"Down with the Man!! oh, wait, I am the Man"---Billionaires take to the street to protest a tax increase...

Australian billionaires, yes, billionaires, took the the streets to protest a proposed new tax on the "super-rich"--ahhhh, no further comment...

Australian billionaires take to the streets for tax protest

""It was, by any measure, a most unusual rally. Many of the placard-waving protesters gathered in a Perth park wore suits and ties, and impassioned speeches were delivered from the back of a flat-bed truck by two billionaires, including Australia's richest woman.
Gina Rinehart's pearls glistened in the sunlight as she bellowed through a megaphone: "Axe the tax!" Ms Rinehart has a personal fortune of $4.8bn (£2.7bn). Andrew Forrest, in monogrammed worker's overalls, told the well-mannered crowd that Australia was "turning Communist". Mr Forrest is the country's fourth richest person, worth an estimated $4.2bn.  Both Mr Forrest and Ms Rinehart have amassed their wealth from digging up iron ore in the remote Pilbara region. Like other mining magnates, they have grown fabulously rich during a resources boom based largely on China's insatiable demand for the coal, iron, nickel and other minerals that lie in abundance beneath Australia's rust-red soil. Now Kevin Rudd's Labour government is planning to levy an extra tax on the mining industry, and the industry is furious. The issue has dominated the political agenda for weeks, and is even threatening to torpedo Mr Rudd's chance of being returned to power at an election due to be held before the end of this year....""

Is your favorite World Cup team from an economically repressive country? Find out within...

Too interesting to not post, at least for an economics teacher---here are the teams participating in the World Cup AND their Economic Freedom ranking as compiled by The Economic Freedom of the World Project. The counties ranking in the index for ALL countries in the world are in parenthesis and they are numbered in order of economic freedom relative to the teams participating in the World Cup (the USA is number 6 in the world rankings but 4th relative to the teams in the World Cup).  Are you rooting for a team that does not have a system for individuals to economically express themselves? Does it matter?  Just a thought...

HT: Divsion of Labour---Looking for a way to decide who you're rooting for in the World Cup? Or do you need a tie-breaker for games in which your home country isn't involved? Here are World Cup participants ranked by their scores in the Economic Freedom of the World Index. Index rankings in parentheses.


1. New Zealand (#3 in index, Hong Kong & Singapore are 1 & 2)
2. Switzerland (4)
3. Chile (5)
4. USA (6)
5. Australia (t-9)
6. UK (t-9)
7. Denmark (12)
8. Netherlands (t-20)
9. Slovakia (26)
t-10. Japan (t-28)
t-10. Honduras (t-28)
12. Germany (29)
13. South Korea (32)
14. France (33)
15. Spain (39)
16. Portugal (45)
17. Greece (52)
18. South Africa (t-57)
t-19. Italy (t-61)
t-19. Uruguay (t-61)
21. Slovenia (t-64)
22. Mexico (68)
23. Ghana (71)
24. Serbia (84)
25. Paraguay (91)
26. Nigeria (97)
27. Argentina (t-105)
28. Cote d'Ivoire (108)
29. Brazil (111)
30. Cameroon (123)
31. Algeria (131)
32. North Korea (Not Ranked)

Iraqi Authorities to Kill 1 Million Dogs! Iraqi Vets, are there REALLY this many stray dogs in Baghdad???

Are there REALLY over million stray dogs in Baghdad, a city of 7 million people? Iraqi Vets, can you confirm this? Thanks

Baghdad to cull a million stray dogs as rogue canine population soars

More than a million stray dogs roaming Baghdad are facing destruction. The initiative has so far led to 42,000 strays being killed in only two months. Teams of riflemen and vets are trying to thin out a rogue canine population that has reached at least 1,250,000...‘We could consider this the biggest campaign of dog execution ever,’ said Baghdad chief veterinarian, Mohammed al-Hilly. Mr al-Hilly claimed the huge amounts of litter that began heaping up in the capital as violence paralysed public services had helped to trigger the problem. The cull involves 20 specialist teams each consisting of two shooters and two vets, often backed up by police patrols. The dogs are either shot or poisoned and their bodies are then taken to refuse dumps.

HT: Drudge Report

US rice causes people in Haiti to starve---Is that an overstatement?

