November 13, 2000

Wall Street Votes For Gridlock
Pressure to Ratify Kyoto Protocol Mounts
New Controversial Regulations to be Released by OSHA Today

Wall Street Votes For Gridlock

Under the headline "Political stalemate will endure, to Wall Street's delight," The Christian Science Monitor reports today that Wall Street isn't scared by the prospect of political deadlock in Washington.

"Gridlock will be a good thing," says Subodh Kumar, chief investment strategist with CIBC World Markets. "The ability to follow an ideological agenda is sharply reduced."

The winner of the presidential race has to deal with an almost evenly divided Congress. He also doesn't have a sharp mandate from the electorate himself. The popular vote was extremely close between the two candidates.

"Luckily," says Charles Schultze, chief economic adviser for former President Jimmy Carter, the new president "will be unable to deliver" on his major campaign promises.

The less Congress does, the better, writes Stephen Moore in "What's So Bad About A Do-Nothing Congress?" According to Moore, "Economist Jim Bianco of Arbor Trading Co. has documented that during the past several decades, the stock market performs more than twice as well when Congress is out of session and isn't regulating, taxing, spending or engaging in other meddlesome activities that erase wealth."

Moore warns, however, that federal spending may actually rise faster if Republicans control both the White House and Congress than it has during the Clinton years. "A reduction in gridlock greases the wheels of the legislative process and inspires the regulatory ambitions of legislators," Moore writes.

Pressure to Ratify Kyoto Protocol Mounts

Delegates from more than 160 nations will meet in the Netherlands for a conference on the enforcement of the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty aimed at curtailing global warming, according to The New York Times. The pivotal talks, which begin today in The Hague, come on the heels of new U.N. reports with the evidence that people, mainly through the burning of fossil fuels, have contributed substantially to a warming trend that could disrupt weather patterns, ecosystems and agriculture around the world.

The treaty requires industrialized nations to reduce releases of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere. It has been signed by representatives of more than 100 countries, including the United States, but cannot take effect until a substantial number of the industrial nations ratify it.

So far, none have done so. Most important would be the approval of the United States, far and away the world's largest producer of heat-trapping gases, and without whose participation, specialists say, the effort is bound to falter.

In a Cato Institute book, "The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air About Global Warming," Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling Jr. explain why global warming is vastly overrated as an environmental threat. The book marshals an impressive array of scientific data, studies and analyses to argue that initial forecasts of rapid global warming were simply wrong. Perhaps more important, the book points out that attempts to “fix” the forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are even more misguided than the original projections. The first and fifth chapters of the book can be read online.

In "Kyoto's Chilling Effects," Michaels writes that the protocol has poor chances of being ratified by the United States as "both Democrats and Republicans can agree that Kyoto will wreck our economy, according to just about every credible study that uses realistic policy assumptions." Director of Natural Resource Studies Jerry Taylor agrees in "Hot Air in Kyoto," stating that "impoverishing society today to avoid a very uncertain problem tomorrow would harm, not help, future generations."

New Controversial Regulations to be Released by OSHA Today

Workers who spend their day typing on a computer or repeatedly lifting heavy boxes are among the more than 100 million Americans to receive new protections from job-related injuries under standards being issued by the Clinton administration, according to The Associated Press.

But the rules, to be released today by OSHA, were so contentious that they helped torpedo budget negotiations between the White House and Republican lawmakers. They are sure to face a court challenge by business interests.

Organized labor had pushed for the regulations, which could force companies to alter work stations, redesign facilities or change tools once employees are found to suffer work-related injuries.

In the Regulation magazine article "Abolishing OSHA," Thomas J. Kniesner and John D. Leeth write that everyone has an "OSHA horror story" and that the agency often creates more problems than it solves. The Cato Handbook for Congress recommends abolishing OSHA or at the very least further exempting from inspections companies with strong safety programs and reducing fines for firms making legitimate efforts to correct health and safety programs.

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