The Solyndra bankruptcy has, not unexpectedly, resulted in a wide range of reactions. On one end we have “This was a horrible investment and waste of taxpayers’ money. We should shut down the whole program,” and on the other end “Every investment has risks, and if you want success on a big problem there will [...]
Posts Tagged ‘economics’
CSR, Oversimplified
In Associate Professor Anil Karnani’s world, Corporate Social Responsibility professionals at the world’s largest companies only do two things: propose projects that the business should already be doing because they make total financial sense, and propose projects which are financial disasters and companies should never seriously consider. And if you lived in his world, you’d [...]
It’s Just Another Tax, Folks
On 3/18 the WSJ reported that Energy Secretary Steven Chu “advocated adjusting trade duties as a ‘weapon’ to protect U.S. manufacturing”. Basically, the threat is that we’ll increase tariffs to protect energy-intensive industries where they compete with products coming from countries that don’t apply a tax on CO2. What interests me in this article and [...]
Your Cost of Carbon
It appears that the Obama administration is getting closer and closer to implementing some sort of GHG cap and trade system, since the WSJ and others are reporting that the proposed budget is counting on revenues from the sale of allowances. You may read these articles and see numbers in the 10′s or 100′s of [...]
Obama to detail further compensation limits – Yahoo! Finance
Obama to detail further compensation limits – Yahoo! Finance: this is just the tip of the iceberg on this, and I suspect its why Ford is being so vocal that they don’t want government help.
US Innovation Talk Outline
Outline for Talk at US Innovation Panel Washington, DC 12/1/08 Today I want to talk about enabling “national scale” innovation, or how to create innovation with thousands, or even millions of people, spanning public and private investment. Why national scale innovation? Simple. Many of our problems are national (and global) in scale and are so [...]
The Onion Explains Carbon Offsets
Finally, now I understand.
Emergency Bill…yeah, right
The Senate version of Emergency Bailout bill is now 451 pages, up from the 113 page House version that was defeated earlier in the week, which was up from the original 2 and a half page proposal. All of the extra stuff is pork. (here’s one of the many descriptions on the internet). Is anyone [...]
Boston, Nevada
Our governor has decided that either a) we dramatically raise taxes, or b) we open the state to casinos. Argh. Part of this is driven by the large number of Mass residents who visit the Connecticut casinos. Part of it, I suspect, is the big success of the Mass Lottery, which distributes over $761M a [...]
Top States for Foreclosures in December
Paul K reports that “Foreclosures were up 35% year-over-year in the U.S. in December”. Massachusetts is #3 on the list, NH is below #40. (Via Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed.)