Archive for the 'Economy' Category
“Average Cost to Raise a Kid: $241,080” ???
August 15th, 2013Our annual household income is roughly what this report indicates the cost would be to raise one child for a year in the U.S. And we have two children. Living mortgage free is like living on a different planet compared to those who have a bank’s boot on their necks. Via: CNN: From day care […]
Democracy Now On Amazon and Jeff Bezos
August 14th, 2013Disclosure: I have an affiliate relationship with Amazon. The Democracy Now discussion below contains some legitimate gripes about Amazon, which I’ve covered on here in the past. The most disturbing thing about Amazon (to me) is their work with CIA to build the agency’s new cloud computing infrastructure (news circa March 2013). That’s bad. But […]
World Changing Technology Enables Crops to Take Nitrogen from the Air
August 12th, 2013Via: University of Nottingham: A major new technology has been developed by The University of Nottingham, which enables all of the world’s crops to take nitrogen from the air rather than expensive and environmentally damaging fertilisers. Nitrogen fixation, the process by which nitrogen is converted to ammonia, is vital for plants to survive and grow. […]
A Material That Could Make Solar Power ‘Dirt Cheap’
August 10th, 2013Via: MIT Technology Review: A new type of solar cell, made from a material that is dramatically cheaper to obtain and use than silicon, could generate as much power as today’s commodity solar cells. Although the potential of the material is just starting to be understood, it has caught the attention of the world’s leading […]
Japan’s Day Trading Elite
August 10th, 2013Via: Bloomberg: Murakami calls himself the smallest player in a group of seven day traders who chat with each other online, vacation together, and cumulatively buy and sell almost $100 million in stocks each day, using borrowed money to increase the size of their bets. … “These guys are pros,” says Jesper Koll, head of […]
Japan Gets to Know a Quadrillion as Debt Hits New High
August 10th, 2013Via: Bloomberg: The late Senator Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.) is famous for allegedly saying, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” It might be apocryphal—the Dirksen Congressional Center has found no evidence that the late Illinois Republican ever made the quip—but it certainly resonates as the political parties spar over […]
Americans Giving Up Citizenship Jump Sixfold
August 10th, 2013Update: Forgot to Mention I recently received an email from an American who is attempting to renounce his or her U.S. citizenship in New Zealand. I don’t want to get into any details, because NZ is like a small village full of people who take great pleasure talking about other people in the village. The […]
‘Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?’
August 9th, 2013Via: BBC: As many as a million young people in Japan are thought to remain holed up in their homes – sometimes for decades at a time. Why? For Hide, the problems started when he gave up school. “I started to blame myself and my parents also blamed me for not going to school. The […]
JPMorgan Faces Criminal and Civil Investigations Related to Mortgage Securities Scam
August 8th, 2013Via: New York Times: JPMorgan Chase disclosed on Wednesday that it faced a criminal and civil investigation into whether it sold shoddy mortgage securities to investors in the run-up to the financial crisis, the latest legal threat to the nation’s biggest bank. JPMorgan acknowledged for the first time the existence of the investigation — one […]
Britain: Prices Collapse for Prostitution Services
August 8th, 2013Via: The Economist: In part, this reflects the sluggish economy. Overall consumer spending at the end of 2012 was almost 4% lower than its 2007 peak. And Vivienne, an independent escort in the south who works part-time to supplement her income as a photographer, says paying for sex is a luxury: “Food is more important; […]
