higher cost specialized treatments.

Last week, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) announced that more than 11.4 million Americans are now covered by HSA-eligible insurance plans, a more than 14% increase since last year. Increasingly popular among small businesses and families, HSA’s put patients in control of their basic health care dollars and- surprise- when people directly control their health care costs, they choose more wisely and costs come down.

Great idea, isn’t it? More personal control of healthcare dollars, more personal control of basic healthcare decision-making, lower healthcare costs because we are shopping around for the best value. So, of course, Obamacare intends to gradually eradicate HSA’s.

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Our current administration and swarms of socialists for decades before it have repeated the dogma that the rich get rich on the backs of the poor.  This fallacy deserves no place in genuine political discourse.  In fact, the opposite will be true given the policies that come from such a premise – all of society will get poor on the backs of the ‘rich’ chained by government.

First off, if a rich person can only get rich by bilking the poor person, this implies that there is a finite amount of wealth in an economy.  This defies all logic.  There is an infinite amount of wealth because there are an infinite amount of ideas that can be converted into goods and services, the competition of which increases quality, decreases cost and spreads the wealth to all of society.  The imagination of the entrepreneur is boundless, and the transformation of ideas to tangible wealth can only be constrained by taxes, regulations and the economic uncertainty generated by a political class responding to constituents who seek to use the law to benefit themselves at the cost of others.

Taking a step back, when those like Barack Obama speak about the “rich,” they never define who these heartless souls are.  The term ‘rich’ as regards tax policy is a misnomer.  It is the highest earners that are the rich; it is the highest earners in society that provide the disproportionate amount of wealth that the government forcibly takes and redistributes.  This is not a static class.  People can move from high income brackets to low income brackets at any time in a free economy.  Only in a socialist economy do the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor at the whim of the political class, whereas in the free economy it is determined by how much society values one’s services.

Which brings us to the fact that when Obama and his comrades speak of the ‘rich’ in derisive terms, there is never any discussion of how the high earner becomes the high earner.

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The former Governor of Massachusetts and semi-declared candidate for President, Mr. Romney, has the Massachusetts health care “solution” called now “RomneyCare” (a plan upon which the widely unpopular “Obama Care” plan is based) to discuss with the American people. For some on the Left this provides Mr. Romney with a strong gravitas, but how will RomneyCare play on the Right?

“RomneyCare’s” association with “ObamaCare” and the rampant unrealistic, excessive nanny-statism (and legislative strong-arm process that passed the national plan) combines to create a difficult marketing/public relations challenge for Mr. Romney in the upcoming election should he decide to run.

Michael Graham in the Boston Herald of April 12, 2011 writes,

As a health care plan, Romney care is an unmitigated fiasco. It has caused costs to skyrocket, insurance premiums to soar and nonprofit providers like Blue Cross to suffer hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

Illustrative of the deep rift across the country about RomneyCare/ObamaCare and too many other contentious issues to discuss, Graham cites a new Suffolk University poll showing dissatisfaction with the Massachusetts Romney Plan.

But after five years of actually experiencing this new universe, even the Kennedy Democrats have had enough. A new Suffolk University poll showed that nearly half of Massachusetts voters say the law isn’t helping, while just 38 percent say it is. As Michael Cannon at the Cato Institute pointed out, Romney care is almost as unpopular here as Obama- care is across America.

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Walking into Miss B’s Café in Louisburg, KS you join farmers, cattlemen and cowboys. It is a throwback to a time when the local community would gather around a table and talk to one another about local, state and national issues over a hot cup of coffee and a sumptuous breakfast. On the Saturday after the budget compromise I ventured back to that institution to listen to the heart of America expecting to hear appreciation for the Congress and Administration avoiding a government shut down. Instead I learned of the depth of discontent with a political system that seems to be out of touch with its people.

I, for one was impressed with the compromise for several reasons. First, spending was cut by the largest amount in the history of this Country. Granted, it is only a cut of the increase in spending of this Administration and the previous Congress but it is significant that it came when the Administration and remnants of that Congress pledged that there would not only be no cuts, but another increase in spending. Moreover this was punctuated when the President and Majority Leader of the Senate then tried to take credit for the compromise. Not only did that effort fail with the majority of Americans but it angered the stalwarts of their party who have accused them of being spineless.

