Lasers could replace spark plugs in car engines BBC
France gives green light for absinthe revival Financial Times (hat tip Buzz Potamkin)
Has the mystery of Easter Island finally been solved? Independent (hat tip Buzz Potamkin)
Japanese robots await call to action Japan Times. Why did this take so long?
Yemeni leader agrees to step down BBC
Are China’s high-speed trains heading off the rails? Market Cop
MI Republican legislator wants to require foster children to get only used clothing– Lambert Strether
This is a bizarre juxtaposition: House Republicans face backlash at home over budget plan and Gang of Six gives old-time politics a try Los Angeles Times. So if even Republican districts hate the plan, shouldn’t one conclude the Gang of Six is trying to get their fellow Senators to sign a suicide pact?
Will the Protectionists Wipe Out Solo Practitioners in Medicine? Dean Baker
Increasing Taxes on the Wealthy is Unfair??? Mark Thoma
Dodd-Frank for Dorks Economics of Contempt. This is a public service if you ever need to deal with the text of the bill.
A Crack in Wall Street’s Defenses Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT PAID FOR BY YOUR LOCAL NEIGHBORHOOD BANKSTER 4ClosureFraud. A shred of Iowa AG Tom Miller’s lame efforts to rebut Matt Taibbi.
Antidote du jour:
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Japanese robots: Germany as well as France have special robots available for use in nuclear emergencies. These can work in highly radiated and damaged environments. Germany immediately offered them to Japan shortly after the accident.
The offer was not taken up by the Japanese.
I have cut a part of an movie from the German nuclear emergency company (the plant operators in Germany were legislated to create and keep up such a company).
The cut shows the various specialized robots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbdwUnUvmFw
Cool stuff! I knew such robots existed and wondered form the beginning why Japan was not using them.
It says something about Japan’s myopic society and psyche that they could not bring themselves to accept help from others outside their country until weeks into the emergency.
The USA was the same during the Gulf oil disaster last year. I recall several European nations offered very sophisticated oil skimmers and we rejected their offers for no good reason other than the aforementioned myopia and arrogance.
This seems very typical of the ‘benefits’ that financialization has to offer…
A Crack in Wall Street’s Defenses Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times
“Citigroup mismarketed this product to high-net-worth investors as an alternative to municipal bonds with a slightly higher return,” said Philip M. Aidikoff, a lawyer at Aidikoff, Uhl & Bakhtiari in Beverly Hills, Calif., who represented Mr. Hosier and Mr. Murdock. “Our clients never knowingly agreed to risk a significant loss of principal for a few extra points of interest.”
The arbitrators in Mr. Hosier’s case seemed keen to hold Wall Street accountable. And his win against Citigroup does not appear to be an anomaly. Since April 2010, his lawyer, Mr. Aidikoff, has argued 16 other arbitrations involving the same type of investment. Mr. Aidikoff and the lawyers who assist him have won every one.
In an interview, Mr. Hosier said the experience had opened his eyes to the disturbing ways of Wall Street.
“Instead of the financial world being the lubricant for business, they are out there manufacturing products with no utility whatsoever except for generating fees,” he said. “Somebody’s got to do something about Wall Street. It is destroying the country.”
I just sent an email to the attorneys for the plaintiffs. In this email, I asked the attorneys to thank their clients for their brave efforts. I also suggested that Mr. Hosier consider donating his settlement to an organization/individual who is committed to combatting fraud in the financial sector.
Some Easter entertainment for Senator Caswell of Michigan, courtesy of Christmas (apologies for colorization).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6MFN8yiVc0
The Federal Reserve’s devaluation of my savings means that I buy most of my clothing used, or I get used clothing free from the local clothing exchange, or I shop at Walmart. What about MY dignity? Senator Caswell is only being practical. For this he is disrespected. Those who would wish to avoid practicality in providing for the poor would raise sales and property taxes on people like myself to “dignify” the impoverished people they pimp for. Ass backwards.
The foster parents cannot shop at WalMart.
