Archive for the 'Economy' Category
ABN Fears World Housing Crash; UK Housing Overvalued by 50%
June 13th, 2007Via: This is Money UK: Soaring borrowing costs could spark a housing slump on a ‘global scale’, investment bank ABN Amro has warned. Families have taken on ‘unsustainably large’ mortgages, leaving them vulnerable to the sharp increases in bond yields and official interest rates seen in recent weeks, wrote economist Dominic White. Britain is one […]
U.S. States Renamed for Countries with Similar GDPs
June 12th, 2007Several people are commenting around the Intertubes that they’d like to see a per capita version of this. Me too. But for those of us who look at the U.S. economy, year in and year out and wonder, “How? Just… How can it be? How can it continue?” This is how, in one picture. Via: […]
Walmart Tries to Become Your Bank with the “Walmart MoneyCard”
June 12th, 2007Via: Consumerist: “Would you like to load your check onto a Wal-Mart MoneyCard?” Get ready to hear this phrase whenever you cash a check at Walmart (which you shouldn’t do anyway, but that’s another post.) Walmart has launched a prepaid debit card, issued from the same bank that also issues their credit cards. Why is […]
Putin Calls for New Financial World Order
June 11th, 2007Via: Financial Times: Russian president Vladimir Putin called on Sunday for a radical overhaul of the world’s financial and trade institutions to reflect the growing economic power of emerging market countries – including Russia. Mr Putin said the world needed to create a new international financial architecture to replace an existing model that had become […]
New Zealand Government Trying to Halt Rise of Kiwi Dollar
June 11th, 2007WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument. UPDATE: 6/12/2006: Well, That Didn’t Take Long: New Zealand Dollar Rises as Investors Return to Higher Yields Maybe the New Zealand Government should try… spit balls? Well, I’m not the senior currency strategist at Banc of America Securities, but that guy […]
Morgan Stanley’s 3-Alarm Sell Signal
June 7th, 2007HA! A “full house” triple Magic-8 Ball alarm! I wonder if this announcement was accompanied by a loud klaxon and flashing red lights? I need my old Quake 2 sound board: “IMPRESSIVE.” Via: Business Week: There have been a number of bearish analyst calls on stocks amid the recent global stock rally, but it took […]
Syria Drops U.S. Dollar Peg, United Arab Emirates Might Follow
June 6th, 2007Via: Gulf Times: The UAE may be the next Middle Eastern country to stop pegging its exchange rate to the US dollar, according to trading in currency forwards. The second-largest Arab economy may follow Syria and Kuwait, which both said in the past two weeks that they would dump the dollar peg to curb rising […]
Chinese Markets: Panic Selling
June 5th, 2007Via: Reuters / Yahoo: China stocks tumbled 8.3 percent on Monday in their second biggest drop this decade, erasing $340 billion in market value and extending big losses from last week after the government hiked the share trading tax to cool a feverish bull run. In an apparent attempt by authorities to restore confidence, front-page […]
The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Intelligence
June 3rd, 2007We’re solidly into the post-mortem phase of the analysis now. Via: Salon: More than five years into the global “war on terror,” spying has become one of the fastest-growing private industries in the United States. The federal government relies more than ever on outsourcing for some of its most sensitive work, though it has kept […]
Big Brother, Big Business
June 3rd, 2007Here’s a two hour CNBC piece about privacy, surveillance and the emerging biometric lockdown. Even though the situation presented here is grim, we know that it’s much worse. If, however, you or someone you know is looking for a general, easy to understand presentation on these issues, and have about two hours to spare, this […]
