by cactus Reading Between the Lines of an Excuse Here’s a story you probably already heard. The Republican National Committee has spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August. According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began […]

rdan Here for your consideration is a private company made up of defense contractors running city governments in the state of Georgia, USA. Privatized Cities — When the government of the city of Sandy Springs in Georgia decided to bring in a multinational corporation to run all of the city’s services – with the exception […]

Late to the party, but FelixMatthew Malone (via The Divine Bess) quotes from Andrew Lahde’s good-bye letter, the follow-up to the one in which he noted that he only plays fair games, and the Fed is currently rigging the roulette wheel, so he’s taking his 800%+ return from last year and going home. This ‘graf […]

rdan Potability, Politics, and PipesBy David ZetlandA Guest Post (Freakonomics) In 2000, the United Nations declared an intention to reach eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) — each with one or more targets — by 2015. The MDG’s are attracting a lot of money, but money can’t fix everything. Since I’m a water guy, I’ll explain […]

by cactus Economic Catastrophes – Another Look at Economic Performance by Presidential Party Since we’re in a period of economic crisis, I started thinking about crises of the past. Its not always easy to define whether a moment in time is more than just part of ups and downs in a run-of-the-mill business cycle or […]

The leadership at Wells Fargo must be royally peeved at this point: Stable national players like Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo are already digesting acquisitions. A second group of so-called super-regional banks are well positioned to take over their competitors, officials said, but have been reluctant to undertake or unable to complete […]

Dear Supporter, If you caught my guest appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend, you may have seen an ad or two (or twenty) from Senator Obama’s campaign. This barrage of advertising is adding up to the most expensive negative ad buy in political history. And these ads are funded with the nearly $200 million […]

The WSJ wants to pretend that Barack Obama is responsible for Canada making a good decision: Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France signed an agreement Friday to begin negotiations for a free trade pact between Canada and the European Union. A Canada-EU study released last week outlines the joint economic benefits […]

NYT reports on Question 1 proposing the repeal of the MA state income tax over two years. That view is exactly what most state and local officials in Massachusetts are afraid of. Amid the whirlwind presidential election, Massachusetts has a ballot contest of its own this November that could drastically alter — some would say […]

The Guardian reports: Financial workers at Wall Street’s top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year – despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock […]