In 1960, President Eisenhower warned us of the growing influence and power of the Military Industrial Complex. He was right and we ignored him. Today our country has the world’s largest total annual Military Budget of over $650 billion, additional defense-related spending of over $350 billion, more than 1.5 million people serving in its Armed Forces in over 100 countries around the globe, and is currently...

This says it all, doesn’t it?

Pakistan, rightly or wrongly, is generally described as an “exporter” of terrorism. Now it is trying to export something different – its famous Murree beer produced at the nearly 150-year-old Murree brewery, Pakistan’s sole producer of beer. “Understandably, making beer and whiskey in a Muslim country, where 97 per cent of the population is officially banned from enjoying your...

I didn’t vote on Tuesday in Phoenix, Arizona, my residence for almost the past 4 years though I voted in the National Elections last year. I was pleased to see that the local school funding and bond issues all passed with comfortable margins across the metro area. Had I voted, my other choice would have been for a city council position wherein I did not know either candidate. ARIZONA Heavily Democratic...

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Tuesday’s elections were a rebuke to the right wing and a warning to Democrats. They were also a timely reminder that President Obama needs to tune up his celebrated political organization and find a way to make Americans feel hopeful again. The night’s biggest loser was the national conservative political machine — the wealthy tax-cutters at the Club...

You may have seen the viral video of the worst parking job ever. 1,684,803 views since the Thursday Oct. 22 incident. While we gawk and guffaw, the owner of the crushed 2004 Hyundai Elantra (the one in the foreground) had just finished paying off his car loan! The 62 year-old woman driving the BMW was arrested for leaving the scene. The crushed Hyundai owner was left looking to replace his car. So what did...

I’m not an aggressive consumer of financial journalism, so it has to be something of a coincidence that I’ve come across three separate items that chronicle the dark predictions of three separate men who warned of an impending financial crisis. The first two are discussed below. The third is Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The Black Swan...

In the mid-1990’s, Yale economist Robert Shiller predicted the dot-com bubble would burst. In 2005, Shiller predicted the housing bubble would burst. Why? In the wake of the dot-com crash, which helped make Shiller a public figure, Americans turned their financial attention from stocks to real estate. House prices were rising rapidly, and people had begun to see real estate as a can’t-miss investment....

The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal profiled John Paulson, whose firm made $15 billion by systematically betting against the value of American homes. Paulson himself took home $4 billion. How’d he do it? Research. Grasping for new ideas, [Paulson researcher Paolo] Pellegrini added a “trend line” that clearly illustrated how much prices had surged lately. He then performed a “regression...

Back in March, Declan McCullagh reported that the Obama Administration cloaked its draft section of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) under “national security” wrappers — for the general public. At the same time, the document had supposedly already made the rounds of “corporate lobbyists in Europe, Japan, and the U.S.” Today, someone has leaked information about the...

Tell your friends you read it here first. Don’t bother watching the wall-to-wall cable television coverage of today’s handful of odd-year elections. Robert McDonnell, the Republican candidate, will be elected governor of Virginia. Barring a minor miracle, incumbent New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine will lose to Republican Chris Christie. Douglas Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate, will trounce Democrat...

This point has been made before, but not usually as bluntly as here (emphasis in original):

What Physicians Know by Joel S. Hirschhorn I had a long conversation with my favorite physician, who has operated on me twice successfully. He is an incredibly kind person without an ounce of greed or pretense. Like other physicians I have spoken to, he spoke eloquently about the terrible times he consistently has with private health insurance companies. While he praises Medicare for its simplicity and certainty,...

As CIT goes bankrupt and Treasury Secretary Geithner warns that the “damage caused by this crisis” will “take some time” to repair, a key Wall Street player has managed to weather the storm at the expense of an unwary, drenched public. “All men are equal,” E.M. Forster wrote a century ago, “all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas.” An old saying puts it...

WASHINGTON — The next health care fight has already started. It’s the battle to define the bill that President Obama will eventually sign as a victory for consumers, taxpayers and the common good. You might say this view is premature. Legislation has yet to pass the House or the Senate, there are differences between the two bodies, and some moderates still have doubts. But barring astoundingly...

GDP gets all the attention as a measure of how well our economy is doing but it has problems, big problems. There are philosophical problems such as the fact that GDP doesn’t adjust for resource usage or debt, so a sustainable economy will look the same as a bubble economy, but there are also a myriad of technical problems with the measurement. The formula is GDP = private consumption + gross investment...

One of the largest components of the worldwide asset bubble that hit its top in 2007 was the carry trade. A carry trade is when money is borrowed in a low yielding currency in order to buy assets in another currency that will be high yielding. Preferably the borrowed currency should be from a strong industrial country and the target assets should be in a high growth (hence emerging) market. The former rule is...

President Obama must understand that foreign wars are the undoing of U.S. Presidents and most domestic agendas. If he hopes to concentrate on getting us out of this deep recession, he cannot spend any more time in Iraq and in particular, enlarge or continue our dead-end involvement in Afghanistan. Perhaps he’s trying to find a way to break the news to the U.S. Military and the American people that we must...

The New York Times notes that there are a lot of nervous Democrats in Washington who have suddenly noticed that the deficit and our national debt have somehow mysteriously spiraled into a range of numbers generally reserved for discussions of the number of grains of sand on the world’s beaches. Is it because of some new found concern for the public purse? Apparently not. But they did remember that many...

Senator Lieberman of Connecticut has angered Democrats in his opposition to the “public option” for healthcare reform. Well this is not the first time he has gone his own way. It is perfectly understandable because he is officially an independent and thus he has no duty to the Democratic Party. He answers only to his constituents and himself. Just because he caucuses with Democrats who foolishly permitted...

Now that most economists, our government, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street Barons, and our ignorant and shallow 24/7 info-entertainment Media pundits have pronounced that the recession is over, there are no more excuses. For all those people still lounging around on unemployment benefits, given up looking, or working at temporary and part-time jobs, get off your lazy duffs. There are no more excuses. Take...

When last quarter’s GDP showed a small decrease, I ripped it to shreds, pointing out that by nearly every measure, things were worse than anticipated. Sure the headline number was alright, but only because of a massive 11% increase in government spending, and a massive reduction in imports (imports subtract from GDP) which I viewed as bad since it signaled economic activity was decreasing. This number...

My last post referred to a story that suggested that many — perhaps even the majority — of mortgages were invalid due to failing to properly transfer ownership during securitization. However, Calculated Risk has a guest post up that calls the story “sensationalist swill” and gives much more context than originally provided. As I noted previously, I am very naive about this topic, so...

Just in the historian geek category. Today and tomorrow, the 28th and 29th, mark the 80th anniversary of the Great Crash. While things are certainly tight for a lot of us, perhaps a time for reflection on how much worse it was back then.

I predict that the “public option” in healthcare reform will be a completely useless Rube Goldberg concoction in order to please and displease everyone simultaneously. However no one on the left or right should fear it because it will never come into existence even if it written and passed into law. The public plan that will emerge from the joint conference committee between representatives of the U.S....