CRA, the cause of the financial crisis, is still there

From investors.com:

The CRA coerces banks into making loans based on political correctness, and little else, to people who can't afford them. Enforced like never before by the Clinton administration, the regulation destroyed credit standards across the mortgage industry, created the subprime market, and caused the housing bubble that has now burst and left us with the worst housing and banking crises since the Great Depression.
...
During the last severe slump, President Reagan deregulated the economy, saying: "Government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem." He's as right today as he was then.

Electricity from Waste Heat

Another track to capturing the energy in low temperature heat: Electricity from Waste Heat:

Instead of turning a turbine, the expanding vapor in Ener-G-Rotors' system turns the gerotor, which is really two concentric rotors. The inner rotor attaches to an axle, and the outer rotor is a kind of collar around it. The rotors have mismatched gear teeth, and when vapor passing between them forces them apart, the gears mesh, turning the rotor.
The company claims that the rotor design is far simpler than that of a turbine, making it potentially easier and cheaper to manufacture, as well as more durable. And the company says that it has invented a proprietary way of mounting the rotor on rolling bearings that makes its movement nearly frictionless.

Low Temperature Geothermal Power

Nice article on Low Temperature Geothermal Power from The Oil Drum. This is power from water than is hot but not boiling.

Low temperature geothermal power is also starting to attract significant interest, as lower temperature water resources are common in many countries (for example, waste hot water produced by oil and gas wells - in Texas alone, more than 12 billon barrels are produced, with oil companies usually re-injecting the waste water into the earth) and new technologies are beginning to appear that allow these resources to be developed commercially.

UTC Power has developed a low-cost Rankine cycle system that can convert temperatures as low as 195 °F (91 °C) into electricity. The technology is similar to a steam engine, with steam or hot water vaporizes a hydrofluorocarbon refrigerant that drives the turbine (it has been compared to a "refrigerator compressor running backwards").

Reject Medicare and lose Social Security, too

I did not know not signing up for Medicare means you lose your Social Security benefits (if they are still available when you retire, of course). From The San Diego Union Tribune via Newsalert:

No law mandates participation in both programs or none. The Clinton administration instituted that regulation, buttressed by Congress' ban on seniors venturing outside Medicare for any service it provides.

Making Big Government Bigger

From the DCExaminer, the 700 Billion is going to make the public sector bigger, not to shore up private enterprise. It quotes Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy:

"In earlier posts (e.g. - here and here) I have emphasized the risk that the combination of economic crisis and unified Democratic control of Congress and the White House would lead to a vast expansion of government. It looks like key Obama advisers and congressional Democrats are thinking along the same lines. As Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel puts it, the crisis is 'an opportunity to do things you could not do before . . . You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.' The WSJ article from which the quote comes makes clear that the 'things' Emanuel has in mind are government policies that 'pick winners' by subsidizing particular industries on a massive scale - as Congress is already doing with the finance industry, auto industry and others (HT: David Boaz)."

Financial hard times ahead

A link to Finance Trend Matter reviewing an interview with Jim Rogers where "The famed Singapore-based investor discusses a number of timely issues with the FT's John Authers."

Recession: Jim feels that the current recession will be the worst since World War II, a point on which he and Nouriel Roubini seem to agree. However, unlike Roubini, Rogers feels that the policies and stimulus packages enacted by politicians and central bankers around the world will only lengthen and prolong the recession.

Regulators' failings: According to Rogers, most of our current problems are rooted in the failings of regulators and central bank officials who encouraged moral hazard with easy money policies and a string of financial firm bailouts. We have not allowed business failures to occur in recent years, and this has prevented the economic system from cleaning itself out.

