Did Fannie Cause the Disaster?

In a word, no.  Those who are saying it did can be put in the collection of folks that have a casual relationship with the truth.

Along with many other experts, the nine members pointed to considerable
evidence that, despite large losses, these government-sponsored
enterprises (GSEs), as they are known, bought or guaranteed too few
highly risky loans, and did so too late in the 2000s, to cause the
crisis.

Rabbit-Hole Economics

All the ways the Republican economics narrative is dead wrong.
This recession was caused by too little effective regulation, not too much.
The bad loans were made by the private sector, not the government.
Ben Bernanke has done too little to end the recession, nothing to cause it.
Deliberate inflation could be a remedy for recessions like this, not continued deflation.
Tax cuts didn't work during the Bush era, they won't work now either.

It’s a terrible thing when an individual loses his or her grip on reality. But it’s much worse when the same thing happens to a whole political party, one that already has the power to block anything the president proposes — and which may soon control the whole government.

Richard Hastings Fails

The head of the Natural Resources Committee  has a complete failing grade with the Sierra Club.  I'm sure his constituents are proud, real proud.

Diabetes cured with stem cells

With stem cells extracted from their brains, diabetic rats have been cured.

Alabama Workers Leave State

And the immigrant experiment begins.  Alabama will be the first state to show how jobs and the economy are affected when draconian immigration laws are in effect.  Let's all watch.

Reality Check on Immigration

Janet Napolitano gives an update on the current illegal immigration figures and border security.

...we have seen dramatic declines in illegal immigration and dramatic increases in seizures of illegal weapons, cash, drugs and contraband. This year, we will yet again see a historic drop in illegal crossings, and more and more contraband seized.

So any claim that this border is overrun or out of control is inconsistent with the facts.

Warren shines in debate debut

In her first debate appearance, Elizabeth Warren has a good night.

Russ Feingold on Occupy Wall Street

Russ Feingold's take on Occupy Wall Street is that more and more people are recognizing that the big corporations are in the business of ripping-off the little guys.  When this reaches the tipping point, the TEA Party will look like a tea party.

Alzheimer's might be transmissible

Researchers have been able to induce Alzheimer's by injecting malformed proteins into the brains of mice.  This implies that some of it could be infectious like mad cow disease where prions are the vector.

Reducing Health Care Costs

A study at a figure of  $6.7 billion wasted every year on unnecessary tests and prescriptions.  Eighty-six percent of that was for expensive brand-name statins to do things like lower cholesterol when cheaper generics work just as good.

Universal Influenza Vaccine

By targeting a different part of the flu virus that doesn't change much over time and from strain to strain, they may be able to develop  a vaccine that lasts for many years.

Hispanic Flight

The experiment is on.  Can a state's economy thrive if it kicks out all illegal immigrants?

Phony Fear Factor

Krugman pleads for reason.  But alas, little is to be found on the right.

The bad news: Republicans, aided and abetted by many conservative policy
intellectuals, are fixated on a view about what's blocking job creation
that fits their prejudices and serves the interests of their wealthy
backers, but bears no relationship to reality

Credit Rating Agencies Not Perfect

Not only are they not perfec, they aren't even good.  Our securities world depends on honest assessment of creditworthiness.  Without it, we can expect more financial disruption in the future.

Fighting Climate Change in the Fields

Graze your way to sustainability.

The centerpiece of Savory’s work is the 2,630-hectare Dimbangombe Ranch in northwestern Zimbabwe near Victoria Falls, home to his Africa Centre for Holistic Management. In the hot, dry, depleted landscape of this region, “the rains are not what they used to be” is a frequent refrain. But Dimbangombe looks as though it’s been uniquely favored by the rain gods. It has lush, varied grasses, flowing rivers and streams, and thriving livestock—some four times the number of neighboring ranches. Thanks to the renewed flow of the Dimbangombe River, elephant herds no longer have to travel to pools but can water on the river. Women who used to walk as much as five kilometers daily for water now have it available in their communities. Dimbangombe has become productive and vibrant while its neighbors, and similar environments around the globe, are turning to desert. How? “Two things: we brought in increased cattle numbers with holistic planned grazing, and [we] minimized the fires,” says Savory.

