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Links April Fools Day

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U.S. Government To Save Billions By Cutting Wasteful Senator Program The Onion (hat tip reader Scott)

Lloyd Blankfein: Time Man Of The Year Simon Johnson

Merkel Places Hopes in Lysistrata Initiative Chevelle

France ‘claims’ best pizza maker title BBC

Hedge Fund Managers’ Pay Roared Back Last Year New York Times

In Fed We TruPS FT Alphaville. Quelle surprise! Some of those Maiden Lane I exposures are junk! But I thought that was a feature, not a bug. JP Morgan was trying to dump the worst Bear exposures into MLI. Looks like they succeeded.

Google Is Not a Heroic Defender of Privacy Columbia Journalism Review. Quelle surprise!

PPACA and “What If?” Scenarios Menzie Chinn, Econbrowser

BlackRock’s Fink Snubs ‘Socialized’ Money-Fund Industry Plan Bloomberg

Does the U.S. Pay Too Little in Taxes? EconomPic Data

The Trouble Turning Over the U.S. Auto Fleet Paul Kedrosky

Interview with James Lovelock Guardian (hat tip reader John M)

Three potential explanations for the continued fall in US savings rate Ed Harrison

Norms as a Substitute for Laws Rajiv Sethi (hat tip Mark Thoma)

Antidote du jour. A pastoral scene from reader bloostater:

happycowsbloostater

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21 comments

  1. attempter

    I like the way it’s hard to tell some of the de jure joke headlines from the de facto ones.

    But it’s like that every day, nowadays.

    Unfortunately, the ones that should be (sick) jokes but are real are always all too obvious….

  2. NotTimothyGeithner

    I think most Americans would agree eliminating the Senate would literally usher in a new golden age.

  3. eric anderson

    Perhaps I was too hasty to completely dismiss James Lovelock, who appears in the daily links again today. (It’s the same article, isn’t it? Or is it deja vu all over again?)

    But this quote is precious: “I don’t know enough about carbon trading, but I suspect that it is basically a scam. The whole thing is not very sensible. We have this crazy idea that we are setting an example to the world. What we’re doing is trying to make money out of the world by selling them renewable gadgetry and green ideas. It might be worthy from the national interest, but it is moonshine if you think what the Chinese and Indians are doing [in terms of emissions]. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.”

    If politicians really did believe the end of the world is nigh, they would not try to stop it with a carbon credit trading scheme. Lovelock seems to be in lock-step with NASA’s resident AGW alarmist Hansen in his doubts about carbon trading. It’s a revenue-enhancer. A way to divert yet more of our economy to the finance sector (so they can do more of the Lord’s work, of course).

    The headline on the Lovelock piece is “Fudging data is a sin against science.” Who can argue with that? But the fudging goes far beyond cherry-picking some tree rings. Even the temperatures we think are real have been massaged from the raw thermometer readings. Climate science is a field of uncertainty (climate models) growing on a rich topsoil of uncertainty (massaged, “corrected,” temperature readings), over a bedrock of bias.

    1. Gerald Muller

      Could’nt agree with you more. This global warming thing is no more real than the fact that Timothy is saving the (financial) planet. Read Ian Plimer for the details.

  7. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    Again, the bigotry is showing.

    No Time Cat Of The Year.

    No Time Dog Of The Year.

    No TIme Acai Berry Of The Year.

    No Time Rat Of The Year.

    No Time Okapi Of The Year.

    Only Time Man Of The Year.

    Not Even Time Honest Man Of The Year.

    1. Jim in MN

      Um, it’d be more hypocritical NOT to wouldn’t it? To show support for our negotiator out there in the wild world she should use the product.

      1. Cynthia

        I suppose you also think that it wouldn’t be hypocritical of her to use Round-up or plant genetically-modified seeds in her organic garden. Surely you’re joking with me.

  9. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    Does the US pay too little in taxes?

    When people are clueless, they grade/judge on a relative scale – ‘I don’t care how much money I make or have, as long as I make or have more than you do’ or ‘I am morally superior than you because I only took out a subprime loan instead of your negative amortization loan’ kind of relativistic logic.

    On an absolute scale, can you not say that you are taxed too much when you truly believe that

    1) less is more
    2) small is beautiful
    3) short is sweet

    can be applied to government as well?

    1. attempter

      Well, only when you believe in those principles in general, regarding all material things, and wealth and power as such.

      On the other hand the kind of idiot who wants “bigness” in everything, economic structures and “productivity” and “growth”, consumer crap, the military, the police power etc., yet who claims to be stupid enough to think you can have those without a big, aggressive government, which has to mean big government taxes, one way or another (inflation, for example, is a tax by other means, as is forcing people into debt in order to be socially functional; those are just two examples of the kinds of taxes this system favors over the more direct kind)…..

  10. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    Merkel’s Lysistrata Initiative – I hope she is not withholding anything from her busband.

  11. kevinearick

    falling savings rate:

    the liquidation never slowed. only the government numbers have changed.

    lies, d— lies, and statisticians.

    buying time gets expensive.

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