Senator Harkin: Centralize all derivatives trading under the CFTC, which I oversee

The Streetwise Professor has an article on risks involved in trading in different venues. A centralized format does not suit all participants, and tends to favor the riskier institutions and trading practices since the central trading place must view all players as equal. In a "broker" model, the individual brokers track the risk of their trading partners and price the different risk rates differently. As noted at the end of the article:

In brief, forcing a one-size-fits-all approach is doomed to failure because it fails to take into account the heterogeneity of financial instruments and financial market participants. We have the proof of experience that it is doomed to failure. But nonetheless, Harkin is playing King Canute, trying to force markets to conform to his will. Good luck with that. All it will do is create opportunities for lawyers–and undermine the efficiency and arguably the soundness of our financial markets.

I am sure that it is just coincidence that Harkin is Chairman of the Senate Ag Committee, which has jurisdiction over the CFTC–which, under Harkin’s bill, would have regulatory authority over every derivative traded from sea to shining sea. Think of the campaign contributions! The thought never crossed his mind, I’m sure.

Animated graffiti

On the lighter side, time-lapse photography and graffiti. Interesting.

Link to video.

Energy Efficiency Report

The Oil Drum points to a report from the American Physical Society. An interesting report in that it collects many of the ways we can make things more energy efficient. Lots of nice graphs. They are listed on pg 17 of the full report. I don't really agree with the report's theme that the government is the best entity to push some of these changes. As far as I can tell, government meddling tends to be for the short term benefit of some narrow interest group with long term effects ranging from bad to worse. Examples like the financial disaster (the CRA bill) and the crumbling auto companies come to mind. It is more likely we will get a power grab like cap-and-trade, where the government bureaucrats start making fine-grained decisions for the majority of american industry, than intelligent policies that private industry can capitalize on.

Wildlife in the suburbs

The comments are interesting ... lots of turkey, deer and coyotes, wit some wolves and cougars mixed in in a post here. From a comment...

I have a flock of parrots in my subdivision in Southern California.

At first it was just one, which leads me to think that it was a couple of caged birds that got loose but nobody called animal control on, but this morning (right before the fires started) I saw a flock of about 30 of ‘em flapping to their favorite nesting place.

"Global warming" hysteria is based on a combination of bad science and fraud

More and more evidence that global warming is a scam to grab power and riches for the eco-elites.

From Powerline linking to the UK Telegraph, the "Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen" anounced the hottest global October ever. This in the face of "reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years." The reason? They have been reusing the August numbers for the last 3 months. Some other tidbits from the story:

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

There are some interesting comments on the story on the Telegraph site. One points out that "consensus" is not proof. That on this global warming shtick, when "evidence" and "proof" are predominately going against your agenda, claiming "consensus" and declaring your position the only true theory is bad science.

The IPCC is the body which is lying and perverting the data in order to pretend there is a problem. So it's hardly a valid place to find this magical 'consensus', which appears to have taken over from 'proof' as the way science arrives at the truth!

Airlines and car companies

The car companies want a bailout. Experts seem to agree that going through a bankruptcy is the best choice; they will adapt and still make cars. The politicians are the problem.

From SCSU Scholars:

Granting immortality to Detroit’s Big Three does not enhance creative destruction. It retards it. It crosses a line, a bright line. It is not about saving a system; there will still be cars made and sold in America. It is about saving politically powerful corporations. A Detroit bailout would set a precedent for every single politically connected corporation in America. There already is a long line of lobbyists bidding for federal money. If Detroit gets money, then everyone would have a case. After all, are the employees of Circuit City or the newspaper industry inferior to the employees of Chrysler?

Better generators for windmills

This looks good. Now we need a way to get the energy from where it is generated to where we need it.

In ExRo's generator, in contrast, the individual coils can be turned on and off with electronic switches. At low wind speeds, only a few of the coils will switch on--just enough to efficiently harvest the small amount of energy in low-speed wind. (If more coils were active, they would provide more resistance to the revolving magnets.) At higher wind speeds, more coils will turn on to convert more energy into electricity. The switches can be thrown quickly to adapt to fast-changing wind speeds.

Energy Links

As posted by PowerLine, even the most respected of sources, The SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY PROJECT are declaring that the global warming theory is bunk.

Plastic solar cells with 10% efficiency on the way.

Measuring wind speed with lasers. And getting an extra 10% out of windmills by knowing wind speed a few seconds before it get there.