Secondly, it is apparent that Congressman Boehner was the engineer of the compromise and it was his leadership that made the result possible. For most of us, our introduction to the Congressman was his tearful statements when the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives. I was hopeful that he was as sincere as his delivery, but admittedly too jaded to believe it. His success is not only a testament that those deep feels he gushed were sincere but that he is now a proven leader.

Finally, I was impressed with Boehner’s generosity toward the Tea Party, giving them credit for being a big part of the solution. It is unusual for any politician to give others credit, especially those outside of their loyal party. And regardless of what the press says, the Tea Party is outside the Republican and Democratic Party. Instead as was the case with the President and Senate Majority Leader, they wanted to hijack the success of others.

So why all the dissatisfaction?

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It is no secret that, since the passage of the healthcare law, the states have been desperately scrambling to figure out how to pay for the millions of people who are to be added to the Medicaid rolls if the law survives.

On February 3rd, Secretary of the Department of Health and  Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, wrote to the governors of the states:

“In light of difficult circumstances, we are stepping up our efforts to help you identify cost drivers in the Medicaid program and provide you with new tools and resources to achieve both short-term savings and longer-term sustainability while providing high-quality care to the citizens of your states.”

According to DHHS, some of these key areas of cost-savings to states include changing optional benefits by limiting their amount, duration or scope. Some of the benefits included are services such as prescription drugs, dental services, and speech therapy. In some cases people may be removed from the program.

This is an ironic turn of events. While the Democrats have spent years denigrating health insurance companies for limiting coverage, Secretary Sebelius is sounding an awful lot like health insurance managed care companies whose job it is to ration care. If you are on Medicaid, your state, according to DHHS, has the “flexibility” to limit or cancel your coverage for these types of services in order to make room for the thousands more who will proudly wear the “insured” label as required by Obamacare.

Further, in response to states who have requested “waivers” from some of the healthcare law’s requirements, Secretary Sebelius responded:

“I continue to review what authority, if any, I have to waive the maintenance of effort under current law.”

It would appear, from this statement, that the Secretary, who already has authorized waivers for over 700 companies and unions who are unable to meet the law’s requirement of no annual limits on health insurance coverage, is considering waivers from some requirements to entire states if the “flexibility” provided in the law is not sufficient for them to make the healthcare law cost-effective.

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In his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, the President joked about the fact that House Republicans have repealed the Healthcare law, and affirmed his commitment to his administration’s signature piece of legislation.

Just one day later, however, the fate of the same Healthcare law appears more doubtful, perhaps, than the President and the Democrats imagined.

According to Foxnews.com, Medicare’s Chief Actuary Richard Foster told House Budget Committee members on Wednesday that the two central premises of the Healthcare law, upon which the President and Democrats have been defending the law, are not likely to come to fruition.

Foster responded to two “True-False” questions, posed by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-California): 1) whether the law will keep down healthcare costs; and 2) whether the law will allow people to keep their health insurance if they choose.

Foster responded, “I would say false, more so than true,” to the question about costs, and “Not true, in all cases,” to the question about keeping coverage.

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The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives has begun the process of repealing the Healthcare law. Some have argued that, because the Senate may not repeal it as well, and the President will likely veto it, the House’s repeal is purely “symbolic.”

Just as the reading of the Constitution on the floor of the House, on Wednesday, was symbolic of a “return to constitutionalism,” as Charles Krauthammer writes, the repeal of the Healthcare law in the House will be symbolic not just of the fact that Republicans have heard the will of the American people, but also that they fully understand that the new law is, only superficially, a jumbled and thoughtless mess of rules about how healthcare should be delivered and paid for in this country. In reality, the Healthcare law is a liberal power grab that is gradually permitting the federal government to control more of our lives, making more people dependent upon the government and continuing the culture of dependency among minority groups who, up until now, have mostly voted liberals into power. The symbolism of the repeal will ring loud and clear.

Liberal Democrats will be launching a big campaign over the next few days, doing what they always accuse Republicans and conservatives of doing- “fear-mongering.”  They will be telling their constituents that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the repeal of the Healthcare law will increase debt, that Republicans don’t want people with pre-existing conditions to have access to health insurance, and that Republicans want to defund Medicare, new chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Paul Ryan, has set out why these claims are wrong.

However, one of the features of the new Healthcare law, already in effect, is the extension of healthcare coverage to adult children (up until 26 years old), a hallmark of the true intention of this law- to make more people dependent, while it raises premiums on private health insurers who need more money to meet this new requirement.