...

Desertification—and associated problems such as flooding, wildfires, and water shortages—can be seen as a symptom of the carbon cycle gone awry, says Savory. In the same way that plants need animals, as seen in the relationship between ruminants and grasses, soil needs plants. “For soil to form, it needs to be living, and to be living, soil needs to be covered,” says Australian scientist Christine Jones. Without a cover of plants in various stages of growth and decomposition, much of the carbon oxidizes and enters the atmosphere as CO₂.So soil carbon has huge implications for climate change. Rattan Lal, Distinguished Professor of soil science in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at Ohio State University, estimates that soil-carbon restoration can potentially store about one billion tons of atmospheric carbon per year. This means that the soil could effectively offset around one-third of human-generated emissions annually absorbed in the atmosphere. Building soil carbon would also enhance food production; and, because carbon-rich soil holds significantly more water than its dried-out counterpart, it would help to secure watersheds and protect against flooding and drought.

Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

We should be learning from Finnish education practices.  They give free reign for teachers to do whatever it takes to get a child educated.  Their success points the way for the rest of us.

The Real Class Warfare

Professor Krugman points out that class warfare has been going on for some time now.  But most of the middle class don't seem to be aware that the ones doing the complaining about it are the ones who have been on the attack.  When middle-class incomes have risen by a modes 21 %, the income of the top 1 % of the distribution have risen by 480 %.  This concentration of wealth is not good for the country.

Deep-sea fish in deep trouble

It's no surprise but now there is evidence that even our deep-sea fisheries are hurting.

Perpetual hydrogen

With just a bit of salt water a microbial electrolysis cell can generate hydrogen practically forever.  Perhaps there is a cheap, sustainable fuel source here.

A super-slippery material

Clues from a carnivorous plant leads to the development of a super-slippery material.  It's self-healing, too.

Effortless sailing

The cloaking craze comes to boating.  The idea is to move the vessel through the water with a minimum of disturbance.

"The goal is make it so the water passing through the porous material leaves the cloak at the same speed as the water surrounding by the vessel," Urzhumov said. "In this way, the water outside the hull would appear to be still relative to the vessel, thereby greatly reducing the amount of energy needed by the vessel to push vast quantities of water out of the way as it progresses."

Perhaps it will be coming to an America's Cup vessel near you.

Dental Revolution

A new method of filling cavities actually rebuilds the tooth without drilling or foreign material.

Bacterially produced wires

The same bacteria that immobilizes uranium mentioned in a previous post also creates a network of nanowires that conduct electricity.

Real Mystery Meat

For all the ethical vegetarians out there, advances continue to be made in growing meat in a culture
 instead of on an animal.   Probably tastes like chicken.

Breakthrough in wireless.

By going to full duplex on the current frequencies, we could double wireless capacity without building any new towers.  But even that probably wouldn't be enough.

Uranium bugs

There's a microbe that thrives on uranium in the soil.  It stabilizes the stuff by forming it into nanowires.

Mitt Romney and Medicare

Mitt Romney's plan simply fails to address the biggest budgetary problem in the coming years.  It completely ignores the budget-busting consequences of rising healthcare costs among Medicare recipients.  For Romney's plan to work, we would have to kill Medicare.  But he fails to say that out loud.

Petri dish testing

A cell-based alternative to animal testing would let industry test new products without harming helpless animals.  It probably would be cheaper and quicker too.

Challenging a Chinese monopoly

Near a small town in Nebraska, a mine for rare earths and other essential minerals is being developed.  The Chinese are currently the dominant supplier for these things.  What has taken so long?

Adventures in tea-party cognitive dissonance

A Tea Partier's prescription for a slow economy is...wait for it....stimulus spending bythe government.  But, strangely enough, only defense spending is acceptable.  Let's spend $9 billion on an aircraft carrier we don't need but nothing for infrastructure investments we do need.  This is an example of why these folks should not be taken seriously.

The Wrong Worries

The time is past for half-measures designed to tweak the economy out of its doldrums.  If we have a hope to avoid a double-dip recession, it's now time to do something real and meaningful to generate jobs.

