Regulation

What They Don’t Want You To Know About Prices

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By Keith Weiner – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Last week, in Part I of this essay, we discussed why a central planner cannot know the right interest rate. Central planner’s macroeconomic aggregate measures like GDP are blind to the problem of capital consumption, including especially capital consumption caused by the central plan itself. GDP has an intrinsic bias towards consumption, and makes no distinction between consumption of the yield on capital, and consumption of the capital per se…between selling the golden egg, and cooking the goose that lays golden eggs.

One could quibble with this and say that, well, really, the central planners should use a different metric. This is not satisfying. It demands the retort, “if there is a better metric than GDP, then why aren’t they using it now?” GDP is, itself, supposed to be that better metric! Nominal GDP targeting is the darling central plan proposal of the Right, supposedly better than consumer price index and unemployment (as Modern Monetary Theory is the darling of the Left).

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Energy Dept. to Roll Back Light Bulb Ban

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By Michael Barnes – Re-Blogged From Liberty Headlines

‘DOE is making such a dangerous proposal despite the recent dire warnings about the fate of our planet if we don’t urgently address climate change…’

If it’s not broken, government regulators are in a frenzy to fix it.

In many ways, that was the Obama administration’s command-and-control approach to the American economy, free-market proponents often assert.

Perhaps the single best example is its war on the incandescent light bulb—which has been brought back from regulatory oblivion this week.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/qC7PlA3_3nk

On Jan. 19, 2017, or the day before President Donald Trump was inaugurated, the Obama administration’s Department of Energy published two final regulatory rules.

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MAGA And Government Myths

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By Gary Christenson – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

We know the acronym MAGA – Make America Great Again. A different description of MAGA is MYTHS ASSOCIATED with GOVERNMENT ACTIONS.

WHAT MYTHS?

THE MYTH OF GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN. Some parts of the U.S. government close. The employees are not paid and hardship blankets the land. Well, NO! The government employees are paid retroactively and most business continues as usual. It is good political theater. The D.C. circus never stops.

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When Environmentalism Becomes Corruption

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By Craig Liukko – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Part 1

Environmental principles are too often used to stop lawful, responsible, vital land uses.

All across the United States, private property rights are under assault – assault by state and federal legislators and regulators, environmentalist groups, wealthy liberal foundations, corporations and other special interests, often acting in coordination or collusion with one another. They are seizing or taking control of lands and other valuable property without due process or just compensation, under a host of environmental and other justifications, many of which are fictional at best.

I have personally witnessed attempts to shut down the small mining industry in my state of Colorado. Exploration and development by this industry often results in discoveries of major deposits of minerals that are essential for everything we make, use and do – including medical equipment, cell phones, computers, aircraft, aerospace, automobiles, wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, and modern high-tech weapon and communication systems.

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Don’t ban plastic bags!

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By Hal Shurtlef – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Learn the facts about plastic versus paper bags – and bag the bans, instead

Like dozen towns and cities in Massachusetts and other states, Boston recently enacted a ban on plastic shopping bags. It went into effect December 14, 2018. It was a relatively easy vote, because “evil” plastic bags have received extensive bad press that generally ignores important facts.

The same holds true in other jurisdictions, especially those controlled by Democrats who a generation ago cared about American workers, but today too often subjugate the needs of blue collar families to demands by college educated and environmentalist elites, and even noisy grade school kids.

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Debt, Division, Dysfunction, and the March to National Bankruptcy

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By Stefan Gleason – Re-Blogged From Money Metals Exchange

Never in our lifetimes has American politics been so marked by division and dysfunction.

The longest partial government shutdown in history occurred after the Democrat-controlled Congress wouldn’t compromise with President Trump on a border wall. The impasse is but one symptom of a deeper malady – one that threatens to wreak wider social and financial instability in the years ahead.

Put plainly, the pillars of the American system as we have known it are eroding.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #344

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The Week That Was: 2019-01-19, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, The Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “Truth never dies but lives a wretched existence,”— Yiddish proverb [H/t Tim Ball.

Number of the Week: Advancing to # 3?

The Weather Engine: Last week’s TWTW discussed the two primary energy flows from the surface through the atmosphere into space as speculated in the influential 1979 Charney report: 1) carbon dioxide (CO2) absorbing and re-radiating (interfering with) some of the outbound long-wave radiation from the surface to space and 2) increased water vapor absorbing and re-radiating (interfering with) even more outbound long-wave radiation. According to the Charney Report, the increased water vapor is more significant than the CO2 in causing a warming of the planet.

Further, TWTW discussed the 1997 model of the earth’s “Annual Global Mean Energy Budget” as presented by Kiehl and Trenberth paper published by the American Meteorological Society. In their graph, Figure 7, one can see the component allocated to outgoing longwave radiation and the component allocated to increasing water vapor, evapotranspiration and latent heat. Other publications disagree with the specific numbers but accept the concept.

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