We have heard it many times: raising minimum wage creates unemployment. Just like introducing price controls creates food shortages or implementing rent control creates housing deficits.

Gateway Pundit reports on the disastrous effect of the multiple increases in the minimum wage on teenage unemployment rate in the US. According to the The Wall Street Journal:

There’s plenty of competition, but our vote for the recent act of Congress that has caused the most economic hardship goes to the May 2007 law raising the minimum wage in three stages to $7.25 an hour from $5.15. Rarely has a law hurt more vulnerable people more quickly.

A higher minimum wage has the biggest impact on those with the least experience or the fewest skills. That means in particular those looking for entry-level jobs, especially teenagers. And sure enough, as nearly all economic models predict, the higher minimum has wreaked havoc with teenage job seekers, well beyond what you would expect even in a recession…

…But as the minimum wage increased even as the overall job market began to worsen, the damage to teen job seekers became more severe. By the time the third increase to $7.25 from $6.55 took effect in July 2009, the teen jobless rate was 24.3%, and by October it peaked at 27.6% before dropping to 26.4% in January.

The story is even worse for black teens, who often have lower than average education levels or live in areas with fewer job prospects. Their jobless rate climbed from 38.5% before the third wage hike to 49.8% in November 2009, before falling back to 43.8% in January. For black male teens, the rate climbed to 52.2% in December from 39.2% in July. The difference between the jobless rates for black teens and the entire population widened by six percentage points from June 2007 to January 2010. Even assuming those rates fall as the job market improves this year, they will remain destructively high.

And yet this observation is nothing new. One has to wonder what will it take for politicians to learn basic economics principles...

The whole world has been wondering for months if the recent market surge is the sign of a recovery or just part of a double-dip recession. In other words are we really out of the woods or are we witnessing a bearish rally just like in the 1930's.

We have now designed the ultimate test to allow you to answer that question unequivocally. Just answer yes for each of the following statements which you reckon is true:

1. I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail
2. I ordered a burger at McDonald's and the kid behind the counter asked, "Can you afford fries with that?"
3. CEO's are now playing miniature golf
4. If the bank returns your check marked "Insufficient Funds," you have to call them to check if they meant you or them
5. Hot Wheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM
6. McDonald's is now selling a 1/4 ouncer
7. Parents in Beverly Hills have now fired their nannies and learned their children's names
8. A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico
9. Motel Six won't leave the light on any more
10. The Mafia is laying off judges

Now you get one point for each question where you answered yes. If you score more than 6, we are definitely in a W-shaped recession. If you score less than 4 then you can safely say we just came out of a V-shaped crisis. In between... well, sometimes even the most sophisticated tests fail to bring you an answer!

Andrew Neil thinks that the Global Warming fantasy is starting to unravel and that the dam around the UN IPCC report of 2007 is cracking. He is convinced that the amount of evidence will start to force mainstream media to take note. And he believes also that Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman often wrongly described as the world's leading climate scientist (he's actually a railway engineer) will be the first to lose his job over the whole mess. I'm far form certain that those climate politicians with their expansive government agendas will go quietly (we all know that taxes never get repelled). But I hope I'm wrong:

The dam began to crack towards the end of last year when leaked e-mails from one of the temples of global warming, the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, suggested that a few sleights of hand were being deployed to hide facts inconvenient to the global warming case. An official investigation into these e-mails is on-going.

But the flood gates really opened after the IPCC had to withdraw its claim that the Himalayan glaciers would likely all have melted by 2035, maybe even sooner. This turned out to have no basis in scientific fact, even though everything the IPCC produces is meant to be rigorously peer-reviewed, but simply an error recycled by the WWF, which the IPCC swallowed whole.

(...)

Then at the weekend another howler was exposed. The IPCC 2007 report claimed that global warming was leading to an increase in extreme weather, such as hurricanes and floods. Like its claims about the glaciers, this was also based on an unpublished report which had not been subject to scientific scrutiny -- indeed several experts warned the IPCC not to rely on it. The author, who didn't actually finish his work until a year after the IPCC had used his research, has now repudiated what he sees has its misuse of his work. His conclusion: "There is insufficient evidence to claim a statistical link between global warming and catastrophe loss."

