V8 Ford

Didn't Ford also post a Q3 profit last year before losses in Q4 due to R&D resulted in a net loss on the fiscal year? This is still a big jump over the quarterly profit from last year in worse market conditions, so well done Ford.

Easier solution: 1. Pick up and economics textbook 2. Look up short run open economy model 3. Look up effects of government spending 4. No change in output or unemployment Just because the government is creating jobs somewhere, doesn't mean they're being lost elsewhere as a result of the same policy. I'm kind of disappointed that people had to actually wait for data to come out before they questioned the validity of this policy as a stimulative effort.

If he wanted to raise net exports he wouldn't have reduced them by 1.5 trillion dollars through deficit spending. Of course that presumes subterfuge rather than incompetence.

Yes, this is correct. In a purely competitive market wages would be reduced to equilibrium levels accross the board because only companies with the minimum marginal costs survives. Monopoly conditions was a response to what I took as an allegation that a company could arbitrarily reduce wages, which would only be plausible under monopoly conditions or close to them. In a purely competitive market, all similar employees get paid the same in all markets because that is the only possible condition. A firm cannot lower wages because no one would work for them and a union cannot raise wages because the firm would go out of business. In a monopolistic or monopsonistic market, the firm chooses the outcome that maximizes it's welfare because it can. A firm can set wages to maximize its welfare and a union can do the same because there are no competitive forces. This is the one case where a union can improve overall welfare to society because it generally results in more employment and higher wages. Game theory arises from a case where neither pure competition or pure monopoly exists. A player has more than one viable strategy and a player cannot arbitrailly maximize welfare due to competitive forces. That's actually an example of an economic game. A strike would be an appropirate response to a threat of wage reduction. Of course, in a market with sufficient competition, the loss of revenue and the ability of employees to tranfer would be enough of a threat to prevent employers from dropping salary below equilibrium-this is what my entire previous post was about, a monopoly is the only condition where an employer can just arbitrarily reduce wages; there, the threat of a strike would be a necessity to combat The same thing applies to unions though. In a market with sufficient competition a union would have difficulty demanding above equilibrium wages for the same reason. This is just a simple case though. There are factors, like the cost of searching for a new job or the cost of hiring that may make forcing lower than equilibrium wages (employer) or higher than equilibrium wages (Union) a Nash equilibrium. That's actually incorrect. Efficiency requires that people are able to optimize their welfare given their initial endowments Slavery places a cap on welfare and is therefore inherently inefficient. IIRC, this idea of economic efficiency was used by abolitionists and damaged the efforts of some early economists. Supposedly Thomas Carlyle came up with the term "The Dismal Science" because economics treated people as equal points rather than recognizing social superiors and inferiors.

This is flawed for several reasons. The first is that it assumes a monopolistic employer, and even then the assumptions aren't necessarily correct. That isn't the case for most employers. For non-monopolies, competition exists for both labor market and consumer market. If you don't want to pay your employees they can go elsewhere. While monopolies can force lower wages in your example, the same is true of unions. Single employers are the only case were unions can wield market power without government assistance, and are the only case were unions improve welfare to society. In a real case with some degree of competition, this doesn't satisfy Nash equilibrium. If the employer can stay in business without lowering wages, this in an incredulous threat. Causing a strike is a lose-lose situation. The employer loses revenue, the workers lose wages. Not demanding the pay cuts results in positive utility for both the workers and the employer. The only time might not matter is if the employer is a monpoly and could survive the strike. This is also true if workers are making above equilibrium wages. They would strike and try to keep their high wages, and potentially lose their job and have to find work at equilibrium wages, or they could accept the paycut and not have to worry about unemployment with no upside. Accepting the paycut is the dominant strategy, that's the one that satisfies nash equilibrium. The final problem is that schelps are part of society to. If unions take above equilibrium wages, they divide it among fewer workers and they transfer welfare, not from the employer to themselves, but from the unemployed to themselves. If you're dealing with a situation where a company could use non-union workers to replace union workers 1. gov't regulations need to be in place to keep the union alive, since the union cannot exist with competition in the labor market 2. the union is transferring an extensive amount of welfare from society to itself. edit: the employer is going to be producing fewer goods and making less money with a union, so I guess there is a transfer of welfare from the employer to the union, I guess less profits seems trivial compared to lower employment.