And used shoes, unless they are really new shoes in a second hand store (a rare event) are a bad idea. Shoes shape to a person’s foot pretty quickly and wearing someone else’s shoes is really discouraged by orthopedists.
If the foster parents and child want less and better (fewer items that fit in the overall budget that the foster child wears more often) what’s wrong with that?
yves; i got an email back on that link:
Right now a semi-annual clothing allowance is sent to the care provider in addition to an initial allowance on an as needed basis. So would they issue a plastic card which would cost additional state money to create? Someone stands to make money on this proposal and it isn’t the state. http://www.michigan.gov/documents/FIA-Pub843_16406_7.pdf see page 9
and http://www.michigan.gov/dhs/0,1607,7-124-5452_7117_7658-14899–,00.html
I am for ‘Just Don’t Buy…Whenever Possible.’
The next best is to recycle and buy used. This could be an opportunity (out of a crisis, ask the Chinese) for our green leaders to inspire, to set good examples.
1)I’m not pimping for anyone. You must be thinking of ‘our Friend’ Phillip Tattaglia.
2)There IS something Dickensian about this proposal. Why not some sort of arrangement to use Sate purchasing power to get good deals on clothing, for instance?
3)My clothing budget is down too. One good solution is to wear ratty old clothing around the house, and quality duds only ‘on the street.’ When I mentioned my ‘innovation’ to a very financially savvy lady friend, her answer was something like, “Duh, you just figured that out now?” Women pay more for clothes, and smart women have long used the stratagem.
4) Ergo, mandating used clothing as a blanket solution for people already in a tight spot is punitive, myopic, and uncreative.
Because I am a former foster parent, I would like to share my thoughts on this. 1)Foster parents typically are only middle-class earners or less. So we are already shopping for our foster children at Walmart or discount stores. 2)We are entrusted not only with providing clothing, but we often serve as the only moral compass for these unfortunate children. By going to Walmart, I was teaching them to find value for their money. I would also use the opportunity to buy a special piece of clothing as a reward for good behavior, or to help ameliorate some devasting news the child had received.
In raising my foster daughter, the most important thing I did was bring stability and normalcy to her life. This included an occasional pair of designer shoes, a pretty dress or a hip pair of jeans.
William Greider on the Credit rating hoax:
“Standard & Poor’s, the self-righteous credit-rating agency, has a damn lot of nerve. It provoked scary headlines by solemnly threatening to “short” America. That is, downgrade the credit-worthiness of US Treasury bonds unless Congress and the president oblige creditors by punishing the citizenry with severe budget cuts. What a load of crap.
The headline I would like to see is this: “S&P Execs Face Major Fraud Investigation, Take the Fifth Before Federal Grand Jury.”
News coverage on S&P’s credit warning typically failed to mention that Standard & Poor’s itself is in utter disrepute.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/160066/credit-rating-hoax
Maybe they can let FICO compute the government’s credit score?
Mz Smith et. al.:
We had to send the picture of ‘The Bunny Family with their Nest Egg’ to our grandaughter, who is six, in encouragement and just plain fun. Thanks for consistantly skirting the edge of but never falling into the Cute Trap! Antidote is exactly the right word to use. I feel my Psychic Immune System regenerating as I type. Happy Easter!
[China’s] Finance Ministry said last week that the Railways Ministry continued to lose money in the first quarter of this year. The ministry’s debt stands at $276 billion, almost all borrowed from Chinese banks.
“In China, we will have a debt crisis — a high-speed rail debt crisis,” Zhao Jian, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University, said. “I think it is more serious than your subprime mortgage crisis. You can always leave a house or use it. The rail system is there. It’s a burden. You must operate the rail system, and when you operate it, the cost is very high.”
$276 billion? Good Lord, that’s 5 percent of GDP in debt, just for the freaking railroad.
And it seems that even the most elementary market studies were not conducted:
‘Many of those riding trains are migrant workers, who return annually to their home villages. But for most of them, even the cheapest tickets are unaffordable. During February’s annual migration, officials noticed that the high-speed trains were largely empty. But the slow trains on those lines have been taken out of use, giving people few choices. As a result, the highways were clogged and more people rode long-distance buses.’
