A Spork in the Drawer

St. John Roundup

Because, y'know, he's the bad guy we should be focusing on.

first up, via The Shrill One, one reason why I hate economists:

Almost half of the economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey decided against answering a question on which presidential candidate offers the most responsible fiscal policies. However, Sen. John McCain was the clear favorite of those who answered the question. Twenty-one economists of 75% of the respondents chose the Republican contender.

So much for higher education. Still, McSame shouldn't be too proud:

“His [policies] are the least horrible,” said James F. Smith of Western Carolina University and Parsec Financial Management.

All deride the McCain-Clinton gas tax "holiday." (The junior Senator from New York the least favorable to these financial dingbats.)

Next up, St. John's wealthy but addled wife Cindy says that she will never, ever, ever release her tax returns no matter what. Never, do you hear, NEVER! This despite the fact that the Man from Panama unethically uses her corporate jet and appears to be hiding his assets in the Beer Queen's name. How mavericky!

Finally, the senior Senator from Panama Arizona denies being old.

OK.

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Throw The Dogs A Bone

James Fallows on the McCain-Clinton "gas tax holiday" scheme:

The pandering and ignorance-across-party-lines represented by the John McCain-Hillary Clinton united front for a temporary reduction in the gasoline tax should make Americans hold their heads in their hands and moan. No one who has thought about this issue thinks that it will actually reduce prices or -- more important -- help the the people disproportionately hurt by $100+/barrel oil and $4 gasoline. And to the extent it has any effect on America's long-term approach to energy policy, transportation, oil dependence, and climate change, the effect will be perverse.

I can imagine that John McCain, who boasts about his sketchy command of economics, might consider this a good idea. But the master of policy, Hillary Clinton??

Even Hillary supporter Paul Krugman is scratching his beard:

Is the supply of gasoline really fixed? For this coming summer, it is. Refineries normally run flat out in the summer, the season of peak driving. Any elasticity in the supply comes earlier in the year, when refiners decide how much to put in inventories. The McCain/Clinton gas tax proposal comes too late for that. So it’s Econ 101: the tax cut really goes to the oil companies.

The Clinton twist is that she proposes paying for the revenue loss with an excess profits tax on oil companies. In one pocket, out the other. So it’s pointless, not evil. But it is pointless, and disappointing.

I agree that Hillary is too intelligent and knowledgeable to believe that this is a good idea. St. John, of course, is neither. So the only conclusion is that Hillary is engaging in a standard pander, possibly a double-pander: Fool the rubes with a simplistic "fix" for economic woes and maybe throw a few more subsidized dollars to the oil companies.

And everybody knows they need it.

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Scary, Indeed

You know those food riots around the planet? They could be coming to a United States near you:

Rye flour stocks have been depleted in the United States, and by June or July there will be no more U.S. rye flour to purchase, said Lee Sanders, senior vice president for government relations and public affairs at the American Bakers Association.

"Those that are purchasing it now are having to purchase it from Germany and the Netherlands, and that's very concerning," Sanders said.

[...]

For bakers, rye grain is not the only supply stock that is declining. In the past the market has typically had a three-month surplus of wheat stocks to serve as a cushion against supply interruptions, but now the surplus is down to less than 27 days worth of wheat, Sanders said.

[Via Atrios.]

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Bush Boom

Your pocketbook is getting lighter:

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that wholesale prices rose by 1.1 percent last month, the second largest increase in the past 33 years, exceeded only by a 2.6 percent rise last November. Analysts had been expecting a much more moderate 0.4 percent rise in wholesale prices for the month.

Given that petroleum has topped $112 per barrel expect more of the same.

But remember, energy conservation is merely "a sign of personal virtue".

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No One Could Have Predicted

That BushCo™ would go easy on corrupt corporations:

In a major shift of policy, the Justice Department, once known for taking down giant corporations, including the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, has put off prosecuting more than 50 companies suspected of wrongdoing over the last three years.

[...]

Deferred prosecutions have become a favorite tool of the Bush administration. But some legal experts now wonder if the policy shift has led companies, in particular financial institutions now under investigation for their roles in the subprime mortgage debacle, to test the limits of corporate anti-fraud laws.

Nooooo...do ya think?

