Today’s links to interesting news and analysis, collected from around the Internet. If you find this useful, pass it to a friend or colleague.
- Why do we pay attention to these people? “Defending the Reagan Deficits“, Brian Riedl, Heritage Foundation, 16 June 2004
- Potentially serious, certainly bad: “Forecasting World Crude Oil Production Using Multicyclic Hubbert Model“, Ibrahim Sami Nashawi (College of Engineering and Petroleum, Kuwait U), Energy and Fuels, 4 February 2010 — “The presented method is a viable tool to predict the peak oil production rate and time. The model is simple, accurate, and totally data driven, which allows a continuous updating once new data are available. The analysis of 47 major oil producing countries … (indicates that} world production is estimated to peak in 2014”
- “Atlas Shrieked: Ayn Rand’s First Love and Mentor Was A Sadistic Serial Killer Who Dismembered Little Girls“, Mark Ames, The Exiled, 26 February 2010
- “They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools“, Adam B. Schaeffer, CATO Institute, 10 March 2010
- Big news if correct (and it looks accurate): “The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story“, Mark Perry, blog of Foreign Policy, 13 March 2010
- Analysis of the above story: “Israel is putting American lives at risk“, Paul Woodward, War in Context, 14 March 2010 — “What Mark Perry’s report indicates is that for the Obama administration a tipping point has been crossed in its perception of Israel’s effect on the conflicts that span the region.”
- We want great services, but prefer not to pay for them: “Saving U.S. Water and Sewer Systems Would Be Costly“, New York Times, 14 March 2010
- That’s a feature, not a bug: “Fears over non-Muslim’s use of Islamic law to resolve disputes“, Guardian, 14 March 2010 — “Muslim Arbitration Tribunal reports 15% rise in non-Muslims employing sharia law in }civil} cases … {some argue} that the recognition of sharia law decisions in Britain is regressive and harmful to women.”
- “The $2 Trillion Hole“, Jonathan R. Laing, Barron’s, 15 March 2010 — “Promised pensions benefits for public-sector employees represent a massive overhang that threatens the financial future of many cities and states.”
- Money is power in motion: “The Money Fighting Health Care Reform“, Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books, 8 April 2010
Today’s hot rumor
“Final destination Iran?“, The Herald (of Scotland), 14 March 2010 — “Hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.”
Background information about a possible US strike at Iran:
- ISIS: “Can Military Strikes Destroy Iran’s Gas Centrifuge Program? Probably Not.”, 8 August 2008
- “Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Development Facilities“, Anthony H. Cordesman and Abdullah Toukan, Center for Strategic & International Studies, 16 March 2009
- For more information see the FM reference page Iran – will the US or Israel attack Iran? Esp note the many other hot rumors about a strike at Iran.
Factoid for the day
The end of the housing crisis looms ahead, as shown by these stats from HousingWire, 15 March 2010:
- a whopping 7.4 million loans are now non-current, compared to just 4.1m on average between January and June of 2008.
- On average, severely delinquent borrowers have gone more than 9 months without making a mortgage payment—and yet foreclosure has not yet started for them.
- For those borrowers who are in the foreclosure process, it’s been an average of 13.6 months—more than one full year—since they last made any payment on their mortgage.
