The More Liberal You Are – The Less You Know About Economics

Absolutely fascinating.  Though not surprising.

A study was done by Zogby.  In it, 4,835 people were asked 8 questions on economics.

The results are in.  And they don’t look pretty if you are a Leftist.

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Serious?

How in the world can you say you are managing this thing if THIS is true?

June 6 (Bloomberg) — BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward hasn’t spoken directly to President Barack Obama since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20.

Darwin

It might be thoughtless and crass.  But it also might be the truth.

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Chapel Hill Schools: In Debt or Cutting Edge?

The headline to this story is impressive.

Chapel Hill school first in world to give students iPod Touch

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Perspective: China Style

I suspect we’re all guilty of it.  It being the practice of seeing things ONLY from where we sit.  Of seeing things in ways that are colored by the ways we have always seen things.

I’m guilty of it all the time.

I look at people, react to people and come to conclusions based on my past experiences.  This is my perspective.

Lot’s of times it works like it should; dark alleys get avoided.

Some times it doesn’t work like it should.

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Going Green: Free Market Style

Imagine a combination of Green Peace and Ayn Rand. A sort of free market approach to protest the free market.

Got it?  Great.  Cause it makes MY head hurt.

But it would seem that’s exactly what’s going on in a restaurant in Sydney.

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Where is Solar Energy?

Last week Mark Perry posted an interesting factoiod on solar energy on his blog Carpe Diem:

In the December 1974 issue of Popular Science Magazine, there was an article titled “Solar Cells: When Will You Plug Into Electricity from Sunshine?” that discussed the future of solar energy. The article predicted that by 1986 the cost per watt at peak power would be down to $0.30 ($0.60 in today’s dollars) based on projections from the National Science Foundation.

By 2007, solar prices were actually about $3.66 per watt (about six times higher than predicted), and were predicted in this 2008 article to fall to $2.14 per watt in 2010.

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June 6, 2010: Chance of Recession in the Next 12 Months — 00.041%

If anything has changed in the last month it’s the fact that the chance of recession reduced by 20%.  We went from the ridiculously low chance of .055% all the way down to .041%.  The only times in the last 50 years it has been this low was in 1983 for 2 consecutive months; August and September.

As for the “current” recession, NBER takes an exceptionally long time to officially declare the end, up to 24 months.  As I have been on the record as saying, I think the recession ended late May 2009; NBER won’t score it until January 2011, longer if I am wrong.

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Oil in the Water: Drilling for Oil

So, who woulda thought that oil would naturally seep into the ocean?  Not me.  Ever.  For some reason I always thought that oil was deep underground and very hard to get at.  Turns out that oil really does seep into the oceans naturally.  And, by humans drilling for off shore oil we actually prevent much of that oil from entering the water.

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Wherein Offshore Drilling Reduces Oil in the Oceans

The spill in the Gulf is horrible.  The damage done to the coast, to the wildlife, to the people living there and the economy as a whole will be devastating.  Generations of small business owners will have been impacted by this before it’s over.  It may be decades before the local fisheries produce again; if they ever do.

The lives of those people living in New Orleans, just now recovering from Katrina, will be facing the headwinds of the loss of economic drivers for years.

It’s sad; jaw droppingly depressing.

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