IBD:

Harry Reid claims there isn’t “a single shred of evidence” regulations cause big economic harm…”In the first six months of the 2011 fiscal year, 15 major regulations were issued, with annual costs exceeding $5.8 billion and one-time implementation costs approaching $6.5 billion…Overall, the Obama administration imposed 75 new major regulations from January 2009 to mid-FY 2011, with annual costs of $38 billion.”

It takes a major media outlet like the Washington Post, however, to remind those of us outside the government that we’re not smart enough to realize the falsity of what is obvious. “Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that very few layoffs are caused principally by tougher rules,” a Post story claimed last week, explaining that “whenever a firm lays off workers, the bureau asks executives the biggest reason for the job cuts. In 2010, 0.3% of the people who lost their jobs in layoffs were let go because of ‘government regulations/intervention.’”

But the BLS survey is, in fact, a meaningless gauge of businesses’ views of the effects of regulation. This is because it dizzyingly asks respondents to divide their explanations for lost jobs into seven categories, plus no fewer than 28 subcategories…

the Federal Register shows over 4,200 new regulations soon to hit an already battered economy — not including impending Environmental Protection Agency clean air rules, new derivative rules, the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rule, fuel economy mandates, ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank financial restrictions. Yet Reid claims regs are harmless

Construction of the world’s tallest building, the Empire State Building took 14 months in 1930. The Pentagon, the world’s largest office building, took 16 months in 1941. 26 months from the beginning of construction, the World Trade Center became the tallest building in the world in 1970. It is now 122 months since September 11, 2001 and there might be a replacement structure completed in another 24 months, for a grand total of 146 months.

Regulation certainly isn’t the whole story, but it’s a part of the story. Look what happens when you incentivize performance and cut red tape — a project done in half the allotted time.

Reuters:

The amount of money MF Global should have segregated for customers may be short by “$1.2 billion or more,” trustee James Giddens said…MF Global was run by former Goldman Sachs & Co chief and New Jersey governor Jon Corzine before its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. The bankruptcy came after the New York-based company revealed that it had made a $6.3 billion bet on European sovereign debt.

Eh, it could have been worse. Someone could have made off with a chicken salad sandwich.

Telegraph:

EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration…EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact. Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict…

professors Dr Andreas Hahn and Dr Moritz Hagenmeyer…compiled what they assumed was an uncontroversial statement in order to test new laws which allow products to claim they can reduce the risk of disease, subject to EU approval. They applied for the right to state that “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration” as well as preventing a decrease in performance.

However, last February, the European Food Standards Authority (EFSA) refused to approve the statement. A meeting of 21 scientists in Parma, Italy, concluded that reduced water content in the body was a symptom of dehydration and not something that drinking water could subsequently control.

Just how many millions of euros were spent on conferences in Parma and other things for a “three-year investigation” of whether water is wet? Niall Ferguson may well be right.

One, Two, Three is airing on TCM. It stars James Cagney as a Coca Cola executive in Berlin just prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall. It’s hilarious if you are of a certain age, and it caricatures both America and the Soviet bloc well. After about an hour of watching it, we became aware of its shortcoming: the East Germans are all funny. The movie was made in a free country, and it makes light of the terrible reality of living in a the Societ bloc where making such a satire would be punishable by a long prison sentence. The central fact of the movie is that Billy Wilder never could have made it on the wrong side of the Brandenburg Gate.

Niall Ferguson in the WaPo:

Eurocrats…fear that a country could leave the European Union itself. This is by no means an irrational anxiety. Under E.U. law, it would be much easier for Britain to leave the European Union than for Greece to leave the euro zone. Thus the process of European integration has reached a richly ironic point: The breakdown of the European Union is now more likely than the collapse of the single currency that was supposed to bind it together…

we…struggled to see how, once assembled, the euro zone could be dismantled. The costs of exit would be prohibitive for a small peripheral country such as Greece, which would overnight lose access to any source of external credit. And a Greek departure would raise the probability of others leaving, causing contagion throughout Southern Europe. Finally, if all the weaker brethren were to leave the monetary union except Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Finland, the strengthening of the euro would cause significant pain to the exporters of those countries. In short, almost nobody would gain from a breakup of the euro zone…

