The New York Times ominously reports that “G.D.P. Grows at Tepid 1.9% Pace Despite Stimulus”
A more accurate wording would be “G.D.P. Grows at Tepid 1.9% Pace Due in Part to Stimulus.”
CEI’s Wayne Crews shows why the stimulus package was doomed to fail in a recent CEI Issue Analysis, “Still Stimulating Like It’s 1999.” Worth reading.
Last night I attended a preview of the new film Swing Vote, which is being released tomorrow. It revolves around one man, Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner), who through a series of odd events winds up getting to re-cast a botched ballot in a tied presidential election in the state whose electoral votes will tip the election to either candidate, New Mexico.
Such is the scenario often put forth by non-voters — given its extreme unlikelihood, the chances that your vote will…
Number of farms in the U.S. — about 2.1 million.
Cost of the 2008 farm bill — $300 billion over five years.
That’s nearly $150,000 per farm, at a time of high food prices.
Last month, Google slightly improved the relevancy of the ads it displays when you search for something. In addition to taking your last search into account, Google now also factors in your immediately-previous search. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Google released more information about how it improves its search algorithm - notably, by collecting data on searches.
Today, Google has added a new feature that shows users how their results are customized, based on factors like location, recent searches, and a longer search…
I reported here earlier on public safety agencies holding up spectrum owed to Sprint-Nextel. I also reported on repeated demands for even more spectrum, in spite of public safety agencies already being given an enormous chunk of the spectrum freed up by DTV.
Yesterday, a group of public safety officials met with FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and demanded even more. The public safety officials want the whole D-Block, the section of spectrum that was to be turned into a public-private venture,…
So far, nanotech has been left blessingly unregulated by the feds. Nanotech has been responsible for the great advances in computer technology. It offers the possibility of cheap genome sequencing. And it generates new, better materials for everyday uses.
But now, states and locals are stepping in and beginning to regulate nanomaterials. The main concern is apparently toxicity. But nanomaterials are very safe and scientists are already examining their toxicity. Nothing is terribly unique about nanomaterials; we are already bombarded with objects on the same…
This can’t be. There apparently are PHYSICISTS who don’t believe the world is about to end due to climate change. They even disagree with the UN’s IPCC. My god! What further horrors await all true believers in the Goracle’s pronouncements??
Observes Jeffrey Marque, the editor of the Forum on Physics & Society:
With this issue of Physics & Society, we kick off a debate concerning one of the main conclusions of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body which,…
Bush signed into law an enormously costly mortgage bailout today, turning a deaf ear to financial experts who warned about the bill’s dangers and risks, and choosing instead to spend untold billions of dollars (potentially up to $300 billion) to bail out government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“David M. Walker, the former comptroller general of the United States and head of the Government Accountability Office . . . said that Mr. Bush might have been unwise to sign the measure. ‘Providing authority to the…
In addition to massive federal probes of the deal, the nonexclusive Google-Yahoo ad pact is facing scrutiny from states as well. The California attorney general is being pushed to examine the advertising arrangement.
Why all this hubbub? As I’ve argued here before, the Google-Yahoo deal is fairly minor, not a merger, beneficial to consumers, and was initially thought not to even need approval.
One may particularly wonder why the states are getting involved. If there’s ever a fairly clear case for federal preemption, antitrust…
Due to their failures in the subprime mess, it has long been expected that Congress would take up regulation of the credit rating agencies to attempt to make the ratings stronger.
But the first rating agency bill to move forward — the Municipal Bond Fairness Act sponsored by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass. — has the almost explicit goal of making the rating weaker for a certain type of security. Scheduled to be marked up in the…
I love California, but the fruits and nuts truly have taken control. The city of Los Angeles has initiated a moratorium on fast food restaurants–but only in poor neighborhoods–to iimprove the people’s health. Reports the Associated Press:
City officials are putting South Los Angeles on a diet.
The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to place a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in an impoverished swath of the city with a proliferation of such eateries and above average rates of obesity.
The yearlong moratorium…
Today, as Ryan Young noted in his post, negotiations collapsed in the ninth day of talks to resuscitate the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round. Irreconcilable differences between the U.S. and India and China on what are called in trade-speak “special safeguard measures” are blamed for the bad ending to this session. SSMs are actions that developing countries can take to raise tariffs on agricultural goods when there in a surge in imports.
In a press statement, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said:
“Regrettably, our negotiations…
Rather than trying to fight individual violators of copyright, the MPAA is creating a website with links to legitimate movie sources, like local movie theaters, iTunes, Netflix, etc. It just goes to show Cord Blomquist’s point that copyright holders will need to move towards new models of distribution to adapt to changing technology.
Disagreements over farm subsidies have caused the current round of WTO negotiations to collapse. Developing countries are upset that subsidized farmers from rich countries are hard to compete against in the world market.
India’s proposed solution is to trigger a raise in their own farm subsidies if imports rise above a certain level. Other countries found this unacceptable, hence the current impasse.
Rather than fret about unfair competition, developing countries could just sit back and welcome imports from subsidized farmers. Consider it…
Ars has a good discussion of the US Patent and Trademark Office’s recent switch in policy towards software patents. Before, the USPTO would issue patents willy-nilly, causing massive lawsuits and stifling competition amongst software makers. Now, the USPTO is moving towards a more moderate policy, increasing scrutiny of patents to make sure they’re really original. The USPTO should be applauded for its attempt to strike a healthy balance between encouraging innovation and ensuring competition, not lamented.
Last year, AT&T submitted to the FCC a petition for forbearance from some old reporting requirements that were designed back in the days of Ma Bell and monopoly telephone service. CEI is currently preparing comments on the petition, which we believe should be approved.
Ryan Radia had an excellent post on the issue back in April. Radia points out that the reporting requirements, known as ARMIS, only apply to big telcos. But competition is increasing among phone companies and alternatives to landline phone…
I reported last Thursday that the FCC was set to approve the long-ignored XM-Sirius merger. Yesterday, it finally came through… but hampered by significant restrictions like price controls. Ars has a good summary of the regulations, or you can read the FCC’s news release for a more complete rundown.
A year and 90 days ago, Qwest gave the FCC a request for forbearance from complying with some outdated price controls. The FCC had a year and 90 days to respond, or the petition would be granted automatically. Unfortunately, the FCC decided at the eleventh hour to deny Qwest’s request.
The FCC’s vote signals the Commission’s unwillingness to consider revisiting any obsolete and anti-competitive regulation passed by Congress. But chucking old regulation is exactly what the forbearance provision of the Telecommunications Act of…
With a lot of attention focused on the unintended consequences of ethanol policy in raising the costs of food, here’s another example of those spiraling costs. Tyson Foods says higher feed costs led to a big drop in fiscal third quarter profits. The company said that for this quarter its grain costs for chicken feed were $140 million more than a year ago. For this fiscal year, it expects grain costs to be a whopping $550 million higher than the previous…
A just-released working paper from the World Bank, “A Note on Rising Food Prices,” points out that the increased production of biofuels has been “the most important factor” in the rapid rise in food prices internationally since 2002. It notes that much of the increase resulted from government policies promoting biofuels in the U.S. and the EU — subsidies, mandates, and tariffs on imports.
Here’s the abstract of the paper:
The rapid rise in food prices has been a burden on the poor in…
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