I love this bit:

Monsanto, for example, while not admitting guilt, agreed to abstain from further violations of bribery laws.

"Yes, Mr. Prosecutor, I stabbed that man to death but I promise not to do it again."

"Well OK then. On your way."

Meanwhile:

Since the late 1990's average incomes have declined 2.5 percent for families on the bottom fifth of the country's economic ladder, while incomes have increased 9.1 percent for families on the top fifth, said the report from the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Economic Policy Institute.

The result is that the average incomes of the top five percent of families are 12 times the average incomes of the bottom 20 percent.

Gotta strengthen that oligarchy, don't'cha know.

The end of this administration can't come soon enough.

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Oh, The Irony

Ooops!

A year ago, the Mortgage Bankers Association was thrilled to sign a contract to buy a fancy new headquarters building in downtown Washington. Interest rates were low, the group's revenues were steady and the prospects for quickly renting out part of the structure were strong.

[...]

The result: The trade group is about to find it harder than it imagined to pay its own mortgage.

Scheduled to close on the building in the coming weeks, the association will have to pay millions of dollars more than it would have a year ago when it contracted to buy the 160,000-square-foot structure -- millions of dollars it is now less able to afford.

Ah, but hope lives on:

The group's leaders defend the transaction as prudent and, in the long run, wise. "Anytime is the best time to buy," said Kieran P. Quinn, chairman of the association. "Over a 10-year horizon, [the purchase] looks great."

Karma, she is a bitch.

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Hardly Surprising

The state of the Union...not so good:

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

[...]

A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.

On the good side (if there is one) it looks like people know who's at fault:

The poll found that Americans blame government officials for the crisis more than banks or home buyers and other borrowers. Forty percent of respondents said regulators were mostly to blame, while 28 percent named lenders and 14 percent named borrowers.

That's because Americans are smart enough to understand that regulatory agencies are supposed to, y'know, regulate rather than function as protectors of wealth and corporate power.

And:

Yet many say they are merely managing to stay in place, rather than get ahead. This view is consistent with the income statistics of the past five years, which suggest that median household income has still not returned to the inflation-adjusted peak it hit in 1999. Since the Census Bureau began keeping records in the 1960s, there has never been an extended economic expansion that ended without setting a new record for household income.

Heckuva job, Bushie.

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ADDED: U.S. economy sheds 80,000 jobs in March

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Is He Having A Laugh?

George touts his "rebate checks":

There's a rough patch right now in our economy, but I'm confident in the long term we'll come out stronger than ever before. One of the most decisive actions a government can take is to give people their money back so they can spend it, and that's exactly what we've done. In the second week of May, a lot of folks are going to be getting a sizable check. And I'm looking forward to that day, and I know they are as well.

There's no doubt that George, as he has all his life, will build on his millions thanks to "friends". The rest of us...

[Via Think Progress.]

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Irrational Exuberance

As BushCo and Congress prepare to fight over how much regulation the financial markets are subject to it's really going to come down to this:

Wall Street firms have also been major contributors to both political parties, and they are certain to oppose tough new restrictions.

Neither party want to lose those $$$.

Nonetheless, a good start would be to restore the Glass-Steagall Act. The act, properly the Banking Act of 1935, was repealed in 1999.

Thanks, Bill Clinton.

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Those Who Forget History And Whatnot

And so it goes:

Indeed, the past decade has seen a number of investing fiascoes that Wall Street doesn't appear to have learned much from. Krosby noted the go-go Internet days — when untested high-tech companies reaped piles of cash in public offerings. The lesson then was, don't put a lot of money into a venture that isn't on fairly solid ground — but mortgages granted to people with poor credit are quite akin to high-tech firms that had never turned a profit. In both cases, investors gleefully looked past the risk.

Now investors are smarting from what happened to Bear Stearns. And traders are somewhat chastened, for now.

Golly, do ya think Wall Street needs a bit of regulation? Just a little? Hmm?

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Headline Of The Day

Inflation Hits the Poor Hardest

Thanks, Washington Post, for that stunning revelation.

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Greenbacks

Or perhaps we should call them "Bushbacks":

Antique store owners in lower Manhattan, ticket vendors at India's Taj Mahal and Brazilian business executives heading to China all have one thing in common these days: They don't want U.S. dollars.