The creation of the single currency — obeying the law of unintended consequences — set in motion a powerful process of European disintegration. The fact that not all 27 E.U. members joined the monetary union was its first manifestation. Today we have a two-tier system, with 17 member-states sharing the euro, but 10 other states — notably Britain — retaining their own currencies. The result is that key decisions today — particularly those about the scale of transfers from core nations to the periphery — are being made by the 17, not the 27. But the 10 non-euro members may still find themselves on the hook to help fund whatever combination of bailout, haircut and bank recapitalization the 17 decide on…

the logic of continued British membership in the E.U. looks less and less persuasive. British public opinion has long been deeply Euro-skeptic. If it came to a referendum, as many Conservatives would like, Britons might well vote to leave the E.U…the thing that could cause the European Union to topple, or at least shrink in size, would be the outright withdrawal of Britain. And that has started to look quite possible.

It was becoming plain four years ago that the structural imbalances in the world economy needed to be addressed, but we never imagined that so much could change so quickly, and that the end of the EU might be one potential consequence.

Chris Matthews described the country as he sees it from the Left. VDH sees the country a little differently from the Right. Same country, different visions, starkly stated from the point of view of each man. There are those who want to fundamentally transform the country like the administration, and those who do not.

It is odd that there remain those on the right who think that the last three years have been some sort of failure or series of mistakes. It’s too bad the economy isn’t doing better, but that’s not the priority of these folks. The priority is making things fairer, according to their enlightened vision.

The most remarkable thing about this administration is not incompetence; it is discipline. (As the man said: “We are five days from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”) They stay relentlessly on their message of the moment, positioning themselves as the reasonable ones in the center, amidst those on the left and right who take irresponsible positions — and all the while they are quietly executing their agenda, moistly through the federal agencies and cabinet departments. Clever, profoundly anti-democratic.

But the playbook is badly out of date. OWS isn’t random; it’s straight from the playbook. No doubt it will metastasize over the next year and show up at Tea Party events and so forth to cause no end of trouble. The most peculiar thing about this exercise is that it is happening at almost precisely the wrong historical moment. The USSR fell almost a generation ago, and the welfare states of Europe are crumbling under the weight of their entitlement burdens. What a bizarre moment to emulate them.

The second most peculiar thing, at least to us, is our discovery of the extent of the corruption. Many years ago we wrote about the temptation to corruption in declining industries such as the legacy media. We had no idea how bad it really is. Congressmen can legally trade on insider information; major media outlets ignore huge scandals when they are politically inconvenient. And on and on.

We don’t think this is going to end well for the left. We think that they total about a third of the electorate. though the media megaphone makes them seem much more populous. It’s not really a 50/50 country when very basic issues are in play. As evidence we point to Independents flipping by 33 points last November after they figured out they had been sold a bill of goods in 2008. However, we do not underestimate the lengths to which those in power will go to remain in power. Frankly, we’re not looking forward to what the next political year is likely to bring.

An EPA document:

Plan EJ 2014, which is meant to mark the 20th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 12898 on environmental justice, is EPA’s overarching strategy for advancing environmental justice. It seeks to:
1. Protect the environment and health in overburdened communities.
2. Empower communities to take action to improve their health and environment.
3. Establish partnerships with local, state, tribal, and federal governments and organizations to achieve healthy and sustainable communities

In July 2010, EPA introduced Plan EJ 2014 as a concept for public comment and initiated the development of implementation plans. This product is the culmination of nearly a year’s effort by EPA programs and regions, as well as engagement with stakeholders, to develop nine implementation plans with the goals, strategies, deliverables, and milestones outlined herein.

