Guilty feeling ?

Un syndrome récurrent sur lequel les psychothérapeutes devraient se pencher un jour: comme George Soros avant lui, le richissime Bill Gates culpabilise et vire à gauche :

(...) In a system of capitalism, as people's wealth rises, the financial incentive to serve them rises. As their wealth falls, the financial incentive to serve them falls, until it becomes zero. We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well. (...)
The challenge here is to design a system where market incentives, including profits and recognition, drive those principles to do more for the poor.
I like to call this idea creative capitalism, an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world's inequities. (...)

Ou comment faire revenir l'Etat par la petite porte...

Cartographie de la censure étatique sur internet. C'est probablement le Maroc qui nous offre le cas le plus grotesque:

In August 2006, Google Earth has also been added to the list of censored major websites by Maroc Telecom without giving any justification for it. However, and according to the BBC, Google Earth was blocked "so that people cannot look from above into the grounds of the king's sumptuous royal palaces."

L'échec du Protocole de Tokyo est incontestable. Et cette fois, il sera difficile de revenir en arrière:

The presentation of Kyoto as the only course of action has raised the political price of admitting its defects, not least because it would mean admitting that the non-signatories may have been right in practice, whatever their motives. Its advocates invested emotional as well as political capital in the process, making it difficult to contemplate the idea that it is fatally flawed. Its narrow focus on mitigating the emission of greenhouse gases (in which it has failed) has created a taboo on discussing other approaches, in particular, adaptation to climate change. Failure to adapt will cost the poor and vulnerable the most.
For the past fifteen years, it has given the concerned public an illusion of effective action, tranquillising political concern. This has been, perhaps, its most damaging legacy.

Chanson du Québec

Mes Aïeux - Dégénération

Ton arrière-arrière-grand-père, il a défriché la terre
Ton arrière-grand-père, il a labouré la terre
Et pi ton grand-père a rentabilisé la terre
pis ton père, il l’a vendu pour devenir fonctionnaire

Et pi toé mon p’tit gars, tu sais pu c’que tu vas faire
Dans ton p’tit trois et d’mi ben trop cher, frète en hiver
Il te vient des envies de dev’nir propriétaire
Et tu rêves la nuit d’avoir ton petit lopin d’terre

Ton arrière-arrière-grand-mère, elle a eu quatorze enfants
ton arrière-grand-mère en a eu quasiment autant
Et pi ta grand-mère en a eu trois c’tait suffisant
pis ta mère en voulait pas, toi t’étais un accident

Et pi toé ma p’tite fille, tu changes de partenaires tout l’temps
Quand tu fais des conn’ries, tu t’en sauves en avortant
Mais y’a des matins, tu te réveilles en pleurant
Quand tu rêves la nuit d’une grande table entourées d’enfants

Ton arrière-arrière-grand-père, y’a vécu la grosse misère
Ton arrière-grand-père, il ramassait les cents noires
Et pi ton grand-père, miracle, y’est devenu millionnaire
Ton père en a hérité, il l’a tout mit dans ses réers

Et pi toé p’tite jeunesse tu doé ton cul au ministère
Pas moyen d’avoir un prêt dans une institution bancaire
Pour calmer tes envies de hold-uper la caissière
tu lis des livres qui parlent de simplicité volontaire

Tes arrières-arrières-grands-parents ils savaient comment fêter
Tes arrières-grands-parents ça swingnaient fort dans les veillées
Pis tes grands-parents ont connu l’époque yé-yé
Tes parents c’tait les discos c’est là qu’ils se sont rencontrés

Et pi toé mon ami qu’est-ce que tu fais de ta soirée
Éteins donc ta T.V. faut pas rester encabané
Heureusement que dans vie certaines choses refusent de changer
Enfiles tes plus beaux habits car nous allons ce soir danser

Dans la liste des cadeaux de fin d'année: Globalization de Donald J. Boudreaux.

Dans la série "Il faut avoir les moyens pour être socialiste", le cas du français Jean-Pierre Chvènement:

Le fondateur du MRC, ancien député-maire de Belfort, bénéficie en effet de deux appartements à loyer modéré, l'un dans sa ville et l'autree dans la capitale.

Aurait-on atteint un "pic pétrolier" ?

Pas vraiment :

(...) The world produces about 85 million barrels of oil a day, according to the International Energy Agency. Global energy demand is expected to rise 55% from 2005-2030. Peak oil theories abound that new discoveries are not keeping up with oil usage. But it's significant that the new demand also is fostering big new discoveries, largely from the very countries where demand is growing most. (...)

