Archive for the 'Collapse' Category
Illinois Lawmakers Say Military Must be Deployed in Chicago Due to Violence
April 26th, 2010Via: AP: Two Illinois lawmakers say violence has become so rampant in Chicago that the National Guard must be called in to help. Chicago Democratic Reps. John Fritchey and LaShawn Ford made a public plea to Gov. Pat Quinn on Sunday to deploy troops. The request comes amid a recent surge in violent crime, including […]
Failed German Bond Auction: Who Bails Out the Governments That Have Bailed Out the Feckless?
April 24th, 2010WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument. This is a decent article, but it contains some rat poison: This just doesn’t happen in major government bond markets. In the U.S. Treasury market, if the total of bids isn’t double the total of securities being offered, it’s considered horrific […]
College Students Struggle to Go Without Media for 24 Hours
April 24th, 2010What could possibly go wrong? Via: Reuters: Crackberry is no joke. American college students are hooked on cellphones, social media and the Internet and showing symptoms similar to drug and alcohol addictions, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Maryland who asked 200 students to give up all media for one full […]
“Lehman Was the Leading Purveyor of Liar’s Loans in the World” — Incidents of Fraud at 90% — “Lehman Sold This to the World”
April 23rd, 2010I also handled issues for the used-car-salesman-type ‘account executives’. Just before I left, the company switched loan origination systems. The people writing these loans were pissed because they were no longer able to get loans approved for people with fraudulent social security numbers. They would actually complain because the system was telling them that the […]
Phosphorus Doom
April 22nd, 2010This is a top national security issue for New Zealand. Whether or not most New Zealanders are aware of it, I have no idea: Will fertiliser scarcity harm farm economy? New Zealand, apart from a tiny urea plant Ballance Agri-Nutrients operates out of Kapuni, Taranaki, imports all its fertiliser ingredients. For individual New Zealanders who […]
Poll: Four Out of Five Americans Don’t Trust Washington; One Third View Government as Major Threat
April 19th, 2010Via: AFP: Nearly one out of three Americans view the US government as a “major threat” to their freedoms, and four out of five say they don’t trust Washington to solve their problems, according to a new poll out Monday. Just 19 percent say they are “basically content” with the federal government, against 56 percent […]
Cultivated Play: Farmville
April 19th, 2010Related: The Future Where Soda Cans Have Screens Via: Future of the Book: Farmville is a free, browser-based video game that is played through one’s Facebook account. Users harvest crops, decorate their farms, and interact with one another, in what is ostensibly a game about farming. While this may sound like a relatively banal game, […]
“Plastic Soup” Found in Atlantic Ocean
April 18th, 2010Via: CBS / AP: Researchers are warning of a new blight on the ocean: a swirl of confetti-like plastic debris stretching over thousands of square miles in a remote expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. The floating garbage – hard to spot from the surface and spun together by a vortex of currents – was documented […]
For Joe Average, It’s Impossible to “Get By” in the U.S.
April 13th, 2010Don’t miss this one. Via: ZeroHedge: While the market cheers on the fantastic job “growth” of March 2010, the more astute of us are concerned with a growing tide of personal bankruptcies. March 2010 saw 158,000 bankruptcy filings. David Rosenberg of Gluskin-Sheff notes that this is an astounding 6,900 filings per day. This latest filing […]
Toxic Beef, Rejected by Mexico, Sold in U.S.
April 13th, 2010Via: USA Today: Beef containing harmful pesticides, veterinary antibiotics and heavy metals is being sold to the public because federal agencies have failed to set limits for the contaminants or adequately test for them, a federal audit finds. A program set up to test beef for chemical residues “is not accomplishing its mission of monitoring […]
