Archive for the 'Economy' Category
A Pilot’s Life: Exhausting Hours for Meager Wages
January 11th, 2010Grim. Via: Guardian: The old hands say there was never much glamour in piloting several tonnes of metal thousands of feet in the air. But there’s no denying that to the earthbound back in the jet-set era half a century ago – when Pan Am’s “Clippers” ruled the air lanes and service was modelled on […]
In 2009, the Federal Reserve Bought 80% of U.S. Debt
January 9th, 2010Update: CNBC: “I Guess You Can Use the Word Ponzi Scheme” —End Update— Am I reading this right!? Someone tell me I’m not reading this right. Via: Pimco: Here’s the problem that the U.S. Fed’s “exit” poses in simple English: Our fiscal 2009 deficit totaled nearly 12% of GDP and required over $1.5 trillion of […]
Shorting China
January 8th, 2010Here’s a little something to keep in mind as you read this: FACING UP TO THE Nation’s Finances National Debt Clock Guess who is mainly responsible for keeping this scam going? UPDATE: It’s the Federal Reserve In terms of sovereign buyers, it’s China, but I had no idea how much debt the Federal Reserve was […]
Sentenced to 40 Months in Jail, UBS Whistleblower Seeks Probe of Government Lawyers
January 8th, 2010Via: Reuters: Lawyers for the whistleblower who helped in the U.S. tax probe of Swiss bank UBS AG asked the government on Tuesday to probe Justice Department lawyers for allegedly making false statements about his case. The National Whistleblowers Center, representing former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld as he fights the government over his role in […]
Wal-Mart and H&M Destroy Brand New, Unsold Clothes
January 8th, 2010Add up all the sorrow, hard work and resources that went into producing those goods… Straight to the landfill. Wal-Mart apparently uses a machine to destroy the clothes. How very American is that? Did someone get rich designing and building the machines that Wal Mart uses to destroy brand new clothes before they are thrown […]
Green Shoots: State Tax Revenue in U.S. Drops Most Since 1963
January 7th, 2010Via: Bloomberg: U.S. state tax collections fell the most in 46 years in the first three quarters of 2009 as the recession shrank revenue from sources including personal income, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government said. Revenue dropped 13.3 percent, or $80 billion, compared with the same nine months of 2008, to $523 billion, […]
Geithner’s New York Fed Told AIG to Limit Swaps Disclosure
January 7th, 2010Via: Bloomberg: The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show. AIG said in a draft of a regulatory […]
Cocaine Vaccine Leads Addicts to Take Ten Times More Cocaine
January 7th, 2010A novel way of boosting demand? Via: Popular Science: Over the last decade, the advances in neuroscience that led doctors to view addiction as a disease, rather than a desire or personal failing, raised the natural question of whether or not addicts could be vaccinated against drug use as if it were a virus. While […]
Stimulus to Bring Body Scanners to Airports
January 7th, 2010Mission accomplished. Via: CNN: The U.S. government is using $25 million in stimulus money to buy and install full body scanners in airports this year, in an effort to ramp up security and create jobs. The Transportation Security Administration is using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to purchase 150 of the full […]
No Bailout for Greece
January 6th, 2010Via: Reuters: EU officials arrived in Greece on Wednesday for an inspection visit, hours after ECB Executive Board member Juergen Stark was quoted as saying the bloc would not bail out Greece if its debt problem worsened. The government’s broad outline of how it will get out of its fiscal mess has not impressed markets, […]
