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POPSFACT: US economy does better under Democrats Graphic proof: Democratic admins usually bring growth in jobs, GDP, and stock values; Repub admins bring deficits, greater gap between rich and poor. If blue-collar Americans ever understand this, it'll be mighty bad news for Republicans.
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POPSHow to fold Proteins Proteins are complex molecules, and understanding the way they can fold using distributed computing, in the unused cpu load of home computers, can spread the load and research in more detail , both the way proteins fold, and the effects of incorrect folding. A prime example of such an instance in in the proteins known as prions, which with a wrong fold can be one of the contributing factors in Alzheimer's disease. The foldingathome network is the biggest computer in the world, with calculations done by the petaflop
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POPSSound Bites And Sloganeering Just Won’t Cut It Anymore even including such environmentally sensitive countries as the United Kingdom, Norway and France—to limit oil and gas exploration to this extent. Gulf of Mexico that hold billions of barrels of oil and gas are inaccessible for purely political reasons. Appeasing Florida’s real-estate and tourism industries has been more important than U.S. energy security. In addition, politicians throw red meat to the crowd by promising to punish the oil industry for its huge profits, overlooking the small problem that much of this profit is not even made in the United States. In fact, it is not the oil companies, but producing countries like Venezuela, Mexico, Iran and Russia that are provoking the pending production crunch through lack of investment. National oil companies now control nearly 80 percent of worldwide reserves, leaving major Western multinationals with full access to only 6 percent.
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POPSGovernment on a diet
Most governments have reduced their top tax rates and spending-to-GDP ratios over the last decade or so, according to data published by the OECD, IMF and World Bank. But slimmer governments have done so at a faster pace, and to significantly lower levels. Their highest tax rate on personal income fell to a group average of 30% in 2006 from 36% in 1996. Top corporate rates were lowered to an average of 22% from 30%. Their average ratio of total government outlays to GDP fell to 31.6% in 2007, from an average peak level during the previous two decades of 40.4% Investment growth jumped to an average annual rate of 5.9% in 2000-2005, from 3.8% over the previous decade. Exports have risen by 6.3% annually since 2000. The net result was a surge in economic growth. The IMF reports that GDP soared in the slimmer-government group at a 5.4% average annual rate from 1999-2008 (including its forecast for the current year), up from a 4.6% rate over the previous decade. Over that same period,
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POPSEntitlement Creep Forecasts for entitlement spending are eye-popping. If we don't want to mirror Europe's slow decline (people don't take jobs because the government pays more, for not working), we must stop this. Increasing taxes isn't the answer.
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POPSDow Tumbles 395 Points On Oil Spike Stocks tanked Friday, with the Dow industrials shedding 395 points, after oil prices spiked more than $11 a barrel and the May jobs report showed a big jump in the unemployment rate. Bond prices surged, as investors sought safety in government debt, while the dollar tumbled versus the yen and euro. According to early tallies, the Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost 395 points, its biggest one-day point loss since February of 2007, at the start of the subprime mortgage crisis. The selloff Friday amounted to a decline of more than 3%.
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POPSMexico Isn’t Feeling the U. S. Economic Slump
Bound to the United States by history, geography, immigration, trade and investment, Mexico’s fortunes have long been linked to the US. The U. S. housing industry, for example, which employs one in five Hispanic immigrants, is in a slump, resulting in a marked slowdown of remittances sent to Mexico. A prolonged U. S. downturn would undoubtedly hit Mexico hard. Still, the nation’s economy is holding up well. The Mexican bolsa (stock) index is up 14.5 percent so far this year. The peso is strong: At the first of the year, $1 could buy nearly 10.9 pesos; now $1 buys a little over 10.3 pesos. While Mexico still ships about 80 percent of its exports to the United States, its farmers and manufacturers are looking for new customers in Asia, Europe and the rest of Latin America. During the first quarter, Mexican exports to the U. S. grew slightly more than 16 percent, while shipments to the rest of the world grew at twice that pace, 32 percent. Exports to Europe grew by 56 percent.
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POPSClimate Reality Bites price of every good and service in the economy. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that this meddling would cause a cumulative reduction in the growth of GDP by between 0.9% and 3.8% by 2030. Add 20 years, and the reduction is between 2.4% and 6.9% – that is, from $1 trillion to $2.8 trillion. These estimates assume that electricity prices will increase by 44% above what they would otherwise be by 2030. They also assume that existing coal-fired power plants, which currently provide about 50% of U.S. electric power, will be shut down – to be replaced with at least 150% growth in new nuclear facilities, plus other "alternatives." California Democrat Barbara Boxer last week introduced 157 pages of amendments to Warner-Lieberman. Most notably, she sets aside at least $800 billion through 2050 for consumer tax relief. So while imposing a huge new tax on all Americans, she vouchsafes to return some of the money to some people.
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POPSForbes: Canada's Economy Resilient Original title was "U.S. Slump Spreading To Canada?" but the article seemed to bear better news than that title suggested, at least for our neighbors in Canada. Good news.
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POPSThe Economy Isn't Hopeless; It's the Press It's presentation of the economy is exactly like everything else it's been reporting for the last 8 yrs. It's convinced the American people that they are in serious danger from all sides and it's this Administrations fault. Good news, of any kind, is not allowed.
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POPSAssociated Press Jumps the Recessionist Shark A decline in economic activity :⇔ economic contraction. You don't have to use the two quarters of negative GDP growth as your criterion, but you do need to find contraction somehow. The AP helpfully notes you can look for economic declines not only in GDP (i.e. output), but also in income or "other measures." Output and income aren't quite semantic equivalents (though in theory they're equal). It's not clear what they mean by "other measures" but I think it's safe to assume they mean "whatever numbers we need to gin up once we get called out on this steaming load." In suggesting that the economy can fall into recession (and presumably, by their gauge, already has) without ever receding, the AP hasn't just moved the goalposts. They've picked up the ball, declared a new score, and gone home.
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POPSYou Can't Soak The Rich "Like science, economics advances as verifiable patterns are recognized and codified. But economics is in a far earlier stage of evolution than physics. Unfortunately, it is often poisoned by political wishful thinking, just as medieval science was poisoned by religious doctrine. Taxation is an important example. "The interactions among the myriad participants in a tax system are as impossible to unravel as are those of the molecules in a gas, and the effects of tax policies are speculative and highly contentious. Will increasing tax rates on the rich increase revenues, or hold back the economy, as John McCain fears?
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