Obama Administration Foolishness, Part 2

I took a couple of days to let life interfere with blogging, but none of the standard politics/economics bloggers seems to have highlighted this note from the Lex column of last Wednesday’s (13 October 2010) FT (again, no link; feel free to provide in comments) under the heading “Defence M&A”:

Lockheed has two small services businesses on the block. [These] in particular appear vulnerable as Robert Gates, secretary of defence, looks for back-office savings to fund operational spending.

That’s pretty much a fair description of the reason for the existence of MERS.* If there is an area of the U.S. economy that it is more corrupt has poorer incentive-alignment than FIRE, it is Defense Spending.  Mr. Gates’s willingness to encourage that by removing processing controls does not bode well for long-term budgetary value.

 

*Well, the other reason, after tax evasion.