URLs du Jour

2009-03-27

  • For the second day in a row, an economist named Jeffrey commends himself to your attention. Today it's Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, writing on…
    The Geithner-Summers plan, officially called the public/private investment programme, is a thinly veiled attempt to transfer up to hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayer funds to the commercial banks, by buying toxic assets from the banks at far above their market value. It is dressed up as a market transaction but that is a fig-leaf, since the government will put in 90 per cent or more of the funds and the "price discovery" process is not genuine. It is no surprise that stock market capitalisation of the banks has risen about 50 per cent from the lows of two weeks ago. Taxpayers are the losers, even as they stand on the sidelines cheering the rise of the stock market. It is their money fuelling the rally, yet the banks are the beneficiaries.
    Funny spelling due to the Britishness of the publication, Financial Times.

    It's not just us right-wing whack jobs who think this is a bad, bad, idea.

  • You might want to save these two URLs the next time someone commits the broken-window fallacy about "green jobs": (1) this Bloomberg story:
    Subsidizing renewable energy in the U.S. may destroy two jobs for every one created if Spain's experience with windmills and solar farms is any guide.

    For every new position that depends on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

    and (2) this post from Chris Horner, who has more numbers from the study.
    The study calculates that since 2000, Spain spent €571,138 to create each "green job," including subsidies of more than €1 million per wind-industry job.
    (That € symbol is allegedly an actual currency unit. As I type, you multiply by 1.33 to get dollars.)