Despite the complaining most people do about the crappiness of airlines, they don't back up their behavior. The reason US airlines are so crappy nowadays is because people shop almost exclusively on price. They just fire up orbitz or whatever and pick the cheapest. This will, of course, result in every airline cutting their services to bare bones levels like they are now so they can lower the price. People say they want nice, but won't put their money where their mouth is, so we have what we have now.

I guess its not 2 billion but check it out (Press release from DOE website): Department of Energy Offers $102 Million Conditional Commitment for Loan Guarantee to U.S. Geothermal, Inc. Oregon Project is First Geothermal Project to Receive Conditional Commitment link: http://www.lgprogram.energy.gov/press/061010.pdf

I think these econophysicists are in error with regard to calling corporate bonds a bubble. A bubble is when prices are out of whack rather than based on some underlying fundamentals. But corporate bond yields were high for a reason. Major companies (Lehman, GM, etc) were going bankrupt left and right. Many companies were being downgraded by the rating agencies. It was the worst recession in 70 years. Of course bond yields were high. People were really worried about default. Now that many companies have started reporting improved earnings though, of course they are returning to normals and the "bubble" is going away. Anyway, the moral of the story is that corporate bonds were clearly not in a bubble.

Uhh seriously? Because this comment is so ridiculous I don't even know where to start. I just graduated yesterday after four years at Berkeley. It's a huge campus and so not everyone is liberal, but its overwhelmingly very very far left wing. Both the professors and the students. And have you ever been to the co-ops? It seems for many of them the sixties never ended. I'm quite left of center, but I sometimes feel like a republican relative to many on the campus.

And the frat/sorority system isn't quite typical either. Sure there are some douchy frat boys and tanorexic sorority girls, but there are also many people who you wouldn't suspect to be in frats. I know one guy graduated to become a NASA engineer. I know a sorority girl who is working at Google next year. There are so many more examples it would be ridiculous to name them all.

And the protests? Last November there were protests against state budget cuts where a huge number of people showed up. Like maybe 5000? Not to mention the tree sitters, the hunger strikers, the unions, the riots this semester, the protesters who took over Wheeler, the popularity of the new Global Poverty minor etc etc etc.

I guess you can talk about the funding we get from corporations. The BP deal is a bit sketchy, but it's 500 million dollars, we need that money. I hardly think this makes Berkeley overwhelmingly right wing. And the whole John Yoo thing is a bit weird, and I'm not sure what should be done about that, but damn dude, UC Berkeley is amazingly liberal.

I thought the acronym was PIIGS, the S being for Spain which is also in a pretty deep hole.

Your comment is very misleading: Sales, General and Administrative is not merely marketing expenses. It includes, among other things, the salaries of everyone at the company (thus the word general) and numerous other expenses. Therefore it is not accurate to use SG&A as a substitute for marketing costs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SG%26A

Sounds interesting. I'm studying economics and my roommate is studying biology and has work experience in biofuels. Would you be able to send me your model/spreadsheet? If so my email is em_green at berkeley dot e d u. Thanks!

Of course its not, but ensuring that tax rates are Pareto Efficient sure is a legitimate goal of government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficient

Not if the people are too afraid about losing their job to spend their tax cuts on a new car, computer, etc. which is how it is currently looking. Also, tax cuts will never be 100% efficient because not all of the cuts will be spent in a useful time frame. They take a couple of months to propagate their way through the govt bureaucracy and into peoples' bank accounts.

Interestingly enough, with reference to that 5% of GDP military spending is the fact the the US military spending is only 4% of GDP. Although this doesn't count the whole Iraq war debacle, the point is that while we do spend a large amount of money on military, our economy is so damn big that proportionally we're fine.

Regardless of whether or not Hamas and other Arab states mean the "no live jew" rhetoric, I think in light of the Holocaust Israel feels as if they have to take such rhetoric seriously. I mean, after what happened in WW2, its easy to see why they might be a tad on edge when someone raises the specter of extermination.