No Jobs? No Economic Recovery? Let Them Have (Marginally Cheaper) Beer!

[caption id="attachment_100177" align="alignleft" width="260"] I've never heard of a "pint" before, but I hear the working classes like them.[/caption] What do you do when you're Chancellor of the Exchequer and everything's going wrong, possibly because of your policies, and you have to introduce a budget today full of evidence of failure? Do you abandon those policies in favor of something that might work and might not cause a triple-dip recession?

Author:: Jon Shazar
Publish date:: Mar 20, 2013

I've never heard of a "pint" before, but I hear the working classes like them.

What do you do when you're Chancellor of the Exchequer and everything's going wrong, possibly because of your policies, and you have to introduce a budget today full of evidence of failure? Do you abandon those policies in favor of something that might work and might not cause a triple-dip recession?

No. This is England. Give the plebs cheaper beer.

Chancellor George Osborne scrapped the country's above-inflation beer tax rises on Wednesday and cut one pence off a pint, cheering drinkers and providing some relief for a pub sector still enduring 18 closures a week….
"We will now scrap the beer duty escalator altogether, and instead of the 3 pence rise in beer duty tax planned for this year, I am cancelling it altogether," Osborne announced to big cheers in parliament.
"That's the freeze people have been campaigning for but I am going to take it one step further and I am going to cut beer duty by one pence. We are taking a penny off the pint."

Osborne raises some cheer with beer duty cuts [Reuters]

[caption id="attachment_99440" align="alignleft" width="260"] The future Museum of American Capitalism.[/caption] Hurricane Sandy claimed many victims. Will the New York Stock Exchange's floor traders be among them?

[caption id="attachment_100299" align="alignleft" width="250"] So you're telling me this is not a legitimate tap?[/caption] Forget gold or diamonds. Maple syrup is the commodity to be stealing these days.

[caption id="attachment_100373" align="alignright" width="260"] Let's be reasonable...[/caption] So things aren't great at Yucaipa Cos. It's bounced back a bit since its books showed a 40% loss at the end of 2011, but it was still down 19% at the beginning of this year. And, it seems, investors were insufficiently impressed with the discount he consequently offered.

Trump.Kudlow

And that is: “You can do whatever you want.”

[caption id="attachment_100005" align="alignright" width="260"] Slumming it.[/caption] If you haven't heard, Avenue Capital's Marc Lasry will be representing you to our oldest and least-reliable ally. The White House didn't intend for you to hear that for a few weeks yet, and Avenue certainly didn't intend for its clients to hear it. But no convention of courtesy or deference can hold Bill Clinton down.

[caption id="attachment_100068" align="alignleft" width="260"] The passing of the torch.[/caption] It's not Venezuela, now that old Hugo is gone. It's not Cuba. And it's definitely not the U.S. Indeed, the ballsiest country on this side of the globe seems to be measuring its cojones against us, in a series of direct throw-downs. And Argentina's are bigger.

Carol M. Highsmith [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

You will have them to kick around for the foreseeable future.

[caption id="attachment_99794" align="alignleft" width="260"] No jurisdiction can hold me.[/caption] Hedge fund manager Phil Goldstein once said that when Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin looks in the mirror in the morning, he sees Eliot Spitzer. Granted, he said this before certain aspects of Client Number Nine's private life hit the front pages, but the point was made. And while Spitzer moves from one failed media venture to another—undoubtedly paying very close attention to a certain South Carolina House race—Galvin still carries the torch and a copy of the Bay State's securities law. That law must be unusually broad, because he's used it to fine a German bank $17.5 million for naughtiness related to a CDO created with an Illinois-based hedge fund.