Intellectuals have some very bad incentives according to renowned economist Thomas Sowell. He defines an intellectual as someone’s who’s end product are ideas (i.e. not an engineer, scientist, medical doctor, etc.). While admitting that he himself is an intellectual, he condemns that lunacy that pervades the intellectual community. The problem is there are no checks on their ideas. If an engineer builds a bridge and it collapses, that engineer has failed. However, if an intellectual pushes for certain policies that turn out to be disastrously wrong, they rarely face any ramifications for this whatsoever.

“Up to 20,000 people have died needlessly early after being denied cancer drugs on the [British National Health Service], it was revealed yesterday,” according to Daniel Martin of The Daily Mail. These unnecessary or unnecessarily quick deaths had to do with patients being refused cancer medication for rare forms of cancer.

The most frightening element of this ten-year forecast is that an estimated $5.6 trillion of the debt would be interest expense. Yes, that’s right, interest.

Glenn Beck vs. Keith Olbermann: Watching either of their shows brings us uncomfortably near the absolute epitome of douchebag, but alas, when push comes to shove, only one can be the victor. Here I will discuss their individual merits and try to determine who can rightfully claim the throne in all of its douche-filled glory… But when the chips are down, we all know that it is either Keith Olbermann or Glenn Beck who will hold the crown of greatest douchebag in the history of the world.

Judge Jim Gray discusses with Reason Magazine, the six groups who benefit from drug prohibition. I’ll give you a hint, none of those groups are the average citizen:

Perhaps losing 36,000 jobs is better than expected, or even a sign of a recovery (which I doubt), but at best it’s a sign that things aren’t as bad as they were, not good news.

The Cato Institute released a short a video on how “creative accounting” is being used to underreport the cost of public education on the tax payer. While this is nothing new for the government, the scope of the dishonesty is impressive (if that’s the right word to use here):

The Federal Reserve and Treasury have pumped an ungodly amount of money back into the economy, which raises serious concerns about future inflation, but for now, much of that money is stuck in the banks and velocity is extremely low.

So what have some city governments and businesses done to combat this? Well, they’ve decided to print their own money. MSN Money highlights one such example:

There’s a lot of talk out there about green shoots, economic recovery and stabilization. Most people aren’t predicting giant leaps in GDP anytime soon, but some are predicting modest global GDP growth between 2-4 percent for 2010. As Greece goes bankrupt and looks to its EU compatriots for help, remember they’re not the only nation on the belly up path. And from a United States perspective, here are the numbers you should be hearing on a daily basis, but aren’t. It isn’t just a matter of restoring economic growth and reducing unemployment. Surprise, surprise: debt, unfulfillable promises and easy money have consequences. Unfortunately, we have plenty of all three:

We haven’t seen inflation on the whole during the financial rescue efforts, despite the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies. If you wanted to cherry pick certain assets, the argument could be made that $140/barrel oil, during a recession, coinciding with a dump of liquidity on the economy, could be related. Global oil transactions are denominated in US dollars. It is hard to imagine any other factor being solely responsible for such a historic, and counterintuitive, rise in petroleum during a recession.