Greece Struggling to Hold On, David Friedman on Global Warming, and Obama's Plan to Fund New Jobs Bill

I have a post on the American Thinker today highlighting the newest innovation in GSEs aka corporate and union payoffs, the Infrastructure Bank.  Here is an excerpt:

The night after a verbal trashing on his handling of the economy from the GOP presidential debate, President Obama took the stage in a Joint Session of Congress to reveal a new jobs initiative aimed at putting "Americans back to work."
Gee, where have we heard this before?
Included in this jobs plan rests the holy grail of liberal spending: an Infrastructure Bank. According to the teleprompter-in-chief, the Bank will provide "billions" to improve our roads, bridges, ports, and electric grids.
Easy translation: "We are going to throw more money at the economy and hope it works.  Please believe in Keynesianism one more time."

More on this in a bit.  First I want to point out this small disturbance in the Euro crisis:

Yet some people just can't face the truth:

LONDON (Dow Jones)--Greece's creditors are expected to give the thumbs-up for the disbursement of the next tranche of its 2010 bailout pact later this month after the Greek government announced new taxes to cover a EUR2 billion revenue shortfall, said two senior International Monetary Fund officials familiar with the matter.

The IMF officials, who have direct knowledge of the talks, warned, however, that this was Greece's last chance and that the scheduled December installment would be more difficult to arrange unless budget targets are met.

The Greek government and its so-called troika of creditors--the IMF, European Union and European Central Bank--are scheduled to meet again this week to discuss the payout of the next EUR8 billion tranche amid worries in financial markets that Greek austerity steps so far haven't met the troika's conditions.

It's fascinating to watch such stupidity and fiscal chaos unfold right before your eyes.  The CNBC talking heads sure have their work cut out for them over the next few days.

The real gist of this post is going to center around a recent posting by David Friedman on global warming that if fittingly titled  "What is Wrong with Global Warming Anyway?"  The main point:

The usual argument to show that an increase in global temperatures by a few degrees centigrade over the next century would be a catastrophe, or at least a very bad thing, consists of pointing out specific bad effects: rising  sea level increasing the risk of flooding in very low lying areas, rising temperature making particular areas less suited to growing the crops they now grow. But an increase in global temperature would also have good effects, as should be obvious to anyone who has ever spent a winter in Chicago, not to mention Alaska or Siberia. The question is not whether there are any bad effects but whether there are net bad effects, whether the increased risk of flooding in Bangladesh does or does not outweigh the opening of a sea route north of Asia and the increase in the habitable area of Canada and Siberia.

The answer, I think, is that nobody knows if the net effects would be good or bad, and probably nobody can know. We are talking, after all, about effects across the world over a century. How accurately could somebody in 1900 have predicted what would matter to human life in 2000? What reason do we have to think we can do better?

Friedman brings up a good point on the beneficial effects of global warming.  Non-habitable places could potentially be made habitable and prime for agriculture.  Why is this seen as such a bad thing when human nature has a way of adapting to trends that take centuries to manifest themselves?  The more important point Friedman makes is that all of the measuring of net good/bad effects of global warming is essentially arbitrary and shouldn't be used as an excuse for the government to enforce such commerce crushing proposals like a carbon tax.  I have already discussed elsewhere the best solution for climate change and it certainly doesn't rely on politicians giving out subsidies to "green energy" companies that will finance their next election.  This of course assumes they don't go bankrupt first.

Speaking of taxation, looks like Obama finally found a way to pay for his new jobs bill.  Soak the rich of course!  Via Daily Caller:

The Obama administration is asking Congress to raise taxes by $467 billion over 10 years to pay for the President’s one-year $447 billion stimulus, which he announced during a speech Thursday before a joint session of Congress.

This is too easy: "the private sector isn't spending money, I want to take it and spend it myself to ensure that the unemployment rates lowers slightly before election day."

Shit, since I am looking for a job I should probably just apply for the position of TOTUS (Teleprompter of the United States).