Lessons in economics

WASHINGTON--Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced on Thursday a number of ways he will streamline the process by which the Energy Department distributes funding, with the goal of dispersing 70 percent of its funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act by the end of 2010.

"We have undergone a detailed scrubbing of the process," he said. "What we've found is that the old process required too much paperwork and simply took too long. These are sweeping reforms in the way the Department of Energy does business."

The energy investments in the stimulus package intimately tie … Read more

The White House has launched Recovery.gov, a site that intends to bring transparency to the government spending authorized in the $787 billion economic package the president signed Tuesday.

"The size and scale of this plan demand unprecedented efforts to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending," President Obama says in an introductory video on the site. "The important decisions about where taxpayer dollars will be invested will be yours to scrutinize."

The site includes charts that break down how the money in the legislation will be distributed. As federal agencies distribute funds, those allocations will … Read more

Updated at 3 p.m. PST with comments from industry representatives.

President Obama signed into law on Tuesday the $787 billion stimulus package, which includes $7.2 billion for broadband grant and loan programs.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate on Friday approved a conference report that reconciled the two chambers' versions of the bill.

The bulk of the funds directed at broadband--$4.7 billion--will be distributed through a program run by the Commerce Department, while $2.5 billion will fall under the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Department, giving particular emphasis to broadband deployment in rural areas. … Read more

Correction at 2:50 p.m. PST: This story was initially posted with an inaccurate headline. Tax credits, not tax cuts, were reportedly stripped from the bill.

Congress is still working on the language of the latest version of its economic stimulus package, but it appears the bill will not include tax credits for broadband deployment.

The House of Representatives and the Senate came to a compromise Wednesday night, agreeing to a $789 billion economic package that is aimed at reinvigorating the economy through government spending and tax cuts. The bill includes $7 billion in grants for extending broadband services … Read more

commentary The U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved an $838 billion "stimulus" bill by a 61-37 vote, capping more than a week of political sparring between critics of the measure and President Obama, who claimed during a press conference that an "economic emergency" made it necessary.

What didn't come up during the president's first press conference was how one section of the convoluted legislation--it's approximately 800 pages total--is intended to radically reshape the nation's medical system by having the government establish computerized medical records that would follow each American from birth to … Read more

WASHINGTON--Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini announced on Tuesday a $7 billion investment in U.S.-based manufacturing facilities, telling a crowd of Washington elites that the current economic recession gives the nation an opportunity to make once-in-a-lifetime changes and investments for the future.

"For nations like the United States, absolutely nothing about the future is inevitable or guaranteed--not jobs, not leadership, not our standard of living," Otellini told the Economic Club of Washington here. "How we deal with these changes can lead us to new heights--or they will define the beginning of a downward spiral." … Read more

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer sketched a dire portrait of the world economy on Friday, likening it to market conditions in 1837, 1873, and 1929, each of which involved bank failures, high unemployment, and a depression.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis," Ballmer told a retreat of House Democrats in Williamsburg, Va. "There is a lot of history around that, and frankly if you stop and think about it, 1837, '73, '29, 2008, it's almost exactly a whole lifetime between each of the major economic difficulties that we face."

Ballmer said that economic growth in … Read more

Two Silicon Valley leaders have been appointed by President Obama to a 16-person committee that's charged with offering economic advice during what has become an unusually sharp and deep recession.

John Doerr, the billionaire venture capitalist at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, is one. Doerr was involved in funding companies including Google, Amazon.com, Sun Microsystems, and Cypress Semiconductor; he currently serves on the board of companies including Amazon and Google and has recently turned his attention to green tech.

Charles Phillips, the president of Oracle, is another. Phillips became president in May 2003 and previously was with Morgan … Read more

WASHINGTON--The massive "stimulus" bill that's careening through the U.S. Congress spends billions of dollars in areas including green technology, energy research, and rural broadband.

Congressional leaders have made sure it comes with some strings attached. A "Buy American" requirement remains after the Senate failed to remove it by a 31-65 vote. Net neutrality rules for broadband spending is another condition that's been imposed.

But strikingly absent is one provision that unions would seem to naturally prefer: requirements that spending be directed at unionized firms, or at least focused on jobs with minimum hourly … Read more