Trust the Financial Times of London to get it right, as usual. At least their press hasn’t folded up like cheap lawn chairs in adoration: About a third of the present stimulus bill – the welfare and social service parts – will be exceedingly hard to end. That includes the $92.3bn being spent on labour […]
Tag: Obama
Stimulus plan?! How about reward your friends plan?
with 5% of the 800+B going towards actual infrastructure, the truth is revealed about promises made. The ones that matter are the long standing ones made to supporters early in the process, years ago, behind closed doors. Private promises made by public faces. If you wanted a real stimulous for the economy you would remember […]
The right way to get out of debt from Bridgewater Associates
says it nicely in few words: not harsh, or only as harsh as capitalism itself, from Bridgewater Associates: “There is no easy way out of a debt restructuring. Someone will have to bear the cost of prior bad decisions. The people who should bear the cost are those who made the bad decisions to make […]
Market reflections January 24, 2009
1. The teaching is good in our new state-of-the-art college building at Fort Leavenworth. Everyday as I walk to the new building I go past the old building which is being demolished. I’ve been watching the wrecking ball taking apart beautiful building and I can’t help but noticing how quickly the heavy ball takes apart […]
A Reflection on the political process of defense acquisition
In other places , such as this discussion about acquisition reform, and Dr Paparone’s discussion of The Fallacy of Technical Rationality, we have seen commentary on the nature of the acquisition process. There is a strong case for it being political in nature. In any event, politics plays a large role in creating the process, […]
Just what kind of a challenge is military acquisition reform? rhetorical?
We were having a discussion about reforming the military acquisition system around the watercooler today, and the subject came up: what kind of lens should we use to look at the problem? Engineering? Political? Scientific? Metaphorical? As we circled around the politics of reform I observed: “…If acquisition is a political process (and it should […]
The difference a year makes
borrowing from the Fed this year dwarfs all other years. That’s not quite true. It renders all other borrowing combined to irrelevancy
Who owns your country?
Interesting twist to prop up markets
Congress and President Bush signed legislation that suspends the rule requiring retirees over 70 ½ to take withdrawals (RMDs) from tax-deferred retirement accounts, such as traditional IRAs and 401(k)s. This suspension currently lasts for one year, 2009. The intention is to give retirement accounts time to rebound from the difficult economy/market conditions. Please note that you […]
Almost 1T in state pension shortfalls
Observed earlier that 5 large states were requesting 1T from Obama for combined medicare and pension shortfalls; Its now up to almost 1T just for the state employee pension funds alone, to say nothing of the medicare costs of an aging population determined to give voice to its feelings of entitlements. I can almost hear […]