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While the new Congress deliberates over ways to repeal or defund the Obama Administration’s “healthcare reform” law, twenty states and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), have filed suit in federal court arguing that the law is unconstitutional and should be struck down immediately. This is the largest of several legal challenges to Obamacare across the country.

Lawyers for NFIB and the states will appear in a Pensacola, Florida federal court this Thursday, December 16th.  They will ask U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson to rule that the heart of the law – and “individual mandate” that obligates private citizens to obtain health insurance whether they want it or not – is unconstitutional.  NFIB and the states will accordingly ask that Judge Vinson to strike down Obamacare in its entirety.

The Constitution does not allow Congress to force Americans to purchase a product solely because they are alive and the federal government’s claim of such authority contradicts more than two hundred years of Supreme Court precedent.  Yet the individual mandate, which would obligate private citizens to obtain health insurance whether they want it or not, does just that.

Counsel for NFIB and the states will make the following arguments:

1) The Individual Mandate in Unconstitutional

Under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Congress has the power to regulate people when they engage in an economic activity that affects interstate commerce.

The Obama Administration argues that choosing not to purchase something (like a health insurance policy) is somehow an “activity” that affects the economy.  The federal government’s theory that a decision to do nothing is “activity” that may be regulated by Congress under the Commerce Clause is unprecedented. The Administration’s lawyers have been unable to identify a single pre-Obamacare decision upholding a law that forces a private individual to enter into a market for goods or services against their will.

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The U.S. economy grew incredibly from 1983 to 2008. And then it all collapsed. What happened?

Nobel Prize winning economist and University of Chicago professor Gary Becker weighs in on the state of the US economy.  He gives the Bush Administration mixed reviews, but finds the current response of the U.S. Federal Reserve to the crisis troubling.

He argues that ObamaCare is a bad bill – it will increase costs and not address the real problems in the system (being that health care is employer based and out-of-pocket expenses are too low).   Now, small businesses will be taxed if they don’t provide health care, forcing many businesses to take the tax to avoid the liability and cost of employer-provided care.

Lastly, Becker, like many Americans, is optimistic about the future not because of the power of government, but because of his faith in the American people.  He says, “What I trust with the American people is that they have always had a lot of common sense. … And I think most Americans believe, and I think they are correct in that belief, that the private sector has shown that it performs better overall, not 100 percent, but…a lot better overall than the public sector does.”

Here is the full episode:

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So the latest disappointing news from the Republican leadership in Congress comes from Majority Whip in waiting, Eric Cantor.  As Whip, Congressman Cantor carries the message of the caucus.  So what does he think about healthcare?  Does he support full repeal of Obamacare?  Does he share the view of most Americans that the federal government should get back into its Constitutional cage and get out of health care, education, mohair subsidies and a host of other spheres of American life over which they should have zero sway?  Nope!  Sadly, Congressman Cantor has just affirmed our worst fear.  He thinks the federal government should absolutely be regulating health care and guaranteeing Americans “free stuff”.

I suppose the Congressman fancies himself a limited government fiscal conservative.  Ok.  What does that mean?  I thought it meant that the federal government should handle basic things like fighting wars and coining money (and please coin way less than you are).  Everything else should be left to the “several states”.

But hey, at least the Republican leadership wants to give us less free stuff than the Democrats.  Here is what Cantor says about Obamacare:

“We too don’t want to accept any insurance company’s denial of someone and coverage for that person because he or she might have a pre-existing condition,” he said. “Likewise we want to make sure that someone of your age has the ability to access affordable care if it’s under your parent’s plan or elsewhere.”

So, the Democrat are promising a chicken in every pot and the Republicans are promising a nice broth.  Great message guys.   Certainly your pollsters really dug deep for that.

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The hits keep on coming from a train wreck of a presidency.

I just got my healthcare renewal form. My rates are up over 30% across the board, and that’s with a $5,700 deductible. This is the fruit of Barack Obama’s health care “reform,” to make healthcare affordable and accessible for everyone.

Obama really makes me sick — oops, I can’t afford to get sick.

I want a waiver — oops, I don’t know any crooked Democrats (is there any other kind?) who can fix it for me.

Who is the recipient of these goodies from this crooked administration? Unions, of course, and FOO (Friends of Obama).

