Greeted by many in the crowd who want him to run for president in 2012, Gingrich half-jokingly said he would consider doing that "if you get (Burns) elected."Well, Burns didn't get elected. Read More......
After the chief executive of Transocean Ltd., owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, held a closed-door meeting with shareholders Friday, the company issued a terse statement [ . . . ] saying it would distribute some $1 billion in dividend to shareholders. [emphasis mine]This looks like fraudulent conveyance, but the money will be gone. Horton concludes:
It’s not surprising that the management of Transocean would take such a step. [ . . . ] But it is surprising that Congress and the executive would allow them to get away with it. An alert creditor would take action to block Transocean’s efforts to move its assets out of reach. The question is whether the United States is capable of acting like an alert creditor.In the Randian world, of course, the shareholders are the deserving, not some stinky fishermen. Besides, those guys are poor. In the Randian world, this is justice. Hmm.
GINGRICH: I don’t think being the leader of an organized group necessarily means that you’re going to — you will or won’t understand the critique that I just outlined. … A lot of religious leaders who come out of basically a socialist background. They don’t create wealth. They don’t create jobs. They in fact redistribute wealth and so from their perspective this is just one more opportunity to redistribute — this is sort of compulsory charity, what we used to call taxes.Read More......
Read More......Eating two rashers of bacon or a sausage every day can increase your risk of heart disease by nearly half, scientists claim. Their study found meat that has been cured, salted or processed in another way can also push up the likelihood of developing diabetes. It linked the salts and chemical preservatives used on processed meat to ill health if the products are eaten regularly.The research, from the Harvard School of Public Health, adds to previous investigations which found links between processed meats and cancers of the bowel and breast. It is hard to imagine that consuming large quantities of fatty meats that have been pumped up with a ton of sodium might somehow prove perilous, but Science does not always bring you good news.
China's internet "firewall" is a trade barrier and needs to be tackled within the framework of the World Trade Organization, Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission, told reporters in Shanghai today.Read More......
Dutch-born Kroes, who is also in charge of Europe's digital agenda, said the firewall was a trade barrier as long as it blocked communication for internet users, preventing the free flow of information.
"It is one of those issues that needs to be tackled within the WTO," said Kroes, who served as European Commissioner for competition until 2009.
Kroes spoke at the China headquarters of video-sharing company Tudou, a rival of Google's internationally popular video-sharing platform YouTube that is blocked in China.
Via Paul Kedrosky, here's a McKinsey chart comparing projections of corporate earnings by Wall Street analyst with the actual results. As you can see, the analysts relentlessly overestimate earnings.Read More......
Actually, what I find most interesting about this chart isn't the overestimation — though that's fascinating — but the remarkable steadiness of their earnings projections. For 25 years, with the exception of a few years starting in the late 90s, through good times and bad, consensus earnings for the S&P; 500 have been right around 12-13%. No matter what's going on in the broader economy, Wall Street always thinks earning will be at least 12% or higher. Coincidentally, I'm sure, this is also the direction of error most likely to get their clients to churn stocks.
President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies are using the levers of government to speed up and promote what they consider the most popular aspects of the new health care law before a highly skeptical public passes judgment in November.Yeah, I seem to remember getting a mailing about my George Bush whopping $300 tax cut, or whatever it was earlier in the decade. So spare me the tears. Read More......
Top administration officials, who meet regularly with outside special interest groups to coordinate the public relations effort, have so far focused on expediting and amplifying four key areas of the new law: expanding coverage to young adults, covering sick people with pre-existing conditions or high medical costs, providing tax breaks to small businesses and helping a select group of seniors pay for prescription drugs.
In one case, the administration moved so quickly to provide coverage to young adults under their parents’ health plan that it cut short the conventional period for the public to weigh in on the new rule.
In another, it used taxpayer money to alert small businesses that they will get a break on this year’s taxes.
Both are perfectly legal but also politically beneficial.
Eight-term Rep. Mark Souder will announce his resignation Tuesday after it came to light that he was conducting an affair with a female aide who worked in his district office, Fox News has learned.Souder, as you can imagine, has long been an outspoken critic of same-sex marriage. This year, he signed an amicus brief in a case against D.C.'s new marriage law. Read More......
Multiple senior House sources indicated that the extent of the affair with the 45-year-old staffer would have landed Souder before the House Ethics Committee.
Elected as a family values conservative as part of the Republican revolution in 1994, Souder survived a tough re-election challenge in 2008 and survived a contested primary two weeks ago.
The U.S. Coast Guard says 20 tar balls have been found off Key West, Fla., but the agency stopped short of saying whether they came from a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.Read More......
BP has claimed its first success in stemming the flow of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico after almost a month of trying.Read More......
The company said that it would now be able to capture 1,000 barrels of oil a day after inserting a small tube into the end of the broken pipeline lying on the seabed.
Official estimates put the spill at 5,000 barrels of oil a day, but some scientists say the spill could be as much as 100,000 barrels daily. BP says there is no way to measure it accurately.
Costa Rica's Christiana Figueres is to be the new head of the UN climate convention, BBC News understands.Read More......
The UN is expected to confirm her appointment to take over from outgoing chief Yvo de Boer later in the week.
Sources close to the UN said she emerged as front-runner after an intervention from small island states.
The US-based diplomat, daughter of former Costa Rican president Jose Figueres Ferrer, has taken part in UN climate negotiations since 1995.
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