I am in the habit of rolling through most stop signs at 4 way stops. I used to come to pretty much a full stop. But then I thought about the following.   The U.S. imported 1.2 Million barrels of oil per day from Saudi Arabia in 2009. At $70 per barrel (that [...]

I always sort of a grimly chuckle when I hear a politician on the tube say something like “Our focus is now entirely on creating jobs.” Politicians may be just about the stupidest creatures on our shared Earth, but they do know one thing. When people feel economically insecure, they tend to [...]

Antichrist’s Adjutant: Henry Waxman
Dumb as a Rock, but just as dangerous when thrown at your head – 3rd in line for the Presidency, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

These are two of the most powerful Demunists and Commocrats in Washington, Waxman, Chair of the House Energy Committe, and Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives.  Waxman [...]

In December the Fed announced that it would target Fed Funds at 0 to 1/4% and it also announced that it would be in the market for agency debt and treasuries, effectively monetizing the debt of the United States.  The dollar, which had been strengthening in the flight to quality as risk positions were eliminated [...]

UPDATE 05 March 2009: I would add that in light of what seems an unbelievable overextension of their balance sheet by writing hundreds of billions of dollars or more in Credit Default Swap (CDS) contracts they could not even remotely begin to conceive of being able to honor in the event, it would [...]

President Obama has been using the phrase “the tired policies of the past” quite a bit to refer to supply-side conservative economic ideas.  He should be careful.  These words sound like words that could have been uttered by Reagan in 1980 or by Newt Gingrich in 1994.
The tired policies of the past are precisely the [...]

UPDATE:  4 June 2009 – Freedom House and some other organizations have released a report, Undermining Democracy: 21st Century Authoritarians (pdf) that captures the ideas expressed here so I guess it is now official.
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I have been meaning to write about this for about 5 years, but the installment of the Obama administration with what should [...]

In listening to some congressional idiot talk about aid to the auto makers, I was struck by their determination in insisting that this is not a bailout but a bridge loan.  There is a grain of truth in this I suppose.  When the commercial paper markets seized up, financing oprerations would have become very difficult [...]

People have to make judgments and they also have limited time to do so.  This probably explains why so many Americans are content and even eager to see the same rubes return to positions of authority, or their children or siblings or spouses.  The latest example is of course Vladimir – er – Michael Bloomberg.  [...]

As a form of national protest at the high and rising cost of energy and food, everyone in the nation should stay home on Wednesday, June 11th.  This might help get the attention of the idiots in Washington and the ear of fellow citizens who – for whatever strange reason – are not thinking much [...]

I was recently invited to a dinner at the aforementioned institution. Mark Hurd, the CEO of HP was the speaker. He spoke about globalization and took some questions. The thrust of his remarks lampooned American education vis-a-vis China and India. His anecdotal supporting evidence was that the number of engineering graduates [...]