(...)

Now after Climate-gate, Glacier-gate and Hurricane-gate -- how many "gates" can one report contain? -- comes Amazon-gate. The IPCC claimed that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests were risk from global warming and would likely be replaced by "tropical savannas" if temperatures continued to rise. This claim is backed up by a scientific-looking reference but on closer investigation turns out to be yet another non-peer reviewed piece of work from the WWF. Indeed the two authors are not even scientists or specialists on the Amazon: one is an Australian policy analyst, the other a freelance journalist for the Guardian and a green activist. The WWF has yet to provide any scientific evidence that 40% of the Amazon is threatened by climate change -- as opposed to the relentless work of loggers and expansion of farms.

(...)

But it is now clear that the majority of those involved in the IPCC process are not scientists at all but politicians, bureaucrats, NGOs and green activists. They may -- or may not -- still be right or wrong but what has become clear in the past couple of months is that, contrary to what many leaders have claimed, the science as promulgated by the IPCC is very far from "settled" and that there are important questions still to ask. The mainstream media has been slow to do this. The bloggers, too easily dismissed in the past, have set the pace with some real scoops -- and some of the mainstream media is now rushing to catch up.

Read the whole thing!

As international aid agencies rush food, water and medicine to Haiti's earthquake victims, a United States group is sending Bibles. But these aren't just any Bibles; they're solar-powered audible Bibles that can broadcast the holy scriptures in Haitian Creole to 300 people at a time. The Faith Comes By Hearing organisation says its Bible, called the Proclaimer, delivers "digital quality" and is designed for "poor and illiterate people". It says 600 of the devices are already on their way to Haiti.

The Albuquerque-based organisation says it is responding to the Haitian crisis by "providing faith, hope and love through God's word in audio". The audio Bible can bring the "hope and comfort that comes from knowing God has not forgotten them through this tragedy," a statement on its website says. "The Proclaimer is self-powered and can play the Bible in the jungle, desert or ... even on the moon!"

Interesting and quite accurate description of the various career paths in banking from eFinancialNews:

• Operations and technology leads to India.
• Sales leads to Glengarry Glen Ross.
• Private banking leads to a rich spouse (retired trader meets young graduate, true love!).
• Compliance leads to a filing cabinet full of forms.
• Research leads to Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V repetitive strain injury from internet and annual reports.
• Broking leads to strip clubs and depression.
• FX leads to offshore tax havens.
• Equities leads to insider trading charges.
• Investor relations leads to lunches.
• M&A leads to a single powerpoint slide with a line sloping gently upwards to the right regardless of the situation.
  

The Golden Rule to succeed in any of these is to talk about next quarter enthusiastically while making sure no one has any record of what you said would happen in the previous quarter. Repeat until fade.

I had started using Google Sites but realized very rapidly that building a site with flair would be an immense challenge. Graphics and fonts are just too difficult to deal with in Sites. But what I gained in look and feel by moving to iWeb, I lost in marketability. Having iWeb sites rank properly is notoriously difficult. The sites are hard to index because the main navigation is JavaScript based and text content is often converted to images. And inserting tracking code to monitor your site performance is just not possible without clumsy workarounds.

To improve ranking, I suggest those 3 easy steps:

1. Some people have suggested rewriting the navigation toolbar manually. Another option is to make sure that no page is left orphan on your site, i.e. there is a link on the home page to another page in your site that in turns contains a link to a third page and so forth. That allows crawlers to find all the pages of your site since the navigation bar will not fulfil that role.
2. Create a sitemap, either manually or if you have followed my previous advice by using an online tool such as XML-Sitemaps. Then you should upload it to Google with Google Webmaster Tools. If you have a blog on your site, don't forget to add a sitemap for its RSS feed as well. Blogs are crawled a lot more often.
3. Make sure that the font you are using is not converted into an image upon publishing. The easiest way to check is to turn on image indicators in the preference pane. Once you have done that, any text content that will be converted to an image will show with a small image icon on it's top right. In some instances however (especially for titles) you might want to use that special font that you know will most probably not be available on the client computer. In that case you can force conversion to graphics by selecting the text and applying a 1% drop shadow.

