Tuesday, December 14, 2010

The trucks won't load themselves 12/14/2010 edition...

I'm headed to work.  Here are your morning reads.
 
House to consider estate tax amendment http://bit.ly/gkYPEX
Julian Assange and ex post facto http://bit.ly/hiE0GP
What does an unmanaged macroeconomy look like? http://bit.ly/hiXL4Y
 Labor law is broken http://bit.ly/b3Mejx
Can anyone say: Judge with a conflict of interest http://bit.ly/gtry3D
NYTimes: Iran’s Foreign Minister Is Abruptly Fired While Abroad http://nyti.ms/gLyEjO
 Health Care Law Ruled Unconstitutional http://nyti.ms/hePj41
The Courts Divided: How Health Care Lawsuits Have Exposed A Partisan Judiciary http://tpm.ly/gnTxM8
Young People: A Potential Lost Generation Of Young Americans. http://goo.gl/CnzmY
 
Here are some old items I've been meaning to get to....
 
Here is a really cool BBC video looking at income and life expectancy growth over the past 200 years in 4 minutes.
 

David Altig over at Macroblog asks, what might monetary policy success look like? Also take a look at his recent oped in the AJC, Federal Reserve policies focused, where he focused on some of the concerns people have about Qe2.
 
 
 The revolving door continues--Citigroup Names Obama's Orszag Vice Chairman of Investment Bank.  Do we really wonder why corporations and the financial industry have such political power in Washington?
 
 
Wikileaks
 
 
George Washington political scientist Henry Farrell reviews Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination by Benedict Anderson and The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia by James C. Scott.
 
Paul Krugman looks at the Obama/GOP tax agreement through political economy lens' and thinks there is cause for concern.  He looks at Mark Zanndi's economic projections and notices that while growth increases in 2011 the increase begins to decline in 2012 to lower than it would be without the deal and increases the likelyhood of Obama losing in 2012.
 
 Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) all ran around the media this week trying to pull a double standard by making the claim that Obama's payroll tax holiday would increase the deficit and that the extending the Bush tax cuts wouldn't.  This is obviously not true as both will increase the deficit.  A cut in revenue is a cut in revenue is a cut in revenue.  Both will increase the deficit.
 
Dan Kovalik points out that in all of the talks in the media about how to cut the deficit you here nothing from either side (sic) in regards to cutting military spending portion of the budget deficit
.. what is largely absent from this debate is discussion of the war, which includes military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, allied Pakistan, military exercises in the Yellow Sea and elsewhere, and the maintenance of over 800 U.S. military bases throughout the world. To put the latter into perspective, Great Britain and Ancient Rome, at the very height of their Empires, never had more than 40 military bases internationally.  
He accurately notes that "while Obama is rightly criticized for being too conciliatory to the rich and powerful -- to Wall Street bankers and to the Republicans -- he is unflinchingly harsh when it comes to unleashing violence throughout the world."  If you include the long term health care costs and disability benfitis as part of military spending it would all add up to about half of the federal budget.  Thats a big chunk of budget for there to be no discussion of within the media or major leaders of either party.
 
 
 
 
 
 
James A. Nichols IV
cell: (770) 312-6736
www.JimN2010.com
www.JimNichols4.com

"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."     ---Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933)
 
"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen."      --Lugwig Wittgenstein     Logische-Philosophische Abhandlung 7

No comments:

Post a Comment