Plan EJ 2014 has three major sections: Cross-Agency Focus Areas, Tools Development Areas, and Program Initiatives. The following summaries outline the implementation plans for Plan EJ 2014’s five cross-Agency Focus Areas and four Tools Development Areas

This is the sort of nonsense we’re spending taxpayer money on in these troubled times? Tellingly, the 181 page brochure on “environmental justice,” whatever that is, has quite a few pages with the legend “this page left intentionally blank” — so you can waste paper when printing the document. Everyone connected with this should be fired immediately. HT: PL

Epoch Times:

Larry Lang, chair professor of Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in a lecture that he didn’t think was being recorded that the Chinese regime is in a serious economic crisis — on the brink of bankruptcy. In his memorable formulation: every province in China is Greece. The restrictions Lang placed on the Oct. 22 speech in Shenyang City, in northern China’s Liaoning Province, included no audio or video recording, and no media. He can be heard saying that people should not post his speech online, or “everyone will look bad,” in the audio that is now on Youtube…

Lang’s assessment that the regime is bankrupt was based on five conjectures. Firstly, that the regime’s debt sits at about 36 trillion yuan (US$5.68 trillion). This calculation is arrived at by adding up Chinese local government debt (between 16 trillion and 19.5 trillion yuan, or US$2.5 trillion and US$3 trillion), and the debt owed by state-owned enterprises (another 16 trillion, he said). But with interest of two trillion per year, he thinks things will unravel quickly.

Secondly, that the regime’s officially published inflation rate of 6.2 percent is fabricated. The real inflation rate is 16 percent, according to Lang. Thirdly, that there is serious excess capacity in the economy, and that private consumption is only 30 percent of economic activity. Lang said that beginning this July, the Purchasing Managers Index, a measure of the manufacturing industry, plunged to a new low of 50.7. This is an indication, in his view, that China’s economy is in recession.

Fourthly, that the regime’s officially published GDP of 9 percent is also fabricated. According to Lang’s data, China’s GDP has decreased 10 percent. He said that the bloated figures come from the dramatic increase in infrastructure construction, including real estate development, railways, and highways each year (accounting for up to 70 percent of GDP in 2010). Fifthly, that taxes are too high. Last year, the taxes on Chinese businesses (including direct and indirect taxes) were at 70 percent of earnings. The individual tax rate sits at 81.6 percent, Lang said…

Professor Frank Xie at the University of South Carolina, Aiken, said that the idea of China going bankrupt isn’t far fetched. Major construction projects have helped inflate the GDP, he says. “On the surface, it is a big number, but inflation is even higher. So in reality, China’s economy is in recession.” Further, Xie said that official figures shouldn’t be relied on.

Oh those empty cities. Also in the piece above: “former aide to ousted Party leader Zhao Ziyang, said that high praise of the ‘China model’ is often made on the basis of the high-visibility construction projects.” We recall some of that praise from a few years ago.

WaPo:

The Obama administration, which gave the solar company Solyndra a half-billion-dollar loan to help create jobs, asked the company to delay announcing it would lay off workers until after the hotly contested November 2010 midterm elections that imperiled Democratic control of Congress, newly released e-mails show…the administration had held up Solyndra as a poster child of its clean-energy initiative, saying the company’s new factory, built with the help of stimulus money, could create 1,000 jobs. Six months before the midterm elections, Obama visited Solyndra’s California plant to praise its success, even though outside auditors had questioned whether the operation might collapse in debt.

As the contentious 2010 elections approached, Solyndra found itself foundering, and it warned the Energy Department that it would need an emergency cash infusion. A Solyndra investment adviser wrote in an Oct. 30, 2010, e-mail — without explaining the reason — that Energy Department officials were pushing “very hard” to delay making the layoffs public until the day after the elections. The announcement ultimately was made on Nov. 3, 2010 — immediately following the Nov. 2 vote.

Meanwhile: “Secretary of Energy Steven Chu vigorously defended the actions of the Department of Energy with regards $528 million in loans it gave the now-bankrupt solar energy company Solyndra. Chu told All Things Considered’s Melissa Block that neither he nor any of his staff working on DOE loans program was swayed by politics.” Charming bunch, aren’t they?

