Who says there's no free lunch? But can you eat it?
Good bye, Kodachrome
NYC teachers kill time in rubber room. Some union contract those folks have.
Amusing holiday complaints
Blog sold. We at Maggie's will consider any offer in the $15 million range.
Iran will never be the same. Luttwak
A new book: Global Warming and Other Bollocks
When a journalist asks a set-up question, it's no longer journalism. Call it whatever you want, but not professional journalism.
Dishonest TV ads in support of government medical care. Related at the Denver Post, US Medical care is not inferior. Related, from Kudlow: Why the overreach?
The CDS --the "toxic assets" that AIG (most prominently) committed ritual suicide with --was specifically left unregulated by this guy in the yr 2000 financial reforms, when there were a few hundred million in CDS existent. By 2007, that number was sixty trillion. Denninger makes the case that complex structured assets are deceptive by design.
Why can't they answer three simple climate questions? Related from He thinks you're stupid:
Waxman-Markey would be a very stupid bill even if it were true that 1) the earth is getting warmer, 2) human activity is mostly responsible for climate changes, and 3) a warmer earth would be a bad thing. Given that all three of these premises are false--we cannot, in fact, control the weather--Waxman-Markey is a suicidal monument to human folly.
Related: We're all evil polluters now
Barone rips The Chicago Way
Hot dog diplomacy for the Iranians.
From Douthat:
Oh, it seems easy at first. The press is kind; the Congress is pliant; the country loves you. You’re a breath of fresh air after the previous administration’s excesses. Your first attempts at big-ticket legislation shoulder their way into law. The opposition party looks easily divided, easily co-opted and deeply out of touch.
But eventually the hard part arrives. For Barack Obama, it may have started last week, courtesy of the abacus-wielding wonks at the Congressional Budget Office.
Dick Morris' new book Catastrophe. Yes, he is a Dem.
Our coming middle class tax hikes. h/t, Just One Minute's Are you depressed yet?
How Socialist is the US?
Where did the US sit in 2007 (the last year of data in Table 1315)? Somewhat less socialist than the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) average, but well into the mix. In 2007, government spending in the US was 37.4% of GDP, or more than Australia, Ireland, Japan, Slovakia, South Korea and Switzerland. The OECD average was 40.4% and the European average was 46.2%.
In 2007, the federal government spent "only" 20% of GDP (the remaining 17.4% of GDP was spent by state and local governments). According to the Congressional Budget Office, President Obama will spend 28.5% of GDP in 2009. If states and localities have remained roughly constant, government spending is now about 46% of GDP, or almost exactly the European average in 2007.
We are as much in the thick of socialism right now as, say, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands.
But the trends in these figures tell an even more interesting story. Table 1315 lists 28 OECD countries. At some point prior to 2007, 16 of those governments were spending over 50% of GDP. The European average peaked in 1993 at 52.2%. But by 2007, only four governments spent over half of GDP: Hungary, Denmark, Sweden and France. The European average fell from 52.2% to 46.2%.
At one point, Sweden was the top socialist in the OECD states, at 70.9% of GDP. But by 2007, France was in the lead, at just 52.4%. Sweden's government had cut its spending by almost 20% of GDP between 1993 and 2007. That is the size of the entire US federal government as a fraction of GDP!