[...]

"Gone are the days when we used to run after dollars, holding onto them for rainy days," said Vijay Narain, a tour operator in the city of Agra where the Taj Mahal is located. "Now we prefer the euro. It gives us more riches."

In Bolivia, billboards feature George Washington's image on a $1 bill alongside a bright pink 500 euro note, encouraging savers to turn to the euro to tuck away money earned abroad or sent home in remittances.

[...]

The problem right now, is that "people just don't want to be holding U.S dollars and U.S.-based equities," Sylvester added. "If you are an investor with a million dollars to invest, you look for the highest yield — you're looking at South Africa, Australia, New Zealand."

Meanwhile, the price of an ounce of gold approaches $1000 and a barrel of oil briefly hit $111.

The only question, really, is how long will it take us to recover from the BushCheney Era?

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Wheeeeee!

Remember to keep your money in a shoebox because:

"Regulators are bracing for 100-200 bank failures over the next 12-24 months," says Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with the financial services firm, the Stanford Group.

[...]

The problem areas will be concentrated in the Rust Belt, in places like Ohio and Michigan and other states like California, Florida and Georgia.

Let's party like it's 1930!

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Can't Do Worse Than Alan Greenspan

Ohio forecasting pig will opine on economy

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Mittens!

Willard comes up with an economic plan: Make old people get jobs.

That's why he's a member of the "Party of Ideas."




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McEducation

This will wash up on our shores soon enough, no doubt:

McDonald's employees trained in skills needed to run outlets for the fast-food chain can get credit toward high school diplomas, the British government announced Monday.

Along with two other large companies, McDonald's Corp. was given the power to award the equivalent of advanced high-school qualifications as part of a plan to improve young people's skills, said the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, a government education regulator.

From the Guardian:

Speaking on GMTV, [Prime Minister Gordon] Brown said: "You have got to do a pretty intensive course to get that qualification. It's not that standards are going to fall. It's going to be a tough course. Once you've got that qualification you can go anywhere."

Don't laugh. McDonald's has already tried to weasel into our school system:

McDonald's has decided to stop branding report card envelopes in a program that gave kids in Florida free food as a reward for good grades after a backlash from parents concerned about exploitive marketing. Teport (sic) cards came in an envelope...telling kids to check their grades and redeem a free Happy Meal if they got all A's and B's or got good marks in "Citizenship" or attendance. The jacket also showed a smiling Ronald McDonald and mentioned McDonald's several times.

Perhaps a course based on being a WalMart "Greeter" would be desirable.

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No Shame

Disgusing:

Now the top five Wall Street banks - three of whom racked up record losses - have announced that they are paying their employees a record $39 billion in year-end bonuses. Hemorrhaging losses, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Bear Sterns had to increase the percentage of revenue they devote to pay to ladle out these bonuses. So much for pay for performance.

[...]

Stock buyback plans do help elevate the stock price. And that, of course, makes executive stock options more valuable. And that is likely the next thing we'll learn about these really good people. They've pushed the economy over the cliff, led their banks to the verge of bankruptcy, fed the folly that will cost families their homes - but they pocketed the stock options at the top, and walked away with bonuses at the bottom.

The rest of us may be reduced to eating tinned catfood but the top execs won't car. I've said for years that if thinggs go truly - and I mean truly - bad in this country the lot of them will simply hop on their Gulfstreams and relocate to somewhere safer (Singapore, Abu Dhabi, wherever) knowing that they have their bank accounts in the Caymans. They won't even look over their shoulders as they depart.

I am not now nor have I ever been a Communist but it's this sort of thing that makes the philosophy attractive.

Anyway, my guess is that this country will soon be fundamentally finished.

It was fun while it lasted.

[Via Steven D at Booman Tribune.]

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$1,500,000,000,000

The mind reels:

The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, according to a new study by congressional Democrats that estimates the conflicts' "hidden costs"-- including higher oil prices, the expense of treating wounded veterans and interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars.

[...]

The report argues that war funding is diverting billions of dollars away from "productive investment" by American businesses in the United States. It also says that the conflicts are pulling reservists and National Guardsmen away from their jobs, resulting in economic disruptions for U.S. employers that the report estimates at $1 billion to $2 billion.

