Archive for the 'Economy' Category
7 Charged In $78 Million Inside Trading Case
January 19th, 2012The point is that LOTS of people who aren’t corporate insiders know the news before the market does. —Insider Crimes, Funny Money and Options Rackets Via: AP: Greed on Wall Street set a new record, federal authorities said Wednesday as they unveiled a massive insider trading case charging a hedge fund co-founder with engineering a […]
NZ Asset Sales Policy Began On Wall Street
January 18th, 2012Both National and Labour are clear and present dangers to New Zealand. National’s goal is sell our country’s assets to Australia and China. Labour’s goal is get us saddled with debt to those country’s banks. In other words, the ultimate goal of both of the main parties is to sell us out, to make us […]
It’s a Girl: The Three Deadliest Words in the World
January 17th, 2012Via: Independent: It’s a girl, a film being released this year, documents the practice of killing unwanted baby girls in South Asia. The trailer’s most chilling scene is one with an Indian woman who, unable to contain her laughter, confesses to having killed eight infant daughters. The statistics are sickening. The UN reports approximately 200 […]
Greece Is Insolvent, Will Default on Its Debt, Fitch Says
January 17th, 2012Via: Bloomberg: Greece is insolvent and probably won’t be able to honor a bond payment in March as the country negotiates with creditors to cut its debt burden, Fitch Ratings Managing Director Edward Parker said. The euro area’s most indebted country is unlikely to be able to honor a March 20 bond payment of 14.5 […]
Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory
January 16th, 2012Update: Apple’s Chinese iPhone Plants Employ Forced Interns, Claim Campaigners Via: Guardian: Apple’s factories in China are employing tens of thousands of students, some of them on forced internships, according to campaigners lobbying for better labour conditions at Foxconn plants, which assemble iPhones. Some students could be as young as 16. The Foxconn chairman, Terry […]
The Rise of the New Groupthink
January 15th, 2012Via: New York Times: SOLITUDE is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people […]
China’s Skyscraper Craze May Herald Economic Crash
January 15th, 2012Via: Guardian: China could be the next country to go bust, if its headlong rush to build ever-taller skyscrapers is a guide to its future economic health. According to a study by Barclays Capital, the mania for skyscrapers over the last 140 years is a sure indicator of an imminent crash. It points out that […]
Value Afghan Opium Yield Rose 133 Percent from 2010
January 14th, 2012Via: AFP: Production of opium and the illicit crop’s value soared in Afghanistan last year, the United Nations said in a report released Thursday. According to the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime, farmer income derived from Afghanistan’s opium crop in 2011 was $1.4 billion (1.09 billion euros), representing nine percent of GDP. “Opium is […]
S&P Cuts Credit Ratings for France, Italy, Spain
January 14th, 2012Via: Los Angeles Times: Standard & Poor’s swept the debt-ridden European continent with punishing credit downgrades Friday, stripping France of its coveted AAA status and dropping Italy even lower. Germany retained its top-notch rating, but Portugal’s debt was consigned to junk. In all, S&P, which took away the United States’ AAA rating last summer, lowered […]
Haiti: Two Years After the Earthquake, Where Did the Money Go?
January 13th, 2012Via: Global Post: Where those billions went following the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that left a government-estimated figure of 220,000 people dead — and at least 1.6 million more homeless — remains a confounding mystery. … “In the end,” says Robert Fatton Jr., professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia and a son […]