Installing tracking code for Google Analytics (or any other tracking code) is the hardest part. Some people have suggested that inserting the code in an HTML snippet on each of your pages will work. And indeed it does. But in such a limited way that's it's almost useless. Because all inserted HTML code is actually created in an iframe and not the page itself, all information about the source of the clicks is lost. If you use Adwords, all the clicks will appear as direct. And if someone falls on your page through a search engine query, the keywords as well as the referrer details would be lost as well. The only workaround is to inject the Javascript code directly into the pages created by iWeb (and do it again for every change in the site). Fortunately there are tools that allow for some automation of this process. One such tool which has the merit of being freeware is iWeb SEO Tools. You can use it to inject javascript automatically into your site after every change. You should use it with caution however as it only works on static pages. Attempting to amend any blog page for example will completely break them!

Also, you should remember that if you use adwords, you need to specify the landing page to be the page that has the Google Analytics code in it and not the main web site for example. Such a redirect would again fail to allow for proper capture of CPC information.

Yes, it's a bit clumsy, but I have no doubt that Apple is aware of those limitations and hopefully by next version of iWeb this will become just a painful memory...

The last thing you need in an economy that's struggling is to penalize those who create value and therefore jobs. As usual this move will end up being another marvelous example of the unintended consequences principle...

1. Granted this is only a one-time tax. But I would be surprised if it does not subside one way or another. We all know that temporary taxes always find a way to stay. The increase in alcohol duties that were voted last year to compensate for the reduction in VAT has not been repelled now that the VAT has gone back to where it was last year! If that tax remains in place, thanks to the recent tax rate increase from 40% to 50%, the new marginal tax rate will climb to 70%. You can be sure then that it's just a matter of time until Atlas Shrugs. Who will complain when producers disappear to more hospitable countries or just retire?
2. It has been proven time and time again that in order to succeed firms need to be flexible and adaptable. One of the most effective tools available has been bonuses. If you work hard you get a reward, if not you don't. If times are good you get a big bonus, if not you don't. No hard feelings. No firing. Now firms are pushed by regulation and public option to scrap incentive pay, increase salaries and get rid of bonuses. How is that good? Are we trying to emulate the public service? Are we so delighted by the NHS and the Post Office that we want to use them as a benchmark? How is forcing companies to guarantee remuneration when revenue is variable a good thing? Let's not be surprised when unemployment explodes next downturn because we have removed the flexibility from the system. Or if the just recovering economy tumbles again because hiring has turned out to be too risky and expensive.
   
3. Because the tax applies not only to cash but also to restricted stock, options and any other kind of deferred incentives, most firms will think it twice before putting those incentives in place. The firms will have to pay the tax even if the award is never awarded because the employee leaves for example. We all know that to improve performance it is paramount that firms align their employees to the company. What better way than use profit sharing through share distribution and reward those who are loyal to the firm by using long term incentives. Clearly this new scheme is pushing the street in the other direction. Will everyone complain next that guaranteed cash compensation generates the wrong behavior?
4. People tend to forget that government tax is reliant on businesses to be successful, not only because no profit means no tax but also because of the increasing stake that the state has now in banks and financial institutions. As a matter of fact, the whole £500m of expected income from the bonus tax was zapped within a few of hours of the announcement when £650m was whipped off the value of RBS.
5. Well, maybe the idea was not to raise money but to punish those responsible for the crisis. But you know what, even this collective punishment fails to hit what the public opinion assumes the real culprits are. Indeed, this tax will not hit any of the short-sellers from the hedge funds (those are not banks) nor the bankers from now defunct Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns since they are now most probably working at Nomura, Barcap and others on 2 year guaranteed bonuses (those are not part of the tax envelope and can't legally be clawed back anyway).
   