A case can be made for subsidizing rail travel to reduce congestion on highways, which are also a subsidized form of transport. But here the return on investment was negative, with highway congestion actually increasing since the slow trains were sidelined.
And this vast vanity project is just a microcosm of the massive Chinese investment boom, much of it based on similarly flaky or nonexistent market analysis.
Economic conditions in China — rising inflation even with excess capacity — are reminiscent of 1989: Tiananmen Square and all that. Despite their leaders’ effort to filter news of the ‘Arab spring’ in the mideast, Chinese are going to make the connection and demand democratic control over China’s authoritarian government.
As ever, inflation is the surest way to destabilize a society. Is the US paying attention? Connect these dots: QE2; $4/gallon gasoline; Molotov cocktails. Burn, baby, burn.
[China’s] Finance Ministry said last week that the Railways Ministry continued to lose money in the first quarter of this year. The ministry’s debt stands at $276 billion, almost all borrowed from Chinese banks.
“In China, we will have a debt crisis — a high-speed rail debt crisis,” Zhao Jian, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University, said. “I think it is more serious than your subprime mortgage crisis. You can always leave a house or use it. The rail system is there. It’s a burden. You must operate the rail system, and when you operate it, the cost is very high.”
$276 billion? Good Lord, that’s 5 percent of GDP in debt, just for the freaking railroad.
And it seems that even the most elementary market studies were not conducted:
‘Many of those riding trains are migrant workers, who return annually to their home villages. But for most of them, even the cheapest tickets are unaffordable. During February’s annual migration, officials noticed that the high-speed trains were largely empty. But the slow trains on those lines have been taken out of use, giving people few choices. As a result, the highways were clogged and more people rode long-distance buses.’
A case can be made for subsidizing rail travel to reduce congestion on highways, which are also a subsidized form of transport. But here the return on investment was negative, with highway congestion actually increasing since the slow trains were sidelined.
And this vast vanity project is just a microcosm of the massive Chinese investment boom, much of it based on similarly flaky or nonexistent market analysis.
Economic conditions in China — rising inflation even with excess capacity — are reminiscent of 1989: Tiananmen Square and all that. Despite their leaders’ effort to filter news of the ‘Arab spring’ in the mideast, Chinese are going to make the connection and demand democratic control over China’s authoritarian government.
As ever, inflation is the surest way to destabilize a society. Is the US paying attention? Connect these dots: QE2; $4/gallon gasoline; Molotov cocktails. Burn, baby, burn.
I was a bit shocked at Dean Baker’s take on the NYT article about solo practicioners, and posted the following comment there in response:
—————–
Wow, I nearly always agree with your take on things, but this seems truly misguided.
1. The doctor in the article is a relic — his world has nothing to do with the world of today’s young physicians. He worked very hard, undoubtedly, but was very well paid for his work over the years, when unions were healthy and Americans had actual benefits. New US-trained doctors must take on truly shocking amounts of debt for medical school (on top of “normal” astronomical college debt) and spend years thereafter receiving merely subsistence pay as residents/fellows before finally entering a world of jobs that, save for a few specialists performing procedures, will never be more than modestly paid, and for which indeed all payment is increasingly the object of wrangling with powerful insurance companies. To become indignant at the attempts of young doctors to manage their accumulated debt, their great responsibilities, and the realities of their profession is knee-jerk stupidity. You want to fix the supply of doctors by introducing an H1B-equivalent importation program, fine; but then you must also reform medical education and health insurance in this country, or you will literally destroy the profession.
2. I say “destroy the profession” without qualifier because I don’t believe importation of a commoditized class of medical practitioners from the third world is an effective way to build it back up. The H1B program is by and large a woefully inefficient and ineffective way to address technological needs in this country; to wish to model our response to health care on such a program is lunacy. Go spend a week in the IT pool of one of our TBTF banks, trying to have even basic discussions of what’s important, how to negotiate risks, how to handle bad news, and then tell me that this is how you want your health care delivered. Madness.
