Sara, My understanding of VAT is that it isn’t really a sales tax. I think the tax is based on the difference between the acquisition cost and the sales price, not solely on the sales price, as it would be if it was a sales tax. That makes it a cost of doing business, similar to profit and overhead, which are considered in the pricing strategy that produces the maximum profit at varying price/volume combinations. Thus, it seems more like an income tax than a sales tax. And income taxes are not paid by buyers because they don’t change how much a buyer is willing to pay.

Putting the Fed in the government would be too enticing to the politicians, and they would destroy the credit worthiness of the U.S. Congress never should have given Greenspan responsibility for overseeing derivatives. They abdicated their responsibility and now blame the Fed. The Fed has been putting too much emphasis on controlling inflation, versus generating full employment, but what do you expect when Congress and Presidential candidates are threatening its chair’s physical safety? It doesn’t help if the chair is partisan. Bernanke should not be telling congress to be concerned about inflation. In economics, the proper interest rate and money supply is that which creates a zero non-structural rate of unemployment. That should be Bernanke’s target, and what he tells congress should reflect it. The Fed did exactly what was necessary to rescue the financial markets, and so far, hasn’t lost the government a dime. Reforming it versus turning it over to the brats in congress is a much better idea.

I’m confused, Joel. My question was for Rocky. Do you speak for him? I hadn’t heard of the NDRP executive order before it was mentioned below and don’t know what the issue is. I scanned it, but nothing jumped out at me. What is the concern?

I doubt if our turning down the rhetoric, as long as Israel is a bad actor, is going to do any good. An Israel military leader said Iran having a nuclear weapon is immaterial to Israel, just as it should be to us. Mutually assured destruction keeps everyone in line, except the nuclear energy industry. Its corner cutting has allowed several mass contaminations to occur. Yet, no one is stopping it from building more bombs. We even subsidize them. No stabile state is going to let its most powerful weapon, and a delivery system, get into someone else’s control. Some, like Pakistan, might sell the technology, but it would take a substantial actor to use it, create a delivery system, and test them without detection. We wouldn’t be able to go around destabilizing nuclear countries, which would change the balance of power, but the balance of power isn’t so good as it is.

Fukushima proves industry can no be trusted with nuclear energy. Its builder built the plant with lower seismic resistance than it had proposed, installed back up emergency generators that take a half hour to come on line without breaking their crankshafts, stored their waste in weak buildings, and covered up the extent of its failure. Many similar plants, with similar spent fuel storage exists in the U.S., and the industry is failing to rectify the issues.
A Canadian energy expert points to deep geothermal energy as the best supply of green energy fo propell our energy intensive societies. Drilling through deep hard rock technology could use improving, but the quantity available could be expanded over the shallow drilling geothermal that is currently being exploited. Would you move forward with research and development of such.

Sounds good.

While it sounds like you would bring the Bush and Obama administrations to justic, an unequivical clarity would be more assuring.

Doug, Did you mean Rocky? Roger doesn’t ring a bell for me.