From The PERColator:
As PERC’s Rick Stroup often says, “Efficiency has no constituency,” and that’s certainly true of environmental policy. The federal government is replete with inefficiencies resulting from overlapping, redundant, and wasteful spending programs.
Over the last three years, the Government Accountability Office has outlined 131 areas of wasteful and duplicate spending by the federal government. The GAO released its latest report last month, identifying an additional 31 areas to improve [...]
IT IS the sad fate of American overseas food aid to occupy a policy “sweet spot”, says Chris Barratt, an expert in the subject at Cornell University.
Its budget, the largest of any country’s, is big enough to attract rapacious special interests, but still sufficiently small and complex that its scandalous inefficiencies rarely make headlines.
Scandalous barely covers it. Since America began donating surplus wheat, corn meal, vegetable oil and other farm [...]
On Thursday, Valentine’s Day, WaPo officially discussed the circumstances surrounding the layoffs of employees, FishbowlDC sources have learned. Internal sources appropriately place the number at 54, though a publicist hasn’t confirmed the exact number. Every department facing cuts was asked to keep the news to their department only, as to not make it look like a mass layoff. We’re told those given pink slips include Beth Jacobs, General Manager of Mobile, and Ken Dodelin, [...]
From Points and Figures:
… Mark Perry has an excellent blog you should read on food stamps. But his food stamp analogy carries over to all government transfer payments. Every program. Not just your favorite ones. Every one. That includes Social Security and Medicare.
In an economy, the economic effects from a transfer program always sum to zero. Simply put, there can be no economic stimulus from increased food stamp usage.
Given the [...]
James Miller
silverbearcafe.com
July 2, 2012
I won a bet today.
A few weeks ago I wagered with a coworker that the United States Supreme Court would uphold the Affordable Care Act otherwise known as Obamacare. He reasoned that the federal government has no authority under the Constitution to force an individual to purchase a product from a private company. My reasoning was much simpler. Because the Supreme Court is a functioning arm of [...]
From The Reformed Broker:
Did you read the massive bear case cover story on China this weekend in Barron’s? Oh my god, you have no idea.
I know the steel and coal stocks are all “setting up” technically, and I don’t doubt they’re in for a bounce – but my god, this is not going to end well. The Barron’s piece, called Falling Star, is by Jonathan Laing. And it looks at the fictitious finances, desperate demographics, [...]
From Miller’s Genuine Draft:
I won a bet today.
A few weeks ago, I wagered with a coworker that the United States Supreme Court would uphold the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. He reasoned that the federal government has no authority under the Constitution to force an individual to purchase a product from a private company. My reasoning was much simpler.
Because the Supreme Court is a functioning arm of the [...]
The stereotype of the lazy Greek worker, putting in long hours but not producing much, and not declaring everything to the taxman, has dogged the country’s efforts to get international sympathy.
And this cliché has permeated public opinion elsewhere. Greece is perceived as the least hard-working country in Europe by the British, the Germans, the Spanish, Poles and Czechs, according to a recent survey by Pew. Greeks who were surveyed pointed the finger [...]
By Farid Khavari
Healthcare costs are skyrocketing out of control, outpacing inflation at an ever-accelerating rate. Unless this trend is reversed, our obsolete healthcare system will destroy our economy and make healthcare less available in the bargain.
In other words, no healthcare system of any kind can survive unless we can control the rising cost. To bring cost under control, we must take a series of precision and effective, cost-cutting steps to [...]
A new congressional report highlights “serious inefficiencies” in the Transportation Security Administration’s “management and deployment of screening technology” at U.S. airports.
The report, published Wednesday and titled “Airport Insecurity: TSA’s Failure to Cost Effectively Procure, Deploy and Warehouse its Screening Technologies,” states that the TSA “is wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars by inefficiently deploying screening equipment and technology to commercial airports.”
The report comes days after the Electronic Privacy Information Center unearthed a November 2011 report by [...]
Auburn, Alabama – The people in my community love their public schools. So too it is in most of the country. If only they knew the costs, and I don’t mean just the financial costs, which are two and three times those of private schools. I also mean the opportunity costs: If only people knew what they were missing!
Imagine education wholly managed by the market economy. The variety! The choice! [...]
From FT:
With the €530bn lent to banks through its latest three-year longer-term refinancing operation, the size of the European Central Bank’s balance sheet has increased to unprecedented levels, raising a number of concerns. Not all are justified.
The main concern is that sooner or later the increase in central bank money will lead to inflation. However, there is no empirical evidence – across countries and over time – that the size [...]