Niger delta spills

At long last, the oil industry admits its responsibility in the oil spills that have seriously polluted the Niger delta and poisoned the population there.

Heat Regulation in Building Materials

Chinese researchers are working on building materials that absorb or release heat at specific temperatures.  Interesting.

Making More, Contributing Less

Here's the story.  The rich are really getting richer while the burden of deficit reduction is falling on the middle class. The argument for keeping tax rates low is that low rates boost the economy.  But our actual experience is that the accumulation of wealth at the high simply doesn't do that.  The problem with the economy is the lack of demand.  When more people have money to spend, demand will go up.  When there is mild inflation instead of deflation, immediate spending is encouraged.  Before the tax cuts, both the economy and the rich were doing fine.  A properly fashioned tax code would encourage those with accumulating wealth to spend it where it can do some good instead of just sitting on it.

Texas Miracle? Not so much

Rick Perry claims that his Republican policies have produced job growth in Texas.  Actually unemployment is just as bad there as elsewhere.  The jobs being created are low-wage jobs without benefits.  Meanwhile the numbers of homeless continue to climb and schools crumble for lack of funding.

Turning the Tables

Ezra Klein argues that the Democrats have an opportunity to turn the tables on Republicans.  The pending expiration of the Bush tax cuts can be used as a hostage against them.  If they choose to not participate in genuine tax reform then we can just let the cuts expire.  In Ezra's words:

Just as Republicans planted a trigger for 2011 that ensures spending cuts, Democrats should use the Bush tax cuts as a trigger in 2012 to force revenues. Which is not to say they should campaign for raising taxes. They should campaign against an outdated, inefficient, unfair tax code as well as the Washington way of leaving hard problems for somebody else to handle.

The White House should announce that it won’t extend any of the Bush tax cuts and will instead insist on a Gang-of-Six-esque plan that cleans the code, lowers rates for everyone, and raises $2 trillion or more in revenue. If the GOP refuses, the tax cuts will expire, our revenue problems will be solved, and Republicans will suddenly find themselves much more interested in tax reform. Sometimes, to govern like a Democrat, you need to negotiate like a Republican.

Iron-rich dust and ice ages

Could we control global warming by salting the ocean with iron?  It seems that part of the ice age cycle involved dust storms that increased the iron content in sea water.  In turn that caused the plankton to bloom and increase oceanic uptake of carbon thereby cooling the planet.

More nuclear power good for Tri-Cities

Michael Lawrence talks about how the new trend for small, modular reactors could benefit the Tri-Cities.

The Truth About Federal Spending

Once again Krugman points out how the high spending per GDP statistic is misused to criticize Obama.  Obama has not expanded spending.  It's the GDP that has dropped resulting in the scary statistic.  We should be asking why the GDP has dropped.  Those reasons include Ponzi games played by our big bankers and the concentration of wealth in the hands of those who can afford not to spend it.

A "Christian" Suit

When someone in the media points out the stupid things you say, you can always compound the problem by filing a baseless lawsuit.

The Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas

The brainy folks at Rensselaer Polytechnic have done a study that shows if as few as 10 percent of a population doggedly holds on to a set of ideas regardless of how wrong they might be, they can eventually win over the people who make the mistake of being reasonable.

Republican Leaders Voted for U.S. Debt Drivers

It should be noted and repeated that the big drivers in our debt problem were put is place by Republicans.  We should ask our Republican representatives, "In light of the fact that you now see the debt as a major problem, do you have any remorse that you voted for the biggest causes of that debt?"  These causes include the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, the Medicare prescription drug benefits, and TARP.

Sugar Doesn't Melt

The actual melting point of sugar has always been a bit slippery.  It seems to vary with the intensity of the heat that is applied.  Now we better understand why.  Sugar doesn't melt like a metal.  Under heat it decomposes in any number of different methods.

