Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
You Tube: If you care about improving people's lives....
"Economic Freedom and the Quality of Life is a short, informative video centered on the ideas of economic freedom and the societal benefits it produces. The video helps explain what economic freedom is and why it's key to improving society."
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Fatal Fatalism - NYTimes.com
Here's a good statement of the Keynesian view of recessions.
Excerpts:
"Our current economic discourse is pervaded by fatalism. Leave aside the people who insist that somehow Obama has destroyed capitalist incentives by passing Mitt Romney’s health care plan and threatening to raise tax rates to Clinton-era levels. Even among people who should be sensible, you hear many assertions that run something like this: historically, recovery from financial crisis is usually slow, so we have to accept a slow recovery this time around too. Actually, that’s more or less what Obama has been saying.
This fatalism is deeply destructive — because there’s no good reason we need to experience many years of high unemployment. What historical experience shows isn’t that there’s no answer to post-crisis slumps, it only shows that most governments have responded to such slumps with the same kind of fatalism and learned helplessness we’re showing now. (Hey, Greg, I have first dibs on that!)
We are not, after all, suffering from supply-side problems. We don’t have high unemployment because workers lack the necessary skills, or are stuck in the wrong industries or the wrong locations; the hypothesis that we’re mainly suffering structural unemployment has been repeatedly shot down by evidence. This is a demand-side slump; all we need to do is create more demand.
So why is this slump, like most slumps following financial crises, so protracted? Because the usual tools for pumping up demand have reached their limits. Normally we respond to demand-side slumps by cutting short-term nominal interest rates, which the Fed can move through open-market operations. But we now have severely depressed private demand thanks to the housing bust and the overhang of consumer debt, so even a zero rate isn’t low enough.
So what’s the right response? Should we just throw up our hands, and say that having 12 million or so adults who should be working out of work, and roughly $1 trillion per year of output we should be producing not getting produced, is just a fact of life? Or should we be using unconventional policies to deal with an abnormal situation?
The answer seems obvious. We should be using fiscal stimulus; we should be using unconventional monetary policy, including raising the inflation target; we should be pursuing aggressive measures to reduce mortgage debt. Not doing these things means accepting huge waste and hardship.
But, say the serious people, there are risks to doing any of these things. Well, life is full of risks. But it’s simply crazy to put a higher weight on the possibility that the invisible bond vigilantes might manifest themselves, or the inflation monster emerge from its secret cave, over the continuing reality of enormous human and economic damage from doing nothing.
The truth is that we have nothing to fear but fear itself — fear and complacency — the two things we have to fear are — amongst our fears ….
Anyway, seriously, the fatalism that has overtaken economic debate is a terrible thing. It is, indeed, the main enemy of prosperity.
Excerpts:
"Our current economic discourse is pervaded by fatalism. Leave aside the people who insist that somehow Obama has destroyed capitalist incentives by passing Mitt Romney’s health care plan and threatening to raise tax rates to Clinton-era levels. Even among people who should be sensible, you hear many assertions that run something like this: historically, recovery from financial crisis is usually slow, so we have to accept a slow recovery this time around too. Actually, that’s more or less what Obama has been saying.
This fatalism is deeply destructive — because there’s no good reason we need to experience many years of high unemployment. What historical experience shows isn’t that there’s no answer to post-crisis slumps, it only shows that most governments have responded to such slumps with the same kind of fatalism and learned helplessness we’re showing now. (Hey, Greg, I have first dibs on that!)
We are not, after all, suffering from supply-side problems. We don’t have high unemployment because workers lack the necessary skills, or are stuck in the wrong industries or the wrong locations; the hypothesis that we’re mainly suffering structural unemployment has been repeatedly shot down by evidence. This is a demand-side slump; all we need to do is create more demand.
So why is this slump, like most slumps following financial crises, so protracted? Because the usual tools for pumping up demand have reached their limits. Normally we respond to demand-side slumps by cutting short-term nominal interest rates, which the Fed can move through open-market operations. But we now have severely depressed private demand thanks to the housing bust and the overhang of consumer debt, so even a zero rate isn’t low enough.
So what’s the right response? Should we just throw up our hands, and say that having 12 million or so adults who should be working out of work, and roughly $1 trillion per year of output we should be producing not getting produced, is just a fact of life? Or should we be using unconventional policies to deal with an abnormal situation?
The answer seems obvious. We should be using fiscal stimulus; we should be using unconventional monetary policy, including raising the inflation target; we should be pursuing aggressive measures to reduce mortgage debt. Not doing these things means accepting huge waste and hardship.
But, say the serious people, there are risks to doing any of these things. Well, life is full of risks. But it’s simply crazy to put a higher weight on the possibility that the invisible bond vigilantes might manifest themselves, or the inflation monster emerge from its secret cave, over the continuing reality of enormous human and economic damage from doing nothing.
The truth is that we have nothing to fear but fear itself — fear and complacency — the two things we have to fear are — amongst our fears ….
Anyway, seriously, the fatalism that has overtaken economic debate is a terrible thing. It is, indeed, the main enemy of prosperity.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Teenager sells kidney for ipad2 - GlobalTimes
EXCERPTS:
"A teenager in Huaishan, Anhui Province has sold one of his kidneys to buy an iPad2 tablet computer, as reported by SZTV on June 1.
The 17-year-old man surnamed Zheng, a freshman in high school, got connected with a kidney-selling agent through the internet, who pledged to pay him 20,000 yuan ($3,084.45 ) for one of his kidneys.
On April 28 of this year, Zheng went to Chenzhou, Hunan Province to have his kidney removed under the supervision of three so-called middlemen, and received 22,000 yuan ($3,392.97). Then he returned home with a laptop and an iPhone.
