A Short Economics Lesson

I came across this a few days ago and when I find something that is well written and makes a light go on, I like to share:

When good decisions are no longer possible, bad decisions are inevitable.

The real cost of credit and capital is discovered by open, transparent markets. When a central bank sets the price of credit, it destroys the market's price-discovery process. When the government subsidizes certain types of credit, for example, home mortgages and "cash for clunkers" auto loans, it destroys the market's price-discovery process.

This distorts not just the price of credit, but the price of everything purchased with credit. This is the origin of bubbles, and of the resulting busts.

(Read  the whole article here.)

There, if you read and understood this, you now know more than Bernanke, Yellen, Greenspan, Krugman, etc.

The  Federal Reserve manipulates credit markets and interferes with the price-discovery process.  This eventually leads to financial disasters and bailouts by the FED to save its buddies, who are too big to fail.

Kitfox Completion

Congratulations to my friend, Dave N. for completing this beautiful Kitfox, powered by a Rotax 912.

Poorer

Much has been said about the increasing inequality between rich and poor in the United States. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Such news is usually reported with the implicit or explicit call for more government intervention to even the odds. 

You see, if Uncle Barry and Sweet Auntie Nancy just got their heads together and wrote some legislation, the world would suddenly become fair.

Well, I'm not buying that. Government interventions always makes things worse and then there are calls for even more interventions.

I would like to point out in this post at least one of the reasons that the poor keep getting poorer, while the rich keep getting richer. It is the tale of two nuclear power plants.

Yes, Virginia, I know that I am a broken record when it comes to all things nuclear. I am a bit obsessive when it comes to nuclear power, but for good reason. Do you think the poor would be less poor if we could all tap into that $50 quadrillion discovery that Glen Seaborg talked about?

I certainly believe we would all be richer if we could harness the most energy dense substance in the universe, thorium.  All of us would be richer, except for the producers, distributors and refiners and marketers of fossil fuels. Also, the anti-nuclear professional fear mongers would not be richer. They have a lot to lose, just like these coal miners from Australia. (BTW, this is an actual advertisement.)



This is the struggle we are in. A struggle over whether or not an energy source a million times more dense than gasoline will be allowed to flourish or whether the current coal, oil, and gas powers will be able to continue to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about all things nuclear.

Back to the stories:

The first story you may have heard of; Shoreham Nuclear power plant on Long Island. The plant took nearly 20 years to license and build at a cost of $6 billion. Powerful forces, including fossil fuel distributors on Long Island conspired to have the plant closed before it ever delivered a single kilowatt of power to a customer.

Eventually, the state bought the plant for a $1, Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) declared bankruptcy, and the plant never operated to produce or sell electricity.

The electrical customers on Long Island continue to pay the loans on $6 billion. Doesn't that make everyone on Long Island a lot poorer? That is everyone except the distributors of oil and gas on Long Island, who paid for the above ad

(Paid for by the Oil Heat Institute of Long Island, 132 West Cherry St. Hicksville, N. Y. 11501)

The other power plant in the story is San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), just few miles north of San Diego, California. The story reads like a Greek tragedy. The plant was recently shut down for some nuanced technical reasons, though it could have run safely producing electricity for another 20 or 30 years; billions of kilowatt hours, clean, safe, and emission free!

Now, I'm sure the beach house owners/millionaires in La Jolla, San Diego, Carlsbad, Encinitas, etc., don’t care in the least that electricity will be more expensive now. They might care about brownouts and blackouts, but their housekeepers, gardeners, mechanics, and other help care a great deal more that electricity is going to be more expensive.

SONGS was a capital investment of billions of dollars, very similar to Shoreham. Scarce resources really are scarce. We just can't waste our capital (money) and not expect to be a lot poorer. But remember, cui bono, who benefits? The coal, oil, and gas industries and antinuclear forces gain power and money at the expense of everyone else. An investigative reporter estimated that the cost of early retirement of SONGS to be $13.6 billion!!!!!  Now, we're talking about real money!

