The 3%/97% thing is this paper: http://www.nber.org/papers/w10433 It really is true.

Sherritt in Canada processes the Cuban Ni/Co laterites and they're building a huge plant in Madagasacar, coming online this year, for laterites from that country. There's no Sc capture circuit at either but there could be if they wanted to. Murrin Murrin was originally designed to have an Sc capture circuit but it was never installed. It's absolutely true that the Sc levels of these sources aren't as high as what those two juniors are reporting. But I'd say that it's fairly obvious that adding a capture circuit to something already operating is going to be cheaper than creating a whole new mine and processing unit. Please note though that I am biased here. My own work identifies an entirely different mineral and process as the best source: if we go to an independent source then CSIRO says that either No/Co laterites or my own idea are the only two reasonable sources but they're not quite willing to say which of those two just yet. But this just brings us back to: if Ni/Co laterites are the best source then why wouldn't capture circuits on extant plants work?

Condolences

Couple of things: "but probably manufactured just outside Guangzhou" Taiwan actually. " One is that the Queensland project involves a plant that can process the scandium along with the other metals;" This is true: but that also makes it true of the other nickel laterite processors. They could just add an Sc capture circuit to their current operations. At least one such mine/processor was designed with just that in mind although the unit was never actually added. And other processors have at least looked at it: I know very well they have because I've talked to them about it.

Strangely, no, I'm not. I've said repeatedly that while there very definitely is a Laffer Curve I do not think that the US is on the wrong side of it in general. So scotch that particular argument you present there. BTW, "hack" in English English (as opposed to Americain English) is a term of praise so thank you for that.

"Democrats generally argue that the crisis can be traced to misplaced faith in the ability of markets to self-regulate." Yes, but that's what you always argue: and most of the time you're wrong. Markets do self-regulate and they do so rather better than political or bureaucratic attempts to regulate them. Is the airline business better now than it was before Carter's deregulation? Trucking? Heck, railroads since the demise of the ICC? Is this always true? No, most certainly not. There really are times when markets need to be regulated by exactly such processes. Now, why did the banks actually fall over? Because they held the AAA portions of the syndications. If they'd sold them on, as they were supposed to, there would have been no systematic problem at all. Still the same losses, sure, but not at leveraged institutions, which is what caused the collapse. What is the Dodd etc solution to this? That banks must hold 5% of deals they process. That is, by law, they must do what just caused the last problem as a way of avoiding the last problem. Difficult to say that this regulation is better than none really.

"The only other major commercial use of zirconium through the years has been in flashbulbs used in photography. A speck of it, on a flashbulb, ignites to provide a flash of light. But in a nuclear plant, we’re not talking about specks—but tons and tons of zirconium, put together as a compound called “zircaloy” that clads tens of thousands of fuel rods. Heat, a great deal of heat, builds up in a very short time with any interruption of coolant flow in a nuclear power plant—the problem at Fukushima after the earthquake that struck Japan. Zirconium, with the explosive power, pound for pound, of nitroglycerine, will catch fire and explode at a temperature of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the 5,000 degree temperature of a meltdown." Blimey, so much ignorance in so few paragraphs. It is zirconium powder which explodes, not zirconium tubing or plate.This is why Zr powder is used in those flashlight bulbs, as the secondary initiator in artillery shells and often in car airbags as well. Zr melts at 3,400 oF ish, something which would be very hard to work out if it exploded at 2,000 oF really: and even harder to actually make it and cast it, you know, make the metal, have it as a liquid so that you can pour it into an ingot. BTW, the major use of zirconium is in fact in zirconia, the oxide, which we use to make the ceramic plates (as an example) which make fuel cells work. Journalism prpofessor churning out article on a subject he knows nothing about....how new is that, eh?

recent trends below 20% of gdp up to a level to provide a consistent ~22-24% of gdp The Feds have never managed a consistent 22-24% of GDP as revenue. So what makes you think that returning to a previous system of taxation will make them be able to now?

