A new report, launched in Brussels on Monday by the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, shows that – contrary to what the finance sector’s paid lobbyists have been insisting – a European financial transaction tax (FTT) would boost growth in Europe by at least 0.25%,  raise the revenue to combat poverty and climate change at home and abroad, and help re-balance the economy by making long-term investment more worthwhile than short-term, high frequency trading. This new report by noted economists Prof Avinash Persaud and Prof Stephany Griffith-Jones comes on top of revised estimates from the European Commission who originally produced some of the data that fat cat financiers pounced upon. The Commission’s original impact assessment was based on a flawed model which shows all taxes as harming growth, whatever the revenues are used for, but misunderstandings of what the impact assessment showed were used to create concern among progressive politicians and abused by people opposed to the tax all along to justify their position (even though the same people shed few tears over the impact on growth of measures they support like increased VAT or cuts in public services.)

Right…

The EU will regulate the economy is such a way as steer money in to long-term investment more worthwhile rather than short-term, high frequency trading. What could go wrong (other than making it difficult for publicly traded companies to raise capital through the sale of stock i.e. trading)?

Tim Worstall, my favorite economist, described this lunacy perfectly:

What are these people smoking?

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Via Core77:

What could make the view from the infinity pool atop the Marina Bay Sands casino, soaring some 55 stories above Singapore, even more surreal? Human bodies jumping off of the roof behind you.

This is a great video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Too cool.

The European Union scheme to charge airlines for carbon emissions has led to a dispute with China, which announced Monday that it was forbidding its airlines to pay the new fees.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a statement on its website that the rules “contravene the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and international civil aviation regulations.”

Since January 1, all airlines are required to buy certificates for the carbon dioxide they emit through landings and takeoffs in the European Union. Airlines that fail to comply face fines and may even be banned from landing at airports in the EU.

The China Air Transport Association (CATA) estimates that the EU scheme will cost Chinese airlines some $120 million in the first year alone, and that the amount could triple by 2020.

The dispute comes at a sensitive time for the EU, which is wooing China, a major holder of foreign reserves, to invest in bailout funds to help tackle the euro debt crisis. Chinese and EU leaders are due to hold a summit next week.

Ironic that it is the Communist Chinese who are cutting through the economic / global warming nonsense Europe and the United States are embracing.

Found this very interesting story discussing vintage motorcycle advertisement @ the very cool web site The Vintagent:

The first motorcycle race started when the second motorcycle was built. And the first motorcycle advertisement was placed immediately post-finish, crowing the winner’s superiority. Motorcycle ads have a natural ‘hook’ in the lure of Speed, although manufacturers have had mixed feelings about selling what riders really wanted, deep down in their speed-demon souls. From the first days of the 20th Century, builders and buyers of motorcycles have played a complex dance around the subject of Speed, with the Industry anxious to spread a message of respectability and docility for their noisy, horse-scaring moto-bicycles, keeping a low profile about the exhilaration of pulling the throttle lever all the way back.

Be sure to visit The Vintagent for more pic’s and to read the rest of the interesting article.

Now, on to the links…

theCL: ‘For the Good of the Party’
ChrisWy: My Weekly Obama Jobs Report, the Illusion of Falling Unemployment edition
TBA: Spineless Jellyfish of the Month: The Susan G. Komen Foundation
The Eye: Godwin Rule
SJ: Palin’s Right

CH2.0: Solyndra down the tubes?
Bunker: Supreme Ginsburg trashes U.S. Constitution in Egypt
Gator: When you lie down with dogs…
Spellchek: Did Panetta gaffe? Did we win the Afghanistan war? Is the leaked NATO report wrong?
LaS: Barry’s Park Police cleaned up after Barry’s Bolshevik Brigade on the Square.

MTTM: It’s Official- Indiana Is a Right-to-Work State
‘Bot: America at a Crossroads
PR: O-Man The Destroyer
Pundette: Santelli:-Shrinkage, shrinkage
RR: Rudy Giuliani- I’m a Pro-Choice Moderate Republican and Romney Gives Me Pause (VIDEO)

TMGGB: About This Climate Change Myth
TCotS: The Spot-On Quote Of The Week…
Wade: AT&T Letter
WWTFT: With Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Zilla: If You Want to Troll Me, You Will Have to Pay

Click here to view the embedded video.

