“ Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.
To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end… It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.
— Nobel Prize winner F.A. Hayek - 1932
What about this idea for saving the Amazon Rain forest and helping Brasil get on it’s feet as a first world nation?
Admittedly Brasil has serious socio-economic problems which prevent it from protecting the Amazon region. It’s a fairly onerous obligation, having to police the entire area especially when people are economically motivated to destroy the Amazon for farmland and timber.
Why doesn’t the Brasilian government make a deal with the first world. The Amazon region gets named as a world ecological protection zone with all the protections that the first world nations care to name. In turn these nations pay Brasil a management fee to police the area and ensure enforcement. There could be clauses for violations on both sides and maybe a pre-selected U.N. arbiter. The fee could be wildly excessive and go towards infra-structure development which hopefully elevates the standard of living in Brasil in the long term
Mr. “strict constitutionalist” Justice Antonin Scalia, today voted with the majority in limiting the punitive damages award in the famous Exxon Valdez case Exxon v. Baker.
The jury awarded $287 million in compensatory damages and it assessed another $2.5 billion in punitive damages against Exxon.
Justice Souter, writing for the majority, did a thorough historical analysis and found that in maritime cases punitive damages were generally approximately the same as the compensatory damages.
WTF.. did you read that?
How in the hell can these guys limit a punitive damage award passed down from a jury? Past case decisions from juries on punitive damages cases don’t set legal precedent and no legislation is currently in place to limit those damages. If you want a limit, pass the law.
Now as far as Exxon Valdez is concerned, I have no dog in that race. $287 million is still a significant amount of money to add to the $3.5 billion Exxon already shelled out. Exxon definitely paid the piper. I actually don’t even think that it’s bad if judges reduce punitive damages. But it chaps my ass to continually see so called neo-cons trot out their agendas of strict constitutionalism and “no legislation” from the bench, as Justice Scalia does every chance he gets, and then turn around and perform some hypocritical self serving magic trick. I’m sure you’ve all heard their B.S. not unlike the entire Republican bull shit show party. This so called group of conservatives who laughed strict conservative and strict constitutionist Ron Paul off the debate stage many times this election season.
Their hypocritical agenda is mind boggling. Throw out the constitution when you need to in the name of security, but wrap yourself up in it to get elected. Preach fair, free and open capitalist markets except when it suits you to enact corporate socialism to bail out Wall Street and tax cheaper and more efficient Brasilian ethanol. Stupifiying this country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/washington/25cnd-punitive.html?ref=science