Heckuva job, Bushie.

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Lucky Duckies

While I'm not the first to note this today I still feel the need to call out the WaPo's Robert Samuelson:

Recessions also have often-overlooked benefits. They dampen inflation. In weak markets, companies can't easily raise prices or workers' wages.

Yes, by gum, we need to keep those wages down. How else is a CEO to afford that third home or Gulfstream IV?

So I hope those who can't afford health insurance or are having trouble paying that rent or mortgage understand that you're receiving "often-overlooked benefits."

Robert Samuelson says so.

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Fiscal Conservative? Not So Much

George W. Bush, despite all his recent bravado about being an apostle of small government and budget-slashing, is the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, he's arguably an even bigger spender than LBJ.

“He’s a big government guy,” said Stephen Slivinski, the director of budget studies at Cato Institute, a libertarian research group.

[...]

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative research group, blamed a ravenous Congress that was eager to show constituents how generous it could be. (Republicans ran that Congress until January. Bush never vetoed a single GOP spending bill.)

Good on McClatchy for pointing out the lack of vetoes.

LBJ = Tax and Spend

GWB = Spend and Spend.

You tell me which is worse.






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That Darned Euro

Making the US dollar look bad.

Such nerve!

[Via Atrios.]

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(Bush) *BOOM*

Oil hits US$80 a barrel while the the dollar itself hits a record low.

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This Will Come To Grief

A seriously bad idea:

Nasdaq is set to launch tomorrow what its executives are calling one of the most significant developments on Wall Street in decades -- a private stock market for super-wealthy investors.

Minimum requirement for traders: $100 million in assets.

Any private firm can list on Nasdaq's new platform, which is called the Portal Market, and raise money by selling stock to an elite group of shareholders. These companies would remain private and not have to make public their financial statements or submit to federal regulation, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate accountability law.

Let's say this proves popular among the super-wealthy. Billions of dollars will be invested and there will be no accountability whatsoever. Sooner or later something will go wrong, either because of bad choices or outright fraud, this market will teeter, possibly start to fall, and because of the tremendous amount of money involved the government will have to step in and try to stop the collapse. With your money and mine.

I'm almost willing to bet on this happening.

In the end this is just another way to privatize profits and socialize the losses.

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Widening The Gap

Executive pay:

As executive pay has surged in most American companies, attention has focused on the growing gap between the earnings of top executives and the average wage of workers in cubicles or on the shop floor. Little noticed, though, is how much the gap has also widened between the summit and the next few echelons down.

[...]

Few are deprived in corporate suites, of course. But the widening disparities in business, which show up in a variety of other ways, reflect a dynamic that is taking hold across the economy: the growing concentration of wealth and income among a select group at the pinnacle of success, leaving many others with similar talents and experience well behind.

In the 1960s and ’70s, chief executives running the nation’s biggest companies earned 80 percent more, on average, than the third-highest-paid executives, according to a recent study by Carola Frydman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Raven E. Saks at the Federal Reserve. By the early part of this decade, the gap in the executive suite between No. 1 and No. 3 had swollen to 260 percent.

[...]

This even more skewed pattern at and near the top of the income ladder has become a sort of national standard. From 1985 to 2005, the incomes of taxpayers in the top 10th of earnings rose about 54 percent after inflation, to an average of $207,200, according to Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley.

But among the top 1 percent of taxpayers it increased 128 percent, to $812,500. And among the top 0.01 percent it nearly quadrupled, to $14 million on average.

Before too long those at the very top will be living behind their walls, checking the balance in their offshore accounts, and ever-ready to jump on their Gulfstreams and skedaddle when the economy goes sour.

And for this lot Robert Reich has a solution.



(New York Times graphic.)