3. Besides being a practical disaster, the H1B program is a moral obscenity, yet another means to hand power to the corporatocracy at the expense of middle-class America. You write, “there is a huge supply of people in the developing world who would be willing and able to train to U.S. standards and work under the conditions described in the article.” Jeffrey Immelt couldn’t have put it any better.
Here’s what happened, Dean. The New York Times is a corporate propaganda rag. This piece is an attempt to build public opinion against the cushy lives of doctors, now that we’ve finished off the cushy lives of unionized autoworkers, American engineers, Wisconsin teachers. You got jiu-jitsu’d into taking the same position. Less protectionism in America has to come with meaningful system-wide reform. Otherwise it’s just stripping the people to feed the upper 0.1%.
This is also happening to the engineering profession. I’m graduating from a top school. There’s a girl in my class, a Chinese-American, with a 3.9 GPA, who can’t find a job in engineering. Meanwhile, the ‘conventional wisdom’ is that there is some grave deficiency in engineers and we must give out more H1B visas. It’s a total rouse to bring in engineers from other countries, lock them into low-paying jobs with little chance of escape, and thereby depress wages across the board.
A 3.9 gpa does not mean a thing when the graduate does not know the basics. We are having a hard time recruiting because the only computing the US engineers have done is in Matlab in a Windows environment. The curriculum has room for a zillion gut courses but no room for a decent background in comupter programming.
I’m sorry. A 3.9 from a top 5 engineering school does mean a thing. It’s silly and shortsighted for an HR person to think otherwise.
Agreed though, I know Python, C/C++ and had my choice of jobs in engineering and finance with a 3.6. Computer nerds are in demand, but I don’t think that bodes well for the real economy.
Perhaps that response needn’t be taken @ face value. It may be just a negotiating ploy. And who knows….if people hear it often enough, even 3.9s fr/ top 5s may begin to believe it.
“We are having a hard time recruiting”
Then offer more. If you don’t have cash flow, offer a meaningful equity stake instead of the usual 3-card-monte dilutable crap package most startup workers get these days. The American workforce shouldn’t be undermined just so that two or three founders can walk off with f-you money when it’s buyout time.
The recruiting problem comes down to one main thing: companies want fully formed workers who know everything required for the job before being hired. Its a basic lack of investment in their workers. The tragic irony is that its companies’ lack of commitment and loyalty to their workers that created the hired gun mentality of most workers, which is the excuse used by companies for not wanting to train workers. At some point companies are going to have to wise up and realize they can’t have loyal hires without loyalty flowing from them. They created this mess and now complain about it. Man up and hire smart people who need training. Train them well, pay them well, treat them with respect and the rewards will be a happy and productive, loyal workforce. In other words a pipe dream because I have no reason to believe corporate management is anywhere near owning up to any of this.
I take it you’ve never gotten medical care overseas. This is real chauvinism. I’ve been to private hospitals in Thailand and was impressed with the care. And by your standards, Australia, which has spectacularly good and affordable care, would also be third world. I know people who’ve had high stakes procedures to be done and had access to both systems so the cost to them was pretty close to a wash (couples, one with decent US insurance, the other spouse Australian and a payer in their system) and they chose to have procedures done in Australia.
Look at our medical stats. We have a terrible health care system by global standards and as you point out, our bloated medical education costs are a big driver. We’ve had huge, unwarranted cost escalation in all sorts of higher ed costs over the last twenty years, all thanks to student loan availability. Bringing in foreign doctors might force the schools to get their costs in line. Unfortunately, the better time to have done that would have been ten years ago, since I suspect some of the costs are overinvestment in infrastructure (new buildings, student amenities like gyms that don’t add squat to the quality of their education) that can’t readily be reversed.
Have you missed what is happening on the budget debate? We are about to cut Medicare. You’ll see mortality rates among the elderly rise as a result. The estimates are over 2/3 of older people’s income would have to go to medical care. So what are they supposed to do? Eat dog food? Live on the streets so they can buy their meds? Admittedly, a big chunk of that is gross overspending on the last two weeks of life, this is a well documented problem but why hadn’t this been addressed? Why do medical professionals basically leech the system on extremely costly and futile interventions? They refuse to discipline the members who do that and collectively get a free pass on this ripoff. And those chickens are coming home to roost.
