Is it me or are there more disasters in the US?

Is it just me, or do you also think the number of major natural disasters is increasing each year?  Disasters make news.  Are they just being over-hyped by the onslaught of 24/7 reporting?

The U.S. government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) actually maintains a website that answers this question.   NOAA’s list of billion dollar weather and climate disasters goes back to 1980 and records the date, place, deaths and total cost.  Since 1980 there have been 212 disasters, which NOAA calculates have a combined cost of over US$ 1.2 trillion. Continue reading

Why is corruption so costly?

The news is currently filled with stories of corruption.  A global group of media outlets just broke the story of secret offshore bank accounts in Panama, which suggests widespread corruption in the Russian government and elsewhere. For months, stories of the Brazilian government’s bribery scandal have filled the news. Other headline-grabbing events include Malaysia’s prime minister allegedly siphoning almost a billion dollars from a state development fund. Continue reading

Jeb Bush promises 4% growth. Could ‘President Bush III’ deliver?

Jeb Bush recently announced his candidacy for president by declaring that “our country is on a very bad course” and promised to fix this with the striking promise of “4% growth, and the 19 million new jobs that come with it.”

The former governor stated in his speech that he grew the Florida economy by that much every year during his two terms in office. Can he deliver the same growth in gross domestic product (GDP) for the entire US if elected? Continue reading