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“We’re confident that we’ll meet the metrics that they have prescribed,” he said.
If you spun a globe and stopped your finger 12 times on 12 random countries, they just might make more sense for a monetary union than the euro zone.
That's the conclusion from this awesomely clever chart showing the difficulty, and maybe impossibility, of the euro experiment (click to expand).
Here is what this chart shows. Compared across more than 100 factors measured by the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report, from corruption to deficits, JP Morgan analyst Michael Cembalest calculates that the major countries on the euro are more different from each other than basically every random grab bag of nations there is, including: the make-believe reconstituted Ottoman Empire; all the English speaking Eastern and Southern African countries; and all countries on Earth at the 5th parallel north.
And here is your tweetable fact: A monetary union might make more sense for every nation starting with the letter "M" than it does for the euro zone.
If you find yourself wondering, as I did, how the 50 states within the U.S. would compare across this measure of dispersion, remember that the nice thing about the United States is that baked into the first word of our name is not only a monetary union (i.e.: we all use dollars) but also a fiscal union. If Mississippi has a bad year (or decade, or century), Washington doesn't debate whether we should force the state to raise taxes or cut spending to become more competitive. We just keep paying it Medicaid, which is basically a transfer from rich Americans to poor Americans, many of whom live in Mississippi.
Germany doesn't want to establish any sort of "Peripheraid" -- a permanent transfer program from the core to the periphery. And that's why you should be about as optimistic about the future of the current euro zone as you are about a monetary union for the all the countries in the world that start with the letter "M."
LAS VEGAS — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal forcefully rejected Mitt Romney’s claim that he lost because of President Barack Obama’s “gifts” to minorities and young voters.
Asked about the failed GOP nominee’s reported comments on a conference call with donors earlier Wednesday, the incoming chairman of the Republican Governors Association became visibly agitated.
“No, I think that’s absolutely wrong,” he said at a press conference that opened the RGA’s post-election meeting here. “Two points on that: One, we have got to stop dividing the American voters. We need to go after 100 percent of the votes, not 53 percent. We need to go after every single vote.
He reiterated the points for emphasis.
The Louisiana governor didn’t just get worked up over Romney’s comments to donors in a Wednesday conference call about the root of President Barack Obama’s victory being “gifts” to various constituencies. He’s been stewing for some time over the damage the GOP nominee did to the party.
In an interview with POLITICO earlier in the week, Jindal indicated his anger over Romney’s infamous comments about “the 47 percent” of voters who don’t pay taxes and, Romney argues, are dependent on government for services.
Premiership-winning top grade coach Adam Bettridge says the Newcastle RL’s new Under 19’s program is the perfect pathway for young players to transition into senior footy.
Newcastle officials Matt Harris and Adam Devcich along with Bettridge launched a new competition and representative program at McDonald Jones Stadium on Wednesday.
The competition, to be played between May and August, will feature the eight district clubs in stand-alone Friday night double-header matches under lights.
The teams will also play in Futures matches before or after first grade during the season with a player from each club eventually invited to trial with the Knights at the end of the year.
The Emerging Rebels representative squad, which Macquarie top grade coach Bettridge will be in charge of, will be selected for a mid-season clash against a Penrith representative youth squad and an end-of-season trip to Melbourne to play a Victorian side.
Bettridge, who is chasing back-to-back first grade premierships with the Scorpions in 2018, is excited to be involved with the new Under 19’s initiative.
“I think it’s a great program and hopefully, it will encourage young guys to stick around in rugby league,”he said.
“It’s probably not so much a pathway to the NRL but more a pathway to playing first grade at local level.
“I don’t think there is too much wrong with young blokes striving to play 100 first grade games in Newcastle and trying to play representative footy for Newcastle.
“I’d like to bring the history of the game here back into it and show these kids exactly what they can strive for.
Bettridge said it’s important young players are given an incentive to keep playing the game.
“Boys at this age turn into men obviously and they get jobs and girlfriends and responsibilities and probably life career paths change so it is a hard age group to keep boys playing,”he said.
“We see it being a very strong competition this year and by encouraging these 19-year-olds to stick around, and this is something we hope will do that, we are hoping to see the format grow.
“They are the future of the game. We can talk about first grade all we want but in five years time, these are the kids we are going to be talking about.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - Drought conditions in the Dakotas have remained stable over the past week.