Weekend links

From the "non-family-friendly" blog I read *bad language warning* We keep telling you: THIS AIN’T OVER ... some numbers from the internal campaign polls.

Apparently the people at the Quinn and Rose show have a contact in the Republican camp who is willing to share. Yes. the internal numbers.

A warning: When we checked out that link, it loaded horrendously slowly. But if you want a quick summary, here it is:

New Jersey: McCain 48% - Obambi 43% - Undecided 7%, undecideds currently breaking 4 to 1 for McCain.

[snip]

Michigan, the state that the McCain campaign hasn’t put much of an effort in at all, thinking it already lost: McCain 44% - Obambi 42% - Undecided 10%

OK, now here’s the bad news. There’s a state where Obambi leads.

California: Obambi 44% - McCain 43% - Undecided 9%.

People, if Dear Leader isn’t landsliding by double digits in the People’s Socialist Republic of Kalifornikate??? We rest our case.

Oh, and the state we mentioned before that Obambi is supposedly going to carry in a double-digit clobbering, yet for some reason he is focusing a LOT of effort in?

Pennsylvania: McCain 55% - Obambi 33% - Undecideds 10%

We guess they really don’t like being called racist, redneck, bitter, gun and bible-clinging xenophobes after all. Imagine our surprise.

Number one reason among Democrats breaking for McCain? They’re pissed off that he’s cheating and trying to buy the election.

The fact that the Democratic Machine can get away with smearing anyone that does not agree with their rehashing of failed ideas from the past is outrageous. State employee says she was ordered to check out Joe the Plumber


Forbes article on MSM bias. And the NRO weighs in.


Now that most companies have moved from pension plans to 401K plans, congress is considering a plan to eliminate 401K plans. People would be forced to fork over an additional 10% of their pay to the government and in return would get to be part of ... Social Security! What a deal. And that is OK, i guess, if you don't want to pass the money you earned and did not use to your kids or favorite charity, if you think the government is much smarter than you and can invest it better than you, if you think the bureaucrats in Washington consider your family's long term welfare as very important, and if you believe "public pensions" can defy the laws of physics and finance. On the other had, some jurisdictions are declaring bankruptcy, destroyed by the unreasonable burden of guaranteed pensions when there is no way to guarantee the necessary income to fund them. Most public companies moved away from guaranteed pensions because of this, and many of those that did not went bankrupt and could not pay anyway.


According to The OECD, we already tax our top earners more than any other country in the world. And the Democrats think we should double down on this policy other countries are moving away from as counter-productive?

The table also shows that the U.S. collects more household tax revenue from the top 10 percent of households than any other country and extracts the most from that income group relative to their share of the nation's income.

From Instapundit... some thoughts of Robert Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."

I guess will know in the next few days if we are in for some bad luck.

And a quote from SCSU Scholars:

The American businessmen, as a class, have demonstrated the greatest productive genius and the most spectacular achievements ever recorded in the economic history of mankind. What reward did they receive from our culture and its intellectuals? The position of a hated, persecuted minority. The position of a scapegoat for the evils of the bureaucrats.

The Virginian writes: "Obama Auntie is an Illegal Alien Living In Poverty In Boston, Makes Illegal Contribution to Obama and It's McCain's Fault."

That the headline in the POLITICO where the revelation that Obama's "Auntie Zeituni" is living in a Boston slum is transformed into a Republican "Dirty Trick." The Democrats are demanding a criminal investigation ... I'm serious as a heart attack! And the whole article is about Republican dirty tricks.
These are levels of chutzpah that I never would have believed, and have rarely seen. For those of you who have any doubt, let the record show that it was not the vaunted in-the-tank-so-far-they-need-scuba-gear American press that located "Auntie Zeituni" but that well known conservative rag, the London TimesOnline. I wrote about it HERE.

This still makes me nervous: Obama proposes a Civilian National Defense Force. Just as powerful and well funded as the US Military but focused on the civilian populace. I keep thinking Gestapo.