The Lesser Depression

Some Paul Krugman quotes:

For those who know their 1930s history, this is all too familiar. If either of the current debt negotiations fails, we could be about to replay 1931, the global banking collapse that made the Great Depression great. But, if the negotiations succeed, we will be set to replay the great mistake of 1937: the premature turn to fiscal contraction that derailed economic recovery and ensured that the Depression would last until World War II finally provided the boost the economy needed.

There’s an old quotation, attributed to various people, that always comes to mind when I look at public policy: “You do not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.” Now that lack of wisdom is on full display, as policy elites on both sides of the Atlantic bungle the response to economic trauma, ignoring all the lessons of history. And the Lesser Depression goes on.

Eric Cantor's Hypocrisy

Reducing the deficit is just fine with him except when it means losses to a big contributor.  The pandering is just so transparent.

Question

A question that needs to be asked of our political extremists of both sides is "How far in your preferred direction is too far?"  Ask the Republicans what they see as the realistic limit of tax cuts.  Ask the Democrats what they see as the realistic limit of entitlements.

Early detection of tsunamis may be possible

It seems that the minuscule disturbances in gravity caused by a propagating tsunami have a detectable effect on a certain layer in the upper atmosphere.  A system that perform careful observation can give clear warning that one is on the way.

Darrell Issa's Investigation Backfires

If you're going to investigate the activities of a commission hoping to find ammunition that hurts the other party, you had better make sure your own party is playing by the rules.  But when it comes to Republicans that is really difficult to do.  Republicans fare better when they stymie the investigative process altogether.

Runaway Union Violence?

Not so much.  Only in the minds of the right-wing blogosphere.  But in reality?  Nope.  Not even close.

Wave-power ships for cheaper clean electricity

Instead of stationary installations that must be sufficiently robust to deal with all sorts of weather, what about cheaper mobile units that can come into port when the weather get ugly?

'Elections' Haven't 'Worked'

Mitch McConnell hates democracy because it doesn't yield the results he likes.  Perhaps he would like someone to die so he could become king.

Outcome of Insuring the Uninsured

A formal study has confirmed what intuition would lead one to think.  When the uninsured have access to Medicaid, they seek out more healthcare and have better health outcomes.  Moreover, their overall financial situation improves.  Those who wish to deny insurance need to explain why they think it is better for the low income folks to suffer.

Portugese drug law show results

Ten years ago, Portugal shifted it's drug laws from punishment to treatment.  Now, addiction is declining.  It could be a model on how to really win a war on drugs.

What Really Happened at Fukushima?

An update and assessment of the aftermath.  Unfortunately, there seem to be a number of problems in how the risk was assessed over the years.

More reasons for nuclear renaissance

The recently noted problems of our aging fleet of nuclear powered generating stations serves to point out that rather than abandon nuclear power, we need to start aggressively replacing them.  Replacing old plants with newer, safer ones is much better than trying to keep the old ones up to snuff.  These bad economic times are perfect for investments that create American jobs and revive some major industrial production.  In the end, you have an improved power base that will be ready to support a revitalized economy.

About Big Busts

Now that I have your attention, our banking laws are in serious need of reform if we ever hope to have a stable economy.  Until that happens, all we should expect is one disaster after another while the guys creating the disasters run off with our nation's wealth.

Let's keep our illegal immigrants

Despite the stereotypes to the contrary, many illegal immigrants represent what is best about our country.  They work hard and enrich our society in a great many ways.

You Can't Trust Wall Street Bankers

They have a long history of lying to the public.

Medicare Saves Money

The easiest way to reduce health costs is to improve Medicare.  It has outstripped the cost performance of the private sector while delivering care much more broadly.  True, it has its problems, but the gap between it and private insurance is so large that those problems could easily be fixed and still not match the private insurance cost levels.

Looking for Jobs in All the Wrong Places

Dan Rather points out that job creation is tricky.  It takes more than just throwing money around.  You have to put the money in the right places with the right restrictions.  Otherwise you run the risk of encouraging the export of even more jobs offshore.

Life Expectancy

Life expectancy in most US counties is below that of other developed nations.  Best health care system in the world?  Not.

Bacteria and Biofuel

A bacteria has been found that produces an enzyme that breaks down lignin, the hard stuff in cellulose.  This could be an economical source to more easily create biofuels from waste plant stocks.

