Archive for the 'Elite' Category
Why Are the Chinese Buying Record Quantities of Gold?
January 31st, 2012Via: Forbes: This month, the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department reported that China imported 102,779 kilograms of gold from Hong Kong in November, an increase from October’s 86,299 kilograms. Beijing does not release gold trade figures, so for this and other reasons the Hong Kong numbers are considered the best indication of China’s gold […]
Freddie Mac Betting Against Struggling Homeowners
January 30th, 2012Via: NPR: Freddie Mac, a taxpayer-owned mortgage company, is supposed to make homeownership easier. One thing that makes owning a home more affordable is getting a cheaper mortgage. But Freddie Mac has invested billions of dollars betting that U.S. homeowners won’t be able to refinance their mortgages at today’s lower rates, according to an investigation […]
FDA Fired Employees Who Warned Congress About Approvals of Dangerous Medical Devices
January 30th, 2012Via: Washington Post: The Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the personal e-mail of a group of its own scientists and doctors after they warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that they believed posed unacceptable risks to patients, government documents show. The surveillance — detailed in e-mails and memos unearthed by six […]
Portable DNA Sequencer Demonstrated at World Economic Forum
January 30th, 2012Via: Medical Express: It was the talk of Davos, grabbing the imagination of a forum otherwise shrouded in gloom: a miracle machine that cracks the code of life within hours and could revolutionise healthcare. Patients will no longer have to wait weeks to know if they have cancer and their doctors will know immediately what […]
Report Detailing Much Higher Costs of Containing European Economic Crisis
January 30th, 2012Via: The Automatic Earth: The report I refer to in the title requires a little background info: In Holland, where I’ll be for a few more days, there’s a “rogue” right-wing party named PVV (Party for Freedom). It has no cabinet ministers, but the minority moderate right-wing government needs its support to stay in the […]
Copyright Industry Calls for Broad Search Engine Censorship
January 29th, 2012Via: Torrent Freak: At a behind-closed-doors meeting facilitated by the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport, copyright holders have handed out a list of demands to Google, Bing and Yahoo. To curb the growing piracy problem, Hollywood and the major music labels want the search engines to de-list popular filesharing sites such as The […]
Killing the Competition: How the New Monopolies Are Destroying Open Markets
January 29th, 2012Via: Harper’s Magazine: Fear, in any real market, is a natural emotion. There is the fear of not making a sale, not landing a job, not winning a client. Such fear is healthy, even constructive. It prods us to polish our wares, to refine our skills, and to conjure up—every so often—a wonder. But these […]
Iran Hits Back at EU with Own Oil Embargo Threat
January 29th, 2012Via: Reuters: Fighting sanctions with sanctions in a test of strength with the West over its nuclear ambitions, Iran warned on Friday it may halt oil exports to Europe next week in a move calculated to hurt ailing European economies. … “They are the masters of bluffing,” one Mediterranean crude oil trader said of remarks […]
UK Bioethicist: Pregnancy and Natural Birth Should Not Be Tolerated
January 27th, 2012Make ready the municipal hatcheries. Via: Bioedge: Pregnancy and childbirth are so painful, risky and socially restrictive for women that public funding should urgently be directed to the development of artificial wombs. This is the only way to achieve true equality between men and women for then neither women nor men would then be limited […]
The Death of Used Video Games
January 27th, 2012Via: Kotaku: Microsoft will upgrade its disc technology for its next Xbox from DVDs to Blu-Ray discs, catching up to rival Sony, games industry sources tell Kotaku. Sony’s PlayStation 3 currently supports Blu-Ray, which can contain 25 or 50GB of data compared to DVD’s 9GB. But that disc detail could be far less impactful to […]