Aux-Etats-Unis, les riches ne paient pas moins d'impôts qu'avant. Bien au contraire :

(...) it is true that the top earners have increased their share of total income. Yet, as the nearby table shows, the rich showed more rapid gains in reported income shares in the 1990s than in the first half of this decade. The share of the richest 1% jumped to 20.8% of total income in 2000, from 14% in 1990, but increased only slightly to 21.2% in 2005. (...) By this measure, the Clinton years were far worse for "inequality." Notably, however, the share of taxes paid by the top 1% has kept climbing this decade -- to 39.4% in 2005, from 37.4% in 2000. The share paid by the top 5% has increased even more rapidly. In other words, despite the tax reductions of 2001 and 2003, the rich saw their share of taxes paid rise at a faster rate than their share of income.

Auto

Les Indiens en bonne place pour la reprise du constructeur automobile Jaguar.

Climat

Pour bien se vendre, un journal ne doit pas faire dans la nuance :
Réchauffement = Apocalypse.

Une bourse d'options climatiques ?

Une économie forte passe par une fiscalité et des services publics réduits.
La preuve par... Sim City:

Banal though it may be, I remember playing SimCity 2000 as a teenager on my computer. Every time I tried to set up a high-tax, high-service economy within my city, my economy, followed by the city itself, stagnated.

Democracy is not the goal :

Democracy is not what people want. Democracy is not the cause of prosperity. Freedom (of speech, religion, the press, and yes, TRADE) is the cause of prosperity and frankly, prosperity and freedom is what people want.

Democracy is not freedom; democracy is the tyranny of the majority. When the majority is free to oppress the minority, nobody is free, because in some aspect of their life, everybody is a minority.

La religion écologique.

Brésil

Le Sénat brésilien refuse le renouvellement d'une taxe sur les transactions financières qui représentait 10% des revenus de l'Etat.

Northern Rock

Velléités de nationalisation en Grande-Bretagne:

The UK government is out of practice when it comes to nationalisation. For the past 20 years, the trend has been to sell off, rather than acquire assets.
The government is drawing up plans to nationalise Northern Rock, the stricken UK bank which yesterday announced the immediate departure of chief executive Adam Applegarth, as uncertainty surrounding its future mounted.
Nationalisation is looking like an increasingly realistic proposition for the bank, as the number of its potential buyers has diminished.
"There are people looking at this in great detail," admitted one government official yesterday. "But in practice, something like this hasn't really happened before, so precedent is no guide."

Vénézuela: il faut avoir les moyens pour être un vrai socialiste...

Journalistes : deux poids, deux mesures

Drôle de médias: la destruction de radars de vitesse est assimilée au terrorisme, le massacre de civils innocents est mis sur le compte d'un anodin acte de rébellion.

Economie

Bien choisir l'université de ses enfants ? Visitez son département Economie :

In looking at colleges for my daughter, one of the things I do is to drop into the economics department and get into a conversation with one of the professors. Part of the reason is that "economist" is in some ways an ethnicity--I have things in common with other economists that I don't have in common with most other people, making it easier to talk with them and get them to talk with me.
A second reason is that I want to know how tolerant the college's culture is of intellectual diversity. Economics as a science is neither right wing nor left wing--there have been good economists who were socialists, good economists who were extreme libertarians. But it is, in a very real sense, its own ideology.
It is almost impossible to be a good economist and accept traditional conservative arguments against free trade--because those arguments depend on not understanding economic ideas worked out nearly two hundred years ago. It is almost impossible to be a good economist and accept common left wing rhetoric about "people not profits" or the equivalent--because a good economist knows that the argument on the other side isn't about profits as an end in themselves but about profits as part of a signaling system that results in benefits for people. (...)

Climat

L'activité humaine n'est pas la source principale du réchauffement climatique, loin s'en faut.

La conférence de Bali travaille sur des données dépassées :

Three Stages of Knowledge and the IPCC

Our scientific understanding of global warming has gone through three stages:

1985–2003

Old ice core data led us to strongly suspect that CO₂ causes global warming.

2003–2007

New ice core data eliminated previous reason for suspecting CO₂. No evidence to suspect or exonerate CO₂.

From Aug 2007

Know for sure that greenhouse is not causing global warming. CO₂ no longer a suspect.

The IPCC 2007 report (the latest and greatest from the IPCC) is based on all scientific literature up to mid 2006. The Bali Conference is the bureaucratic response to that report. Too bad that the data has changed since then!