Stephan: This excellent essay makes it clear that there is another issue beneath the austerity argument; and that it is an ideological, theological one, not an economic one.
The controversy continues to simmer around the Reinhart-Rogoff (RR) paper and the now famous Excel spreadsheet error that led to claim that debt-to-GDP ratios above 90 percent led to sharply lower growth rates. The University of Massachusetts paper that exposed this mistake has led many people to reconsider their earlier acceptance of the Reinhart-Rogoff 90 percent debt cliff.
While that is a positive development, the re-examination should go a step deeper and ask why anyone ever took their argument seriously in the first place. It’s not just the arithmetic on debt-to-GDP ratios that tripped up RR; it was the basic logic of their argument.
If we accept the RR thesis, something bad happens to countries when their debt-to-GDP ratio exceeds 90 percent, which causes them to experience prolonged periods of slow growth. It is difficult to see how this could possibly be the case since debt is only one side of a country’s balance sheet, countries also have assets. For there to be any actual relationship between debt and growth it would seem that it would have to be debt, net of assets, and growth.
The RR story, where they purport to find a relationship between debt and growth would be like finding […]
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ANDREA GERMANOS, - Common Dream
Stephan: No one will be able to say we weren't warned.
Click through to see the graph.
The world is likely days away from a ‘sobering milestone’ in our planetary history.
Concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide will likely reach 400 parts per million (ppm) for first time in human history, say scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and unless drastic action is taken, we’re on track to hit 450 ppm in the near future.
‘I wish it weren’t true, but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400-ppm level without losing a beat,’ said Scripps geochemist Ralph Keeling, whose father Charles David (Dave) Keeling began the ‘Keeling Curve’ to track daily CO2 levels recorded at Mauna Loa Observatory.
The last time the greenhouse gases were at 400 ppm was likely the Pliocene epoch, between 3.2 million and 5 million years ago.
The current reading is at 399.72 ppm — far past the 350 ppm level many, including noted climate scientist James Hansen, have warned is the upper safe limit before the planet hits a tipping point.
‘At this pace we’ll hit 450 ppm within a few decades,’ warned Keeling. Indeed, the rate of rise of CO2 over the past century is ‘unprecedented.’
The figure should serve as a call to act on the deadly emissions […]
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TIMOTHY LANGE, - Daily Kos
Stephan: You think I am kidding or exaggerating about the Theocratic Right's drive to defund social science, and eliminate fact based policy? Try this on then. There are so many of these stories I could do whole editions of SR daily for many days just with reports like this one. The Democrats often disappoint me, but the Republican Party is becoming a menace to our national wellbeing.
Rep. Jeff Duncan has a plan to help us cope with information overload. His H. R. 1638 would simply eliminate all the data collection that the U.S. Census Bureau does except for the decennial population count. In particular, it would do away with the American Community Survey that has been undertaken in some form since a guy named Thomas Jefferson was president. (And along with it the Economic Census, the Census of Governments, the Census of Agriculture, the mid-decade Census and other information-gathering not explicitly stated in the Constitution.) The House of Representatives voted last year 232-190 to dump the ACS, but the proposal failed to gain traction in the Senate. That probably will be its fate this year as well.
Together with the Census itself, the American Community Survey used to be done every 10 years, with one of out six Americans required to fill out the ‘long form.’ But, as a cost-saving measure, President George W. Bush switched it to a annual survey of one in 38 households. Advantages: cheaper and more up-to-date. The problem, according to Republicans like Duncan (as well Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Poe of Texas who want it to be optional), […]
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LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer - The Advocate
Stephan: You may have already heard about this decision from the FDA. I view this as very good news for many reasons, not least because although it is far from perfect it would go a long way toward eliminating the need for abortions, and would provide an option in those Red Value states where women's reproductive health services have been virtually eliminated. I have been increasingly concerned we were going back in those states to life before Roe v Wade, when women often resorted to dangerous measures in the absence of safe, legal abortion services, and an estimated 47,000 of them died or were rendered sterile each year from backroom abortions.
But the decade long struggle to get Plan B into the market ain't over yet. A few hours ago Obama's Justice Department announced it would appeal the court ruling by a Federal Judge that the pill be made available to all regardless of age.
WASHINGTON — In a surprise twist to the decade-plus effort to ease access to morning-after pills, the government is lowering the age limit to 15 for one brand – Plan B One-Step – and will let it be sold over the counter.
Today, Plan B and its generic competition are sold behind pharmacy counters, and people must prove they’re 17 or older to buy the emergency contraception without a prescription. A federal judge had ordered an end to those sales restrictions by next Monday.
But Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a different approach: Plan B could sit on drugstore shelves next to condoms, spermicides or other women’s health products – but to make the purchase, buyers must prove they’re 15 or older at the cash register.
Manufacturer Teva Women’s Health, which had applied for the compromise path, said it planned to make the switch in a few months.
The question is whether Tuesday’s action settles the larger court fight. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Edward Korman of New York blasted the Obama administration for imposing the age-17 limit, saying it had let election-year politics trump science and were making it hard for women of any age to obtain emergency contraception in […]
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Stephan: I take this to be very good news. Slowly, the transition out of carbon energy is occurring in spite of constantly being slowed and sabotaged by carbon energy corporate special interests who control the Congress.
LONDON and NEW YORK — New research by analysts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance show that annual investment in new renewable power capacity is set to rise by anywhere from two and a half times to more than four and a half times between now and 2030. The likeliest scenario implies a jump of 230%, to $630bn per year by 2030, driven by further improvements in the cost-competitiveness of wind and solar technologies relative to fossil fuel alternatives, as well as an increase in the roll-out of non-intermittent clean energy sources like hydro, geothermal and biomass.
This is the message of new research published today by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The findings will be unveiled to delegates this afternoon at the analysis company’s sixth annual Summit, in New York. Further information on the Summit can be found at http://about.bnef.com/summit/.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s predictions for world energy markets to 2030 come from its Global Energy and Emissions Model, which integrates all of the main determinants of the energy future, including economic prosperity, global and regional demand growth, the evolution of technology costs, likely developments in policies to combat climate change, and trends in fossil fuel markets. Together these form three scenarios: ‘New […]
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