Why the Debt Ceiling Matters — and What to do About It
Dr. Tiemann presented a talk at the Business Management Discussion Group on Monday, February 4th in Santa Monica, California entitled “Why the Debt Ceiling Matters - and What to do About It.”
Inside the Sausage Factory
By Dr. Jonathan Tiemann, January 20, 2017 With a new Administration comes a new Cabinet, so the US Senate spent most of its time this week in hearings with Cabinet nominees on whom the Constitution requires them to provide their advice and consent. On January 19, the Senate Finance Committee interviewed the new Treasury Secretary-designate, Steven Mnuchin. The hearing was [...]
A question for Senator Ted Cruz
We are about three weeks away from the next Republican candidates' debate, but I'm still stuck on one item from the last debate. Toward the end, the moderators cited a Treasury Department proposal to replace the image of Alexander Hamilton on the ten-dollar bill with that of a woman, and asked the candidates which woman they would choose for that [...]
Of Markets, Mother Nature and Moore’s Law
Lore has it, according to Thomas Friedman, that a Chinese emporor was so enthralled with the invention of the game of chess that he offered to fulfill any wish for the inventor. The simple wish: place 1 grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard, then place 2 grains of rice on the second square, 4 grains on the third square, 8 grains on the fourth and continuing doubling the grains across the entire board. The emporer granted the wish happily, only to discover that by the 64th square, he owed his kingdom in rice. Thomas Friedman included this among many brilliant observations and points made in a talk that he gave to Stanford's Precourt Institute last year. His point here being that trends that seem small and insignificat at the outset, can have huge and uncontrolled impacts if they maintain their incremental growth over time. He posits that we are on the second half of the chessboard in the way the markets work, the impacts we are having on Mother Nature and in the operation of Moore's Law on technology.
Examining Balanced Budget Amendments
Posted July 28, 2014 Henry J. Aaron, a Senior Fellow, at the Brookings Institute, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on July 24th, providing five very sound reasons why a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution was not viable solution to the U.S.'s escalating deficits. His summary of his comments is as follows: Balanced budget amendments have been around a [...]