"Reduce the tax bill on the poor , oh yes , that's fine with you because it has no impact on you." You know precisely SFA (yes, that is an acronym, go look it up) about my income, whether I am poor or not, whether the tax rate upon the poor inpacts me or not. As a German philosopher pointed out, on those subjects about which you know nothing, silence is a good option. "You miss much of the top 1% incomes when you use Census data , which don't capture capital gains - a large share of top 1% incomes - which is why the propagandists so often restrict their analysis to Census data." Me? Personally? When I talk about top 1% (or 0.1%, or 5%, or 10%) I use the Piketty and Saetz numbers. the ones which, you know, point out that those top income numbers are very different indeed from the late 1920s. Then they were largely from capital accumulation, now they're from labour income. You have, of course, as someone willing to shout out on this issue, read those papers, yes? "We could of course institute a progressive capital gains tax that would capture tax revenues that are now flowing untaxed to the filthy rich , if we could stop the rich from blocking it." So, err, no. "Another old standby of the Big Lie : if the money raised by taxing the rich wouldn't solve 100% of our problems , then full stop - you have to do something else." Ooooh, no! If we cannot pay for everything by taxing the rich then I say we should be doing fewer things. I really do believe in proper, real, progressive, taxation. Those on median wages or below should not be paying tax. The rich should be paying for everything. But that does mean that we can only have as much government as the taxes we can extract from the rich. Which is, as you will note, rather less government than we have now.

"Why , while the U.S. is marking time while China plays catch-up , should not the super-rich within the U.S. mark time , by foregoing some of their income gains ( via high marginal tax rates , for example ) " I support progressive taxation, don't worry. Indeed, I often argue that it should be made more so: by reducing the tax bill on the poor for example. "Many peoples' place in life could be elevated substantially at a cost only to relatively few rich" I'm afraid that isn't necessarily true. There's not many rich people and cumulatively they don't have all that much money. Income tax raises $1,400 billion a year. Some 50% of that is paid by the top 5% of earners. So let's double income taxes on the rich, eh? To 70%. And let's even assume that there is no such things as the Laffer Curve, that such a tax change will not change earnings or effort. So, an extra $700 billion raised: wouldn't even close the deficit, let alone make a "substantial difference" to lower income lifetsyles. "For too many readers familiar with your work , myself included , it reads as 'Tim Worst-of-all'." 40 years now since I left grade school. Thanks for reminding me of the level of with prevalent back then.

"Over time, centuries, perhaps, free trade should tend to equalize standards of living across countries and then it will not cost workers." Yes, and isn't it great? Do note, as Paul Krugman does, that it will be levelling up, not down. Note also that any truly liberal set of morals or ethics will place the same value on the Chinese getting rich as it does on Americans getting rich. Even if it were true that free trade meant no rise in US living standards (which I don't believe for a moment, but just imagine for the purposes of arument) but did lead to a rise in Chinese living standards, then I would argue for free trade on exactly those grounds. After all, there is this marginal utility of money thing, and that the people of the richest society ever mark time for a few years, decades, while those rising up out of destitution play catch up and start to earn enough to actually have three squares a day seems like a moral outcome to me.

There are two things I do for my living. 1) Write for newspapers and online. This job is, as you will have noted, suffering greatly from both technological change (all those pesky bloggers) and also from overseas competition (Dean Baker and Amanda Marcotte now regularly appear in The Guardian's CiF section, a place where I also write and I have appeared in Foreign Policy, the US monthly magazine). 2) I am a wholesaler of weird and exotic metals. This is absolutely a global industry. I have competitors, suppliers, and customers in Russia, China, Germany, Austria and the US. And yes, I do say that this is absolutely fine and dandy, in both cases.

Trade and technological change have exactly the same effects in that they disrupt previously static positions. Given that the effect is the same, our reaction to it should also be similar, which is the point I am making there.

Nothing.Ignore it all.