Yup. Of the former American presidents to get the peace prize, Roosevelt got the noble peace prize for negotiating an end to a war. Woodrow Wilson got the peace prize for founding the league of nations. When I pointed this out to my Italian grandparents they sarcastically suggested that I should give it to Bush instead. I guess that's what this is really about so :shrug: . If Americans can't determine the difference between performance and public lauding by political sympathetics they've got bigger problems that determining the validity of a peace award.

Scalia's right, of course instead of doing the correct thing and going to the proper authorities to correct an injustice, let's do the American thing and shoot the messenger. It's called enforcing the law. You see, in the US we elect people to the legislative bodies to codify our moral beliefs into law. Then those charged with violating it have to go before the judicial authorities to determine if they violated it. The system is broken when appointed judicial officials take it upon themselves to determine what is moral, and effectively legislate law. When this has happened we've wound up with judges overstepping their boundries and doing stupid things, like making abortion a constitutional right, banning the death penalty and making the right to own slavery a constitutionally protected right. Scalia has taken the correct position that the Federal government has no jurisdiction; they don't, this is a state matter. The correct response to this would be for the state officials to fix the obvious problem of allowing people to prove their innocence so this doesn't happen again. What this dilweed blogger wants is for the Supreme court to rewrite Federal law and make the Federal government an appelate court for state laws in order to correct a single injustice.

The testing probably isn't different enough to cause a 500% difference in results Under Euro testing the GTI makes 0.024 g/km, 1/10th that of the duratorque Fiesta under Euro testing and half of the Super Duty US numbers. It's not like the fiesta is a clean car and its emissions were exaggerated by the Euro testing cycle http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/search/ve...ls.asp?id=18868

Fiesta Econetic 1.6L Duratorque 0.192 g/km = .3072 g/mi http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/search/ve...ls.asp?id=15973 Fiesta Econetic 1.4 Duratorque 0.203 g/km = 0.3248 g/mi http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/search/ve...ls.asp?id=15980 08 Superduty 6.4L Powerstroke <.07 g/mi http://www.pickuptrucks.com/html/news/eart...rd07/page1.html Granted, the testing standards probably aren't identical but the results aren't surprising considering the super duty's emmision system and the Fiesta's lack thereof.

Remember, this program was invented by "environmentalists" that would rather have you drive a Fiesta that puts out more NOx than a Super Duty and was implemented by "economists" that think the solution to the recession is to borrow 1.5 trillion dollars/year from China

I'd be very interested to see how they support this. Half of Bernenke's job is to put a smiley face on economic conditions, so I can understand it from him. The literature put out by the administration that suggests a stimulus effect from spending uses a Closed Economy model; IE, it's crap since the real world (Open Economy) isn't affected by government spending. The bailout of the auto companies was a waste of time and money: they went bankrupt anyway. The effect on suppliers won't be felt until October when all the plants get shut down. The bailout of financial institutions probably would have been necessary 50 years ago. The effects from before the bailout were a lot less than would have been expected- I suspect that computerized transactions minimized the damage. Since the bailout already happened there's no way to tell it's effects without tons of data I don't have. Bush didn't do anything to destroy the economy and Obama isn't doing much to stimulate it. The biggest effect they both had was racking up national debt and Obama's doing his best to outdo Bush by the time his first term ends The only evidence of government spending affecting output is WWII, and it still has no bearing on the current economy. Labor Supply increased in WWII because people that never would have been working before (Rosie the Riveter) joined the war effort. That increases output regardless of government spending and won't happen today. The other problem is that the US Economy in WWII can't be described as an Open Economy. Uncertainty about the War and massive debts racked up by the government prevented foreigners from buying US bonds (which is why the US had to run massive war bonds campaigns). When that happens, you no longer live in an Open Economy and Government Spending can increase output.

With Nasser at the helm, Tata may have found somewhere to unload Jag and Land Rover.

So, is "lightweight technology" is just marketing jargon for no radio and no sound deadening?

I don't know why you're picking on fox on that account. All three cable networks run the same format: news events in daytime, commentary at all other times. As I understand it, Fair and Balanced used to mean that they'd bring in guests from both sides in the commentary section. I don't watch that often so I can't testify to how well they live up to their motto.