Interesting if true:

According to the IPCC, who produce the original numbers, humans produce approximately 9 gigatons of CO2 per year. This is within the error factor for the amount of CO2 from at least two natural sources. Estimates of CO2 from natural sources are very crude as evidenced by the large error factors…In 2010 humans produced 9 gigatons, but ocean output was between 90 and 100 gigatons and ground bacteria and rotting vegetation was between 50 and 60 gigatons

Maybe we’ll have to get rid of all the bacteria, rotting plants and those darned oceans if we’re going to make the five-year window to avoid doom.

Jeffrey Sachs in the NYT:

Occupy Wall Street and its allied movements around the country are more than a walk in the park. They are most likely the start of a new era in America…The young people in Zuccotti Park and more than 1,000 cities have started America on a path to renewal. The movement, still in its first days, will have to expand

Well, they have a nice theme song, and there are only seven dead people so far, so maybe the author is right.

The US has enough smallpox vaccine to inoculate the entire population for three bucks a pop. But that’s not good enough. LAT:

the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work. Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor. When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company’s financial demands, senior officials replaced the government’s lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show. When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing…

the government could draw on $1 billion worth of smallpox vaccine it already owns to inoculate the entire U.S. population and quickly treat people exposed to the virus. The vaccine, which costs the government $3 per dose, can reliably prevent death when given within four days of exposure. Siga’s drug, an antiviral pill called ST-246, would be used to treat people who were diagnosed with smallpox too late for the vaccine to help. Yet the new drug cannot be tested for effectiveness in people because of ethical constraints — and no one knows whether animal testing could prove it would work in humans.

Smallpox is lethal and nasty. When Edward Jenner created the smallpox vaccine by using cowpox, he arguably contributed to saving more lives than any single man in history, yet we have found no record of him receiving a $433 million contract.

You will recall that some years ago, people worried about a smallpox terrorist attack. The US government created a plan to deal with it, and an idiotic plan it was. A group a bad guys flying on Southwest for a week before they keeled over would render the government’s plan useless. They’d also render ST-246 useless. So this is another big waste of money. Far better and cheaper to encourage voluntary vaccinations, but apparently this is not being done. We are given to understand, however, that the government officials in charge of smallpox response have all been vaccinated. How nice for them.

Guardian:

World headed for irreversible climate change in five years…If the world is to stay below 2C of warming, which scientists regard as the limit of safety, then emissions must be held to no more than 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; the level is currently around 390ppm. But the world’s existing infrastructure is already producing 80% of that “carbon budget”, according to the IEA’s analysis, published on Wednesday. This gives an ever-narrowing gap in which to reform the global economy on to a low-carbon footing. If current trends continue, and we go on building high-carbon energy generation, then by 2015 at least 90% of the available “carbon budget” will be swallowed up by our energy and industrial infrastructure. By 2017, there will be no room for manoeuvre at all – the whole of the carbon budget will be spoken for, according to the IEA’s calculations.

Think of this: the difference between Have a Nice Day! and We’re Doomed! depends on 60 parts per million of the gas that plants breathe. That’s less than 1 out of 10,000 bits of air, as we tirelessly point out. If you think the earth is that fragile, well, good luck. Or maybe we’re just among the Gomers and Goobers of the world, as the WaPo reported: “It is not surprising that support for federal funding for clean energy drops among Republicans when their major source of information is a ‘news’ network that is pushing an anti-environment, anti-science, anti-government agenda 24/7.”

The Washington Times on the spread of the contagion to the largest troubled country in Europe:

Italy’s debt totals $2.6 trillion, which is 119 percent of its gross domestic product. Only Greece has a worse position in the European Union. The rule of thumb for most economists is that a debt-to-GDP ratio of 90 percent is the danger zone where economic growth falters. This is reflected in Italy’s lackluster growth numbers. After seeing 1.3 percent growth last year, the figure crawled at a pathetic 0.8 percent in the second quarter of this year.

