The Wash Post’s Ezra Klein interviewed the CEO of Kaiser Permanente and found massive differences when looking at health care costs in the US and other countries.
Yes, it’s not even close.

Gee, I wonder why we’re going bankrupt…
And those are just 3 graphs! Want to see the other 19? Click here to download the whole report [...]

I’ve been genuinely intrigued at how much fiction and reality have been intersecting recently.
See, there’s this film called MOON and it follows the story of a guy working on the far side of the moon who figures out that there’s a lot more to his mission than collecting the natural resource Helium-3. It’s a [...]

I thought it was a joke when I first heard about it, but “Seasteading” is a serious idea, it’s being backed by Milton Friedman’s grandson and they’ve apparently already raised more than a half a million dollars to realize their dream of building communities…on the sea!
Here’s more from Reason:
Patri Friedman was doing all right himself, [...]

There’s been a lot of talk about this little virus the past couple days, so I figured it might be helpful to connect everybody with some more stories that could help you sort the wheat from the chaff.
And away we go…

Officials in Mexico are scrambling to find the source of the infection, and it points [...]

A Smithfield Foods farm could be linked to the outbreak.
Grist has more…
Is Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer, linked to the outbreak? Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carroll, raise 950,000 [...]

“Venezuela is a country whose defense budget is probably 1/600th of the United States’. They own Citgo. It’s unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States. I don’t think anybody can find any evidence that [...]

Quite a nice surprise on this holiday weekend.
From ABC:
A senior US official tells me that President Barack Obama approved a recommendation by Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen to dispatch special forces to the US scene on Friday.
These special forces were authorized to take action “in extremis” against the [...]

Great little piece about the ridiculousness of Fox News, Olbermann, et al…
Fair warning, there’s a little bit of cursing in this.

We win!
*shudder*
(h/t: Sully)

One silver lining to the economic crisis? We’re exporting more and importing less.
From The Census Bureau:
February exports of $126.8 billion and imports of $152.7 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $26.0 billion, down from $36.2 billion in January, revised.
February exports were $2.0 billion more than January exports of $124.7 billion. February [...]

And after the AIG mess, I say we give it to him. How we allowed one company to take down the entire system still feels unreal to me. How on earth could we allow that to go down? Crazy, crazy, crazy.
But it did happen and we are suffering massive fallout as a result, so we [...]

You knew the time would come when the dollar would fall out of favor, but did you think it would happen this fast?
Actually, it’s not just the dollar that we’re talking about here. What China is proposing is leveling the playing field and including all world currencies in the reserve basket, which now only includes [...]

What would happen if the dollar wasn’t the world’s reserve currency?
Well, we may just find out if an U.N. panel has its way.
From Reuters:
Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts, told a Reuters Funds Summit in Luxembourg that the proposal was to create something like the old Ecu, or European currency [...]

Perhaps one of the reasons why the administration didn’t think they could challenge the bonuses in the first place?
From the Guardian…
The company said it was legally obliged to pay traders $165m (£118m) in “guaranteed” bonuses, despite the near collapse of the insurer last September and its subsequent $173bn bailout by US taxpayers. Staff at the [...]

Our trade deficit is out of control, and in this video Warren Buffett explains why that’s so dangerous.

I remember a discussion I had recently on this blog where I said that consumer spending drove this economy. Somebody disagreed and said our economy is based on making things. Well, that’s obviously not true if our trade [...]

In Sri Lanka…

This has to be one of the most terrifying and haunting images I’ve ever seen. It takes a tragic place right alongside the Vietnamese children who are running down the road near Trang Bang after they got hit with napalm.
(credit: Telegraph)

As the economy goes cliff diving, the effects are being felt around the world.
From NY Times:
In its new report, prepared for a meeting next week of finance ministers from the 20 industrialized and large developing countries, the World Bank warned that the financial disruptions are all but certain to overwhelm the ability of institutions like [...]

“We are in the midst of a phase of history in which nations will be redefined and their futures fundamentally altered.”
- Rupert Murdoch talks about the current state of the global economy in an internal memo
Anybody willing to bet against Murdoch’s prediction?
And do you think these futures will be better or worse?
Discuss.

Following up on his campaign promise to have a surge-like push in Afghanistan to see if it could help the country.
From Fox News:
“This reinforcement will contribute to the security of the Afghan people and to stability in Afghanistan,” Obama said in a statement. “I recognize the extraordinary strain that this deployment places on our troops [...]

Some pretty depressing numbers.
GDP dropping by 12%+ in Japan because nobody’s buying their exports.
Yikes.

Question…who is doing well?
Also, if this truly is a global economy and we’re all connected now, then how will we be able to pull ourselves back out of this if nobody’s buying what we’re selling either?

NBC reports…

As I scan the wires I do get a sense that people all across the globe are genuinely inspired that Obama has become President.
What’s your take on it?