Historian and finance analyst Kenneth Schortgen, Jr., notes in The Examiner that while Obama has given waivers for his new healthcare scheme to 111 corporations and other entities, the form to apply for a waiver is hard to find and harder to wade through, and:

“to receive a waiver it appears you must have political capital with the administration to be accepted.  For most small businesses, you will be incurring the new taxes, fees, and programs that will add thousands to your bottom line, and in more than a few cases, might cause a small business to close their doors.”

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In a country of exceptionally high rates of personal taxation and home to one of the world’s most generous welfare states, Norway’s Progress Party, which describes itself as a “classical liberal” organization committed to “personal freedom,” is something of an anomaly. But it is an increasingly powerful anomaly, now ranking as the country’s second biggest political party.

In August, Progress Party leader Siv Jensen sat down with Reason senior editor Michael C. Moynihan and explained that Norwegians are growing tired of “regulation, bureaucracy, and high taxes” and why the Scandinavian health care model is bad for America—and Scandinavia.

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Each summer, Wall Street strategist Byron Wien convenes a meeting of high rollers to discuss the outlook for investment. This year’s meeting brought together fifty individuals, including more than ten billionaires.

Their expectations, as reported by CNBC, are gloomy:

“They saw the United States in a long-term slow growth environment with the near-term risk of recession quite real,” said Wien, in a commentary to Blackstone clients. “The Obama administration was viewed as hostile to business and that discouraged both hiring and investment. Companies and entrepreneurs were reluctant to add workers because they didn’t know what their healthcare costs or taxes were going to be.”

Add this report to the many similar ones to which my colleagues and I have called attention over the past two years.

Of course, for mainstream macroeconomists, such evidence means nothing. In fact, they hold it in complete contempt because (1) their formal mathematical models do not have a variable called “regime uncertainty,” and (2) even if they could be persuaded to take this factor into account, the canned data on which they rely—the product of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, for the most part—do not supply them with an “official” data set for their analysis. What you can’t measure, according to their “scientific” credo, does not exist. Their de facto motto (of which I have more than once been on the receiving end) is: you’ve got no formal model; you’ve got nothing.

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It must be a condition of employment that a journalist who writes about the current recession include in his article the statement, “consumption makes up more than two-thirds of the economy” or “consumption spending accounts for 70 percent of GDP.” This seemingly simple, factual statement, however, is nearly always intended to carry some explanatory weight, and on occasion the writer spells out this explanation by adding a statement such as, “unless consumers begin to open their wallets and spend more, recovery from the current recession will be impossible.”

At first glance, this journalistic commonplace appears to make sense. Anyone can understand that, say, a store at the mall will not hire additional employees unless its sales increase enough to justify the additional expense. Hence, would-be employees will remain unemployed; they will purchase fewer consumption goods than they would have purchased if they had jobs; and therefore the stores will not hire more workers; and so forth. The circle of a theory of income and employment seems to be closed, and thus an explanation provided for the lingering recession: consumers are not spending enough.

One does not need a Ph.D. in economics, however, to discover that something must be wrong with this way of thinking about prosperity and recession. Checking the national economic accounts produced by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (Table l.l.6), one finds, for example, that the most recent quarterly peak in real personal consumption expenditure occurred in the fourth quarter of 2007. This spending ($9,244 billion at an annual rate) equaled 69.2 percent of contemporary GDP ($13,364 billion at an annual rate)—where the data are expressed in dollars of 2005 purchasing power. Real GDP did not fall significantly until the third quarter of 2008. When it reached its trough in the second quarter of 2009, it had fallen to $12,810 billion, down about 4 percent. At that time, real personal consumption spending was $9,117 billion, down only 1.4 percent, and equal to about 71 percent of GDP. Thus, as usual over the course of a boom and bust, consumption spending varied proportionately less than GDP as a whole.

As every student of the business cycle learns early on, the most variable part of aggregate expenditure is private investment. When real gross private domestic investment peaked, in the first quarter of 2006, it was $2,265 billion, or 17.5 percent of GDP. When it hit bottom in the second quarter of 2009, it had fallen by 36 percent to $1,453 billion, or 11.3 percent of GDP. (Deducting investment expenditures aimed at compensating for depreciation of the private capital stock [Table 1.7.6], we find that real net private investment—the part that contributes to economic growth—in the most recent quarter was only one-third as great as it was at its peak in early 2006.) The ups and downs of the business cycle are obviously driven not by consumption spending, but by investment spending.

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