(Dan here…a recent talk I attended on water in Burkina Faso reminded me to look at another important issue even for the US) by David Zetland    David Zetland is a senior water economist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and maintains a blog on water issues at Aguanomics. Will San Diego make the desalination mistake? […]

I loved the horses-and-bayonets rejoinder, and I especially loved that it highlighted Romney’s incessant plucking of irrelevant statistics and misrepresenting what they indicate.  But the line I liked best wasn’t any line that Obama said.  It was this one, said by Romney in his closing statement: I’ll lead you in an open and honest way. […]

I hear so many things about how investors prefer a Republican president I often  wonder if they have ever looked at the data.  Of course from just looking at a chart of the S&;P 500 since WWII  it is hard to see how the market has performed under different presidents.   Maybe this chart that […]

While he (uncharacteristically) doesn’t explain or deploy it terribly well, Paul Krugman points to some very excellent research on the relationship between private debt levels and the depth and duration of (especially financial-crisis-driven) recessions. The Schularick/Taylor Vox EU article is here. The Jorda/Schularick/Taylor paper is here (PDF). I think the work is excellent in large […]

 I was looking for something else, but in the latest poll the ARRA has become popular http://www.pollingreport.com/budget.htm United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Sept. 7-9, 2012. N=1,012 adults nationwide. Margin of error ± 3.7. Asked of those who have heard about the program:“From what you have seen or […]

 by Kenneth Thomas Starbucks in Hot Water Over British Tax Reuters (via Tax Research UK) reported on October 15 the results of an extensive investigation into the British unit of coffee giant Starbucks, the second largest restaurant firm in the world after McDonald’s. It turns out that the company has reported losing money in every […]

Lifted from Robert Waldmann’s more private thoughts: I love this video. I agree that it is very odd for Romney to brag about balancing a budget with a 1.5 billion dollar federal bailout. But what exactly does it mean for a manager of a firm to balance a budget ? I’d say the very minimum […]

Via Economist’s View on reducing oil imports and energy independence for the US is reader Min’s proposal, which I have unabashedly stolen: For forty years politicians have been promising energy independence for the US. Forget it. It is not going to happen, at least not any time soon. Our best bet is to cut back […]

Via reader rjs news and Naked Capitalism comes this excerpt on income inequality and programs to address the issue: Bill Moyers: Plutocracy Rising – via Yves Smith – Bill Moyer’s latest show, with Matt Taibbi and and Chrystia Freeland, focuses on how the super rich have established a yawning chasm between themselves and ordinary Americans, both […]

The excellent Justin Fox makes the excellent point that I have made many times: that nobody in the ecosystem of publicly traded companies — including shareholders – is anything like a business owner. And no, the shareholders don’t own the corporation — they own securities that give them a not very well-defined stake in its […]