Predictable...Pay generous subsidies to US Rice growers which encourages over-production.--US buys the surplus (producer gets paid twice)---bag up the rice and send it as food aid to various parts of the world, EVEN if that country has rice producing capabilities---depress the local price of rice---local rice producers go out of business---now they need to get free rice to feed their families...(Repeat with Corn, Wheat, etc)...Rich countries don't REALLY want developing countries to be self-sufficient, do they?  Why not BUY local as much as possible?  Is it really that difficult to ask that question FIRST before making a big aid decision?  I understand the initial response, but consideration has to be taken in making sure local markets are not adversely affected by the good intentions (MARKETS MATTER!!).  It just makes rebuilding that much more difficult.  The US government is not the only culprit. Other donor countries that "subsidize and buy" are just as guilty.  Many NGO's do the same thing.  

Tons of subsidized U.S. rice hurt Haitian farms

POND-SONDE, Haiti – Haiti’s rice farmers are dismayed. It’s nearly harvest time in this fertile valley where the bulk of Haiti’s food is grown, and they’re competing once again with cheap U.S. imported rice.
Just down the road, vendors are undercutting them, selling the far less expensive grain. Subsidized U.S. rice has flooded Haiti for decades. Now, after the Jan. 12 quake, 15,000 metric tons of donated U.S. rice have arrived.  “I can’t make any money off my rice with all the foreign rice there is now,” said Renan Reynold, a 37-year-old farmer who makes an average of about $600 a year. “If I can’t make any money, I can’t feed my family.”Read rest of story.

HT: (MV=PQ: A Resource for Economic Educators)

BP Oil Spill makes my worst nightmare come true---MORE Ethanol on the way...

The list of tragedies from the oil spill seems endless, but we must add one more---ETHANOL...
The Ethanol Trap:  The oil blowout will mean more subsidies for the corn-fuel industry. That's bad news for consumers.(Slate.com)

""The most disgusting aspect of the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico isn't the video images of oil-soaked birds or the incessant blather from pundits about what BP or the Obama administration should be doing to stem the flow of oil. Instead, it's the ugly spectacle of the corn-ethanol scammers doing all they can to capitalize on the disaster so that they can justify an expansion of the longest-running robbery of taxpayers in U.S. history...Listen to Matt Hartwig, communications director for the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol industry lobby group: "The Gulf of Mexico disaster serves as a stark and unfortunate reminder of the need for domestically-produced renewable biofuels." Or look at an advertisement that was recently placed in a Washington, D.C., Metro station: "No beaches have been closed due to ETHANOL spills. … America's CLEAN fuel." That gem was paid for by Growth Energy, another ethanol industry lobby group. The blowout of BP's Macondo well has given the corn-ethanol industry yet another opportunity to push its fuel adulterant on the American consumer. And unfortunately, the Obama administration appears ready and willing to foist yet more of the corrosive, environmentally destructive, low-heat-energy fuel on motorists.""

My main concern is the havoc that an expanded ethanol mandate will have on the food chain and other food crops that will be displaced because of increased use of subsidies for '"Food For Fuel".  The Earth Policy Institute says:

""The 107 million tons of grain that went to U.S. ethanol distilleries in 2009 was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels. More than a quarter of the total U.S. grain crop was turned into ethanol to fuel cars last year. With 200 ethanol distilleries in the country set up to transform food into fuel, the amount of grain processed has tripled since 2004.""

HT: Carpe Diem

JibJab's Year in Review---2009...

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Do you think everyone was focused on Pres. Obama or the young man behind him for this graduation speech?

Want to be a World Cup Soccer Player?---You can't be if you were not born in the right month...

Is your chance of being on the US World Cup team determined by which month OR what part of the year you were born in?  This is a premise discussed in some research but popularized in a terrific book by Malcolm Gladwell called "Outliers".  Here are the months and number of players born in that month (data HERE). I eliminated the players who were explicitly NOT born in the US and make an assumption (maybe incorrect) that they did not play their youth soccer in the US and I assume that the players born in the US played their youth soccer in the US (again, I could be wrong).  There are a total of 23 players on the team but two are listed as foreign born so I don't count them in the total (21) when calculating percentages.  May not equal 100% due to rounding. 

January     0    (0%)                       July              1  (4.7%)
February  2    (9.5%)                    August          1 (4.7%)
March      4    (19%)                     September    1  (4.7%)
April        2    (9.5%)                    October         1  (4.7%)
May         5    (23.8%)                 November      2  (9.5%)
June         1    (4.7%)                   December       1  (4.7%)

Players born in March, April and May comprise 53% (approx) of the team.  Players born in the FIRST 6 month of the year comprise 66.5% of the team...In Spain 9 out of the 23 players (all were born in Spain) were born in January, February and March (39.1%) and 14 out of the 23 were born in the first 6 months of the year (60.8%)...Correlation or Co-incidence?  Statistically, you should give up soccer now if you were born in the second half of the year and play something else that is advantageous to your birth month...What do you think?

