Month: July 2011

economics

Stagflation

Once again, the economic news is “unexpected” bad.  Official inflation is supposedly 3.2% annualized while real GDP is supposedly 1.3% annualized.  I suspect actual inflation is higher, which would mean that actual growth was correspondingly lower, but even if we take these figures at face value, they still do not support the Keynesian account of …

economics

The debt limit charade

US politicians are engaged in passionate debate and confrontation over the debt limit and spending.  The question is whether to “cut” two trillion over the next ten years, which is to say, about two hundred billion dollars a year, which is to say, whether, after ten years, spending will be five or six trillion dollars …

economics

How well run is Oslo?

According to the bloggers who speak for our ruling elite (such as Matthew Yglesias) Norway is wonderfully well run.  But according to the terrorist Breivik, it is run much like Chicago, where the ruling party’s political mobilization of the disproportionately criminal underclass has produced a criminal party.

global warming

Anthropogenic CO2

A replication of part of Clive Best’s analysis. The theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming assumes a number of points without evidence, assumptions that might well be true, but which they have made no attempt to test. One is that warming would be a bad thing, another is that the world is very sensitive to …

economics

The curious solvency of Japan

By any objective measure, Japan is more broke than Italy.  Indeed, nearly all the advanced countries are as broke as each other, but some of them are in trouble, and some of them are not.  Japan can borrow money at low interest.  Italy cannot. Looking at past financial crises, there is no objective level of …