My Loyal Reader notes that the economic survival of Zimbabwe’s current government is now largely dependent on sin taxes: As he presented his revised 2009 budget to parliament, Finance Minister Tendai Biti noted that “indirect taxes made up of customs and excise duty have contributed 88 percent of government revenue, which means that the government […]
Lawrence Wilkerson tells the truth and shames the Devil: Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. “There are still innocent people there,” Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of […]
Looking at Population Change data derived from version 6.2 of the Penn World Tables. It appears that the population of Kuwait declined by 55.46% in 1991, only to increase 48.64% in the following year. I’m inclined to think of this as measurement error, not a mass exodus following by a mass return after the invasion. […]
George Will, guest-posting chez Berube: But hope is not a financial plan, and rewards come only to those who work for them. It is time for the Democrats to grow up, learn the lessons of adulthood, and begin dismantling a tax system which creates so many disincentives to wealth creation. Justice demands that bonuses must […]
In Conversations with Economists (h/t Kevin Quinn at Econospeak), James Tobin refers to LBJ having made “a mistake” in “raising taxes to pay for the Viet Nam War.” Google Desktop can’t find the line of reasoning behind that in any of Tobin’s papers that have survived my migrating possibly-non-OCR PDFs over about six computers. Anyone […]
I promise to try posting more this weekend, but this one is just too good to pass up. Since most people don’t know it beyond three to six digits, today, 14 March (14.03)—er, oops, March 14 (3.14)—has been officially designated “Pi Day.” Ten Republicans voted against the (purely symbolic) designation: Chaffetz Flake Heller Johnson (IL) […]
For those wanting a slightly shorter version of the post below, here’s 11:15 of video dealing with how the Bad Banks got that way:
Via the Chronicle of Higher Education (link may not be public): The Arkansas legislature is taking a different approach to reining in soaring tuition costs: Today it sent a bill to the governor’s desk that would cap the amount of money public colleges can spend on scholarships. Increases in scholarship aid lead to higher tuition […]
In this corner, as previously mentioned, Yves Smith goes for the slam dunk: Let’s see, the credit default swaps market, due to some netting, is now somewhere north of $30 trillion (as opposed to its earlier “north of $60 trillion” level). Investment banks were believed to have hedged most of their exposure via offsetting contracts, […]
Dr. Black (you know the site) links to AIG Strike Three. And unlike the Citi debacle previously discussed (relatively) positively and rather negatively here, this one makes some form of sense. The difference comes down to the meaning of an accounting concept: ongoing concern. More below the break (yes, this might get wonkish. It’s me, […]