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

Clever math, clever reasoning

by coberly Math and Math I was looking at a book called “The Standard and Poor’s guide for the New Investor,” by Nilus Mattive. In it I found offered the following counterintuitive argument (page 9): Suppose you inherit 40,000 dollars and you want to buy a 40,000 dollar car. You can get the car for […]

Revolving door employment going global

The Nation carried an op-ed on the expansion of both privatizing government functions, de-fanging regulations, and creating a global network capable of sidestepping most nations.This is part of the story as company loyalties supplant love of country. It is partisan and so below the fold. Total Intelligence, which opened for business in February 2007, is […]

Who is minding this store?

by reader ilsm GAO 08-572T Testimony has an interesting observation which needs thinking about. There are good reasons that this testimony and the testimony in 621T are not supported by released GAO studies. Those being the investigators would likely need to call in the guys with gold badges, and government officers would go to jail. […]

Squashing news or interference in NASA reporting

OIG of NASA found a preponderance of evidence demonstrating Accordingly, the NASA Office of Inspector General conducted an administrative investigation to examine reports of alleged “political interference,” predominantly by senior NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs officials, with the work of NASA scientists pertaining to climate change—to include whether NASA inappropriately prevented one of its […]

WTO frames and real markets, real people. real rules

Dani Rodrik does a wonderful job framing politically framed economics and our American experience. Worth reading the whole thing. By overlooking the problems created by trade in instances where regulatory arbitrage does play an important role, we miss the opportunity to celebrate the kind of globalization where such arbitrage doesn’t play a role. The latter […]

Comments being taken at the EPA

Welcome to the Partner Blog for the National Dialogue! June 5th, 2008 by admin EPA is holding an on-line discussion among state, tribe, and other federal partners of EPA, as well as the public to foster collaboration on information access. For this discussion, we are using a blog which is a more interactive and personal […]

Corn is just corn?

by rdan The Economist reports on troubles in Mexico around corn tortillas. Last year there were demonstrations about a significant rise in prices for corn tortillas. From research I learned that 50% of the people in Mexico earn $5 or less per day, with the corn tortilla being the mainstay of diet…Indeed, the average Mexican […]

GAO-08-782T

by rdan GAO 08782T and GAO-08-847Tor testimony at a congressional hearing on defense spending reports the following: …the Department of Defense’s (DOD) management of its major weapon system acquisitions—an area that has been on GAO’s high risk list since 1990. Prior to and since that time, Congress and DOD have continually explored ways to improve […]

State and local economies and $1.8 trillion

The NYT reports: State and city governments have yet to shrink the economy; indeed, they have even managed to prop it up. They have quietly maintained their spending at pre-crisis levels even as they warn of numerous cutbacks forced on them by declining tax revenues. The cutbacks, however, are written into budgets for a fiscal […]

Serco is the new auditor for Iraq

by rdan In April, the Pentagon split its largest military contract in Iraq – formerly belonging to the Houston-based corporation KBR, Inc. – among companies Fluor and DynCorp, in addition to KBR. A fourth company, the British-American service provider Serco, is responsible for managing and overseeing the other three, according to its contract, signed last […]