The market sees the possibility of default on the horizon, so the Italian government’s cost of borrowing is escalating rapidly to reflect the risk. Italian bond yields hit 6.73 percent earlier this week, perilously close to the 7 percent mark where Greece, Ireland and Portugal were forced into the line asking for IMF handouts. On Wednesday, they climbed to 7.35 percent, suggesting the markets know the problem isn’t solved by finding a new prime minister. Investors also realize Italy, with an economy larger than Russia or India, cannot be bailed out.

The NYT reports that a fund of $3 trillion might be necessary to stem the crisis, but notes: “Europe has set up a special bailout fund…promises to leverage the fund even up to $1.4 trillion have not been fulfilled. Efforts to get other nations to invest in it or in a proposed parallel fund were flatly rejected.” Looks bad. Better check your euros. Dump the ones whose serial numbers begin with “S” if you still can.

Q: What do Blair Hull, Jack Ryan, and Herman Cain have in common? A: the misappropriation of confidential records, the whiff of seamy scandal, and David Axelrod. (Q: Can you name two people who have lived at 505 North Lake Shore Drive in Chicago? A: Yeah, so what.) One thing that is more interesting than the administration’s attempt to eliminate Cain as a contender before the primaries begin is the complicity of the media in what seems to be a rather transparent scam.

Via GP:

In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of “information” is to include efforts to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10). To pay for the new Federal Christmas tree image improvement and marketing program, the Department of Agriculture imposed a 15-cent fee on all sales of fresh Christmas trees by sellers of more than 500 trees per year (7 CFR 1214.52).

Maybe they can mandate using Christmas tree wood in Gibson Guitars. Everyone who touched this project, who sent or even received an email on the subject, should be terminated immediately.

Short-seller Jim Chanos had this to say: In China, “in the Tier 1, 2 and 3 cities we track, real estate transactions are down 40-60% year over year.” And though Agricultural Bank of China has 1.5% NPL’s on its books, it continues to record its loan receivables from the last two bailouts in 1999 and 2004 at 100 cents on the dollar — and the amount of those receivables equals the bank’s book equity. Ouch!

Ynet:

The conversation then drifted to Netanyahu, at which time Sarkozy declared: “I cannot stand him. He is a liar.” According to the report, Obama replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!” The remark was naturally meant to be said in confidence, but the two leaders’ microphones were accidently left on…reporters “did not have a chance to take advantage of this fluke.”

The surprising lack of coverage may be explained by a report alleging that journalists present at the event were requested to sign an agreement to keep mum on the embarrassing comments. A Reuters reporter was among the journalists present and can confirm the veracity of the comments. A member of the media confirmed Monday that “there were discussions between journalists and they agreed not to publish the comments due to the sensitivity of the issue.”

And on a more serious note, there’s this: “The Seals’ own accounts differ from the White House version…shocked that President Barack Obama announced bin Laden’s death on television the same evening, rendering useless much of the intelligence they had seized.” Did the press follow up on this? Not a chance. They don’t bark, let alone bite.

Could this possibly be true, that Gloria Steinem, of all people, defended Herman Cain from the latest allegations in the pages of the New York Times?

The truth is that even if the allegations are true, the presidential candidate is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb and reckless pass at a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, he took ‘no’ for an answer…we have a responsibility to make it okay for politicians to tell the truth — providing that they are respectful of ‘no means no; yes means yes’ — and still be able to enter high office, including the presidency. Until then, we will disqualify energy and talent the country needs

We heard that Ms. Steinem disparaged the accuser’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, because Allred had called Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice “Uncle Tom types.” Could that be true as well? If so, we’re finally making real progress in this country.

Remember that really strange bit about the US needing a “civilian national security force” from the 2008 campaign? It was supposed to be just as strong and well-funded as the military. The idea was both disturbing and bizarre. Of course the press didn’t follow up on it. (What if Rick Perry or Herman Cain had said it?) Well, all of a sudden we have a civilian volunteer movement today. It is composed of buffoons, criminals, the deranged and the addicted, and is led by community organizers and other professional troublemakers. Maybe that is the fulfillment of a campaign promise and dream. If so, we may have skipped the tragedy bit and gone straight to the farce. It’s unlikely, but here’s hoping!