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 solvency at which a country goes down the tubes. They get along fine until they do not. Even when it is obvious that a country …
Author: Jim
Obama’s connections
If you read blogs like this, you probably already know that Obama’s family and friends on both the black and white sides were communists and terrorists for three generations.
“Don’t call my bluff†says Obama
“Don’t call my bluff†says President Obama, thereby implicitly admitting he is bluffing.
Retrodicting climate
Warmist climate models do a fine job of retrodicting the climate, yet a woefully bad job at predicting the climate. Their prediction tends to be doom in the next few years, while their modeling of the past is perfectly spot on. Thus their predictions grow old fast.
Solving the immigration problem
Roissy complains that Libertarians are in favor of open borders and that open borders are having disastrous consequences. But what is having disastrous consequences is not open borders by themselves, but open borders combined with democracy and the welfare state. Even if the government had the will to stop the flood of low IQ migrants, the effect would be limited. Does not stop drugs.
“The Barbarian Invasionsâ€
I watched an old 2003 movie, “The Barbarian Invasions†which the right love, because it depicts the ruling progressive left elite as decadent, corrupt, hypocritical, incompetent and destroying the civilization that they rule, and the ruling progressive elite love, perhaps because it is about their favorite topic, themselves.
Taxing beyond the laffer maximum
Why do governments tax beyond the Laffer maxium? You have probably read about the California’s Amazon tax. Amazon said it would flee the tax, promptly did so, and so, predictably, instead of gaining two hundred million, the state lost taxes on something like one hundred and fifty million of income.
Defund the left
The reason the battle in Wisconsin is so bitter is that the Wisconsin Republicans are doing what Reagan attempted to do and failed to do: Defund the left. Previously schools were required to buy health insurance through the teachers union. Being free to shop around for health insurance appears to save over half a million dollars per school The dissenting opinion, The Stratasphere, Public School Spending That is over a half a million dollars a year of taxpayer funded left …
Poorer, dirtier and shabbier
In the comments, some have disagreed with my proposition that BLS statistics are unbelievable because the US is becoming dirtier and shabbier. Dirtier and shabbier is rather subjective, so reasonable people can disagree.
Quantitative easing comes back again from the undead
QE2 was supposed to end, and it has. However, as it ends, the federal reserve opens up open ended dollar lending to foreign central banks. Supposedly there is no risk, since these are central banks, and we all know central banks always repay their debts.