Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Federal Judge Dismisses Third Party Environmental Claims Against Transocean and BP
June 19th, 2011Via: Courthouse News Service: Ruling in favor of Transocean and BP, a federal judge on Thursday dismissed third-party environmental claims in a giant pleading bundle in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation, saying the fact that the oil flow has stopped makes those lawsuits irrelevant. “The injunction at this stage would be useless, as not […]
Eisenhower’s Worst Fears Came True: We Invent Enemies to Buy the Bombs
June 19th, 2011Via: Guardian: Why do we still go to war? We seem unable to stop. We find any excuse for this post-imperial fidget and yet we keep getting trapped. Germans do not do it, or Spanish or Swedes. Britain’s borders and British people have not been under serious threat for a generation. Yet time and again […]
An Idea for the Billionaires Who Claim to Love New Zealand: How About an Electric Water Kettle?
June 18th, 2011The economy in Northland is in a state of collapse: The recession in Northland has had most impact on young people, with 29 per cent of the region’s 18- to 24-year-olds now on welfare, and on Maori, with an extraordinary 48 per cent of Maori aged 18 to 64 on benefits. Now, in New Zealand, […]
Puerto Rico: Banker Shot Dead, Professional Hit
June 17th, 2011Via: Business Insider: A banker was gunned down in Puerto Rico on Wednesday and at least one Puetro Rican news agency suspects that it might have had something to do with an audit he had recently launched. The banker, 56-year old Maurice J. Spagnoletti, was Doral Financial corporation’s executive vice president of Mortgage and Banking […]
Lawsuit Alleges Whole Foods Sold Frozen Vegetables from China Grown in a Polluted Region by Prisoners and Certified as Organic
June 17th, 2011Ahh, imagine my shock. Rant mode: On. We buy some organic foods in bulk from wholesale distributors here in New Zealand. Increasingly, if we want to buy these ‘certified organic’ bulk foods, the country of origin is China. We refuse to buy any food from China, regardless of which organic certification it has. We’ve indicated […]
‘Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind’
June 16th, 2011Via: Al Jazeera: Scientific experts believe Japan’s nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public. “Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera. Japan’s 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled […]
Why Your Money-Market Fund Could Be Hit by Greek Default
June 16th, 2011Via: CNBC: Some of the safest, plain-vanilla investment accounts in the U.S. could be challenged if Greece defaults on its sovereign debt. Forty-four percent of mutual fund assets in the U.S. are invested in the short-term debt of European banks, according to a report from Fitch. A separate report from Moody’s noted that 55 percent […]
Ireland: Thatched Roof Tract Homes Sit Empty
June 16th, 2011You have to see the pictures of this. Via: Daily Mail: As the Irish economy lies in tatters, the so-called Celtic Tiger now kept alive by an 85billion euro bailout, residents across the country have one reminder of the good old times. Ghost estates have become a new feature of the Irish landscape – hundreds […]
Allied Irish Banks Defaults
June 16th, 2011Via: BBC: Allied Irish Banks (AIB) has been deemed to be effectively in default on its debts by the association of banks that trade in credit derivatives. The ruling means the writers of $500m (£306m) of the insurance-like contracts will now have to make cash payouts. On Thursday, the Irish lender stopped interest payments on […]
Economic Data ‘Shows Troubling Mix of Weakness, Inflation’
June 15th, 2011I guess they don’t know the term stagflation over at Reuters. Via: Reuters: A closely watched measure of consumer prices logged its biggest rise in nearly three years in May and a regional factory gauge contracted this month, showing the economy facing a troubling mix of weakness and inflation. The Labor Department said on Wednesday […]