How is it that people don't like corruption in Washington and yet are willing to vote for someone who blatantly demonstrates it during his campaign? Obama campaign online donation fraud.



She is going to vote for Obama because then she won't have to pay for gas or pay her mortgage anymore. From CaptainCapitalism:

I would like to show her with simple power point presentations that if everybody had her attitude, the country would collapse and there would be no gas and no mortgage because if the world was filled with Peggy's, then nobody would work to drill the oil, refine it into gas, ship it to the gas stations to fill the cars that were never produced, which couldn't be stored anyway because we wouldn't have garages because the houses to which they were supposed to be attached to were never built because the Peggy's of the world were too damn lazy to build the houses in the first place, besides which Barack was going to give them one for free.

Weekend links

Corporate tax rates in the US are the highest in the world at 40%, forcing companies to move overseas, and we are supposed to raise them higher to fund massive welfare payments, including to "at least" 100,000,000 foreigners in other countries? How do they think that any of these companies will be able to survive, let alone prosper and hire more workers?

Congressional Democrats are looking at getting rid of 401K plans. Well, they will need to find a LOT of money from somewhere if they go into the "tax-and-spend" frenzy expected from an Obama win. I find it really scary when our representatives in congress speak about "not taking my money through higher taxes" as if it is an "investment by the government" where they are "giving" me money. Quote: "Rep. George Miller, D-Calif...“We’ve invested $80 billion into subsidizing this activity,” he said, referring to tax breaks allowed for 401(k) contributions and savings."

Weekend political links

What Joe the Plumber Shows Us About the Left: In what kind of nation, do the media investigate critics more than candidates?

Cindy's lawyer responds to NYT attack. "It is worth noting that you have not employed your investigative assets looking into Michelle Obama. You have not tried to find Barack Obama’s drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, Dreams of My Father. Nor have you interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them. Thus, there is a terrific lack of balance here."

More Joe the Plumber Warning ... explicatives NOT deleted. Quote: You didn’t, unlike most of the other scandals that the Obamamedia have successfully buried, have to be a sad geek like me spending hours every day scouring obscure websites with even more obscure names to witness the crucifixion of Joe the Plumber. All you had to do was to turn on the evening news. And then you’d find yourself thinking “what’s up with this guy? Why do they go after him that hard? What the Hell did this ordinary guy-next-door plumber, somebody who’s just like me, do to earn that hatred and persecution?”, followed by the answer: “he dared question the Anointed One.”

WaPo's fantasy candidate. : There's never a "we know he would do this" because he "successfully championed legislation." There's never a "we know he's really committed to that" because "he risked his career by bucking his own party." Instead — as the WaPo again admits — "We had hoped, throughout this long campaign, to see more evidence that Mr. Obama might stand up to Democratic orthodoxy and end, as he said in his announcement speech, 'our chronic avoidance of tough decisions.'" Earth to WaPo: When you hope something, and it never comes true, that's called a "hoping in vain."

Weekend energy links

Geothermal and solar energy projects being pursued by the military.

Solar power in Scotland.

Plastic solar cells being manufactured. They are being printed up on equipment that was previously used to make photographic film.

Wall Street Journal article on the most obvious items to be nationalized under an Obama regime. The energy consequences? "A tax-and-regulation scheme in the name of climate change is a top left-wing priority. Cap and trade would hand Congress trillions of dollars in new spending from the auction of carbon credits, which it would use to pick winners and losers in the energy business and across the economy. Huge chunks of GDP and millions of jobs would be at the mercy of Congress and a vast new global-warming bureaucracy. Without the GOP votes to help stage a filibuster, Senators from carbon-intensive states would have less ability to temper coastal liberals who answer to the green elites."

Oil prices are affecting Russia's economic viability ... LOW oil prices that is.

Self-Imposed Crisis? Quote: A root cause of this situation begs for an obvious remedy if the public can muster the political will to call for it. An abrupt turn away from the policy of seizing every opportunity to obstruct and discourage the supplying of fossil fuels might moderate a late 1970s style resurgence of the recent energy crisis, and with it, the monetary roller coaster ride that is devastating the retirement dreams of the present generation of Americans...

