Warren Buffett, occupying the role of avuncular billionaire once held by Ross Perot before he turned out to be absolutely insane, has an article in the New York Times advocating a balanced budget. At least, that’s what I think he is advocating; he runs from specifics with the dogged determination of Habermas: Slowing them down [...]
Archive for August, 2009
Balanced Budget 101
Posted in Industrial Policy, Labor Policy, Military, Obama, Peter Orzag on August 20, 2009 | 11 Comments »
Killing Fannie
Posted in Corruption, Housing Crisis, Housing Policy on August 19, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Mike Konczal has been writing at Rortybomb and now Baseline about structural fixes to the housing market. I thought of his work when reading this Times article on the real estate appraisal business: On May 1, a sweeping change took effect that was meant to reduce the conflicts of interest in home appraisals while safeguarding [...]
Black Gold
Posted in Industrial Policy, Mexico, Middle East, Military, Transportation Policy on August 18, 2009 | 15 Comments »
Brazil has announced that it wants the national oil company, Petrobras, to control all future deep-sea oil resource development. Ever since Lazaro Cardenas nationalized Mexico’s oil reserves it has been the dream of oil-producing nations to control the wealth beneath their lands. Two can play that game. But it takes courage and communication, and I [...]
Right Idea, Wrong Place
Posted in Health Care, Nancy Pelosi, Obama on August 17, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Mike Stark, who seems to be auditioning for role of marginally skinnier Michael Moore, interviewed Barack Obama deputy consiglere Valerie Jarrett on Friday and offered this curious suggestion: if the health care bill is being held up by the square states, why not hit them where it hurts and tell them no public option = [...]
American Bantustan
Posted in Food, Housing Policy, Industrial Policy, Labor Policy, Obama on August 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Over at Daily Kos, Johnny Gunn has a story of a bicycle trip he took in 2005 through Navajo Nation and the reservations of northern New Mexico. The story builds to the allegation that “There are reasons why there are no Whole Foods stores in any of these places – reasons that go beyond population [...]
Japanese Game Shows
Posted in Foreigners, Health Care, Television on August 15, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Japanese entertainment typically leaves something to be desired, at least for those of us who are not ADD fourteen year-olds with an abiding love of epileptic seizures, but every so often it comes up with a gem of Dada absurdity. Lady One Question, for example: I thought of her while watching Lawrence O’Donnell try to [...]
Trains
Posted in Architecture, Transportation Policy on August 14, 2009 | 10 Comments »
I am not a big fan of mass transit. It doesn’t bother me as much as, say, bicycles, but I don’t see European streetcars and think progress. I tend to think they should get that stuff underground and out of the way. Just as soccer’s foreign roots give it a certain hipster credibility despite the [...]
Network Effect
Posted in Health Care, Obama on August 13, 2009 | 5 Comments »
America’s Health Insurance Plans, the lobbying arm of the health insurance industry, has a new presentation to try to argue that someone else is the bad guy. They point to some of the outrageous charges their members have received from out-of-network doctors: Some out‐of‐network providers are charging exorbitant prices – several hundred or even over a thousand [...]
Incentives
Posted in China, Corruption, George W. Bush, Meltdown, Obama on August 12, 2009 | 8 Comments »
Simon Johnson, over at Baseline: The reason real to worry about China, however, has very little to do with external balances, China’s dollar holdings, or even capital flows. It’s about productivity and rent-seeking. China mostly invests in activities that raise productivity, raising the amount of goods and services that they can produce. This could be manufacturing [...]
Westchester Lies
Posted in Architecture, Housing Policy on August 11, 2009 | 19 Comments »
I am struggling to make sense of the news that Westchester County was sued for lying on an affordable housing grant application and settled with the agreement to: [S]pend more than $50 million of its own money, in addition to other funds, to build or acquire 750 homes or apartments, 630 of which must be [...]