Alred Hitchcock Sound Test---Early Version of "That's What She Said"....

HT: The Agitator

Former Labor Secretary has Economic Advice for the President---I think Matt Damon has a better idea, though...

Former Labor Secretary (Clinton Admin) Robert Reich has an interesting blog entry on the role of the Presidents Economic advisors in advising the President in this economic crisis...I have a better idea, but will let Matt Damon tell you...

"Bye, Bye Miss American Pie. Drove my Chevrolet to the Lev-rolet and the Lev-rolet was dry...?" That makes no sense, does it?

Chevrolet is banning the word "Chevy" from the parlance of its employees:

''On Tuesday, G.M. sent a memo to Chevrolet employees at its Detroit headquarters, promoting the importance of “consistency” for the brand, which was the nation’s best-selling line of cars and trucks for more than half a century after World War II.
And one way to present a consistent brand message, the memo suggested, is to stop saying “Chevy,” though the word is one of the world’s best-known, longest-lived product nicknames.
“We’d ask that whether you’re talking to a dealer, reviewing dealer advertising, or speaking with friends and family, that you communicate our brand as Chevrolet moving forward,” said the memo, which was signed by Alan Batey, vice president for Chevrolet sales and service, and Jim Campbell, the G.M. division’s vice president for marketing"". NYTIMES

Let the mocking begin from the late night hosts---but you heard it here first... :)

A couple of graphics showing resource allocation/access in Africa and Foreign Aid as a percentage of Govt spending...

Two informative graphics.  One showing distribution of natural resources in Africa and some of the latest "deals" with various countries (mainly China) to gain access to those resources...Source: Financial Times

This one shows Foreign Aid as a percentage of total government spending in these same countries...

Graphic with estimated revenues and costs of the World Cup...

Graphic on the economics of the World Cup---estimated revenues and costs...Source HERE

Someone's trash is someone else's treasure---IA significant sign economic recovery is underway...

June 9 (Bloomberg) -- If garbage is any indication, the U.S. economy is strengthening.

""The number of freight cars carrying waste jumped 45 percent in April and May from the same period last year to 79,044, according to the Washington-based Association of American Railroads. Waste freight hasn’t grown as fast for any quarter since at least 1994.
Shipments of waste and scrap have a higher correlation with economic growth than coal or copper, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. (To see an Interactive Insight version of the story, click here.)
“It’s sort of like measuring horsepower by looking at the smoke coming out of the tail pipe,” Carl Riccadonna, a senior economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York, said in a telephone interview. “It’s consistent with our broader view that economic growth is accelerating.”
The world’s largest economy grew at a 3.3 percent annual pace in the second quarter, according to the median forecast of 64 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News from June 2 to June 8. Gross domestic product expanded at a 3 percent pace in the first three months of the year.
Shipments of scrap and waste are “coming back slowly but surely” as the economy recovers, said Lauren Rueger, a spokesman at Jacksonville, Florida-based CSX Corp., the third- largest U.S. railroad by 2009 sales.
Statistical Correlation
The correlation coefficient between carloads of waste and year-over-year growth in gross domestic product from the first quarter of 2001 through the same period of 2010 is 0.82, according to Bloomberg calculations. A correlation of 1 would show the pair moving in lockstep, and a minus 1 reading reflects opposite changes. That is the strongest correlation among 21 categories sent by rail and tracked by the AAR.
Shipments of metals, with a 0.79 correlation coefficient, are the next highest. The coefficient for coal is among the lowest at 0.32. The AAR says iron and steel make up 42 percent of waste and scrap, followed by municipal waste and demolition products at 32 percent; paper, 11 percent; ashes, 5 percent, non-ferrous metals, 4 percent; and chemical waste, 1 percent. Miscellaneous waste accounts for the remaining 4 percent.""

CCTV of houses collapsing as Haiti quake hits

From BBC: A Haitian government video shows the moment the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck in January, and shows parts of the palace crumbling under the impact. The video was released by the Haitian government at a recent conference on the future of Haiti in the Dominican Republic.
The massive quake killed more than 300,000 people and left many more homeless...CLICK HERE to see video...