Category Archives: Business

Business, Political Commentary, Space

Recognizing Reality

Astrium has officially shelved its nutty suborbital project:

“The world economic situation has created a difficult near term environment in which to finalise ongoing discussions with investors. Astrium is to temporarily slow down the technical activities focusing on core risk mitigation for the project. The [space jet] team achieved impressive results in the pre-development phase particularly in the field of propulsion technology. Astrium sees suborbital flight as a promising area because of the emerging space tourism market.”

They had no sensible business case even in a booming economy. There was never any way that a vehicle with a billion-dollar development cost was going to compete with the other players.

Unless, of course, they were hoping to pull a Concorde, and have the taxpayers pick up the tab.

[Update a while later]

More thoughts from Doug Messier, with a roundup of the competition.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Downsizing?

14 Comments

There may be a new trend in the Midwest:

Temporary Mayor Michael Brown made the off-the-cuff suggestion Friday in response to a question at a Rotary Club of Flint luncheon about the thousands of empty houses in Flint.

Brown said that as more people abandon homes, eating away at the city’s tax base and creating more blight, the city might need to examine “shutting down quadrants of the city where we (wouldn’t) provide services.”

He did not define what that could mean — bulldozing abandoned areas, simply leaving the vacant homes to rot or some other idea entirely.

Presumably, those areas would go back under the jurisdiction of the county, like other unincorporated areas, including policing by the Sheriff rather than city police.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Problem Is Bigger Than Them

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Jim Manzi has some useful thoughts:

Commentators on both the Left and Right seem to think that if only we could get the right person to take over these companies and clean up the financial mess, everything would be OK. All it takes is somebody competent and honest, because the answers are so obvious. A rotating series of scapegoats has been created. Paulson? Fool. Geithner? Moron. Liddy? Stooge. It’s funny how their idiocy didn’t seem to surface so much in their prior careers.

Maybe the issue isn’t with the men we’ve selected, but with the problem we’ve asked them to address. Some problems don’t have solutions. The American electorate seems to be intent on re-learning the lesson that how to effectively manage socialized means of production is one of them. The tuition for this course tends to be pretty steep.

I’m sure that Liddy is deeply regetting that he took the job, particularly given the (lack of) financial compensation. The notion that a government, or any one person, is smart enough to run an economy is what Hayek called the fatal conceit.

[Update early evening]

James Pethokoukis:

It’s cliché to say there’s a lot of blame but going around — but there is a lot of blame to go around.

Everywhere you turn in this mess, you can find government right there. To say this is a private-sector failure is ridiculous. It’s like Forrest Gump, where he keeps showing up at historic moments. Everywhere you look in this mess, again and again, you see government.

The most infuriating thing about these clowns, both in Washington and the press, is how a non-existent free market and “deregulation” keeps getting falsely blamed for this as an excuse for bigger government and more regulation.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Making Orwell Proud

32 Comments

Some examples from VDH:

Guantanamo is still open, but there are no longer “enemy combatants” there (Perhaps the name of the camp can be changed next?). The old campaign snicker that a naïve McCain really believed that a then-stronger economy is “fundamentally sound” is now the new Obama gospel about a far weaker one. There are to be no more earmarks in spite of 8,000-plus new ones. A $3.6 trillion-dollar budget is proof of commitment to financial responsibility; the remedy of Bush’s borrowing profligacy is to increase the deficit from $500 billion to $1.7 trillion. Bush’s signing statements bad; Obama’s signing statements good. An end to lobbyists in an administration ensure there are over ten; the highest ethical standards mean the nominations of Daschle, Richardson, etc. The changing meaning of words really does trump memory and reality itself.

Not to mention what a disaster that it would be to make health insurance benefits taxable, which was one of the many mendacious ways by which they slithered into the White House, except that now, maybe it’s not such a bad idea:

Now that Mr. Obama has begun the health debate, several advisers say that while he will not propose changing the tax-free status of employee health benefits, neither will he oppose it if Congress does so.

Let me translate: “Yes, I don’t want to take responsibility for it, because even my lapdogs in the media might find that too much hypocrisy to stomach after all my demagoguery on the issue last fall, but I’ll sign the bill when it gets to my desk, so go for it.”

Well, actually, I’m not sure that it would make Orwell proud. More likely sad at his own prescience.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

The Country Is In The Very Best Of Hands

3 Comments

Congressman on the space committee, meet the real space program:

At one point he raised a few eyebrows when he said America’s position in space depended “particularly on funding from the US Congress. Only governments can really afford space.” That was a rather odd comment given the number of people in the room who do business in, and make money from, space, without relying on the Congress for funding. Asked about that comment in the Q&A session that followed his speech, he amended his comments somewhat. “Fundamental research has to come out of the government and then our private sector will partner with us as a government to improve it and make it more ubiquitous, so to speak.”

Later in the Q&A came the topic that is almost inevitable in any discussion of commercial space policy in the US these days: export control, or ITAR. “Can you comment about your thought on ITAR and the ability for US companies to sell products overseas?” someone asked. Griffith had a blank look on his face. The questioner, and others in the audience, repeated and elaborated on the question: you know, ITAR, export control restrictions, that sort of thing? “Is that a ‘Buy America’?” he asked. “I’m not quite sure.”

Sigh…

Well, at least, given that he’s completely innocent of the issue, he might be amenable to being persuaded into a sensible position on it. I’d rather have someone who is educable than someone who is damned sure of the wrong answer.