72.5% of House Republican's voted for the compromise bill. Less than 1/3rd voted against it.
50% of voting House Democrats voted in favor of the compromise bill (5 democrats didn't vote). Half voted against it.
Nearly 50% more of the Republican's voted in favor than the Democrats did.
The House GOP appears to ...
The article provides a good perspective on the debt and politics of it.
..... people who believe in creationism and deny evolution.
Newt on Obama : "He actually believes in left-wing economic ideas. The only problem with them is ...
and of course he's right ... that is, he provides a rational reason why the gov't now focusing on "jobs" growth is bound to be more rhetoric than providing any gov't help.
&...
The article by Joh Toplin (partial article in TPM Cafe today; full article in his blog) is disturbing, even though in most respects it mimics my own thoughts --- which make it all the more disturbing because my disturbing thoughts are also those of others --- meaning my own thoughts haven't been just my own. &...
Dean Baker's blog today makes a good point about the probability of a double - dip recession occurring. He says it's not likely... barely. His reason is that recessions have been caused by losses in housing market or automobile production, and both of these are already mired so far down that further drop ...
I was going to make this comment a couple of weeks ago when the deb "crises" issue started the fear mongering of a potential credit down-grade, but didn't because I thought it was self evident to everybody that 1) the credit ratings agencies have no credibility anyway, and 2) U.S. credit is still among the best of all ...
.... release their public education (and college transcipts if they attended any institutions of higher learning, whether they graduated or not) so that the public knows what institutions they attended, the classes they took, and the grades they got in those classes. It might be very enlightening --- as is Texas Gov. Perry's ...
Baker emphasizes the lack of internal consistancy of the down-grade and points to the lack of economic foundation for it. He implies, but doesn't actually state what I did --- i.e. the downgrade is based on politics, not economics. He's more direct and succinct than I was in my post
...
Wow... since stem cells have no gender, if sperm can be created from stem cells, then sooner or later so will eggs... leading to human asexual reproduction. This isn't such good news for males though, since females ...
Here's the official S&P downgrade report on US debt. Downgrade is from AAA to AA+. There's zero (notta, zilch) financial information or criteria in the report. The summary is that S&P is just worried about the congressional / political environment in US congress since it ...
Since most people have a largely pre-ordained bias to one side of the political persuasion or the other, that leaves only ~ 10% at most of the voting population in the "can be persuaded" camp. Therefore, the billions of dollars spent on political propaganda and all the political bullshit rhetoric we have to listen to from ...
Ref:
1. My note entitled Right & Left brain dominance as related to political bent of Feb 18, 2010 (see attachment)
... From Krugman's blog today
"Truly, our public discourse has been entirely about problems we don?t have, at the expense of dealing with the problems we do have."
This is not by accident or chance, rather it's a designed and executed maneuver to flank ...
One of PK's blog entry's today, entitled The Waste , charts potential v actual GDP for the last several years ending at current point in time. The point he's making is that the output gap (potential output v actual) is $0.9 Trillion/year at present, and that this is a waste of resource, jobs, etc. ...
15 minutes will do it nicely.
...
I've listened to pundits & economists reasoning and besides that, believe that the natural laws of economics (vis-a-vis capitalism) must be regulated to keep the system on some kind of even keel over time. The issue boils down to degree of economic stability (even keeled) v. degree of regulation.
Article Title:
Venture Capitalists Back Away from Clean Energy...
Taking a really short break from tile work on the bathroom ---
Sarkozy & Merckle speaking of tighter economic controls today for the 17 EU member states, specifically to ...
If you're the least bit interested in how propoganda campaigns are created and funded this is a must read. It's relevant! Think "how did the national socialist's rise in political power in Germany?" It was by the national socialist's propoganda campaigns... "grass root" organizations created and funded by the national ...
From a Reuter's report relating an interview with Moody's past Director of Sovereign's Ratings --- The highlight of the interview tells says it all ---
... Subtitle: The rich are really, really rich.
The net of my gleening from the data in the article is that on average, the upper 1% of AGI's constitute 14.6x more AGI per percent of the entire other upper half of AGI's --- this if from: Upper 1% constitute 23% of Upper Half of AGI's; Upper 49% (50% - 99%) ...
The right wing (GOP) advocate free markets with reduced or no gov't imposed regulations on them.
This means, I presume, going so far as to eliminate, or vastly reduce the impact of fair trade laws (anti-trust).... i.e. letting the market forces determine their own fates.
But "free markets" is a propaganda slogan designed ...
A nice take and explanation on magnitude of U.S. joblessness relative to prior "full employment" levels (potential or trend ...
From Dean Baker --- easily understood and compelling reasoning to keep Social Security fully solvent through end of century at least.
In his series of blogs today, one of them one of them calls out (and describes why) how economically stupid it would be to increase the Medicare eligibility age.&...
Baker, in his op-ed today, makes a credible case against the advent of a double dip recession occurring. His summary leaves only the ...
When I was working, once upon a time, I was often told (in response to my attempts to change how or what was being done): "There are the 'should be's' and the 'way things are'. ... I shortened it to just "the should be's and the is's". Essentially, what I was being told is that the changes I was seeking to implement were&...
An article in the SJ Mercury News a couple of days ago announced a deal between Ford & Toyota to jointly develop the next generation hybrid engines for light trucks.
I have been struck by ...
I've commented on krugmans' failure to use a valid measure of where the economic output is with respect to stable inflation level employment in normal times.... he's previously shown only the extension of the housing bubble's economy with respect to where were at now... and since the housing bubble's economy was an artificial & ...
I'm starting to come to conclusion (still tentative) that Stiglitz may be the only economist (of any respect and wide economic influence) who understands that capitalism doesn't work to the benefit of society; that's its now proven to be a failure in it's supposed "promise" to provide societies with a fair and equitable distribution ...
I've been toying with the measure of a nation's economic prosperity which is effectively defined by GDP as a proxy for that prosperity. However, the net benefit to society isn't being measured at all... it's widely accepted as the implied benefit but it doesn't measure this at all.
The chart & ...
I've started a thread of a thought I'm having about why the basic, underlying reasons for human institutions develop and essentially remain or become stronger over time... even though they change their names, or give the appearance of being modified when in real and relative terms they aren't at all modified....
I'd forgotten that Greenspan's "irrational exhuberance" speech was in '96. It was obvious to any macro-market observer, among which are the fed's staff analysts, that in mid-June '94 the market's price valuations exeeded all prior historic (since Jan 3, 1950) positive deviations from the long term trend by a ...