Archive for the 'Economy' Category
How About a Master’s Degree in Twitbook Arts, Crafts and Sciences?
March 10th, 2011Via: Wall Street Journal: Big consumer-products companies are going back to school. Businesses including Sprint Nextel Corp., Levi Strauss & Co. and Mattel Inc. are sponsoring college classes and graduate-level research to get help with their online marketing from the young and hyperconnected. Sprint, for example, supplies a class at Boston’s Emerson College with smartphones […]
Gasoline Cost to Jump $700 for Average Household
March 10th, 2011Via: Reuters: U.S. drivers will pay another 10 cents a gallon for gasoline before the latest jump in wholesale costs is fully passed on at the pump, and yearly motor fuel costs will rise 28 percent from last year, the Energy Department said on Wednesday. The average U.S. household will spend about $700 more for […]
WORLD’S LARGEST BOND FUND DUMPS ALL U.S. GOVERNMENT DEBT
March 10th, 2011Via: Reuters: The world’s largest bond fund has gone ultra bearish on the United States, dumping all of its U.S. government-related debt holdings. The move by Bill Gross’s $236.9 billion PIMCO Total Return fund completed last month comes in the wake of a vicious Treasury market sell-off and just days after he questioned who will […]
Sedgwick, Maine Declares Food Sovereignty
March 9th, 2011Via: The Complete Patient: On Saturday morning, Sedgwick became likely the first locale in the country to pass a “Food Sovereignty” law. It’s the proposed ordinance I first described last fall, when I introduced the “Five Musketeers”, a group of farmers and consumers intent on pushing back against overly aggressive state food regulators. The regulators […]
Prison Labor Used to Build Parts for Patriot Missiles
March 9th, 2011Via: Wired: This spring, the United Arab Emirates is expected to close a deal for $7 billion dollars’ worth of American arms. Nearly half of the cash will be spent on Patriot missiles, which cost as much as $5.9 million apiece. But what makes those eye-popping sums even more shocking is that some of the […]
Hard Times Generation: Homeless Kids
March 9th, 2011Via: CBS / 60 Minutes: The government considers a family of four to be impoverished if they take in less than $22,000 a year. Based on that standard, and government projections of unemployment, it is estimated the poverty rate for kids in this country will soon hit 25 percent. Those children would be the largest […]
Black 9/11: A Walk on the Dark Side
March 9th, 2011Via: Foreign Policy Journal: In his important 2006 book, Nemesis, the Last Days of the American Republic, the third and concluding part of a trilogy, the late Chalmers Johnson, who was an expert on Japan and US foreign policy, writes that as much as 40% of the Pentagon budget is “black,” meaning hidden from public […]
Britain: Rising Food Prices Could Spark Riots
March 9th, 2011Via: Herald Sun: A SENIOR economist at the worldwide bank HSBC has warned of civil unrest in Britain if food prices continue to soar, Sky News reported yesterday. Karen Ward cautioned that the UK was not immune to the kind of “food riots” seen in other countries around the world. “Even in the developed world […]
Libraries May Lend HarperCollins E-Books Just 26 Times… Before Having to Pay Again
March 9th, 2011Via: ABC News: In what is shaping up to be a major battle over e-book lending, librarians across the country have banded together to boycott HarperCollins after the publisher decided it would limit the number of times an e-book can be checked out. Under a new policy started Monday, HarperCollins will allow libraries lend out […]
Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages
March 9th, 2011Via: CNBC: Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement. Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 […]