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Paying The Bill

So the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are poised, together, to become the second most expensive war in US history (after WWII). WaPo:

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress has approved more than $609 billion for the wars, a figure likely to stand as lawmakers rework their latest spending bill in response to a Bush veto. Requests for $145 billion more await congressional action and would raise the cost in inflation-adjusted dollars beyond the cost of the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

Though the spending for these adventures amount to less than1 percent of the gross domestic product (far less than previous conflicts) the situation is complicated by an inconvenient fact:

And this time, the war bill is going directly on the nation's credit card. Unlike his predecessors, Bush is financing a major conflict without raising taxes or making significant cuts in domestic programs. Instead, he has cut taxes and run up the national debt. The result, economists said, is a war that has barely dented the average American's pocketbook and caused few reverberations in the broader economy.

And let's not forget that, like the credit card in your wallet, interest is accruing. As is expected, BushCo™ turn to faith-based economics:

Administration officials say those payments will be easier to afford because Bush's tax cuts strengthened the economy and boosted tax collections. But even many conservative economists are skeptical. Some worry that the bill for Iraq will come just as the baby-boom generation starts retiring, further straining a budget that will require deep cuts, higher taxes or bigger deficits.

[...]

To help pay for World War II, by far the nation's most expensive, Franklin D. Roosevelt expanded the number of taxpayers from 4 million to 42 million, tripled tax collections as a percentage of GDP and slashed spending on his treasured New Deal programs. As the military budget devoured more than a third of the economy, Roosevelt also called for mass sacrifice, rationing food and gasoline, capping prices and wages and exhorting Americans to spend any money they could spare on war bonds and stamps.

Imagine that! Actually paying for a war.

Bush, in contrast, has allowed domestic spending to rise and cut taxes repeatedly since taking office, adding more than $3 trillion to the national debt. He signed a huge stimulus package two months after marching on Baghdad in March 2003. A few months later, he signed legislation to create a Medicare prescription drug benefit, the biggest expansion of the federal health program for the elderly since its creation in 1965.

[...]

"This may be the first war in history -- in the history of the world -- in which there was a tax cut rather than a tax hike," said Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton University economist who was vice chairman of the Federal Reserve in the Clinton administration.

Again, faith-based economics. But here's the point:

"It's actually turning out to be a very expensive war," Stiglitz said. But "it has been designed to be a war the American people don't feel."

Indeed, we're all supposed to go shopping.

In the end, George will do what he always does: walk away from the mess he created. But instead of a few shareholders being left to clean up it will be all of us.

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The New Gilded Age

This book was not written for private circulation among friends; it was not written to cheer and instruct a diseased relative of the author's; it was not thrown off during intervals of wearing labor to amuse an idle hour. It was not written for any of these reasons, and therefore it is submitted without the usual apologies.

It will be seen that it deals with an entirely ideal state of society; and the chief embarrassment of the writers in this realm of the imagination has been the want of illustrative examples. In a State where there is no fever of speculation, no inflamed desire for sudden wealth, where the poor are all simple-minded and contented, and the rich are all honest and generous, where society is in a condition of primitive purity and politics is the occupation of only the capable and the patriotic, there are necessarily no materials for such a history as we have constructed out of an ideal commonwealth.

-by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, Preface, The Gilded Age, 1873

---

The WaPo's Steven Pearlstein:

The Bush administration may have failed in its efforts to roll back Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, but it's racking up more success with Teddy Roosevelt's Square Deal. Health and safety regulation. Labor protections. And certainly the centerpiece of progressive-era economic policy, the antitrust law.

Pearlstein is writing about student loan giant Sallie Mae, which is about to become gianter (if you'll pardon the expression) by agreeing to be taken over by Bank of America and J.P. Morgan.

It goes without saying that this is for your own good:

Tom Joyce, Sallie Mae's spokesman, claims there will be no antitrust problem because the two banks and Sallie would continue to run their college lending businesses separately, competing vigorously. Not only is this notion laughable, it is immediately undercut by corporate officers trying to convince Wall Street about the synergies and efficiencies of the deal.

Joyce stepped on his own story line when he told my colleague David Hilzenrath that the deal would enable Sallie to sell its products, such as its tax-free college savings plans, through Bank of America and J.P. Morgan branches.

And J. Christopher Flowers, one of the private-equity investors in the deal, predicted that Sallie would be able to use credit-analysis capabilities developed by the banks to better target and price its own products.

"We hope to reach more students and offer them better deals using the combined technology capability of all three companies," Flowers told The Post's Tomoeh Tse. Call me cynical, but it doesn't sound like these "competitors" are going to launch price wars against one another anytime soon.

