There is an interesting read buried on page 4 of today’s Wall Street Journal. The Fed will hold its annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming shortly, but most fed governors, including those from New York, Dallas, San Francisco and Celeveland won’t be there. The problem is that the conference center in Jackson Hole only seats 100, and there are new attendees this year from such | Read More »
Yesterday, the US Ex-Im Bank denied loan guarantees for Reliance Power, an Indian utility company, to purchase up to $600 million in mining equipment from Bucyrus International, a Wisconsin-based manufacturer. Reliance was planning to build a coal-fired power plant in India. Bucyrus employs more than 1,000 people. These jobs in turn help support many more jobs in the Milwaukee area. Ex-Im turned down the project | Read More »
The two most important recent initiatives of Google are social networking and mobile operating systems and ads. So it’s no surprise to see the steady bad press about Facebook and its privacy leaks. These are a serious issue, especially because people disclose great personal detail on Facebook which (they think) can’t be otherwise discovered by third parties assessing browsing patterns or search histories. Now Apple | Read More »
So now Bloomberg tells us that the Coast Guard has given BP only 48 hours to increase their containment capacity: US gives BP 48 Hours to Boost Containment Capacity What a crazy world. The BP situation is such a profound demonstration of the dangers of putting ideology first. The left thinks that oil companies are bad, oil is bad- and so they are willing to | Read More »
There’s an interesting post on the Zerohedge financial blog referencing an article in Foreign Policy, saying that the Obama administration has refused cleanup assistance from thirteen different countries. The blogger points out that the assistance could have made a real difference. For instance, at least one European firm, a Belgian company named DEME, in particular owns ships and equipment which could cut the cleanup time | Read More »
Just a brief note- there’s a link on Drudge right now to an article in Politico about comments by Hillary regarding taxes. “The rich are not paying their fair share.” She specifically mentions Brazil as a model, because taxes there are “high” but “Guess what, they’re growing like crazy”. So… I googled (sorry about that, should have startpaged) ‘brazilian tax rates’, and up popped a | Read More »
It used to be that federal spending of even a few billion $ would get attention. But thanks to the miracle of trillion dollar deficits and hundred billion dollar bailouts, the approximately $9 billion that we will be shipping over to Greece as our contribution to the roughly $40 billion IMF element of the Greek bailout is just not noteworthy. I can understand this from | Read More »
Greece is near default on its sovereign debt as a result of budget deficits of (now reported) 16% of GDP. Greece is a “state” in the EU. Let’s see how US states are doing: California- deficit is 22% of state GDP. (Note as well that California by itself is the 8th largest economy in the world.) Florida- 19.9% Arizona- 19.9% Nevada- 16% Some differences between | Read More »
It’s nice to see our government so proactive about Toyota. I haven’t seen such intensive media coverage about an auto recall ever. Ray LaHood meeting with the CEO of Toyota??? That is unprecedented. But then I realized that since the US owns GM, Hood is just protecting Obama’s investment. So this is what we end up with. Further government intervention into the auto business. If | Read More »
For whatever reason, it seems that the MSM is not interested in exposing the difficulties that Mexico faces today. Prime example is the lack of attention paid to the spiraling drug war on our southern border. So it was not surprising that I learned about today’s news only from a business associate who has an office in Mexico City. His office is in the center | Read More »
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