So you’d rather see old people die to preserve doctor incomes? This is really what this is about. And the AMA was notably absent on the health care reform debate (or if they were anywhere, I assume they were quietly defending the untenable status quo). Their silence on the costs of our health care system was morally reprehensible. They can go to hell for all I care.
If it takes bringing in doctors from overseas to fix that, so be it. Our medical system is literally killing people yet you defend it. This is not the same software visas, where I have little sympathy for the companies. Doctors are small businesspeople and the AMA is effectively a white collar union, which is Baker’s beef. We tolerate unions for elite white collar professionals but no one else. If we saw lawyers and doctors standing up for other unions (particularly on the issue of breaking contracts, where no contracts of big executives are ever questioned or renegotiated but unions’ are always up for grabs) I’d have more sympathy too but I don’t.
Yves, I think you’re responding to points I didn’t make, or didn’t mean to. My point was that I’m all for free markets and no protectionism if there’s meaningful reform across the board, including especially the crippling cost of education in this country and the role of the health insurers. (For the love of God, let us have meaningful reform!) That goes for teacher’s unions and everything else as well as for doctors. Without systematic reform, though, I see all of these attacks on productive-sector American workers as being of a piece, and they all appear equally wrong to me. Saying that Americans who are not in a position to control and derive rents from the broken system should be made to compete with the lowest standards of living on the planet — and it goes a lot lower than Australia and Thailand, those were certainly not the examples in my mind — has a great deal of the highly objectionable in it. And rather than pointing to group after group and saying, “the steelworkers have lost everything, let the teachers lose everything, too, let the doctors lose everything, too,” I would suggest it’s time for people to regard these kinds of attacks with real skepticism.
Much of what you are saying, and much of what I am saying, is anecdote and generalization therefrom, but let me enlarge on it anyway by way of rapprochement:
1. Just to get it out of the way, I lived in Europe for years, and had great care in the Netherlands and Germany, and though I didn’t really need a doctor in the year I was in Italy I was very favorably impressed by the doctors and med students I met there. I was younger then and didn’t have much in the way of medical needs, but I would be very pleased to have a system like that in NL or D here in the States. But of course there is a functional educational system in those countries.
2. I know about a dozen doctors in their late 30’s-early 40’s in New York and Boston, men and women that I’ve known since college or not long after. Most of them just want to practice medicine or do research and focus on that. If they could do that for 16 hours a day and know that everything else in their lives would more or less take care of itself, they would do that. To a person, they all objected to the recent limitation placed on resident working hours, as they believed it affected outcomes adversely; there is real value to having someone care for a hospital patient for a continuous 24 hours, and they were vocal about that. They would like to spend more time with patients than is possible under the current system, and most of them do, to the significant detriment of their personal lives — there is still a ton of paperwork and insurance work to be done after patients are seen, and that comes out of their evenings. And they know they will never be paid enough to be out of debt before 45 or so, to say nothing of the fact that they have all watched the housing market explode out of their reach while they were in endless years of residency. I don’t believe any of these people has any real relationship with the AMA or looks to it to play hardball in defense of a cartel. Mostly they are extraordinarily impractical people, in the best sense of the word, with just enough sense to know that their bottom-line responsibility to help people means that they are always going to be paying the difference for inequities in the system, and so they had better try to at least get a position with a certain amount of protection built in for themselves and their own families.
That’s a totally different view of the average doctor than yours, but I assure you that it is sincere; I don’t know where we go from there in terms of reconciling them. Barry Ritholtz is in the middle of posting some statistical breakdowns of issues with the American medical system, and like several other commenters there I am eagerly awaiting part 2, which will talk about where the costs go. For my part I cannot believe that doctors are a problem that is even remotely comparable to that posed by the insurance companies, pharma, and the university system; they are certainly an easier target, though, like all disorganized workers.