The latest U.S. Drought Monitor map shows about three-fourths of each state in some stage of drought, almost unchanged over the week. The eastern regions of both states are no longer listed as being even abnormally dry.
About one-fifth of North Dakota and one-third of South Dakota remain listed in severe or extreme drought. Those areas stretch roughly from northwestern North Dakota to south central South Dakota.
The Drought Monitor says a hard frost in South Dakota on Tuesday brought the growing season to an end for most of the state.
"Swedish Classical Singers" / Sandra Stark, the new chair of Jubileum, will lead a program on Swedish classical singers, talking about a number of classical singers that you may or may not have heard about. You will hear sample music of each one. At the end, if anyone else would like to tell about a singer you like that wasn't mentioned, please feel free to do so, or even bring a CD sample.
Colorado's Michael Cuddyer, right, is congratulated by third-base coach Stu Cole after his home run in the second inning Sunday against Washington.
Rockies catcher Wilin Rosario follows the bouncing ball Sunday as Washington Nationals relief pitcher Craig Stammen watches. No harm was done with no one on base, as Stammen eventually struck out to end the fourth inning.
WASHINGTON — Jorge De La Rosa watched from the air-conditioned clubhouse, his body spent from two hours in the soupy humidity. Carlos Gonzalez sat in the training room tub, his body packed in ice after exiting early with cramps in his left calf.
Manager Walt Weiss stared out at the mound, the eighth-inning tsunami in his belly belying his expressionless face.
Of all things that had gone wrong on this trip — taking a doughnut in Canada, muzzled by a pair of aces in D.C. — this would have been the nadir.
You can’t squander a seven-run advantage on the road and pretend the view in the mirror reflects a contender. Rex Brothers, after a hiccup and a scream into his glove, secured the Rockies’ nervy 7-6 win over the Nationals on Sunday.
There were few fingernails left in the dugout, but consecutive victories moved the Rockies (39-38) back above .500 and continued to enforce the players’ view of relevancy.
Good teams find a way to duct tape problems in the moment, before an emergency call-up or trade.
Sunday, Brothers saved De La Rosa’s win and rescued Belisle, whose troubling slump continued. He has allowed 10 earned runs in his last six appearances, a span of 5 innings. With only a chunk of the 39,307 paid crowd remaining — they were lured by the Bryce Harper Bobblehead giveaway, but many left in the seventh inning — Brothers jogged in with runners at the corners and the Rockies’ once-7-0 lead now down to 7-4.
It marked the first time this season Weiss asked a closer to log a four-out save, reflecting the urgency, if not the off day Monday.
Jhonatan Solano, pinch-hitting for Roger Bernadina, lined a two-run double to left-center, ruining Belisle’s line and leaving the outcome wobbling on the high wire. Brothers regrouped, striking out Nationals shortstop Ian Desmond. Brothers yelled as he left the mound.
It doesn’t hurt that De La Rosa is talented and clear of the mental block that understandably slowed his recovery from elbow surgery. The left-hander worked six strong innings before succumbing to the heat, but not superstition. The Rockies improved to 11-5 in his starts, and they were victorious without wearing the spring training uniform that made a cameo Saturday.
The Rockies also are much better with a lead. They have won both games on this trip when scoring first. Michael Cuddyer delivered again Sunday, his solo homer foreshadowing Ross Detwiler’s miserable day for the Nationals.
Cuddyer has reached base in a club-record 40 straight games and owns a 21-game hitting streak, two shy of Dante Bichette’s franchise mark. The Rockies have revealed fragility on several occasions, but it has not defined their season. This is the kind of game they would have lost last year.
Instead, music played in the clubhouse, the soundtrack of survival.
Consecutive games with a hit for Michael Cuddyer, two shy of Dante Bichette’s franchise record. Cuddyer has reached base in a team-record 40 consecutive games.
Originally Published: March 12, 2010 10:53 p.m.
Things are tough all over, but never has Arizona been so systematically stacked against those working to advance individual opportunity for the good of the state's future. Yes, it's been a rough week for Arizona's college students.
We learned in a report this week that Arizona has the nation's highest overall default rate on federal student loans - 9.8 percent in fiscal year 2007, the latest year available. The average loan for a student earning a bachelor's degree at a public university is $17,700, the study added.
