Brian Gongol
Six years later, we still can't forget Eldred v. Ashcroft
That was the case -- argued October 9, 2002 before the Supreme Court -- that cemented the preposterous Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, extending the effective term of copyright to a period best measured in centuries. It's ludicrous and it harms the economy and the progress of technology. The act should be tossed out post-haste. Even if it's done more than six years' worth of damage already. Perhaps especially so.
National debt clock runs out of digits as it rolls past $10 trillion
The outrageous growth in the Federal debt has long been one of the biggest economic threats to the United States. The debt is now galloping upwards, which itself is not impossible to overcome -- but the problem is that the longer it's allowed to grow, the harder it will be to overcome.
First off, much of the debt is being incurred on temporary, non-durable things. If debt were being incurred to develop things that would last (like highways or technology), then it might be justifiable. But it's not.
Second, the larger the debt grows, the higher the interest rates we'll pay. Just like Warren Buffett could get a better interest rate on a credit card than you could (since he's obviously good for it), the interest rates we pay on a debt of $10 trillion are (all else being equal) higher than the rates we'd pay on a debt of $5 trillion, $1 trillion, or $100 billion. The larger our debt, the higher the risk that we'll fail to pay it off, and lenders make up for the risk by charging higher interest rates.
Third, the more we indenture ourselves to debt, the more we choke off the available funds for investment in other useful things. The money being lent to the government (forming our debt) comes from the pool of all the available investment dollars (and euros, yen, rubles, and so on) in the world. If Federal debt were not an investment option, those dollars would be invested in other things -- likely including private, profit-making (and job-creating) ventures. It's well past time to get off the debt diet.
The Onion unintentionally provides some perspective
A satirical item from the "historical archive" makes light of the size of our great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents. But in a way, that's the kind of perspective we need right now. A lot of people are making it sound as though we're at the end of the world as we know it thanks to the credit markets. That's overstatement. No matter how the situation shakes itself out, we're still smarter, healthier, and longer-lived than our predecessors of 50 or 100 years ago, not to mention 200 years ago. We just have to learn how to balance our demand for things like neat toys with our perpetual obligation to plan for the future.
When people start insisting there's no bubble, there's probably a bubble
Dubai's completely absurd building boom is about to get...well, absurd-er. The completely insane Burj Dubai, which is going to end up being a good 50% to 75% taller than the Sears Tower by the time it's done this year, is already engendering a whole new level of envy. Another developer is planning to build a 1000-meter-tall building, which would be around 20% taller than the Burj Dubai. It's certainly unsustainable in the long run to have so many aggressive developers all trying to top one another in the same small place. Meanwhile, the West is facing a slowdown in public-works construction as state and local governments run into trouble borrowing money. But despite it all, the world isn't over yet, even if we're being subjected to pictures of sad guys on trading floors.
Storm sewer fails in Bettendorf