There are a lot of other minor points I could add in response, but I’ll just add one, namely that there are already lots of foreign residents and fellows and doctors in this country. You are more likely to meet them if you visit a hospital that isn’t “top-tier,” but at any rate there are many here. Now, generalizing massively, there are some cultural barriers that can get in the way of optimal care, but mostly there aren’t, and based on my experience with the H1B program I would guess that that’s because the floodgates are not wide open. If H1B meant taking a few thousand engineers each year from the IIT campuses, that would be great. But it’s nothing like that, it’s not even close to that selective, and having recourse to a similar solution for health care still seems to me to be an awful idea.
Gotta run …
The fact is that doctors, like other professionals, have chosen to side with the criminal structure against the people. They consider themselves part of the “elite”. They’re just a slightly more upscale version of the same old petty bourgeois class pathology.
If it’s true that America will have to hit rock bottom before there’s any chance of its renewal (and the evidence is that this is true), then part of that will have to be the professional class undergoing the same liquidation as all other workers.
So we must desire that doctors and other professionals be exposed to the full fury of neoliberalism, just like all other workers.
As Baker always says, maybe once lawyers and journalists are going to the wall as well, they’ll suddenly rediscover the public interest conscience they previously spit on.
You write:
“The fact is that doctors, like other professionals, have chosen to side with the criminal structure against the people. They consider themselves part of the “elite”.”
When I have a discussion with someone, I like to know that they have a sense of the limits of generalization. Or maybe you want to tell me who the blacks sided with, and who the Jews sided with, etc. etc.?
You wrote:
“If it’s true that America will have to hit rock bottom before there’s any chance of its renewal (and the evidence is that this is true), then part of that will have to be the professional class undergoing the same liquidation as all other workers.
“So we must desire that doctors and other professionals be exposed to the full fury of neoliberalism, just like all other workers.”
I think there is big difference between thinking that something is inevitable, and desiring it. I agree entirely that this liquidation is happening and will almost certainly continue to happen. Desiring that it will happen is something that I find frightening and not a little odious. My personal desire is that we find a way back to unionization for productive sector workers across the spectrum, whatever color their collar is, and I think that means a great deal more protectionism, not less. I think Jesse has it right, that if we don’t get reform and a meaningful increase in the median wage, we are going to end up with Hitler (this last clause my words, not his). In short I do not desire any further liquidation of anyone’s livelihood, I desire that we hold the line and turn things around as soon as may be.
Or maybe you want to tell me who the blacks sided with, and who the Jews sided with, etc. etc.?
Laughable. There ought to be a version of Godwin’s law to describe those who rush to compare evidence-based class observations with racism. That’s certainly the refuge of a scoundrel. My comment is empirically observed fact. To give one example, as Yves said the AMA did not demand Single Payer. That says it all.
Can you name a single professional organization which opposes the kleptocracy? Or even which simply doesn’t actively support it? I’ve never seen one. Even psychiatrists have been lukewarm at best in criticizing members of the fraternity who participate in torture. And when anthropologists were collaborating with the imperialists in Iraq and a few members dared to criticize this, they were shouted down by the fraternity.
Those are just a few examples.
I think there is big difference between thinking that something is inevitable, and desiring it. I agree entirely that this liquidation is happening and will almost certainly continue to happen. Desiring that it will happen is something that I find frightening and not a little odious.
You will the end, you will the means. I desire the liberation of America. So it follows I “desire” all necessary steps toward that. Are you saying we must always apply euphemism and strive to be PC?
You contradict yourself, by the way. You start out implicitly agreeing that America will have to hit rock bottom, but then go on to dream of reforms that can magically “hold the line and turn things around as soon as may be.”
But again, anyone who’s been observing the evidence knows this is impossible. “Reform” by definition occurs within the system. How could anyone still believe it’s possible to reform this system? Where could this reform even get a fingerhold to begin with?
And again, reform is not only impossible but undesirable. Even if by some miracle you could temporarily achieve this reform, it would inevitably be ground down and rolled back by the permanent war of attrition the rackets always wage as an indelible part of their existence. This attrition has always defeated all other reforms in the end, and it will always win for as long as the rackets exist.