I'm not sure that there's a graceful word for this sort of thing; "corporatocracy" is pretty clunky and, within this specific context, "fascism" is too broad. But whatever word applies the fact remains that this regression to a pre-Sherman Antitrust Act, pre-Teddy Roosevelt situation, this (re-) concentration of such economic power into a few corporate hands can only lead to very bad things.

Will it take another Homestead Massacre to wake people up? And will Blackwater USA be our new Pinkertons?

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The Future's So Bright...

...I gotta wear lighter clothing:

Climate change will exact a major cost on North America's timber industry and could drive as much as 40 percent of its plant and animal species to extinction in a matter of decades, according to a new report from an international panel.

[...]

The 67-page report, which examines everything from freshwater ecosystems to tourism, said North America has suffered severe environmental and economic damage because of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, heat waves and forest fires. Without "increased investments in countermeasures," the authors wrote that they are at least 90 percent sure that "hot temperatures and extreme weather are likely to cause increased adverse health impacts from heat-related mortality, pollution, storm-related fatalities and injuries, and infectious diseases."

The common argument against taking measures against warming is that they would wreck the economy. But warming, by itself, will likely wreck the economy. The slow-witted would call this a conundrum.

Ironically, the good capitalists who are afraid of wrecking the economy could be making boodles of money preparing for climate change. But they're slow-witted.

Speaking of slow-witted, I present you Sen. James Inhofe (R-Cloud Cuckoo Land):

Inhofe informed Gore that scientists are "radically at odds with your claims." Displaying a photograph of icicles in Buffalo, Inhofe demanded: "How come you guys never seem to notice it when it gets cold? . . . Where is global warming when you really need it?"

That's a rare kind of stupid. But not rare enough, unfortunately.

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Free Market Economy

Kevin Drum points out a story in today's LATimes which demonstrates just how far out of whack our economy has become:

When the airline industry went into a deep slump after the 2001 terrorist attacks, American Airlines' pilots, flight attendants and mechanics agreed to billions of dollars in cuts in wages and benefits to keep the carrier afloat.

Now AMR Corp., American's parent, is back in the black, so much so that 874 top executives will receive more than $150 million in stock bonuses next week.

As for the 57,000 rank-and-file employees, they're seeing red.

"We made huge sacrifices," said Dana Davis, an 18-year American employee and spokeswoman for the Assn. of Professional Flight Attendants.

The airline's 18,000 attendants took an across-the-board 16% pay cut and gave up vacation days. "We're not getting anything back for it," Davis said.

This isn't a new story by any means but it does a good job of showing the ridiculousness of our CEO-worship. For 2006, executive compensation averaged at least 400 times that of workers.

Of course, American has its justification:

For its part, American says the executive bonuses, part of a stock-based performance share plan, are necessary to retain managers. And, the airline says, it's a logical way to reward managers for turning American around. The carrier was one of the few to avoid bankruptcy.

Seeing how important those executives are I guess they could run the airline without any employees at all.

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A Whole New Level Of Stupid

Jonah "Doughy Pantload" Goldberg, a a known welsher*, trots out some statistics and looks like an idiot:

The Earth got about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer in the 20th century while it increased its GDP by 1,800%, by one estimate. How much of that 0.7 degrees can be laid at the feet of that 1,800% is unknowable, but let's stipulate that all of the warming was the result of our prosperity and that this warming is in fact indisputably bad (which is hardly obvious). That's still an amazing bargain. Life spans in the United States nearly doubled (from 44 to 77 years). Literacy, medicine, leisure and even, in many respects, the environment have improved mightily over the course of the 20th century, at least in the prosperous West.

"...unknowable, but let's stipulate..."

I won't even bother with this column.

*I'm part Welsh so don't give me any guff.

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Call Me Cynical...

...but I just don't believe he gives a damn:

President Bush acknowledged Wednesday that there is growing income inequality in the United States, addressing for the first time a subject that has long concerned Democrats and liberal economists.

"The fact is that income inequality is real -- it's been rising for more than 25 years," Bush said in an address on Wall Street. "The reason is clear: We have an economy that increasingly rewards education and skills because of that education."

