Bush Without Economists

Hot waters for Bush as fewer good Economists are willing to join the administration.

Help Wanted: Academic Economists, Pro-Bush - New York Times: "IT'S no secret that hurricanes and wars have swamped the economic agenda that George W. Bush planned for his second
term. In the commotion, however, one fact has gone largely unnoticed: much of Washington's expert economic team has disappeared.
The chairmanship of the Council of Economic Advisers will soon be vacant, and two spots on the Federal Reserve Board that were recently filled by academic economists already are. There is no assistant secretary of the Treasury for tax policy, and the director's chair at the Congressional Budget Office, currently occupied by Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, will soon be empty, too.
The White House and Congress need as many as five academic economists of high caliber, and it's not obvious where they will come from. The Republican Party may be facing something
of a shallow bench.
'Bush's reputation in at least the academic community is about as low as you can imagine,' said William A. Niskanen, who was a member of the council during President Ronald Reagan's first term and is now chairman of the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group. 'A lot of people would not be willing to give up a good tenured position for a position in the White House.'"
"It has been true, typically speaking, that Republican administrations have found it harder to find senior, more prominent academic economists for the C.E.A. members and chairman than have Democratic administrations," said Michael L. Mussa, a senior fellow at the Institute for
International Economics, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, who was a member of the council during President Reagan's second term.
Mr. Mussa explained that the problem was partly one of specializations. "In the economics
profession, on the microeconomic and regulatory side, there you find a substantial number of Republicans," he said, "but macroeconomists tend to lean a bit more to the Democratic side, on average."
Quite a few economists might have a hard time acting as the president's mouthpiece today. Plenty of academics, even some who have supported Republicans in the past, have condemned the White House's current policies. In particular, the enormous federal deficit has elicited ire from both left and right.
"There are a number of Republicans, both the right-wingers and the moderates, who are very uncomfortable about the deficits, and particularly about the spending that we saw in the first four years," Mr. Mussa said.
Dismay about the war in Iraq could also prompt many academics to turn down the White House on principle, Mr. Niskanen said.

Well! open up doors for foriegn Economists and see how many you get by relaxing the condition about Citizenship.

U.S. Backs Squeezing Oil From a Stone - Los Angeles Times

I will put my bang for bucks in "Fuel Cell" technology. General motors (GM) that has been sinking my find a relief in this new tech.

U.S. Backs Squeezing Oil From a Stone - Los Angeles Times: "Tucked into a ravine and hidden
behind ridges standing like stony sentinels is the site of Shell Oil Co.'s ultra-experimental, highly anticipated 30-year project to unlock oil from vast underground beds of rock.

Here, on this sweeping plateau in western Colorado, the Bush administration has fixed its hopes for the next big energy boom: oil shale, which the U.S. Department of the Interior praises as an 'energy resource with staggering potential.' Members of Congress have described the region as the Saudi Arabia of oil shale."
....
Oil shale is immature rock that, left alone, would require millions of years of natural heating to produce oil. Modern techniques greatly accelerate that process by cooking underground rock. But some experts warn that the process could use more energy than it yields, and conservationists and many local residents point to the massive amounts of water it will consume and to the disturbances to land, wildlife habitat and the lives of rural people.

So who owns the internet?

I remember one student recently posted on his dorm window
USA! we own the world.
Well! I don't have much to say but! go fix Katrina.

Internet hegemony and the digital divide Economist.com: "Many countries had wanted
to relieve America of its unilateral role in the governance of the internet and hand power to a new body under the auspices of the UN's International Telecommunication Union. Brazil, China and Saudi Arabia had called for a new intergovernmental forum with real powers and a policy-making mechanism for the internet. America had contended that this should be little more than a talking shop, devoid of formal powers, since existing mechanisms to co-ordinate the underlying infrastructure of the internet's addressing system are sufficient."

Fuel-Cell Technology

I want one too to because they are economical and environment friendly too.

GM's Fuel-Cell Pickup - MSN Autos: "GM has invested more than $1 billion in fuel-cell vehicle research and development in the last several years. While the automaker isn't saying that fuel cells will blow away the piston engine anytime soon, it is standing by its commitment to deliver hydrogen fueled vehicles by the end of this decade. In a June speech given at Northwestern University, Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research, development and planning, indicated that by 2010 the company would have at least five vehicles available to consumers. They would range from the HydroGen 3 minivan priced near $30,000 to a crossover SUV under $60,000. When asked if one of the other three vehicles would be a Chevrolet pickup similar to one based at Ft. Belvoir, GM officials are mum. If it is, Chevy might want to consider adopting the Army's stylish paint scheme for a special edition truck. "