Weekend links

Local currencies. An interesting article on local currencies that have been used in the past and their effects on the areas they were used.

The government is a big part of the market problem.

Investors' Real Fear: A Socialist Tsunami

On the Democratic show-trial being run in Alaska. As noted in the article: The Branchflower Report is a series of guess and insupportable conclusions drawn by exactly one guy, and it hasn't been approved or adopted or endorsed by so much as a single sub-committee of the Alaska Legislature, much less any kind of commission, court, jury, or other proper adjudicatory body.

How to ruin the economy.

Its what they do in Chicago... In summary: The list of things that are done in Chicago by politicians is virtually endless. What we can hope is that if the politician is elected, he is only a cynical manipulator of people’s hopes and fears and is not really a radical, America hating racist thug. ... A crook – that’s OK. After all, it’s the way things are done in Chicago.

SNL Skit, uneditied. Actually, I had expected not to like this. It is funny.

A letter from McCain and 20 other Senators in 2006 predicting the current financial meltdown if changes were not made to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The Democrats defeated the changes on the floor of the Senate and continued to use Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as their personal slush fund. And as predicted, the problems developed.

Weekend links

The End of an Era: But what makes this particular economic crisis so appalling, at least from this vantage point, is the sheer scumminess, corruption, short-sightedness and general incompetence of everyone involved. At least in the business world, especially in the take-no-prisoners world of high-tech that kind of venality and ineptitude either gets you fired or kills the company; by comparison, in Washington, it puts you in charge of the recovery effort.

And Here’s The Associated (with terrorists) Press’ Spin on the Obama and Ayers. With commentary of course.

And a story on another of Obama's buddies:
Did Rezko pay for Blagojevich's house rehab?: Federal investigators are zeroing in on whether Tony Rezko paid for all or part of a $90,000 rehab of Gov. Blagojevich's Northwest Side bungalow as the corruption probe of the state's first family accelerates.

Day by Day cartoon....

High-Efficiency Generators for Hybrid Vehicles. Free-piston engines could be used to generate electricity as efficiently as, and less expensively than, fuel cells.

Hitler Youth Video. And for comparison, Obama youth.

Boy Suspended for Wearing Anti-Obama T-Shirt. No surprise that the schools are hot beds of liberal correctness. Do you think he would have been suspended for wearing a pro-Obama shirt?

Biden's Boners from Powerline.

And some economics links. The economists are not happy with this ill-considered bailout.
here and here and here and here.

On price gouging and gasoline lines.

Agrichar, energy production and carbon sequestration, what's not to like?

Interesting article on soil, how we are steadily degrading it with current agricultural techniques, and some efforts that are being made to remediate the problem. There are some challenges to the technology, as mentioned in the article.

Quotes:

"The potential power of biochar lies in this closed loop production process , where agricultural practices involving biochar production see increasing returns of crop yields, energy and soil fertility over time."

"Some industry participants believe that energy, rather than agriculture, will be the key driver for adopting biomass pyrolysis."

"Agrichar – A solution to global warming ?" (shown below) in the lead up to an international biochar conference in Terrigal, NSW, which included Tim Flannery talking about the potential for sequestering gigatonnes of carbon in the soil.

Terra Preta: Biochar And The MEGO Effect

Saturday links

Throw fire on the flames

Media edits out Palin answers that don't fit their agenda. No surprises here I guess.

And media double standards...

The Obama-Ayers relationship keeps getting stronger. And at least some of his supporters posting on the Official Obama web site know what he stands for.

What does a politician's wife tell the kids when the media is smearing their dad?

ACORN's role in creating the current crisis. And perpetuating it.

NRA Ad that the Obama campaign is attacking.

Supply problem + price gouging law = rationing gas by running out. Direct price controls did not work in the 70s. The indirect ones also do not work.