So reformers, at best, want to doom us to a perpetual cycle of racket domination -> crash -> reform -> attrition -> domination -> crash, ad infinitum and ad nauseum.
And why would anyone want this? There are only two possible reasons: One in the end supports the corporate ideology, one agrees that the purpose of society and humanity is to be mined by economic elites, and merely wants to force them to play by some meager “rules”; or one is simply too cowardly to fight them to the finish.
Yves, I’ve read your post again and want to concede a point: you’re basically saying doctors have a responsibility to self-police if they want to be participants in an equitable solution, and I’ll buy that. I still think there’s a ton of nuance to this picture and am uncomfortable with an optative “ruat caelum” when there’s still a chance for “fiat justitia,” but, yeah. Not having a head for union hardball doesn’t confer a right to ignore what the union is or isn’t up to.
Well, it had to happen. The dark side of high speed rail systems in China are debt bomb, built for the sake of vanity and without public input into planning. A giant public works project to draw people out of rural poverty without any hope of making it a paying, profit making financial success. As the critic economist at Beijing University said, at least our sub prime crisis leaves us with homes, you can use them, but this rail road, you have to operate it with no riders and that’s expensive.
Apparently that Chinese economist must have studied with Larry Summers and never heard of foreclosures, bankruptcies, sheriff sales or underwater negative equity. I suppose the Washington Post writer is also unfamiliar with the overbuilding and abandonment of many rail road lines in America, which played key roles in the winning of WWII, for example, critical roles, but were useful creating wealth and prosperity as a foundation for further progress, even if their initial explosion no longer had direct benefits.
Problem with HSR is that it’s really only useful for medium-distance intercity passenger travel, so I don’t know if excess HSR capacity would come in handy in wartime for moving goods or even soldiers around the country.
Also, a big problem too with China’s HSR is that it looks like the tracks are a lot lower quality than they expected.
Year after debt rescue, markets unconvinced, nearly half of Greeks expect restructuring
Derek Gatopoulos, Associated Press, On Saturday April 23, 2011
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — It’s an anniversary few are celebrating. A year ago Saturday, with its faltering economy days away from bankruptcy, Greece ended months of speculation and requested bailout loans.
Prime Minister George Papandreou chose the remote island of Kastelorizo, and its tranquil seaside backdrop, to announce the “urgent national need to formally ask our partners to mobilize the support mechanism.”
International solidarity, he said in a televised address, would “send a strong signal to markets that the European Union is not to be toyed with, and it will protect our common interests and our common currency.”
Twelve months on, there’s little indication that that signal has been received.
Greek bonds have been axed to junk status by the three major ratings agencies. And sky-high borrowing costs have roughly doubled, along with the price of insuring debt. Greece would currently have to pay out 15-percent interest on a 10-year bond, compared with the German benchmark of 3.27 percent.
At least 160,000 more people have lost their jobs since April 23, 2010, with government austerity accelerating layoffs and business failures. And the national debt is forecast to exceed the emergency level of 150 percent of gross domestic product in 2011.
….
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Year-after-Greek-debt-rescue-apf-633232996.html?x=0
Ian Welsh on how we got here and the long shot odds on getting out.
Nice article. I’ve come to the same conclusion.
The coming presidency will be a disaster for whoever is stuck with it. There are no good choices for an empire in decline and even a egocentric character like the Donald will look weak and defeated within a year.
Bad odds, any way you look at them, but maybe the best way forward is diving off a cliff.
Yeah the presidency is going to be a mess, but the Congress is where we need the most change.
When a wealthy investor starts talking like the blogger at Crooks & Liars or Truthdig.com, I believe it is past due time for the powers that be to really put their ears to the ground and listen…for a change!
Yes! Larry Summers…I’m talking to you too…bitch!
France just decided to revive absinthe?
Gee! Watta bunch of slow-po! here in Philly, we already have two (small) local producers of the stuff.
Lemme tell ya this stuff ain’t bad at all…He! He!