James Hall
Infowars.com
February 22, 2012
The prospects for conducting commerce are never an easy task. The hurdles to start a business much less stay competitive demands the greatest skill and fortitude. Innovation and inspiration often is the best course for those bold enough to become an employer. The idea that a level playing field exists for all comers is preposterous. The entire macrocosm for business rests upon separating your enterprise from that [...]
What works for readers in Australia or New Zealand does not necessary work well here. For example, for a short time when we first installed our tanks and started to collect rainwater, we ran it directly into the house, unfiltered. One word: Ugh. If unfiltered works for you, great.
Calculating the amount of rainwater you can collect from your rooftop:
Figure the number of square feet of roof: Multiply the length of [...]
By Andy Xie
BEIJING ( Caixin Online ) — The year 2012 is the most important test for China in two decades. The growth downturn is not just a correction or even a cyclical downturn. It is the end to a two-decade-long, invest-and-export growth model. Shifting to a new growth model requires painful reforms. If China refuses to change, it could experience a lost decade.
China’s economic [...]
The 57,000 Page Tax Return
Consider the resources that GE spends to lowers its tax bill, not just the many millions spent on clever accounting and accountants and the many millions spent on lobbying but also the many inefficient ways that GE structures its businesses just to avoid paying taxes and the many millions it invests in socially wasteful projects just in order to produce privately valuable tax credits. Now add [...]
2011-NOV-07
Italy’s borrowing costs have hit new euro-era record highs this morning. 10-year Italian government bonds are now yielding more than 6.6%, With Bloomberg Warning That The Country Is Heading Down The Same Path Taken By Greece, Portugal And Ireland.
By way of comparison, Germany is able to borrow for 10 years at 1.76% (a paltry return for investors, given that eurozone inflation is currently running above 3%. But then, traders have made [...]
By Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com
Deflation phobia has broken out again. James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, grumbled in San Diego about inflation expectations being too low and threatened to print more money, while pro-QEx commentators are once again pointing at the Japanese “deflation spiral” as a horrid event that we have to avoid at all cost.
In 1996, seven years after the [...]
Your four choices are:
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin
Former VP Dan Quayle
President Barack Obama
Former President George W. Bush
Ready? Go!
1) “Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel ’s.”
A. Barack Obama
B. Dan Quayle
C. Sarah Palin
D. George W. Bush
2) “I’ve now been in 57 states I think one left to go.”
A. Barack Obama
B. Dan Quayle
C. Sarah Palin
D. George W. Bush
3) “On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its [...]
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The United Nations said Wednesday that about 1.3 billion tons of food is lost or wasted every year, which amounts to roughly one third of all the food produced for human consumption.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization commissioned a report on food loss and waste as rising prices and diminished production worldwide have contributed to an increase in food insecurity.
“The issue of food losses is of [...]
by Chris Martenson
“In the long run, as decades of capital misallocations and inefficiencies in the global economy get shaken out, there’s going to be a redistribution of the wealth. And I think the wealth is going to go to where it’s treated best.
And at the end of the day, that’s really what I’m looking for: the places that have the most solid fundamentals and the best [...]
Republican Budget Cuts Collide With Job Training to Assist Businesses
By Catherine Dodge – Apr 1, 2011 12:01 AM ET
Michael Conner, an executive with Cincinnati-based Frisch’s Restaurants Inc. (FRS), says he’s all for the Republican push to shrink government spending — except when it comes to job-training programs that help businesses.
In their quest for deep government spending cuts, U.S. House Republicans passed a budget bill that would [...]
In the past seven trading sessions, we have seen the VIX index jump as much as 15% on any given day and slide as much as 10%. We are still in a period of heightened volatility.
The markets have very recently begun to shrug off the turbulence in the Middle East and North Africa. An eerie calm has certainly managed to settle in regarding the civil [...]
I will venture to guess that about 30 to 40% of federal outlays are wasted due to corruption, inefficiencies and just horrible management; independent of the agency spending the $$$.
Unfortunately, given the size of the govt. bureaucracy and lack of accountability regardless of the level of waste, this problem will literally never be solved. Yes, maybe someone gets fired that is an appointed head of some agency, but the real [...]
Hoenig is lone dissenter on FED panel voting twice to stop “exceptionally low” rates for “an extended period” as near-ZERO% rates guarantees for Wall Street profits that encourage speculation.
Wall Street profits are $55 Billion in 2009 = 3 X Bigger THAN ANY YEAR EVER!
National Unemployment Rate = 10% – Hoenig calls that “unfair.”
Banks make K1LLINGS borrowing at ZERO% and lending at 6% to 36% or even higher!
They use ZERO% money [...]
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