Planning Order, Causing Chaos: Transantiago. What happens when you mix optimism about government planning with ignorance of markets’ ability to provide information? Nothing but trouble. A story about a bus line.

Quote: I have not seen the "capital trap" theory in any macro textbook. How can we be undertaking one of the most extreme policy measures in economic history based on a theory that no one has ever studied?

How about making things worse with the bailout?. Give a big chunk of the money to ACORN, one of the principal players who created the problem?

Unintended–But Totally Predictable–Adverse Consequences. Adding more bad regulations on top of existing problems created by bad legislation does not fix anything.

Update 9/28/08:
Comparison of original Paulson bailout to compromise proposal.

What caused the current financial crisis

This video describes it better than most sources I have found.

Bailouts and Cold Turkey. What is the desired outcome.

One of the economics blogs I read had an interesting article.

What makes a bailout good?

To quote King:

"I'll say this until everyone agrees with me :) You aren't promised a certain price, you're only promised the market will be open so that you can find a price. The financial markets have worked. And to do that the Fed must lend freely, and it has. Meanwhile we will get either a new RTC from the Bush Administration, a MFI Trust from a possible McCain Administration, or something so far undefined by the Obama Administration. The question for Team Obama: Realist, Yankee, Rescuer or the end of the Fed? Do they know yet? This flowchart is unhelpful. Hint: Don't bother asking Raines and Johnson."

Also, probably more than you want to know, but interesting details on the problems: Clearing up the mess.

In a world growing more dangerous, this is scary

Russia and China are increasing the size of their militaries. Russia is again getting aggressive and threatening Europe with both military and energy threats. Oil supplies are going to be decreasing and both Russia and China have shown willingness to do "whatever is necessary" to corner the market. So what is the answer? One that does NOT sound reasonable to me is: unilateral disarmament, in weakness there is strength.

What CREATED Sub Prime paper? Answer: Congressional Mandates

Congressional Regulation and Mandates created the problems that we now have in the financial markets. Carter started it and Clinton finished it. In 2003 the administration proposed a bill that would have established some oversight of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae with a warning that their current sloppy controls and lack of oversight (they were reporting directly to congress and exempt from the controls and oversight imposed on privately owned financial companies) was likely to cause a financial catastrophe. The democrats in congress blocked the bill with the statement that the companies were doing fine and the changes proposed would decrease the number of sub-prime loans that could be made and that was unacceptable. Sub Prime loans are the congressionally mandated loans to people that would not normally be able to obtain such a loan because their credit score indicates that they probably won't be able to repay it. In 2005 the Republicans reintroduced the measure with the same warning of looming financial catastrophe. Again the democrats blocked it for the same reason. Now that we have a financial catastrophe triggered by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae meltdown is here, the ones responsible want to blame capitalism and private companies when it was created by congressional mandate. Of course, forcing banks to hand out welfare payments of that size seems to be a bad idea, even if the citizenry has objected to further direct taxation to accomplish the desired income redistribution.

Community Reinvestment Act

2003 attempt to tighten oversight

2005 attempt at reform

Trillion Dollar Bank Shakedown

Three stooges who helped create the crisis

An article on the evolution of the mess.

Update 9/21/08: And coverups.

Global cooling is on the way?

Arctic Ice coverage increases. "The growth over the past year covers an area of 700,000 square kilometers: an amount twice the size the nation of Germany."



2008 Coolest in 5 years. Quote:

The IPCC models and forecasts are wrong because they are based only on “mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity," he said.

The phenomenon of climate change should include other kinds of factors, both internal, such as volcanoes and human activity, and external, such as solar activity, he said.

"In this century, glaciers are growing," as seen on the Perito Moreno mountain in the Andes; on Mount Logan, the highest mountain in Canada; and on Franz-Josef Glacier, New Zealand, Velasco Herrera said.

Satellite data indicate that a period of global cooling may have begun in 2005, he said.


Update 9/21/08: Nasa to hold press conference on the Sun to discuss data from the joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission that reveals the sun’s solar wind is at a 50-year low.

