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

Sea ice and beach front property

The NYT reminds us of continuing concern of ice melt. The Arctic ice cap shrank so much this summer that waves briefly lapped along two long-imagined Arctic shipping routes, the Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northern Sea Route over Russia. Interactive Graphic Sea Ice in Retreat The Big Melt: A Series From The New […]

Fox News

Fox News carries a story you will be interested in as intelligent descriptive reporting. I did not know they could. Sweeeeeeet.

BLS, Businessweek, and phantom GDP

Business Week carried an article by Are You a Victim of ‘Phantom’ GDP? Here are four signs to help you determine whether your industry’s output and productivity are being overstated According to government statistics, output in almost every major manufacturing industry expanded between 2001 and 2005. That seems a little surprising since manufacturing employment dropped […]

General Sycophant says American Conservative

You may remember that I suggested we watch the media reaction to Pat Buchanan if he published the article as predicted. American Conservative has published on the front cover that General Sycophant is a schill for the President and Vice-Predsident. Time to watch.

To compare or to contrast

Dahr Jamail and Michael Totten are reporting on the same war, the same groups of people, the same country, the same armies. Both are also photographers. Can both be reporting true things? Yes.Can both be offering a perspective that has some value? YesCan both be useful in our personal evaluation of the occupation? Partly. Can […]

O’Reilly says about Edwards

Bill laments the lack of moral spine of the Far Left. Remember, no coerced interrogation, civilian lawyers in courts for captured overseas terrorists, no branding the Iranian guards terrorists, and no phone surveillance without a specific warrant. His statement brought to mind this quote: A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We […]

Qwest for the truth

CEO Nacchio of Qwest has a write up in WAPO: A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be […]

Rules of the Markets = Free?

Rules of the market is the mantra I have always advocated, rather than lumping everything together as ‘free’. Cost reduction was the key benefit claimed by privatization. We conduct a meta analysis of all published econometric studies of water and waste production in cities since 1965. Little support is found for a link between privatization […]

Doing the Economy One Better

Seems there is a movement afoot to do the economy one better. There will be a conference Beyond GDP held in Brussels in November. GDP is the best-recognised measure of economic performance in the world, often used as a generic indicator of progress. However, the relationship between economic growth as measured by GDP and other […]

Slow arm of the law

The slow arm of the law in relation to the grand scale of privitization of government bureaucracy stands in sharp contrast to rules about wiretapping and such. Some of this is understandable, but I have seen no proposals. If this is to be the practice, are’nt we a little slow? As recently as Oct. 3, […]