More Stimulus Needed For Jobs Crisis

Larry Summers makes the case for stimulus spending.  But it must be careful stimulus spending.  Now is the time to make investments in infrastructure.  Labor costs and borrowing costs are low.   

the fiscal debate needs to take on board the reality that the greatest threat to the nation's creditworthiness is a sustained period of slow growth that, as in southern Europe, causes debt-GDP ratios to soar. This means that essential discussions about medium-term measures to restrain spending and raise revenues need to be coupled with a focus on near-term growth. 

Damn Lies and Statistics

When analyzing the effects of the tax cuts, conservatives like to use dollar figures to say that revenues went up.  Liberals like to use %GDP to say that revenues declined.  Timing is everything.  It takes discipline to take in revenues during a growing GDP and pay down the debt, and increase debt and spending during times of shrinking GDP to reverse the trend.  The easy path (and destructive) path is to not worry about the debt during a rising economy and then only address in when the GDP shrinks.  The former dampens the oscillation and the latter exacerbates it.

A Worthy Investment

Whenever our finances rise above the treading-water phase, investing in early education has been shown to be an easy way to leverage better standards of living and reduced crime.

Something New in Steel

This interesting innovation could result in a form of steel that is lighter and stronger than anything now produced.

Lasting Effects of the Bush Tax Cuts

Here's the charts.
Millionaires saw their after-tax income increase by 6.2%.  The middle class saw an increase of 2.2%.
In dollars than $128,832 for the millionaires, 860 for the middle class.
The Bush tax cuts are the largest contributor to the deficit.  More than wars, more than stimulus, more than bailouts, and more than the effect of the recession.
The cost of the tax cuts is roughly equal to the Social Security shortfall.
If we only let the cuts expire, our rising debt stabilizes and begins to drop.  Otherwise the debt just keeps going up.

Cowboys and Pit Crews

Atul Gawande, in this year's commencement address at Harvard Medical School, talks about the challenges of modern medicine. It has become a much more complex process than it used to be. There are too many skills needed and too much knowledge needed that no doctor can do it all himself. Medicine is now administered by teams of skilled practitioners. But we still train our doctors as if they were the focus of medical delivery.

The public’s experience is that we have amazing clinicians and technologies but little consistent sense that they come together to provide an actual system of care, from start to finish, for people. We train, hire, and pay doctors to be cowboys. But it’s pit crews people need.

'What's Up Your Butt' makes national news

Colon cancer awareness ads in our health district make national news.

The tao of doing nothing

Right now, doing nothing is a pretty darn good deficit reduction plan.

The Day the United States Defaulted

Even a temporary default was a bad idea. How much worse would it be if we had a systematic one!

GOP’s jobs agenda

Nothing useful here.

“if lower taxes and less regulation was such good policy, then George W. Bush’s economy would have been a lot better. But under Bush, Republicans cut taxes on business and on investors and high-income people and they didn’t add many regulations and that business cycle was the first one in the post-war period where the income for a typical working class family was lower at the end than at the beginning.”

This is the mantra every Democrat needs to use on the campaign trail. It encapsulates Republican intellectual bankruptcy.

Rob Woodall, Not the Brightest Bulb

When challenged repeatedly by uninsured constituents to walk a mile in their shoes, Rob Woodall ducks and covers.  He says he is happy to take government-provided health insurance instead of buying some on the open market because his insurance is "free".  Talk about your twisted logic.  Every man for himself 'cause I got mine.

IRS vs Karl Rove

If the IRS follows the law, Karl Rove and his secret-contributor PACS may be doing their bit to help with the deficit by paying serious fines, penalties, and taxes.  But the agency may blink because of the expense of the fight.  If the tax laws aren't enforced unless you are too small to fight in court, it pretty much says that the big boys can do pretty much whatever the hell they want. Different laws for different folks, I guess.

Alan Simpson Still Confused

If this doesn't nail the coffin on Alan Simpson's credibility with discussing Social Security, it should.  I think this horse might be ready for the pasture.