When even European papers can see it ...

Don't expect to see this type analysis in the US papers ...

London Times

Palin vs Obama chart

She seems to be more qualified than he does ... and she is only going for VP ...

Palin vs Obama chart

The Fruits of their labor

Linking compensation to production DOES lead to greater efficiency. Of course the outcomes for individuals are not the same. The least productive get no more than they did before, and the most productive get a LOT more.

In summary the article says:

The series of experiments provided a fascinating confirmation that financial incentives can trump social networks, with some precision and much detail about the mechanisms involved. Bandiera and her colleagues have now stopped the experiments, in the belief that there is nothing more to be gained from this particular seam of inquiry. The owner does not seem to agree: He's hired a consultant to keep on hatching new performance pay schemes.


The Fruits of their Labor

public force vs private cooperation

King is an economist whose posts I enjoy reading. An excerpt from one:

What folks like Speaker Kelliher lack is not a failure to understand public finance theory, but the ideal that persuasion and cooperation are the best form of social organization. Government is force, wherever it appears. Sometimes force can reduce transactions costs but not often, and the temptation to use force for other things, once granted in the case of fire or police, is something to which every politician, of every party, succumbs. Don Boudreaux makes the case:

Just as many on the right naively fantasize that foreign problems are best solved by force, "liberals" fantasize that domestic problems - real and imaginary - are best solved by force. Jobs disappearing in Ohio? No problem - force Americans to buy fewer foreign goods. Too many Americans without health insurance? Force taxpayers to give it to them. The "distribution" of income doesn't satisfy some Very Caring Person's criterion? Government should forcibly redistribute. A mine collapses in West Virginia? Uncle Sam should force mine-owners to increase safety. See? All very simple.


read the whole thing at: Westover does public finance, from his blog SCSUScholars

FEC finds man guilty for putting decal on his own car

One more piece of our liberty taken away for our own good. Once we lose the right of individuals to express political views, what is left?

FEC finds man guilty for putting decal on his own car

European views and the BBC

I liked this one: European misconceptions

Oil

All the blather about ANWR and protecting the ecology of this area set aside as a pristine park and such, and then I come across this ... Apparently back in 1980 even the Democrats knew we were going to need energy in the future.

"The Coastal Plain of ANWR, also known as the 1002 Area, is neither wilderness nor refuge. It was set aside by Congress and President Carter in 1980 for future oil development. Development would be limited to 2000 acres of the Coastal Plain or 0.01% of the entire 19.6 million-acre refuge. These lands were set aside for America to produce its own energy resources."


ANWR oil preserve

Mexico complains to Arizona about Mexicans crossing border into Mexico

From www.slate.com

Another country is complaining about an influx of Mexicans crossing its borders looking for work. That country is Mexico. From the Tucson Citizen:

Sonoran officials slam sanctions law in Tucson visit
SHERYL KORNMAN
Tucson Citizen
A delegation of nine state legislators from Sonora was in Tucson on Tuesday to say Arizona's new employer sanctions law will have a devastating effect on the Mexican state.
At a news conference, the legislators said Sonora - Arizona's southern neighbor, made up of mostly small towns - cannot handle the demand for housing, jobs and schools it will face as illegal Mexican workers here return to their hometowns without jobs or money.
The law, which took effect Jan.1, punishes employers who knowingly hire individuals who don't have valid legal documents to work in the United States. Penalties include suspension or loss of a business license.
Its intent is to eliminate or curtail the top draw for immigrants to this country - jobs.
...
"Mexico is not prepared for this, for the tremendous problems" it will face as more and more Mexicans working in Arizona and sending money to their families return to hometowns in Sonora without jobs, she said.
...



Ed: It is obvious why they want the "tremendous problems" of the "hordes of Mexicans" from Sonora to be bourn by Arizona instead of by Mexico. What is not obvious is why they think we would want to continue to take on the burden of these tremendous problems that the hordes of illegal aliens are causing in Arizona.

Here is news that I don't see in the media

Long War Journal - Independent Journalism