Some ridicoulous percentage of Americans (33%?) thought 9/11 was an inside job in a similar poll. Democrats weighted the conspiracy option much more greatly than Republicans. Every country has a bottom 20th percentile and it shows up some where; politics only exasterbates the lunacy.

For me, the headlines on my homepage and espn. Probably similar for most Americans. Most of what news channels do isn't news, it's comentary and in that regard I don't this poll is fair because the quality varies greatly from show to show. Some commentators just put out their opinions as facts, other guys actually bring in other people with different viewpoints, even if all they do is argue with them.

That's strange about the lack of structure near the back, considering that the 90's station wagons used to have fold down rear facing seats in the trunk. I guess I never thought about that when I was a kid and used to fight with my friends over who got to sit in the back.

I like it, and since the Flex is supposed to be he anti-minivan it makes sense. Besides, the Explorer that you got the idea from has driven more moms to soccer games than all other cars combined. Wasn't that the whole point of SUV's? They take you and your family to the grocery store, but they're not minivans, station wagons or some other lame form of transportation.

From his silence I presume the "blackberry sized gap" doesn't let in any light.

Wow, a car that both Consumer Reports and Jeremy Clarkson hate. It must be awful for polar opposites to agree.

Ford NA isn't run by Bob Lutz, which means that Ford isn't going to build cars for auto enthusiasts just for the hell of it. The EB V6 is in the Taurus and the Flex because it's already in their Lincoln platform mates, which need that power to compete. The MKZ probably isn't going to get it because Ford isn't going to challenge low volume high performance luxury cars in its current state, and the Fusion won't get it unless the MKZ does.

I never said it would be a mess, only that it is less efficient than private alternative, as with anything else. Even a subsidy is less efficient just because it results in non-equilibrium output. Does that invalidate arguments for universal health coverage? No, only claims that it would be more efficient than the alternative. I don't think universal health care is something like education, security forces, treasury, etc that will have far reaching benefits in excess of its costs. Again, that doesn't invalidate arguments for universal health coverage, only claims that it would have far reaching benefits that would make its implementation economically advantageous. As a welfare program, I can't argue with it. I may disagree with it on my conservative principals, that's just my opinion and has no more weight than the opinions that call for welfare programs. It will deliver what it promises, albeit with some costs. The only question I have towards it is if universal healthcare is indeed the most effective welfare program in light of other problems. I do have several problems with the plan. As I understand it, its similar to what Massachusetts has: government welfare provides payments for health care for people that are unable to afford health insurance and requires those that can afford it do be covered. There are several problems with this. The first problem is it does not address inefficiencies in the system that cause healthcare to be expensive- it does not address the problems of high malpractice insurance and it does not address the high costs from having health care provided through one's employer. It simply patches over the problems with more money, as if the additional trillion they're already spending isn't enough. This is the second problem, they're already spending a hell of a lot of money without providing healthcare to millions of people. And no one has done anything about social security and Medicare. I also suspect that cost analysis underestimates the increases in healthcare costs that will come from artificially increasing demand, the US gov already underestimated the increases that came from implementing Medicare and Medicaid..

The government is intentionally providing a non-equilibrium output, by definition it is intentionally being inefficient. If the government taking over the majority of an industry and running it non profit made things more efficient, everything should be taken over and run non-profit. And the Soviet Union would have won the cold war. And we'd have to rewrite some fundamental and well established principals of macroeconomics concerning incentives and the efficiency of equilibrium output. Efficiency is not a consideration. That doesn't make it wrong or bad, only inefficient.

People screw up the Lincoln names because they haven't memorized them yet, not because they make less sense than their rivals. It's not like a random person sees a BMW seven and deduces that it must be the seven by eliminating BMW's four smaller numerically named cars. Lexus names make just as much sense as Lincoln's and no one seems to screw those up- like BMW and Mercedes, their cars have been on the market longer and people that care know the names of the cars.

It's not about the quality of the people, its about the intentions and incentives. A private company has to stay afloat and must provide equilibrium or near equilibrium output. The government run program doesn't have those kind of budget constrains and is trying to provide a non-equilibrium output. The government run program is intentionally and inherently less efficient, but that's not its purpose.