Might there be an ulterior motive? Hmmm...

Bush cited income inequality in the part of his speech touting the No Child Left Behind Act. He described the bill as "one of the most important economic initiatives" of his presidency because of its role in closing what he terms the "achievement gap" between students.

"The question is whether we respond to the income inequality we see with policies that help lift people up, or tear others down," Bush said. "The key to rising in this economy is skills -- and the government's job is to make sure we have an education system that delivers them."

That's it! We'll solve the problem of overpaid CEO's by wrecking public education!

And this is all a bit rich considering that George has behaved just like those overpaid CEO's.

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Oooo-kay

Because liberals and progressives support rights for gays they should also support income inequality.

No, I have no idea what this means either.

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Good Riddance

Milton Friedman dead.

I can't think of any other individual who did more to advance the idea of the disposable worker and the supremacy of big business.

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Alms For The Wealthy

The NYT takes a look at the fad in deregulating the electricity industry and finds that a few people are getting wealthy but the public is suffering:

Four big investment firms bought a group of Texas power plants in 2004 for $900 million and sold them the next year for $5.8 billion.

Sempra Energy, parent of the utility in San Diego, bought nine Texas power plants with two partners in 2004 for $430 million, selling two of them less than two years later for more than $1.6 billion.

Goldman Sachs and its partners bought power plants in upstate New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio starting in 1998 and sold them in 2001 at a profit of more than $1 billion.

[...]

But even as some investors have profited handsomely by buying and sometimes quickly reselling power plants, electricity customers, who were supposed to be the biggest beneficiaries of the new system, have not fared so well. Not only have their electricity rates not fallen, in many cases they are rising even faster than the prices of the fuels used to make the electricity. Those increases stand in contrast to the significantly lower prices in other businesses in which competition was introduced, such as airlines and long-distance calling.

Some electricity customers are also being saddled with monthly surcharges to cover construction costs for plants that were sold at bargain prices and then resold at huge profits. Some of these surcharges will continue for years.

Can anyone think of any benefit to the public that has been brought about by privatizing utilities? Perhaps telephone companies but even if so that is being undercut by mergers that threaten to recreate Ma Bell.

I don't think that there can be any doubt that unregulated or lightly regulated public utilitites has been a massive failure. But I'd love the hear differently.

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Illuminating

LTE:

A public good

I take exception to April Clisura's Oct. 16 letter regarding the Kilbuck landslide ("The Route 65 Wake-Up Call: No More Runaway Development"). I understand the project was very poorly planned and has left many commuters in fits. What bothered me is that she said, "It is past time for our officials to put the public good before the whims of developers ... ." Perhaps our crusading defender of the "public good" should take a moment to consider what that might be.

While "developers" and Wal-Mart itself are undoubtedly making a killing, it is dishonest to say that Wal-Mart does not provide a public good. Do the 130 million weekly customers consider it to be a "public good"? Absolutely! Ms. Clisura appears to be a typical liberal who feels like it should be her job to discern what is good for the rest of us.

The fact remains, Wal-Marts are continually packed because enough people believe it to be a public good to keep it in business. If you don't like Wal-Mart, don't shop there. If enough people choose to boycott Wal-Mart, then perhaps "runaway development" will either slow or cease and we'll see Wal-Mart fall into the dustbin of history. If not, we'll see Wal-Mart continue to grow.

This is not a radical idea. This idea is called capitalism. While this word has a negative stigma attached to it for many left-leaning individuals, a much more neutral term can describe it: freedom. If you don't like that, perhaps you should consider relocation to a place devoid of freedom like North Korea, where elites make choices for the rest of society. The result? People there are so malnourished that they are eating tree bark and, some have claimed, even human flesh for sustenance.

CHRISTOPHER HABERMAN
Bellevue

It's a never-ending source of amazement to me that frequently the Right screams, "America - Love it or leave it". (It goes without saying that they mean their idea of America.) While I'm sure there are examples of this from the left none spring to mind.

In this letter, anyone opposing Wal-Mart's predatory and immoral practices (a statement of opinion) would be happier in some impoverished pseudo-Communist dictatorship. What sort of mindset makes that logical leap?

Honestly, I'll never understand some of my fellow citizens.

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