HELP CHILE

the US and the world reacted quickly and significantly to help haiti after its earthquake. this was the humanitarian thing to do. we now need to do the same for chile. haiti was pure humanitarian. it is strategically irrelevant. chile is in need also. but it is a developed country. all the more reason to support it. with the exception of brazil, it is maybe the only other democratic, capitalistic country on the whole continent, a continent significantly under the sway of chavez with his followers in bolivia and peru. chile deserves our humanitarian support and but also it is strategic.

TOYOTA BASHING SHOULD HAVE LIMITS

whacking toyota is the in thing to do. do they deserve it, yeah. but up to a point. there have been many recalls over the years, many for us auto makers. this is getting politicized. lets beat up the japs and help sell more american cars.

toyota became the biggest and best auto company in the world not by accident. they built a quality car. the reason us auto makers lost market share was that the foreign cars had a better value and quality propostion. now toyota fucked up and has and will take its drubbing but lets remember they employ tens of thousands of americans here in america. now these jobs are in red states in the south and are non unionized. do you think that the million the unions have paid to the democrats have anything to do with whats going on with toyota in washington?

lets have a measured response

DALAI LAMA YES, BACK DOOR NO

in keeping with my attempt at fairness. once again obama did the right thing by meeting with the dalai lama. china should not tell us who to meet with or who to sell arms to.

however, let him out the back door, past bags of garbage was not classy or the right thing to do. its like letting your mistress out the back door as your wife walks in the front.

anyhow, at least they met

NUKES; GIVE THE DEVIL HIS DUE

president obama has just done something intelligent. he has, not for the first time but this time with gusto, endorsed new generation nuclear energy power generation to be built now.

in the short to medium term, the next 20 years, we can chooose coal or we can choose nuclear. there is nothing else. so called renewables are great but cannot grow fast enough to fill the gap.

no i dont like nuclear waste either but the latest reactor technology and designs create a fraction of the waste as before, are way safer and the rest of the world very much including china, are building them

keep up the good work

DONT TRUST IRAN

we cannot trust iran re nukes. they are playing us. just like north korea, only worse. they diddle us all the while developing nukes. this has gone on for years.

what to do. hard sanctions focused on the commercial interests of the Guards. support for the democracy movement.

keep israel on standby

BAE AND EXTRATERRITORIARITY

BAE was recently fined 400mm dollars by the US for probably bribing people in tanzania for contracts in tanzania. now bae is a british based multi-national. the brits only fined them like 60 million. why should we fine them 400mm? seem like none of our business.

MARTIN FELDSTEIN IS SMART

i was reading a special section of a recent wsj that was reviewing the first year of the obama white house. it had a broad spectrum of types of op ed types both in terms of their age, politics and area of expertise. there were i think 4 economists. one old dog, martin feldstein made what i considered an amazing if in hind site obvious observation about the health care bills in congress. both i believe prohibit insurance companies from preventing or possibly even rating a new insured based on a pre existing condition. now this seem pro consumer on its face. but, he pointed out an amazing negative arbitrage.

it would make sense for relatively healthy people to pay the penalty for not having mandatory health insurance, save on paying the premiums and if they got seriously ill, apply for health insurance at that time and the insurance company would have to take them. in this hypothetical, the individual can free ride till they get sick, then after not paying premiums for say 10 years, send the bill to the insurance company. this arbitrage would ruin the insurance industry. a point that feldstein said maybe was not an accident.

at age 70, martin is as sharp as ever.