Then came more bad news from those very state schools that already are priced out of students' affordability. This past Sunday, the Arizona Board of Regents approved steep tuition increases at all three state universities. Prescott's own Yavapai College on Tuesday also approved increases in tuition, dorm fees and meal plan fees.
The bad news this week was timely but hardly new news.
The Center for the Future of Arizona, a Phoenix-based nonprofit that combines public-policy research with initiatives, partnered with Gallup to release a poll this past October called "The Arizona We Want," a five-year study that flat-out concludes what Arizona apparently doesn't want: an educated populace.
When the poll asked respondents to rate their city or area as a place to live for various groups of people, a mere 11 percent said Arizona was "very good" for "young talented college graduates looking to enter the job market." The "very good" Arizona lifestyle for college graduates ranking was the lowest of all state demographics studied, including gays, immigrants and ethnic minorities.
And taxpayers? They, too, told college students to take a hike.
Only 18.5 percent of poll responders said they would favor their tax dollars going toward "raising graduation requirements in math, science and language to make Arizona students more competitive with students from other states and countries." The poll also examined which ideas citizens would support with their tax dollars. Education, again, ranked dead last when only 11.9 percent supported using their tax dollars to "help Arizona students prepare for the jobs of the future."
This week's discouraging news for Arizona college students served only to set their goals back even more.
"The quality of education we provide," Pat Esparza, faculty member of Mesa Community College, said in the poll, "also drives job creation because employers come to a place and prosper when they have access to an educated and skilled workforce."
Thanks but no thanks, the Arizona culture says.
North Shields central defender John Parker has been crowned the George Thompson North Shields Player of the Year, in his second season with the club.
John suffered heartbreak at Wembley a couple of years ago when with West Auckland but his second appearance this time with the Robins more than compensated.
Scorer of three goals this season – at Bishop Auckland, Marske and Ashington – Parker is a must have bloke in the dressing room, a totally committed player.
Of course it had to be hot shot Gareth Bainbridge who picked up the Don Winskill Golden Boot after he netted 48 times this season to mark a quite remarkable 103 strikes for the club in a mere 91 turn-outs.
Gareth also was proud to receive as well the Supporters Player of the Year award and a ‘special ‘ Ultras trophy.
Bainbridge came a close second in the Goal of the Season award for his third goal at home to Whitley Bay, just edged out by Kieran Wrightson’s stunner – his side’s fourth against Bay but this time at Hillheads.
Graham Fenton picked out lively front runner Dean Holmes – 18 goals plus many assists – to receive the Managers Award whist Kevin Hughes who has skippered and steered the side throughout with composure accepted the trophy voted on by his teammates, the Players Player, from ground sponsor Daren Persson and club president Malcolm Macdonald.
Lifestyle PART 1: Learn the basics of surfing with Robbie and Carlene Sherwell, of XL Surfing Academy in this series aimed at getting you in the water.
Lifestyle AS THE Coast swelters through a second summer heatwave all most people want to do is cool off. Here are some fantastic options.
News GYMPIE Girl Guides celebrated 90 years of Guiding achievements across the Gympie district last Saturday at the Jacana Hut.
Pets & Animals Snake catcher Richie Gilbert has seen it all in more than 13 years on the job.
Travel CONSIDERING the vast amount of stunning bushland that covers much of Australia, it is no wonder bushwalking has cemented itself as a popular pastime.
Community Gympie Gumnut Girl Guides showed during a visit to Gympie Library that acts of kindness may be made at any time.
It’s obviously true that earmarks are not a significant cause of rising federal spending; eliminating all of them will save at most one percent of the budget.
As Andrew notes and I’ve remarked on previously, eliminating earmarks doesn’t actually reduce spending; all it does is change who makes the decision from Congress to an executive branch agency. Unless the appropriation is reduced at the same time the earmark is eliminated, which no one is suggesting, the amount that will be spent will remain the same.
This is, for some reason, one of those never-remarked aspects of earmarks. Everyone assumes that they raise spending, but they don’t. They just redirect it. I don’t understand why earmark opponents endlessly get away with pretending otherwise.
In fairness, if earmarks were eliminated and the related budget authority were eliminated too, it would cut spending a bit. But that’s not what anyone is proposing. Until they do, the posturing is even worse than Bruce suggests.
