Johnny Venom, Bonddad and New Deal Democrat are on the radio today, on the Johnny Wendell show, 4:30pm, PST. You can listen live here and here is the web page for Johnny Wendell on KTLK.

Sometimes comments can be better than the blog posts and with that in mind, we start a new series:

Best Comments

From Iams712 is the sentiment I am seeing across the blogs, often from people who worked hard on political campaigns:

I agree with you for the most part....

...I guess my point is that I was holding out some hope that Obama might do some good especially given the fact that it's all on him. But yes, you are absolutely correct that this plan doesn't really help those that really need it and further empowers those that caused this mess in the first place.

From Seebert:

And thus the lies of the ITAA

Where they told me 8 years ago that we were only exporting the "easy" jobs and nobody would ever export the R&D jobs for fear of intellectual property poaching, is exposed as the lie it was.

commongood brings to our attention:

Another approach to offshore tax havens

David Cay Johnston has an article in the current Mother Jones. He lists a number of fiscal remedies including:

Invade the Caymans
In 1983 just 10 percent of America's corporate profits were funneled through places that charge little or no corporate income tax; today more than 25 percent of profits go through tax havens. The Obama administration could tell the Caymans—now fifth in the world in bank deposits—to repeal its bank secrecy laws or be invaded; since the island nation's total armed forces consists of about 300 police officers, it shouldn't be hard for technicians and auditors, accompanied by a few Marines, to fly in and seize all the records. Bermuda, which relies on the Royal Navy for its military, could be next, and so on. Long before we get to Switzerland and Luxembourg, their governments should have gotten the message.

Barring gunboat diplomacy (tempting as it is), there is no reason we cannot pass laws to block financial transactions with tax havens or even, Cuba-style, make it a crime for Americans to visit or do business with them without special permission. Congress could declare the hiding of funds a threat to national security and require that anyone with offshore assets disclose them to the IRS within 30 days and pay taxes, interest, and penalties within 180 days. For the holdouts, temporary special teams in the IRS and Justice Department could speedily pursue civil or criminal charges

walterbyrd reminds us:

Thomas Jefferson on private banking - 1802

In light of the present financial crisis, it's interesting to read what Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:

'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

BruceMF gives an obscure detail on trains:

One thing that rails to trails does ...

... is preserve the transport right of way status of old rail rights of way, which could lapse.

Rails to Trails are most often for recreational trails, rather than for commuting cycleways ... they can be useful in getting people into cycling, and could be leveraged into giving people an incentive to gain Effective Cycle training (so they can ride to the trail rather than drive with their bike in a rack), but other improvements would normally be more critical for transport cycling.

Some rails to trails are being laid out in the unused fringe of rail rights of way still in use. Often, right of way was originally obtained with an option of four tracks, with double tracks originally laid out and then more recently downgraded to single-track ...

... since conversion from single track to double track will increase effective capacity by three to four times, even if a cycleway is put into a corridor like that, there will normally be room for expansion of rail capacity.

Seed lets us know about the Chinese:

It's already begun

The Chinese Government announced on Dec 24 that it would begin settling trades with neighboring countries in yuan. I guess that was a heck of a "good tidings to all"...it just didn't include the US under "all". It's just a start, but you're absolutely right. The dollar will not be the world's reserve currency much longer. Great post.

A. Citizen ponders why economists are so off of the mark in terms of what really is going on:

I can think of two reasons for the lack of shame....

First, current 'economists' are using a broken and outmoded set of tools to to their 'work'. Current economic theory being a mass of conservative bs crafted exclusively to make the rich richer and the rest of us broke.

Second, the Bush administration has, as per usual, destroyed the government reporting mechanisms to the point where the information stream is mostly garbage.

And third...heh, went over my limit here, when the crooks who run and manage our financial 'institutions' are spewing lies as fast as they can move their lips...well.

Not to excuse these self satisfied fellows the least they might have done is express some concern over the poor government information and the lack of transparency in the 'markets' but then that might have ruffled some feathers, eh?

And Robert I do believe that all the great economists of the past starting with Adam Smith built their theories with a strong measure of ethics.

Finally the most read blog post of this week is....(drum roll please).....

Obama's Economic Stimulus Plan - Opinions & Analysis.

Bear in mind that the number of reads each week also has to do with how long a post is published, so second up, which was published days later is Why So Little Recrimination Among Economists? by Tony Wikrent.

Thanks to all who spend the time reading posts and writing insightful comments as well as great blogs!