You might very well think that…
Woody Norris, inventor and chairman of American Technology Corp., demonstrates one of his newest innovations that he calls HyperSonic Sound or HSS and talks about his untraditional approach to inventing and education. As he puts it: “Almost nothing has been invented yet.”
Fans of dystopian fiction (or those with a conspiratorial mindset — you know who you are) will doubtless find some potential applications of HSS technology deeply disturbing.
A very nifty website from the “ecoimagination” folks at General Electric to promote their so-called Smart Grid initiatives.
Last night on CNN’s “No Bias, No Bull” program, Campbell Brown put Rush Limbaugh in her crosshairs over the comedian’s attack on business reporter Ali Velshi (who’s Canadian, btw) after he’d criticized parts of Limpballs’ recent Wall Street Journal article.
Here’s the transcript of the rest of the exchange between Brown and Velshi:
Brown: All right. So, he argues the economy much worse in the early ’80s than it is right now.
Does he have a point?
Velshi: Yes, I mean, I don’t want to get into a “My recession is worse than your recession” argument, but ultimately, I am going to have to interject with a few facts that he might have to think about.
We have — unemployment was higher back then than it is today. It was 10.8 percent. It’s 7.2 percent right now. But 2008, we saw the price of a median single family home drop 15 percent. Never before have we seen that on record. Industrial production, which is the measure of how much we actually make in this country, has never been lower than it is right now.
Personal income, adjusted for inflation, was higher then than it is today. Personal savings — right after Reagan got elected, people were socking away 12 percent of what they made, today, virtually nothing, which means we don’t have anything to get us through a recession.
But put all of the economic talk aside for a second. Ultimately — we have talked about this many times — this is an economy that is based on people’s willingness to spend money, more than any other economy in the world. People are not willing to spend money.
And just to give you the one indication of this that we always talk about, and it’s consumer confidence. Inconveniently, for Mr. Limbaugh, the standard for consumer confidence was set in 1985. So, 1985, whatever consumer confidence was back then is considered 100. Today, it is at 38. It is the lowest it has ever been.
Until consumers start buying, businesses will not start investing. You can give them all the tax cuts you want; they can’t.
Now, he is right about something. Reagan cut taxes from 70 percent to 26 percent. They’re 35 percent right now, the top marginal tax rate. So, we don’t — we can’t halve them. Back then, when you took them from that rate over a course of years, down to 26 percent, even if you didn’t believe in tax cuts, you would really believe that that would be stimulative.
So, ultimately, there are two schools of thought, cut taxes or stimulate the economy another way. Virtually nobody falls into one entirely camp or the other. I, too, would like to pay lower taxes.But, ultimately, the facts are the facts. But maybe it was worse for a lot of people. Every recession is hard on — on some people. But we are in a very dire situation right now.
It’s kind of pathetic when someone who evidently has no respect for free speech, who clearly doesn’t have the slightest understanding what the demonstration involved was about, and who apparently doesn’t seem to have any of the facts of the matter straight (he must not have bothered to read the article that he linked to, it seems), nonetheless furiously storms ahead, seizing on a peaceful protest as yet another opportunity to ventilate his petty, small-minded and clearly racist attitudes towards immigrants. No wonder he’s been picked up as free stringer for the National Post.
Does “Raphael” seriously think that Canadian citizens shouldn’t have the right to publicly protest about issues around the world that are of deep concern to them; whether that be out of principle or more compellingly, because they have family and friends abroad who may be directly affected?
In this case, the protesters were pleading with the Harper government to join other countries in calling for a ceasefire to the fighting in Sri Lanka amidst concerns for the safety of 250,000 civilians (according to the Red Cross) and displaced people trapped as the military pushed for victory against the last bastion of Tamil rebels. The EU’s Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel has called for a halt to the conflict in the wake of what he’s called an “escalating humanitarian catastrophe.”
In case (like me) you missed this report by Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes last month regarding the second wave of expected defaults on the way, it’s good to keep this in mind when considering some of the actions presently being contemplated by the U.S. government and others to bail out the global financial system.
This will have the likely effect of deepening and prolonging the recession south of the border, which naturally of course will drag down our economy along with it. This begs the question: where on earth is Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney getting his crazy rosy estimates of a relatively quick recovery from?
Is it possible that Jon Stewart is smarter than Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke?
Earlier this week, on The Daily Show, Stewart suggested in an offhand way, that simply giving the $2 trillion dollars in “stimulus” money (or bail-out money… whatever), directly to the American people for the sole use of paying down their consumer debt. Start everyone with a clean slate, or in other words, to use his expression, “hit the reset button” on the economy.
The logic has some merit to it. After all, the banks would get their money and consumers, free of their towering mountains of personal debt, would then head right back out and start spending; thereby doing precisely what the government wants them to do in order to reinvigorate the economy.
Now I know there are lots of reasons to argue against such a scheme (possible creation of systemic “moral hazard” for instance) but Stewart’s “fine idea” isn’t without historical precedent. According to Aristotle, the ancient Greek leader Solon instituted a set of laws called the Seisachtheia whereby all outstanding debts of the Athenian people were immediately forgiven and lands returned to their traditional owners.
Amidst all of the economic gloom and doom, it’s refreshing to take a somewhat more lighthearted view of banking and high finance…
“And so, heartened by their initial success, the desperate (and reasonably violent) men of the Permanent Assurance… battled on. Until, as the sun sets slowly in the West, the outstanding returns on their bold business venture became apparent. Once proud financial giants lay in ruins… their assets: stripped; their policies: in tatters.”
Thanks to Ian for reminding me of this absolute delight — arguably the most wonderful short feature film ever.
Fairly predictable criticism from the usual suspects regarding the so-called Conservatives’ feckless new SOS (“Save Our Skins”) budget.
What’s perhaps somewhat less expected was the relatively unvarnished reaction of Harper’s political mentor a couple of days ago:
“I spent five years getting Harper into power, so God knows I want him to survive,” Tom Flanagan, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, said in an interview Wednesday.
“I perfectly understand the imperatives of political survival and the need to make compromises and to adjust, etc., etc. etc. But . . . it’s got a creepy feel to it.”
What a shame that, like most “Conservative” supporters (Stephen Taylor and other fatuous jerks over at the Blithering Tories, for example), he didn’t have the fundamental integrity and/or intellectual honesty to denounce Harper’s bogus budget in more forceful terms.
Well, I can hardly wait for the PBO to publish its analysis. Soon I hope! Speaking of which, does anyone know if Kevin Page got the money he was looking for? It would certainly be a cruel irony indeed if he didn’t given the orgy of spending.
After six ballots, former Maryland Lt. Gov., Fox News commenter and dooche Michael Steele edged out South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson, 91 votes to 77, to become the new chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Obviously, the fact that Steele is the first African-American to hold the post is a significant departure for the Republicans and may be a sign of desperately needed change in the GOP… or maybe not.
I’m sure everyone not living under a rock has heard the NDP’s radio ads that were launched immediately after Ignatieff announced that he would be supporting the Conservative government’s deeply “flawed” budget without any significant amendments whatsoever.
Sadly for the NDP, almost nobody outside their traditional base of support will take these ads seriously. Aside from presumably attempting to define Ignatieff as a failure, what are they really saying? Jack Layton is “the only leader strong enough to stand up to Harper and get us through this economic crisis” the ad laughably claims. As if.
All Layton has done here is to demonstrate that, rather than putting average families first, as the ad implies, the NDP leader is far more interested in tooting his own horn and attacking his erstwhile coalition partner because his one chance to ever be in government has slipped away from him forever.
Red Tory v.3.0.3 