Lifted from comments cactus style: Reader juan suggests: Econmagic Charts Bloomberg News IT’S NOT EASY TO SIZE UP THE influence of the index funds. But based on their known cash commitments in certain commodities, and the commodity indexes their prospectuses say they track, it is possible to estimate the size of their commitments in all […]
The report in yahoo news presents an odd twist in relation to government regulation and testing. For me it brings to focus the less than idealogical intent of our current administration. The Bush administration on Friday urged a federal appeals court to stop meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease, but a […]
History: How the US Grew the Military Industrial Complex. The size of the US national security (war) machine is not related to threats to the nation nor any reasonable or efficient response to those wildly inflated threats. Threats are overstated and the solution to the fake insecurity is always the most expensive and profitable, neither […]
Tom Dispatch has an opinion piece on something we have not really considered. The US military has a huge appetite for oil and products. We have not quantified this on the blog. The Bush Administration I suppose has not asked for a volume discount for oil or services, but it made me curious… Every day, […]
The Trustees Report intermediate projection for Medicare costs in 2085 is about 11% of payroll. This is on a bigger payroll than Social Security because currently the Medicare tax is not capped. (If I were a rich person and looking at that uncapped Medicare tax, I’d be lobbying for a cap and a slightly larger […]
Here at Sustainability Institute, we develop computer simulation models to investigate such issues. Over the past couple of years we’ve worked with economists and farm leaders to model the corn economy. The insights are sobering. For the past several decades, despite changes in Congress, different presidents, and new farm bills, net income from farm sales […]
Public Agenda, is calling for submissions for another of their blog carnivals, this time on Medicare. If you want to submit an entry, we can put it up here at Angry Bear today.
Hat tip to reader Henry Cobb. The Economist reports an intersting conclusion in how we measure the equation more growth=more profits for investors. None of this is to deny the importance of emerging economies. The booms in India and China will have enormous effects on everything from the wages of unskilled labour to the price […]
The NYT reports significant progress in Basra, Iraq. The principal factor for improvement that people in Basra cite is the deployment of 33,000 members of the Iraqi security forces after the March 24 start of operations, which allowed the government to blanket the city with checkpoints on every major intersection and highway. Borrowing tactics from […]
cactus sends a note from the WSJ commentaries: Stephen Moore Looks at Mississippi The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in Mississippi in January of 2004, the month Haley Barbour became governor of the state, was 5.7%. A year later, it was 6.9%. The latest figures (March 2003) showed a seasonally adjusted figure of 6.0%. Now consider […]