As usual, by the time repercussions are rippling through the market, everyone will have forgotten the reason it's happening in the first place and everyone will be happy to blame capitalism, again... Now we just need to get the Tobin tax to remove liquidity from the market and Gordon Brown will have achieved what the French and the German have been unsuccessfully trying to do for the last 2 decades: bring the City to it's knees.

The Climategate scandal is starting to unravel and after having been confined to blogs for the last few weeks some of the MSM has started picking up on it. Still, we had to wait until a search for Climategate on Google brings more than 200m hits (more than 10 times as much as Global Warming) for that to happen. Will it have some impact on that giant scam AGW turned out to be. Hard to tell but in the meantime, lets enjoy Jon Stewart's take on it (and he's a believer)...

I have always thought that even if we can prove that Global Warming is real, even if we can show that its effects would be devastating for us, even if we can demonstrate that it is caused by human behavior and even if we had evidence that the remedy proposed has any chance to work, entrusting the job to governments is yet another receipt for increased taxation with nothing to show for it.

Now scientists around the world are becoming more and more vocal about the initial premise itself: Global Warming. Many people have voiced their disagreement before, from Coleman, the weather channel founder calling it the greatest scam in history, Lomborg who wrote one of most thorough books on the subject or Crichton who wrote a very insightful paper on bad science and politics as much as 7 years ago. But only recently have we seen those isolated voices of dissent increase to the point were more than 30,000 scientists have now signed the Oregon petition urging the US government to not sign the Kyoto agreement and arguing that there is still strong lack of evidence that AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) actually exists.

Obviously we all know (except for Gore and his minions) that consensus has nothing to do with scientific proof. And we also unfortunately know that's it impossible to prove a negative. We can only hope that the population will one day wake up huge scam designed by politicians and a few opportunists to increase their influence or stuff their pockets.

Yes, the science behind AGW is bad. As Howard Hayden, a staunch advocate of sound energy policy, says:

It has been often said that the "science is settled" on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false.

The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.

Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive. We can take this further. Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase. If the science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it.

And then to add:

Nobody doubts that CO2 has some greenhouse effect, and nobody doubts that CO2 concentration is increasing. But what would we have to fear if CO2 and temperature actually increased?

• A warmer world is a better world. Look at weather-related death rates in winter and in summer, and the case is overwhelming that warmer is better.
• The higher the CO2 levels, the more vibrant is the biosphere, as numerous experiments in greenhouses have shown. But a quick trip to the museum can make that case in spades. Those huge dinosaurs could not exist anywhere on the earth today because the land is not productive enough. CO2 is plant food, pure and simple.
• CO2 is not pollution by any reasonable definition.
• A warmer world begets more precipitation.
• All computer models predict a smaller temperature gradient between the poles and the equator. Necessarily, this would mean fewer and less violent storms.
• The melting point of ice is 0 ºC in Antarctica, just as it is everywhere else. The highest recorded temperature at the South Pole is -14 ºC, and the lowest is -117 ºC. How, pray, will a putative few degrees of warming melt all the ice and inundate Florida, as is claimed by the warming alarmists?

Consider the change in vocabulary that has occurred. The term global warming has given way to the term climate change, because the former is not supported by the data. The latter term, climate change, admits of all kinds of illogical attributions. If it warms up, that's climate change. If it cools down, ditto. Any change whatsoever can be said by alarmists to be proof of climate change.

In a way, we have been here before. Lord Kelvin "proved" that the earth could not possibly be as old as the geologists said. He "proved" it using the conservation of energy. What he didn't know was that nuclear energy, not gravitation, provides the internal heat of the sun and the earth. Similarly, the global-warming alarmists have "proved" that CO2 causes global warming. Except when it doesn't.

To put it fairly but bluntly, the global-warming alarmists have relied on a pathetic version of science in which computer models take precedence over data, and numerical averages of computer outputs are believed to be able to predict the future climate. It would be a travesty if the EPA were to countenance such nonsense.

But this will probably fall onto deaf ears. Again.