Archive for February, 2010

Starting to Make Taxes Fair

Published on February 23, 2010 in Economics and Politics. 0 Comments

A bipartisan bill to reform the tax code is making its way toward the floor of the Senate. I have not read the full bill, but an editorial today by its co-authors in the Wall Street Journal leaves me with hope:

There is an important issue looming on the congressional horizon: how to address the expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of this year. We believe there is a consensus way forward, which is why we are introducing the Bipartisan Tax Fairness and Simplification Act of 2010.

By streamlining and modernizing the outdated tax code, our proposal would eliminate many of the specialized tax breaks that currently benefit one group of Americans over another. The changes we propose will create policies that benefit everyone. They include: fiscally responsible middle-class tax cuts, business tax breaks to help American companies compete globally and create jobs, and a fairer and simpler tax system for all Americans.

Team USA Curling – Representing Minnesota

Published on February 21, 2010 in Minnesota and Sports. 1 Comment

Upon hearing that the US curling team is predominantly composed of Minnesotans, I couldn’t help but write a blog post about it.

Minnesota and Wisconsin represent the mecca of curling in the United States, with thousands of people playing in everything from mixed-doubles leagues to elite-level bonspiels. The St. Paul Curling Club, with more than 1,200 members, is the largest club in the country.

Of course, I’m certain our similar climate and border with Canada are no coincidence.

Curling’s popularity in Canada is second only to hockey; tournaments are frequently televised, top-notch skips are big stars, and it’s estimated that a million of the sport’s 1.1 million participants live in this country.

Besides having a slight affinity with respect to accents and a love and long history of hockey, it appears that we share a strange and mostly unpopular sport (as far as the U.S. is concerned). I have never curled before, but I do remember that Northwestern had a team for graduate students. An interesting phenomenon that just hasn’t really spread south of Canada or out of Europe.

So far, the men’s curling team has not won a single match to my knowledge. Maybe if we have an incredibly successful team that could turn the sport around in America.

American Olympic Success (So Far)

Published on February 20, 2010 in News and Sports. 0 Comments

Just a little Vancouver update:

Perhaps most impressive is that America is winning medals in traditional sports often dominated by Europeans, such as alpine skiing, figure skating and long-course speedskating. Noting that the number of Winter Olympics events has risen to 86 from 46 in Calgary, Olympic historian David Wallechinsky said, “We’re expected to do well in new events like freestyle skiing and snowboarding. But this week is not just a new-event phenomenon for the U.S.”

Link

Not too jinx things, since there are still a lot of medals yet to be one, but I think we can all be proud of the athletes representing America in this year’s Winter Olympics. Let’s hope the leadership in both overall medals and gold medals continues this week!

Austin Plane Crash – The Wrong Way to Protest

Published on February 19, 2010 in Life and News. 3 Comments

Yesterday, a Texas man crashed his small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas.

A pilot slammed his small plane into a seven-story building that housed the local office of the Internal Revenue Service Thursday, apparently killing himself and one agency employee, in what federal officials described as a deliberate suicide attack amid a long-running tax dispute.

He left a note on his website which isn’t worth the time to read or repeating here. Needless to say, we all have feelings about paying taxes and politics, this just isn’t the right way to deal with that. Sadly, one IRS employee lost their life. Hopefully, his/her family will hold strong even after this senseless crime.

Econ 101 – Government Spending

Published on February 17, 2010 in Economics, News and Politics. 0 Comments

In the first year of macroeconomics I don’t think there is a single student who doesn’t leave with some understanding of fiscal and monetary policy. One controlled by legislators and the other by central bankers. Furthermore, even an elementary reading of Keynes or a brief quote in a textbook makes it clear that government spending (a component of GDP) can be an effective way to encourage growth. Although there are negative effects like crowding out private investment and national debt, the argument goes that these temporary short term problems are worth the long term stability hopefully spurred by government intervention.

The lesson that reality has shown is that there is only an extremely weak multiplier effect for government spending, meaning a dollar spent by the government does not spread throughout the economy in the way originally modelled by Keynes. Moreover and a lesson made clear from the 2009 stimulus bill – getting legislators to allocate money quickly and then spending it is nearly impossible. The tendency is for government spending to dovetail recoveries. This seems to be what is happening now:

The approach this week of the stimulus program’s one-year anniversary sparked a fresh round of dueling partisan statements, as Democrats sought to credit the effort with averting a deeper recession and Republicans said the program deserved a failing grade. But in terms of spending, the stimulus is largely incomplete.

As the economy is recovering, the influx of the majority of the U.S. stimulus money will make the recovery look stronger and more swift than it would be absent extra government spending.

More Analysis on the Euro Mini-Crisis

Published on February 17, 2010 in Economics, News and Politics. 0 Comments

This morning via Adam I read a great article by the nobel laureate Paul Krugman who happened to win the nobel prize for his work on international finance.

I’m going to walk through this article and try and break down some of the points because I think it is worthwhile to understand the workings of a currency and a federal-style system.

Click to continue reading “More Analysis on the Euro Mini-Crisis”

What Have Governments Learned from the Financial Crisis?

Published on February 11, 2010 in Economics, News and Politics. 0 Comments

Lesson #1 – Tax Banks

Wait….what?

Fresh from the FT:

Gordon Brown said on Wednesday the world’s leading economies were close to agreeing a global bank tax, amid hopes in Downing Street that a deal can be concluded at the G20 summit in Canada in June.

The prime minister said those with the “broadest shoulders” should pay more, and insisted that the tax would raise “a substantial amount of additional money”. He admitted: “It’s not as high as you would like it to be because of avoidance.”

Click to continue reading “What Have Governments Learned from the Financial Crisis?”

Challenger Explosion

Published on February 10, 2010 in Technology. 0 Comments

Continuing to read the book that inspired the Patriot Missile post, I looked up a YouTube video for the Challenger space shuttle explosion and found the above result. I know that this was a fairly significant moment in our space program and the collective conscious of the United States, but I’m not sure I had seen until this morning.

Click to continue reading “Challenger Explosion”

Two Bad Ideas

Published on February 9, 2010 in Technology. 0 Comments

According to the FT, Google and Facebook are going to try and compete with one another more directly by making forays into one another’s core territories.

Google is planning to give Gmail users a way to aggregate the updates of their various contacts on the service, creating a stream of notifications that would echo the similar real-time streams from Facebook and Twitter, according to reports.

According to a report on the tech website TechCrunch, Facebook is planning to upgrade this messaging service to compete directly with Gmail and other internet-based mail systems.

Click to continue reading “Two Bad Ideas”

Early in the War & Patriot Missiles

Published on February 9, 2010 in Technology. 2 Comments

For an Information Systems class I am reading a book that has a chapter on the debate about the effectiveness of the Patriot Missile system during the first Gulf War. The chapter is interesting and goes over how different groups presented the effectiveness of the system during and after the war.

After doing a little searching around Wikipedia and YouTube I found this video which shows CNN footage from early on in the Iraq War with a SCUD heading toward a major American base. The Patriot Missile having been improved since the 90’s, automatically recognizes the attack and takes out the SCUD. For something so hotly debated after it’s initial adaptation as a missile defense system, interested parties definitely responded to criticism and improved the system.

The video is about 6 minutes, but worth watching if you have any interest at all.

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