"To take your wider point on good faith, I don't deny the post-war boom, it's exactly my point." Excellent, I don't deny the post war boom either. However, I'm not crass enough to try and link it with high post war taxation. For one very good reason. If you chart economic growth over the couple of centuries since we started using this capitalism/free markets thing you get what is essentially a straight line. What is known as the "trend growth rate". There are wibbles either side of this line, this is true. One of those wibbles in the 1930s: when, I think we all recall, economic growth was really rather low. Negative in fact for much of it. Then there's that large war where we blew up lots of stuff and people. Then there's a post war boom. That boom shows above trend growth.....as the previous decade had shown below trend growth. However, when you add the various decades together you get....trend growth. 1950-1970 were great, sure, but largely because 1930 - 1950 were entirely shite.

So let me see if I've got this right. An industrialist is proposing protectionism as he says that the number one point of economic development, of production, is the provision of jobs. And we've economists taking him seriously? Come along now, all together with Adam Smith: the sole purpose of production is consumption. Sheesh. As to those 800,000 jobs at Foxxcon.....they pay $200 a month, remember? How many Americans are going to want jobs at those pay scales?

"I think that government intervention at the microeconomic level, e.g. breaking up firms with excessive market power, and government intervention at the macroeconomic level, e.g. through monetary and fiscal policy, can improve the operation of the market system we live under." Careful there: keep thinking like that and you'll find you're a classical liberal.

"AIG failed because it sold large amounts of credit default swaps (CDS) without properly offsetting or covering their positions. What we must take away from this is that CDS are toxic instruments whose use ought to be strictly regulated: Only those who own the underlying bonds ought to be allowed to buy them. " This makes no sense at all. That someone *sold* CDS and went bust has no implications whatsoever for whoever might buy a CDS, whether they own the underlying bond or not. AIG lost, what, $150 billion? There were enough actual holders of RMBS etc to cover that amount easily....so whether people were going nakedly short or simply going short makes no difference at all. It might be possible to say that AIG went bust *and also* that there should be no naked shorting. But *therefore* does not follow. "The key elements are clearing, transparency, and capital adequacy requirements that maximize the flow of information into market prices from the fact that people with money are willing to put it on the line to back their predictions and that minimize the chances of disruption of the web of trust." We're already doing that. Can we just cast our minds back and recall what actually happened? Those who had AAA credit ratings did not have to post collateral. Thus the implicit cash flow drain on AIG was not made explicit. This almost certainly skewed their view of what was happening. The contracts have changed. Everyone, even AAA risks, now post collateral each and every day. We've already increased the transparency....the transparency that the risk managers of those writing CDSs require.

"This must be the worst interview ever given by a party leader in a general election campaign." Tsk, Danny, look, we know you're Tory, we know that UKIP is/willbe/could be sucking votes from Tories but really, "worst"? Gordon Brown's every appearance is worse than this. (BTW, just for the avoidance of doubt, no, I do not work for UKIP any more. I am still a member.)

"But the poor fellow was only trying to do the right thing: that is, not to trouser the money himself." Aye, MEP's stuff. But do recall that when Nigel Farage tried to do the same, direct excess allowances to his party, he was prosecuted and fined by the EU Parliament. Sauces for geeses and ganders......

I'm with Philip W here. The only rational trade policy is unilateral free trade. Imports are going shopping. Exports are going to work to make the money so that we can go shopping. Protectionism is deliberately making it more expensive when we go shopping. And none of us are idiot enough to even think of doing that: so why does everyone get so hopelessly confused when they start talking about trade?

My major regret is that they rejected my suggestion of "hang them all".

"I think you overlook the fact that many people voted UKIP in the EU election because it makes sense to stuff Brussels full of UKIP MEPs. It doesn't make sense to stuff Westminster with them." Well, quite. Given that there are no MEPs at Westminster......

"However, because the Soviet Union is a totalitarian state it is very good at squashing consumption--at reducing consumption C as a proportion of output Y to some near-subsistence minimum, and in channelling the extra savings into boosting the capital stock." Indeed, which is what makes it all so amusing. Marx warned that when capital was a monopoly then they would deliberately grind the workers into the dust by lowering the returns to labour in order to increase the returns to capital. The only place this actually happened, the only place where capital really did act as a monopsony, was in those places looking to Marx and his thinking as a way to avoid this happening. Perhaps I'm too cynical but I do find it very amusing indeed.