A Texas execution on Wednesday claimed the life of a man convicted of killing his former common-law wife and her brother more than 20 years ago.
Willie Trottie's execution by lethal injection was carried out about 90 minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his last-day appeals, The Associated Press reported. He had contended he had poor legal help at his trial and questioned the potency of the execution drug.
Trottie repeatedly expressed love to witnesses — both people he selected and relatives of his victims, Barbara and Titus Canada — and several times asked for forgiveness as he was about to be executed.
"I love you all," he said. "I'm going home, going to be with the Lord . . . Find it in your hearts to forgive me. I'm sorry."
Trottie, 45, was pronounced dead at 6:35 p.m. CDT — 22 minutes after the injection began.
He became the second death row inmate executed in the U.S. on Wednesday. Earl Ringo Jr. received a lethal injection just after midnight in Missouri for a 1998 robbery and double murder.
After Trottie's execution, relatives of his victims released a statement saying they were relieved justice was "finally served all these years later."
"It's time for our family to end this chapter and be able to move on," the statement read.
Trottie's attorneys had argued to the Supreme Court that lawyers at his 1993 trial were deficient for not addressing his self-defense theory and for failing to produce sufficient testimony about Trottie's abusive childhood with an alcoholic mother.
Investigators have said that Trottie called his ex-wife May 3, 1993, and renewed an earlier death threat. They said he then showed up at her parents' house and opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol.
Titus Canada also had a gun and wounded Trottie, who then cornered his ex-wife in a bedroom and shot her 11 times before returning to the wounded brother and shooting him twice in the back of the head, according to investigators.
Trottie drove himself to a hospital, where police arrested him.
A North Atlantic right whale is spotted off the coast of Georgia. Maryland's Chesapeake Bay will be put at risk by off-shore drilling for gas and oil along the Atlantic Coast.
The health of the Chesapeake Bay is declining for the first time in a decade. This news is especially dire as the bay faces a new threat: the Trump administration’s offshore oil drilling plan (“Maryland leading challenge to Trump administration’s decision allowing seismic testing off Atlantic coast,” Dec. 20). We’re awaiting the next draft of the plan and it’s quite likely it will open the southeast Atlantic to offshore drilling for the the first time in decades.
Maryland is included in the current oil and gas leasing plan and oil and gas exploration firms have applied to conduct seismic blasting off our coast. This indicates that industry is interested in mid-Atlantic drilling. If years of work and millions of dollars of restoration can be reversed by increased rainfall and urban runoff, imagine the havoc offshore oil drilling could wreak on Chesapeake Bay’s delicate recovery. Any spill, but in particular a major oil spill such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon, would devastate the recovering populations of oysters and crabs and expand the large dead zone.
The Chesapeake Bay’s inland location would not protect it from oil pollution as its waters are tied to the Atlantic which accounts for more inflow to the bay than all of its rivers combined. The risks of offshore drilling are too great. While our elected officials like Attorney General Brian Frosh and Gov. Larry. Hogan, who spearheaded an opposition letter penned by coastal governors, have taken a stand against drilling, all of us need to keep fighting against offshore drilling.
The writer is an intern with Environment Maryland.
The attorney general for the state of Washington has filed a lawsuit against a company that raised more than $25,000 on Kickstarter but allegedly didn’t deliver the playing-card deck it promised its crowd-funding investors.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed what’s believed to be the nation’s first consumer-protection lawsuit involving crowd funding on Thursday against Altius Management, a Tennessee entertainment and artist management firm, and owner Edward Polchlepek III, also known as Ed Nash.
The company’s Kickstarter campaign, funded in October 2012, raised funds to create a set of Asylum playing cards, and the campaign promised the retro-horror-themed playing cards, posters and signed sketches from a Serbian artist as rewards.
The Kickstarter campaign raised money from 810 backers and promised rewards with an estimated delivery date of December 2012. The project hasn’t been completed and none of the backers has received any rewards, Ferguson alleged in court documents. The company has not communicated with backers since last July, he alleged.
The project’s comments page on Kickstarter has multiple complaints from backers. “I’ve asked for a refund multiple times, he refuses to answer any emails,” one backer wrote in January.
Polchlepek didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment on the lawsuit. The company did not immediately return a message sent through its website’s contact form.