This is a friend of mine’s new business. I’m pretty excited about it.
Swing Fail
It’s a shame this doesn’t continue into 2009. There would be two more dwarfing bars, one red and the largest one blue.
This chart shows the amount of debt increased by the party in power in congress, regardless of the party of the president in power, from 1975 to 2006.
The largest increase in debt was by the Republican run congress between 2003 to 2006. A record $555 billion dollar increase in 2003, only to be eclipsed the next year, a $596 billion increase.
I’m getting into golf and looking into clubs on craigslist. time to educate myself.
Ford has reported on their July sales pace.
Cash for Clunkers boost Ford’s July sales 1.6 pct — That’s a year over year figure for the month of July.
Ford U.S. July Sales Rise 2.3% on Clunkers Program — That’s the monthly rate vs. June.
Cash for Clunkers drives Ford to monthly sales jump — That’s a third headline because I already opened the tab in my browser.
Looking at the whole year, it looks like Ford will sell 20% fewer vehicles this year than last year. However, that depends a lot on the Cash for Clunkers program. Remember, some people are buying cars because they qualify for a 10% to 20% incentive paid for by everyone else. Other people are buying cars because they were curious about the program, didn’t qualify, but were convinced to buy anyway.
Remember that Hyundai had a gimmick in January. People who lost their jobs could simply return their cars with no credit penalty. Hyundai sales increased 14% while Ford sales fell 40% year over year. That gimmick didn’t cost the taxpayers a billion dollars.
If I remember correctly, Ford never took any government money. Only GM and Chrysler did.
there are some real gems here. they even turned me on to one of our own, Stranger than Eviction.
sds:
I know the good doctor Jay Parkinson has addressed this before, but I think it’s worth taking another look.Some interesting tidbits from this post (all David Brooks) (emphases mine):
…from a section in which the C.B.O. analyzes what the House plan, with the strong public program and all the rest, would do to health care inflation:
The net cost of the coverage provisions would be growing at a rate of more than 8 percent per year in nominal terms between 2017 and 2019; we would anticipate a similar trend in the subsequent decade.
This is devastating. The plan was sold as a way to bend the cost curve, to reduce the rate of health care cost growth. Instead, the cost of the plan to the federal budget would rise by 8 percent a year, and there wouldn’t be anything close to offsetting revenues to pay for it.
This is a loud trumpet for all health care reformers. Start over. Get serious about costs. We can either pass this kind of reform and bankrupt the country or we can pass another kind of reform. End of story. […]
I’m not crazy about the public plan. I dislike the idea of the government competing in a marketplace it regulates. I think the temptation to subsidize the public entity will be overwhelming. But I’m not vociferously against it either. That’s because:
A.) I’m not that thrilled with the insurance companies.
B.) I think it will save money, but not that much (the C.B.O. agrees).
C.) (!) I think it will produce small administrative efficiencies.
Democratic politicians throw around statistics claiming that Medicare has much, much lower administrative costs than private insurers. I’ve been told by various economists that this claim is three-quarters trickery. It’s a lot cheaper to administer a targeted population that uses a lot of care than it is to administer a large population that uses little care per capita. Plus you can save a lot of administrative costs if you don’t actually regulate treatments that much.
I was dying watching this.
Pabst: 2009’s World’s Ugliest Dog Winner.