Oh, and by the way…The Cult are set to release Choice of Weapon, their ninth studio album, on May 22nd.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yep, get ready for a steady diet of this delusional nonsense until November 6th.

Via Newsbusters:

Did I mention this came from a self-described “internationally acclaimed personal financial expert?”

I guess this “internationally acclaimed personal financial expert” doesn’t know that as we only have one month of data, there is no average yet. You do need at least two pieces of data to have an average.

Also eluding this “internationally acclaimed personal financial expert” is that Obama’s only been in office for three years – or does his campaign year count towards him doing “so much?”

With math skills such as these, how’d you like Orman managing your personal finances?

No, I wouldn’t let Suze Orman within 5 miles of my wallet.

President Obama’s only chance for rebutting Republican claims that he’s responsible for a bad economy is to point to a positive trend. Voters respond to economic trends as much as they respond to absolute levels of economic activity. Under ordinary circumstances, January’s unemployment rate of 8.3% would be terrible. But compared to September’s 9.1%, it looks quite good. And the trend line – 9% in October, 8.6% in November, 8.5% in December, and now 8.3% – is enough to make Democrats gleeful.

The new 8.3% unemployment number is such a scam. As pointed out on Zero Hedge:

it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

How can the BLS just drop 1.2 million people from the labor market? In one month no less.

Rush Limbaugh sums up this data nicely:

But the raw numbers, 130 million jobs in December, 128 million jobs in January, give or take a couple hundred thousand either side. But when the seasonal adjustments take place, there is a gain of 200, whatever they’re reporting, 33,000 jobs. Now, what’s happening is the labor force is shrinking. There are fewer jobs. Even the Drive-Bys, so excited, they can’t wait to report the good news, but even they are reporting that the labor force participation rate, number of jobs out there, is continuing to dwindle, and most of the jobs being created are low wage.

But none of that’s gonna matter. None of it’s gonna matter. I don’t want to be an “I told you so,” but way back last year, even recently toward the end of last year, this being an election year, I predicted. But you knew. You knew what was gonna happen when this year started. You knew that the statistics are that no president has ever been reelected when the unemployment rate’s over 8%. So guess what it’s gonna be by the time we get to Election Day? It’s just that simple.

Yep. The left will stop at nothing to get Obama re-elected.

Check out the following video of the 580 HP Camaro ZL1 at the Nurburgring. The Camaro pulls 172 mph at the 7:35 mark.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Not quite as fast as the Corvette ZR1, but still an excellent run.

Via ASI:

As they show in Figure 1. (pg 259 of the paper) European welfare states (such as Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway etc.) experience traditionally high levels of social spending (measured as a % of GDP) while simultaneously religious beliefs (measured by the importance of God in a person’s life) are not very high (averaging between 4 and 5 on a 1 to 10 scale). On the other hand, countries in which religious beliefs play an important role (between 7,5 and 8,5 on the same scale) in an individual’s everyday life (such as the US, Ireland, Canada, Portugal) the level of spending tends to be much lower, 5 to 10 percent on average, thus strengthening their initial hypothesis. Therefore religion could act as a substitute for an inadequate level of state funded social insurance.

Very interesting trend. The ASI article concludes with this:

Charitable donations can be tracked in the same direction; due to the fact that more people tend to privately solve the coordination problem in the demand for social insurance, there is less need for the state to step in and provide it.

 
If this is indeed true, it should act as a signal to countries such as the UK or Ireland to lower their welfare spending, since private incentives and charitable organizations are likely to take over from the government and provide services such as child day care, private schools, hospital care, retirement homes, homeless shelters, soup kitchens etc. The Salvation Army does just that, as do many other UK organizations. Perhaps it isn’t quite sure how much the private sector can ‘offload’ the government in its welfare spending, but it should be given a chance to do so, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon countries where social capital is undoubtedly very high.

Private charities are always more effective than government.