Single Payer Health Care begins in Vermont

Another test case for single payer goes into action.  It will be interesting to compare the results of this to other states who are circling the drain with Republican-style no-plans.

Obama's Unspoken Re-Election Edge?

Shelby Steele gets it soo wrong about Obama's electoral popularity.  Let's go through it point by point.

his sweeping domestic initiatives—especially his stimulus package and health-care reform—were so jerry-built and high-handed that they generated a virtual revolution in America's normally subdued middle class.

The revolution Shelby sees is the one that has been trumped-up by the corporate-backed TEA Party.  It has made so much noise that Republicans fear it to such a degree that they can brook no compromise.  The weaknesses in the stimulus package and health-care reform are there because of Republican antipathy and the limits of Obama's power, not because of any lack in him.

The president's success in having Osama bin Laden killed is an exception to a pattern of excruciatingly humble and hesitant leadership abroad. 

If you want allies instead of duped sycophants like Tony Blair, some humility is in order.  No alliance built on cowboy bullying can stand for long.

The problem Mr. Obama poses for Republicans is that there has always been a disconnect between his actual performance and his appeal. If Hurricane Katrina irretrievably stained George W. Bush, the BP oil spill left no lasting mark on this president. Mr. Obama's utter confusion in the face of the "Arab spring" has nudged his job-approval numbers down, but not his likability numbers, which Gallup has at a respectable 47.6%. In the mainstream media there has been a willingness to forgive this president his mistakes, to see him as an innocent in an impossible world. Why?

Shelby fails to note that the Katrina failure was a genuine failure of the Bush administration.  The BP oil spill was a result of policies established during the Bush years.  The financial crisis was also a result of Bush policies.  The problems with which Shelby would like to paint Obama were not his problems.  He simply has the task of cleaning up an enormous mess and it is taking a while.  The last thing the Arabs needed was American intervention.  Why does Obama look innocent?  Shelby can't recognize the fact that he actually is.

Rather than give credit to Obama, Shelby has to invent a fantasy of popularity based on reverse racism, not realizing that such reverse racism still has racism at its heart.  How ironic that a black conservative like Shelby hangs his hat on the idea that the only reason Obama is popular is because of his race.

It isn't Obama's fault that the field of potential opponents is so abysmal but Steele wants to blame that on Obama as well.

The rot in the Republican party isn't Obama.  It's the lie at the heart of their ideology.  They talk about empowering individuals over government.  But what they really want to do is to empower a few rich and powerful individuals to co-opt the government to further enrich themselves at the expense of the population as a whole.

Ratko Mladic Arrested

Ratko Mladic was one of the worst in the days of Bosnian ethnic cleansing.

Climate change a threat to nuclear power

Natalie Kopytko points out how nuclear power may be vulnerable to the effects of the climate change it is supposed to alleviate.

It’ll be our fault

Ezra Klein points out that our problems were both predictable and predicted.  Yet nothing was done to stop them.  Now that many have actually happened, we aren't doing much to keep them from happening again.  Something about the definition of insanity comes to mind.

When a crisis comes, the people who were charged with preventing it like to say that it could not have been predicted. Who could’ve imagined that housing markets would crash all around the country or that terrorists would fly planes into buildings or a that a hurricane would breach the levees in New Orleans? Sometimes there’s truth to those claims. But not in these cases. These crises are predictable. These crises are preventable. These are the white swans, and they’re swooping and honking right in front of us.

Another Hydrogen Option

Producing hydrogen from natural gas just got cleaner and easier.  It uses better catalysts, one of which absorbs the CO2 by-product.

Interesting Trash

Who knew?  Cigarette butts can have a useful second life.

Made in America

Manufacturing is growing. A falling dollar helps put Americans back to work which is the real path to a better economy.

So while we still have a deeply troubled economy, one piece of good news is that Americans are, once again, starting to actually make things. And we’re doing that thanks, in large part, to the fact that the Fed and the Obama administration ignored very bad advice from right-wingers — ideologues who still, in the face of all the evidence, claim to know something about creating prosperity.

A Better Way to Teach?

A side-by-side study has shown that interactive teaching not only keeps students engaged but transfers the learning better, too.