by Dan Crawford (Rdan) Business Insider offers one sort of opinion by Mike Shedlock… what I can gather from the short article are the implications that outsourcing over the globe is a consequence of unions, that we should be more like Louisiana, and there is no economic literature on labor to offer some alternative explanations. […]

Even more than Digby on CalPERS, the one piece everyone should read today is Charlie Stross on International Travel. Since this is an economics blog, let’s pull a key section: Here’s the rub: security is a state of mind, not a procedure. Procedures can’t cope with attackers, because they’re inflexible. If you search passengers for […]

rdan The Sacremento Bee has forwarded this story (h/t reader Denis) The unionized government work force has roughly 200,000 or so employees represented by 12 labor organizations. It’s a vast, diverse group ranging from custodians to doctors, clerks to engineers. And don’t forget non-union managers. All get different contract deals with varying terms. In a […]

I’ve said before that the “Buy American” provisions in the stimulus bill were not exactly a major issue. (I believe the phrase was roughly, “could drive a broken Mexican truck through the holes, even if dead drunk.”) Many economists (hi, Barkley) disagreed, even while some acknowledged that the income effect from “buying American” would be […]

by divorced one like Bush Honda has done some math, Honda Motor Co. now expects 185 billion yen ($2.06 billion) in group net profit for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009 — less than a third of the 600 billion yen it earned last fiscal year.For every yen the dollar declines, Honda loses about […]

by divorced one like Bushcaution, a long read I’ve been reading: Making Government Work by Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings. Yes, that Hollings of Gramm and Rudman legislation fame. It is kind of rambling read, but I now understand why our congress of the democratic party side has been acting like moderate republicans and not liberal […]