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TARP

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The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes , Political Humor & Satire Blog , The Daily Show on Facebook ( Link, in case the video above does not play ) In the video above, the Daily Show slams the Fed for giving banks $7.7 trillion in secret. This is a gross misrepresentation that started with a shoddy Bloomberg story and was later echoed elsewhere in the Blogosphere. Simply put, the Fed did not lend anywhere near $7.7 trillion . It was closer to $2 Trillion. Secondly, this total was widely publicized at the time. (What was kept secret was the details about which banks got funds and how much. Everyone knew the details were not being disclosed, and some politicians were quite vocal asking for the details.) The Fed responded to Bloomberg's article, and Bloomberg says they "stand by their reporting", but the details of their clarification show that they were at least guilty of writing in a way that readers might easily be misled. As much as I woul...
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Country Shares of World GDP

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Here's a chart of world GDP, broken down by country share. ( HT: Carpe Diem ). Careful with the x-axis, it is not at all to scale! The basic idea is that India and China had large shares pre-industrial revolution, after which Europe rose. The U.S. shoots up, to over 40% of world GDP by 1950. Then, Japan begins to grow in the 1960s, and China in the 1980s. Suppose countries end up with GDPs proportionate to their populations. What would that picture look like? I've added a bar to the right, showing the break-down of world-population. Look at the U.S. squished down, with less that 400 million out of a world population of over 7,000 million. The biggest change is in the previously un-noticed 'rest of the world". If Africa, the Middle East and so on moved toward freedom, that could be the story of the century.  What if they do not? Here's a chart with a new assumption. Suppose the "rest-of-world" does not increase its relative s...
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Not-so-Rare Earths

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News reports say that China -- supplier of over 95% of the world's "rare earths" -- is curtailing these exports. Since rare earths are used in devices that have military uses, this got me wondering if China is simply the cheapest producer or if it actually has a lock on geological deposits. Via the Wikipedia , I found detailed information in a USGS report (2010-5220 ). Most rare earths are in more abundant supply than gold, platinum, silver or mercury. Indeed, their average concentration in the earth's crust is higher than copper. However rare-earths are more dispersed than copper, so areas with high concentrations -- making mining economical -- are more rare. Still, they have been mined all over the world. "Until 1948, most of the world's rare earths were sourced from placer sand deposits in India and Brazil....Through the 1950s, South Africa took the status as the world's rare earth source. Through the 1960s until the 1980s, the Mountain Pass ...
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