Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

TVA budgets, fixes, and selling securities

rdan Knoxville News points to a 2003 report on options to fix the leaks: In November 2003, a leak along the bottom of the dike forced TVA to cease depositing fly ash into the pond’s dredge cells. TVA considered at least eight options to address the leak, according to a Dec. 22, 2003, agency update. […]

Remember the water table

rdan CNN has a follow up to the story and post concerning the breaking of a retaining dam and the coal ash that was released. Coal ash is full of heavy metals, and not bio-degradable. I believe I was the only one to be concerned about the water sources for the area as part of […]

PONZI PREDICTS

Economy: Enjoying the Pre-Game Show? Sorry to be missing from the Angry Bear scene – but I have had several long and serious medical outages in 2008. Good health insurance was my best investment – picking up a six-figure tab. So far as other investments are concerned — in some of my 2007-2008 HALOSCANS I […]

Correlation is not Causation

I spent most of the evening reading Underbelly posts, so this link is probably due to Buce: On Oct. 22, 1986, President Reagan signed into law the Tax Reform Act of 1986, one of the most far-reaching reforms of the United States tax system since the adoption of the income tax. The top tax rate […]

Proportionate Response

by cactus Proportionate Response I’m not going to weigh in on the latest incarnation of the Israeli-Arab conflict – everyone’s opinion about who is right and who is wrong is set in stone anyway – except to say that I found the constant use of the term “proportionate” to be quite interesting. First, because very […]

A look back at 2005 (Kash)

Excessive Liquidity The Economist is worried about the rapid growth in the world’s money supply over the past couple of years: HOW loose is the world’s monetary policy? One gauge is that real interest rates in America and other countries are still negative. Another is that global liquidity has been expanding at its fastest pace […]

Reads of the Day for the start of 2009

All (somewhat***) via Mark Thoma: Thomas Frank in the WSJ tells me why I always disagree with Robert (and the Other Economists) on the role of rating agencies: And who makes sure that Moody’s and its competitors downgrade what deserves to be downgraded? In 1999 the obvious answer would have been: the market, with its […]