The Cynical Economist

Russia reveals shiny state secret: It’s awash in diamonds

Russia has just declassified news that will shake world gem markets to their core: the discovery of a vast new diamond field containing “trillions of carats,” enough to supply global markets for another 3,000 years.

‘Trillions of carats’ lie below a 35-million-year-old, 62-mile-diameter asteroid crater in eastern Siberia known as Popigai Astroblem. The Russians have known about the site since the 1970s.

Obamanomics Has Failed Dismally

And Ben Bernanke can’t bail it out.

The Magnitude of the Mess We’re In

The next Treasury secretary will confront problems so daunting that even Alexander Hamilton would have trouble preserving the full faith and credit of the United States.

Did you know that annual spending by the federal government now exceeds the 2007 level by about $1 trillion? With a slow economy, revenues are little changed. The result is an unprecedented string of federal budget deficits, $1.4 trillion in 2009, $1.3 trillion in 2010, $1.3 trillion in 2011, and another $1.2 trillion on the way this year. The four-year increase in borrowing amounts to $55,000 per U.S. household.

The tangled web of conflicting rights

….how advocates of tolerance become tyrannical….

Republicans criticize four-gallon EPA gas purchase mandate

With prices at the pump worrying Americans, Republicans have railed against the Environmental Protection Agency’s new gas mandate that requires consumers to buy at least four gallons when purchasing from stations with hoses containing 10 percent and 15 percent ethanol-blended fuel.

America in free-fall 

Economic freedom in the U.S. is dropping fast

Americans Too Lazy to Work?

Here Comes the Big Manufacturing Slowdown

For the second straight month, manufacturing activity in the New York region slowed, this time to the lowest level since April 2009, during the worst of the global recession. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Empire