These kinds of shenanigans can't go on for very long without making the majority of us markedly poorer. And isn't that what is happening?

Irony

I have thought for some time that God has a well developed sense of human irony. 

How else can you explain a bunch of Australian scientists going to the Antarctic to document supposed reductions in the ice pack and instead get caught in the ice because of a blizzard?

And they had to be rescued by a Chinese helicopter, which transported them to an Australian ship, which then also got stuck in the ice.

And for those readers who might not realize that it is not winter down under right now, even though we are freezing in North America, it is actually summer in the Southern Hemisphere.

"I'm a bit sad it's ended this way, but we got lots and lots of great science done,"  said expedition leader Chris Turney.

Yeah, I bet you did!

One Man's Treasure is Another Man's Garbage

Imagine that you had an intaglio press in your basement. It can churn out crisp twenties at your whim.

The Secret Service calls this counterfeiting. They will hunt you down with extreme prejudice and haul you off to Federal Court. The same thing will happen to you if instead of the intaglio press you have a computer and hack/create some digital money out of nothing.

Contrast that with the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. They do have both magic machines - intaglio presses and computers that create digital money ex nihilo (out of nothing).

This is called "monetary policy" and amounts to about one trillion dollars per year.

To recap: If you print or create money in your basement, it's called counterfeiting. If the Federal Reserve does the same thing, it's called monetary policy. Go figure!

Prostate Health

Prostate Health

I am willing to bet that 99% of my blog readers are male. That’s an observation, not a judgment. I’m a geeky guy and this blog is geeky. For reasons beyond my comprehension, it seems most geeks are guys. If you’re a geeky chick, I am happy to have you as a reader. However, you can probably skip this post, or you might refer it your husband or guy friends. Thus, this post should be especially important to those 99% of my readers.

I have been mentally writing this blog for a while and now it is time for the real thing.  (Note: I am not a medical doctor.  You should research what I am saying and consult with competent medical professionals.) (Aside: Does anyone ever consult with incompetent medical professionals?  If so, do they admit to having consulted with incompetent medical professionals? If you saw an incompetent medical professional, what would they look like? How would you tell they’re incompetent? etc. etc. End Aside) 

Let me begin. 

Dr.Nortin Hadler has said, “no man should think that [prostate] surgery will increase his time on earth.” 

Who is Dr. Hadler and why should you care? click here 

That is a pretty strong statement and I owe it to my readers to back that statement up with some hard facts.  That statement also directly conflicts with what you have seen on freeway billboards and read in popular health magazines.  Right now you should be experiencing some mild cognitive dissonance.  It will get worse before this article is over, but I believe that this post will ultimately make your life better or save you from type II medical malpractice. (medical stuff done well by doctors that doesn’t benefit you, the patient!)

What does Dr. Hadler mean? When autopsies are performed on men who have died at ripe old ages, 85% of them are shown to have had prostate cancer.  However, they did not DIE from prostate cancer.  That is an important distinction.  Their prostate gland was cancerous to some degree or another, but the cancer did not kill them. Furthermore, Dr. Hadler also says that if you are male and over age 65, you should assume that you have prostate cancer.

Ok, then what should you do about it?  Do you worry about prostate cancer taking your life.  If you are thinking about getting screened for prostate cancer, consider these three things:

1. Is the screening test accurate?
2. Is the disease important?
3. Can anything be done to the disease that will benefit the patient? 

I quote from the book, Worried Sick by Dr. Hadler,

"First, screening must detect something that is meaningful to me, some important disease or high likelihood of an important disease. Second, the screening must be efficient; it must have few false positives and few false negatives. And finally, if a true positive is detected, something meaningful can be done about it, something that provides much more benefit to me than harm. Screening for prostate cancer fails on all counts."

He continues

 
 15% of men with erectile and urinary dysfunction after surgery!!! Whoa!

Dr. Hadler refuses to undergo PSA screening.  Perhaps we men should consider doing the same?  Take time to read the chapter on the "Beleaguered Prostate" on Amazon and make your decision.