Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for October, 2009

American Superalloy

Posted in Health Care, Immigration, Industrial Policy, Labor Policy, Mexico, Politics on October 13, 2009 | 8 Comments »

Luis Gutierrez is leading a rally in DC to argue for comprehensive immigration reform.

We simply cannot wait any longer for a bill that keeps our families together, protects our workers and allows a pathway to legalization for those who have earned it…We need a bill that says if you come here to hurt our communities, we will not support you; but if you are here to work hard and to make a better life for your family, you will have the opportunity to earn your citizenship. We need a law that says it is un-American for a mother to be torn from her child, and it is unacceptable to undermine our workforce by driving the most vulnerable among us further into the shadows.

“Comprehensive” sounds good.  But “comprehensive” is not what Gutierrez really wants. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Chicago on the Plate

Posted in Argentina, Australia, Education, Foreigners, Italy, South America on October 9, 2009 | 6 Comments »

Edward Glaeser (courtesy Stephen Dodson and Ben Casnocha) asks what went wrong with Argentina:

A century ago, there were only seven countries in the world that were more prosperous than Argentina (Belgium, Switzerland, Britain and four former English colonies including the United States)… In 1909, per capita income in Argentina was 50 percent higher than in Italy, 180 percent higher than Japan, and almost five times higher than in neighboring Brazil. Over the course of the 20th century, Argentina’s relative standing in world incomes fell sharply. By 2000, Argentina’s income was less than half that of Italy or Japan.

It is one of the great mysteries of human development. (more…)

Read Full Post »

The Way We Do Things

Posted in Ben Bernanke, China, Finance, Foreign Policy, Foreigners, France, Germany on October 8, 2009 | 6 Comments »

Economista Non Grata asks about the rumors that the dollar will be replaced as a reserve currency.  Allow me to try to get to it via something completely different – the Krug’s excellent diagram of what is going on in Bernanke’s mind:

DESCRIPTION

There are times I kick myself for not coming up with stuff like this myself.  Then I realize I don’t know how to post my own graphics to WordPress.  And I don’t have a Nobel Prize.  So I’m going to have to use a lot of words. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Role of Government

Posted in Corruption, Energy Policy, Health Care, Middle East on October 7, 2009 | 11 Comments »

David Brooks’ silly season seems to have found an Indian Summer, as he goes on about his imaginary friends Mr. Bentham and Mr. Hume:

If you put Mr. Bentham in charge of the government, he’d proceed with confidence. If you told him to solve a complicated issue like the global-warming problem, he’d gather the smartest people in the country and he’d figure out how to expand wind, biomass, solar and geothermal sources to reduce CO2 emissions.

“I don’t know the best way to generate clean energy,” [Hume]’d whine, “and I don’t know how technology will advance in the next 20 years. Why don’t we just raise the price on carbon and let everybody else figure out how to innovate our way toward a solution?

Brilliant…except the mechanism to achieve Bentham’s goal is Hume’s tax.  Way to find a distinction without a difference. (more…)

Read Full Post »

World Cup

Posted in Architecture, Foreigners, Olympics, Soccer on October 6, 2009 | 5 Comments »

Amazingly, some smart people are treating the celebration of Chicago’s defeat for the Olympics in 2016 as a sign of childishness, as opposed to the maturity to know a Trojan Horse when you see one.  Just because all the other kids are licking light sockets doesn’t mean you should do it too.  Since I have some confidence I know more about international sports than Rachel Maddow, and thanks to Ben Casnocha have some readers who are not solely focused on insurance rescission, I’ll go ahead give the constructive advice of what international event we should be trying to host: the 2018 World Cup

In fact, I think the current American proposal is far too timid.  Let’s go with something only the US can offer: a 64-team tournament. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Foxes Guarding the Henhouse

Posted in Food, Football, George W. Bush, Health Care, Meltdown, Obama, Tim Geithner on October 5, 2009 | 8 Comments »

The basic story is tragic if common: person eats food, person gets sick from food.  In this case, the person was a young Minnesota dance instructor named Stephanie Smith, and the food was ground beef processed by Cargill in Wisconsin from sources in Nebraska, Texas, South Dakota, and Uraguay and contaminated with the E.coli bacteria, and sold at the local Sam’s Club.

People have been getting sick from food for all of human history; no doubt we were getting sick from food before we could fairly be said to be a species.  Even with the best intentions, it will probably continue.  But the diseases of the modern food supply – E.coli, salmonella, etc – are not inevitable.  They wouldn’t exist at all – and Stephanie Smith wouldn’t be in a wheelchair – if our government functioned properly.  These microbes are the canaries in the coal mine of a dysfunctional bureaucracy. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Swiss Health

Posted in Corruption, Foreigners, Health Care on October 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Bit of a Swiss theme this week; first the Polanski drama, then the planted articles in the Times discussing Swiss health care.  See, it isn’t so bad to do without the public option – the Swiss do just fine.

That is quite correct: the Swiss have a better health care system than we have, and they do so with private insurance companies.  They even have a mandate, which I suppose proves that it’s possible to have a functioning mandate and no public option.  But getting to the Swiss system would be far more difficult politically than getting to a public option; indeed, we would probably find it easier to take the plunge and go with a single payer system. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Tell Us What You Really Want

Posted in Corruption, Housing Crisis, Housing Policy, Meltdown on October 1, 2009 | 4 Comments »

Courtesy of Mike Konczal at Rortybomb (itself a thoughtful compilation of a variety of articles, especially this one from Interfluidity), this gem from the Mortgage Bankers Association:

The centerpiece of MBA’s recommendation is the creation of a new line of mortgage-backed securities (MBS).  Each security would have two components – a loan level guarantee provided by a privately-owned, government-chartered and regulated mortgage credit-guarantor entity (MCGE) and a security-level, federal government-guaranteed wrap.  The wrap would be an explicit government guarantee focused on the credit risk of these mortgage securities.

That takes balls.  Know what takes even more balls?  The self-congratulatory blurb at the end of the press release: (more…)

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.