Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Britain: “An Oh-So-Civilised Mafia State”
September 11th, 2015Via: Guardian: To an extent unknown since before the first world war, economic relations in this country are becoming set in stone. It is not just that the very rich no longer fall while the very poor no longer rise. It’s that the system itself is protected from risk. Through bailouts, quantitative easing and delays […]
Meanwhile, in Hitachi Warehouses
September 9th, 2015Via: Popular Science: Say hello to your new artificial intelligence overlord–er, boss. At Hitachi, the Japanese electronics manufacturer, workers have started to take orders from artificial intelligence programs meant to increase productivity in the workplace. Hitachi has deployed the AI in an unspecified number of warehouses, where it issues work orders and instructions to employees. […]
Macy’s to Close 35-40 Stores
September 8th, 2015Recovery. Via: USA Today: Macy’s will close 35 to 40 underperforming stores, around 5% of its total locations, the department store chain announced Tuesday. The stores, slated to be shuttered in early 2016, will be identified at a later date, said the company with corporate offices in Cincinnati and New York.
Russia: Trading Halted Across All Markets
September 8th, 2015Via: Bloomberg: Moscow Exchange PJSC, Russia’s main bourse, said stocks and bonds trading will resume at 4:50 p.m. Moscow time after a nearly two-hour outage. Equities, ruble, bonds and derivatives trading was shut down due to a network equipment failure, the bourse said earlier on its website. Money-market operations have already resumed, while derivative trading […]
China Dumps a Record $94 Billion In US Treasurys In One Month
September 7th, 2015Via: ZeroHedge: On Monday we got the official data from China and sure enough, we find out that the PBoC liquidated around $94 billion in reserves during the month of August and as Goldman argues (see below), the “real” figure might have been closer to $115 billion. Whatever the case, it’s a staggering burn rate […]
The Oil-Sands Glut Is About to Get a Lot Bigger
September 4th, 2015Via: Bloomberg: The last place oil producers want to be when prices plummet to profit-demolishing lows is midstream on a billion-dollar project in one of the costliest parts of the planet to extract crude. Yet that’s exactly where half a dozen oil sands operators from Suncor Energy Inc. to Brion Energy Corp. find themselves with […]
“The mission I have to educate everybody is really an attempt to delay what AI will eventually do to us”
September 4th, 2015In ten or twenty years, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the majority of paid work in companies, that is, work that isn’t done by machines, being done by these “certificate” holders. —Top U.S. Colleges to Offer Free Classes Online And now: “Nanodegrees.” Yeah, that’s the ticket. Also see: Humans Need Not Apply: Via: The […]
Long Exposure to Tiny Amounts of Monsanto’s Roundup May Damage Liver, Kidneys
September 2nd, 2015Via: Russia Today: Long-term intake of the Monsanto’s most popular Roundup herbicide, even in very small amounts lower than permissible in US water, may lead to kidney and liver damage, a new study claims. The research, conducted by an international group of scientists from the UK, Italy and France, studied the effects of prolonged exposure […]
The Surging Ranks of America’s Ultrapoor
September 2nd, 2015Via: CBS: By one dismal measure, America is joining the likes of Third World countries. The number of U.S. residents who are struggling to survive on just $2 a day has more than doubled since 1996, placing 1.5 million households and 3 million children in this desperate economic situation. That’s according to “$2.00 a Day: […]
On Average, People Who Obtain Degrees from Quarter of Colleges Never Recover Cost of Education
August 31st, 2015Via: The New Yorker: These types of studies, and there are lots of them, usually find that the financial benefits of getting a college degree are much larger than the financial costs. But Cappelli points out that for parents and students the average figures may not mean much, because they disguise enormous differences in outcomes […]