Zheng's mother discovered her son's new electronic products and forced him to reveal how he came to afford them. Then she took Zheng to Chenzhou and reported the matter to local police. The three agents' telephones have not been answered since that time.
Chenzhou 198 Hospital, where Zheng had his surgery, has no qualifications for kidney transplantation, according to SZTV reporters.
The hospital has denied any connection with the kidney removal operation, and has said that its urology department is contracted to a businessman in Fujian.
"A teenager in Huaishan, Anhui Province has sold one of his kidneys to buy an iPad2 tablet computer, as reported by SZTV on June 1.
The 17-year-old man surnamed Zheng, a freshman in high school, got connected with a kidney-selling agent through the internet, who pledged to pay him 20,000 yuan ($3,084.45 ) for one of his kidneys.
On April 28 of this year, Zheng went to Chenzhou, Hunan Province to have his kidney removed under the supervision of three so-called middlemen, and received 22,000 yuan ($3,392.97). Then he returned home with a laptop and an iPhone.
Zheng's mother discovered her son's new electronic products and forced him to reveal how he came to afford them. Then she took Zheng to Chenzhou and reported the matter to local police. The three agents' telephones have not been answered since that time.
Chenzhou 198 Hospital, where Zheng had his surgery, has no qualifications for kidney transplantation, according to SZTV reporters.
The hospital has denied any connection with the kidney removal operation, and has said that its urology department is contracted to a businessman in Fujian.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
As Natural Gas Prices Fall, the Search Turns to Oil - WSJ.com
EXCERPTS:
"The natural-gas industry touts its fuel as an attractive alternative to coal and oil, saying it's comparably clean, domestically abundant and cheap.
But that final selling point might not last if the industry succeeds in stirring demand even as it cuts back on drilling.
In the past few years, a glut of natural gas has driven down the price to half the 2008 average—a level where it costs a U.S. consumer $2.75 a day to meet a home's natural-gas needs, according to the American Gas Association. That's good news for consumers, but a recent study by consultancy Wood Mackenzie found that 40% of U.S. natural gas produced last year didn't meet break-even prices for producers.
Natural gas now costs roughly the same as its energy equivalent in coal and a quarter of its energy equivalent in oil. The gas industry is making some headway in capitalizing on its relative cheapness: President Barack Obama has endorsed incentives for trucks powered by natural gas, and power companies are considering replacing coal-fired plants with gas-burning ones.
Those steps would increase natural-gas consumption just as production growth is likely to slow. That's because companies now can make more money drilling for oil, whose price has soared last year and in recent months on unrest in Northern Africa and the Middle East.
Proven U.S. natural gas reserves hold about twice the amount of energy as could be generated by domestic oil reserves, according to a 2009 estimate by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The nonprofit Potential Gas Committee last month increased its estimate of natural gas available for U.S. production to 2.1 trillion cubic feet. That amount represents a 42% increase in the past four years, and is enough gas to meet domestic needs for 100 years at current consumption rates.
Companies use the same type of rig to drill for oil or gas, and allocate equipment according to which fuel is more profitable to produce. The number of land rigs in the U.S. drilling for natural gas is down 8% from a year ago, while oilrigs are up 81%, according to oilfield-service company Baker Hughes, Inc. In April, companies reported more rigs drilling for oil than gas for the first time since 1995, underscoring how oil's profit margins have fattened.
"All of our drilling ideas compete with each other," Larry Nichols, chairman of Devon Energy Corp., said recently. This year, Devon, a major gas producer, is spending 90% of its nearly $5 billion budget on oil drilling. "You look at the ones where you can make money at current prices, and that's where the money gets allocated," he said.
"The natural-gas industry touts its fuel as an attractive alternative to coal and oil, saying it's comparably clean, domestically abundant and cheap.
But that final selling point might not last if the industry succeeds in stirring demand even as it cuts back on drilling.
In the past few years, a glut of natural gas has driven down the price to half the 2008 average—a level where it costs a U.S. consumer $2.75 a day to meet a home's natural-gas needs, according to the American Gas Association. That's good news for consumers, but a recent study by consultancy Wood Mackenzie found that 40% of U.S. natural gas produced last year didn't meet break-even prices for producers.
Natural gas now costs roughly the same as its energy equivalent in coal and a quarter of its energy equivalent in oil. The gas industry is making some headway in capitalizing on its relative cheapness: President Barack Obama has endorsed incentives for trucks powered by natural gas, and power companies are considering replacing coal-fired plants with gas-burning ones.
Those steps would increase natural-gas consumption just as production growth is likely to slow. That's because companies now can make more money drilling for oil, whose price has soared last year and in recent months on unrest in Northern Africa and the Middle East.
Proven U.S. natural gas reserves hold about twice the amount of energy as could be generated by domestic oil reserves, according to a 2009 estimate by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The nonprofit Potential Gas Committee last month increased its estimate of natural gas available for U.S. production to 2.1 trillion cubic feet. That amount represents a 42% increase in the past four years, and is enough gas to meet domestic needs for 100 years at current consumption rates.
Companies use the same type of rig to drill for oil or gas, and allocate equipment according to which fuel is more profitable to produce. The number of land rigs in the U.S. drilling for natural gas is down 8% from a year ago, while oilrigs are up 81%, according to oilfield-service company Baker Hughes, Inc. In April, companies reported more rigs drilling for oil than gas for the first time since 1995, underscoring how oil's profit margins have fattened.
"All of our drilling ideas compete with each other," Larry Nichols, chairman of Devon Energy Corp., said recently. This year, Devon, a major gas producer, is spending 90% of its nearly $5 billion budget on oil drilling. "You look at the ones where you can make money at current prices, and that's where the money gets allocated," he said.
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