Archive for the 'Economy' Category
S&P Downgrades 34 Italian Banks
February 11th, 2012Via: Reuters: Rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded 34 Italian banks on Friday, including heavyweights UniCredit (CRDI.MI) and Intesa Sanpaolo (ISP.MI), citing a reduced ability to roll over their wholesale debt and expected weak profitability. The move follows S&P’s downgrade of Italy’s sovereign rating last month to BBB+, part of a mass downgrade of nine […]
China: Cans of New Zealand Made Infant Formula Sell for NZ$92 in Shanghai
February 11th, 2012One guess as to the nationality of “offshore buyers” of the land mentioned below… Via: New Zealand Farmers Weekly: Canterbury dairy producer and processor Synlait is negotiating to sell up to 70% of its holding in Synlait Farms, with potential for the near 5000 hectares of prime irrigated Canterbury dairy farmland to be sold to […]
Facebook Value Tops $100 Billion Based on Private Market
February 9th, 2012Via: Bloomberg: Facebook Inc. (FB)’s privately traded shares have risen 10 percent since the dominant social network filed for an initial public offering, pushing its market value past $100 billion, according to SharesPost Inc. SharesPost managed the auction of 150,000 shares of Facebook’s Class B common stock at a clearing price of $44, compared with […]
Detroit Citizens No Longer Rely on Police as Self-Defense Killings Skyrocket
February 9th, 2012Via: The Daily: Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police […]
Fewer Young Adults Hold Jobs Than Ever Before
February 9th, 2012Via: CNN: The share of young adults with jobs has hit its lowest level since the government started keeping records just after World War II. By the end of 2011, only 54.3% of those between the ages of 18 and 24 were employed, according to a Pew Research Center report released Thursday. And the gap […]
Britain: TomTom Tech to Set Driver Insurance Premiums
February 9th, 2012Definitely watch, “15 Million Merits,” the second episode of Black Mirror, to see where this economic model is headed. The potential for nightmarish implementations of this is pretty much unlimited. Via: PC Pro: TomTom has signed a deal with an insurance company to use its satnav technology to measure driving ability to set premiums. The […]
Google Will Pay People to Authoritatively Root Themselves: Track 100% of Web Usage Via Dedicated Hardware
February 9th, 2012If that black box option doesn’t require the browser plugins… 1) Connect to VPN 2) Let Google collect a bunch of encrypted data that tells them nothing about what you’re doing online 3) Profit? haha. I haven’t read the fine print, though. Via: Ars Technica: Google is working to collect information about Internet users that […]
GlaxoSmithKline Clears Cash From Eurozone On A Daily Basis
February 8th, 2012It’s like having a PayPal account! *chortle* Via: Telegraph: GlaxoSmithKline is clearing cash out of eurozone countries on a daily basis to protect itself against a potential banking and liquidity crisis in the region. Sir Andrew Witty, chief executive of Britain’s biggest drug maker, said that early last year the company had started emptying “tens […]
New York City Surveillance Center Staffed with Employees from Large Wall Street Firms
February 7th, 2012Via: Counterpunch: The New York Times, the worldwide news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), Wired Magazine, the New York City Council had all previously reported the location of the supposedly super secret counter terrorism center on their public web sites: 55 Broadway in the bowels of the financial district. What was a secret about the operation, […]
Government Motors: OK Go – Needing/Getting
February 7th, 2012The managerial state has assumed responsibility for looking after everything from the incomes of the middle class to the profitability of large corporations to industrial advancement. This system . . . is . . . an economic order that harks back to Bismarck in the late nineteenth century and Mussolini in the twentieth: corporatism. —Corporatism […]
